Creature Feature - Giant Worms, Spell Slinging Spiders, and Bloody Bushes

Annelid, Great

What is an Annelid you dare ask? Well it’s a giant hermaphroditic worm, up to a 1000 ft. long and has 25-50 HD (holy fawking $hit Bro!). ohh I almost forgot the obligatory Dune reference “The sleeper has! Blah, blah, blah.

The highlights are that it digs giant tunnels and swallows people whole. Also it paralyzes earth elementals with its bite, though this power is poorly understood. You know, kind of like why this monster exists. Who is going to fight this thing anyway? I can see it now, our trusty adventurers encounter a thousand foot behemoth. The DM looks across his screen, you have initiative, what do you want to do. Joe who plays the Halfling, grins and says “I pull my dagger, let’s gut this biatch!” Hah! just kidding, everybody would run or maybe the wizard could levitate it to death or something.

Possible Hooks: The Ground shakes outside the tavern, plates and mugs fall of the table and clatter to the floor, pictures fall of the wall and patrons are violently thrown the flood. Then, as suddenly as it began, it’s over.  As the characters step outside to investigate, they barely avoid falling into the 25 ft. wide hole in the taverns porch, the middle of the street and the shops across the way used to be.

GRUBS Rating: Meh, Uninspired. Big, Dumb, Stupid looking.

Aranea

Whoa! Large brained, super intelligent spiders that can cast spells and spend their leisure time doing arcane research. So it turns out that the super large bump on their heads is just wizard hat in disguise. Inquiring minds want to know, but the text doesn’t say, can Aranea cast Web? There is no information about their society or other habits but they are chaotic so I’m gonna guess they aren’t party friendly. Lol

GRUBS Rating: Uninspired, While spider are creepy and shit, just adding spells to them isn’t that great of an upgrade.

Archer Bushes

Yep, this is the ugly little bastard.

“A rose by any other name is…ow, stop shooting me with thorns thou fucking bushes!” Shakespeare it is not. This thing isn’t horrible, it’s just that the picture has it with a gaping fanged maw. Which is pretty stupid. It would be far more interesting if it were just a natural plant that defends itself from being trampled and preyed on by animals. Maybe those thorns are also seeds that grow new plants. But no, instead it’s a carnivorous, blood slurping, semi-mobile escapee from some lunatic wizard’s tower. Just one more reason to burn magic-users at the stake.

GRUBS Rating: Uninspired, killer plants are pure fertilizer.

The Hedge Wizard

Hedge wizards are informally taught wizards who have learned the art of spellcasting from another untrained wizard, from observing a wizard cast spells, or are entirely self-taught. They are always looked down upon by other spell casters who hold them in contempt for their lack of training and basic understanding of magical theory. Never the less, these individuals, with only the rudimentary understanding of the art of magic are able at second level, to cast spells and use magical items the same as a fully trained magic-user. These individuals tend to be loners by choice or social outcasts. As such, they tend to stay on the move, travelling the world and finding adventure wherever they go regardless of whether they wanted too or not. They tend to be clever and charismatic people who live life to the fullest. The prime requisites for a hedge wizard are Wisdom and Charisma. Any hedge wizard character with a Prime Requisite with a 13 or greater will gain a +5% bonus on earned experience points. A character with a 13 or higher in both Prime requisites gains a +10% bonus on earned experience points.

Restrictions: Hedge wizards use a four-sided dice (d6) to determine their hit points. They may wear nothing more protective than leather armor, and a shield. They may use any one-handed melee weapon, sling or short bow.

Special Abilities: At first level hedge wizards may pick two Thieves Abilities, these abilities improve as they go up in level just as a thief’s would. At second level, and every level thereafter the character gains one 1st level spell, they can cast 1 spell per level, per day. They cannot learn to cast any spell above 1st level, and are not required to have a spell book as they may very well be illiterate.

XP: 2200

B/X House Rules: Pelts and Furs, Recovering Arrows, Jumping

Pelts and Furs

Pelts can be recovered from normal or exotic animals at the DM’s discretion. It takes 15 minutes (or more) of time per HD of the creature to skin it properly. Once recovered, it can be sold at market in this raw state and sells for a 1d6 sp for each HD of the creature (+/- 1 sp for each HD bonus). If the pelt is properly treated and tanned it can be turned into a luxury item. To determine a fair market value the DM first determines the furs value as a pelt. For each HD of the creature the pelt came from, roll a d6, the total of this roll is the value of the finished fur in gp. This total is also the number of days it took / will take to transform it into a finished project. 

Recovering Arrows

Roll a d6 for each arrow fired in the melee. Any result of a 1, means that the arrow was recovered and can be used again. Any other result means the arrow is broken beyond repair or lost (in the wilderness).

Jumping

The distance a character can jump is based on their encumbrance and Strength score. The more heavily weighed down the character the shorter their jumping distance. The quickest way to determine the number of feet a character can jump is to remove the last number (on the right) from their Exploration Speed. Then add that to the characters Strength score to this. This is the number of feet they can jump in a running jump. A standing jump is equal to Encounter Speed plus Strength bonus in feet. Characters with 18 Strength scores are at the level of Olympic athletes

Encumbrance / Running Jump / Standing Jump

120’ per turn      12’              4’

90’               9’              3’

60’               6’              2’

30’               3’              1’

The Fine Art of Haggling; Re-purposing the Moldvay Retainer Reaction Table

Haggling 

First, the use of the Haggling table requires that the DM inflate the prices of goods when the characters are shopping. In order to keep things easy, determine the rate at which a particular merchant overcharges his clients by simply rolling a d4 and multiply by 25%. As the DM you can adjust this number up or down at your discretion. Once the price is determined haggling can begin.

Once a character makes an offer on an item, the DM can determine the modifiers and the merchant’s reaction. To determine modifiers the DM determines the number % (in 25% increments) above or below the item’s market value (normal listed price) the character has offered. For each 25% in cost difference above market value add +1 to the merchant’s Reaction roll. Likewise for each 25% below the market value of an offer -1 from the merchant’s Reaction roll. If the player offers market value for the item, then there are no modifiers to the Reaction roll.

Haggling Reaction*

   2 - Offer refused, merchant is insulted and haggling is over**.

  3-5 - Price remains the same***.

  6-8 - Comes down 25% on overcharge price****.

 9-11 - Offer accepted.

12  - Offer accepted, and a small item thrown in for free.

* Add characters Charisma bonus to the Haggling Reaction roll.

** If character continues the merchant bans character from store and may call the guard.

*** If the character makes the same offer again, merchant refuses again, and adds -1 to all future reaction rolls.

**** If the price drop matches players offer, then it’s a deal.

Aging in Moldvay

All PC’s are assumed to be young adults just starting out on their adventuring life and in the prime of their lives. As characters age forward or backwards their stats begin to decline. When a characters ability scores hits 3, that ability stops declining and stays at that score since this is the lowest achievable score. A characters other scores continue to decline until they reach a score of 3. This usually means that while the character is alive, they have trouble functioning because of their low ability scores.

< 7     All scores are assumed to be 3 or 4.

8-11    -2 from all ability scores.

12-14   -2 from all ability scores.

15-18   -2 from all ability scores.

19-29   All ability scores are normal.

30-39   -1 from all ability scores.

40-49   -1 from all ability scores.

50-59   -1 from all ability scores.

60-69   -2 from all ability scores.

70-79   -2 from all ability scores.

80-89   -2 from all ability scores.

90-99   -3 from all ability scores.

100+   -3 from all ability scores.

The table can also be used in reverse by adding to the ability score of characters. For instance, a young beggar NPC will see his stats improve as he ages, or characters who travel back in time sixty years will find the old crone from the village to be a young, strong, charismatic and full of life.

Creature Feature - Prehistoric Animals

Consists of eight prehistoric animals. Not so useful for most straight up D&D games unless you are doing a Lost World type scenario or campaign. If you are playing a prehistoric game, like Wolf Packs and Winter Snows, then these would be an auto include as prey animals and predators. They might even be useful in a regular D&D game as say…the last of their kind, and a one off encounter.

Buluchitherium – A 20ft tall rhino.

Giant Elk – A bigger than big Elk

Grangeri – A rhino-giraffe.

Hyenodon – giant hyena like critter.

Megatherium – Giant ground sloth, a.k.a. Easy Pickin’s

Phorobacos –  Giant bird or Swordbeak.

Titanothere – A blunt horned rhino, as seen in the movie Ice Age.

(the suffixes there and therium, are Latin for - of the big-ass variety. Which is much better than using the lame word Dire, which is just stupid as all get out. I mean really, Dire Halflings, see what I mean. I really like to add some serious science to my D&D games.)

Possible Hooks

The Royal Bromance: Your fighter has been invited to go hunting for the Elk King, a legendary Elk, with the Castellan / Lord from the local keep. Wizards and Clerics can stay in the tent with the rest of the skirts, as usual.

Flock Me!: Get chased around the tall grass prairie by a flock of Phorobacos.

Dine in, or Carry Out: A Carnivorous Megatherium, which sounds stupid at first, but bear with me. As slow as this thing moves it should be stealthy as all get out. It moves around in the trees and drops into the PC’s camp in the middle of the night. Of course they are on guard but they will be looking outward, probably not up. Heck, maybe it even avoids large groups and prays on lone travelers or small groups, as it is not likely to be making a quick getaway. The characters set up camp only to notice that there is a lot of equipment, blankets, pots, pans etc just laying around in the spot they chose to camp. A thorough search reveals that there are no tracks to be found except those made by the victims.

GRUBS Rating: Meh, uninspired, but necessary.

Next up…Annelid, Great

Moldvay Equipment Encumbrance

Soooo...you ever even notice there is a whole section in Moldvay Basic about encumbrance, and then they don't actually tell you how much your characters shit weights? Yeah, I didn't think so, but I'm just gonna post this here anyway, because your characters shit weights more than 80 cn's or 8 lbs.

Item		Cost in gp		Enc (cn)
Backpack	holds 400 coins		5	5
Flask of Oil			2	10
Hammer (small)			2	10
Holy Symbol			25	1
Holy Water	1 vial		25	1
Iron Spikes			1	60
Lantern	uses oil		10	30
Mirror	hand-sized, steel		5	5
Rations:
Iron Rations	preserved food for 1 person/1 week		15	70
Standard Rations	unpreserved food for 1 person/1 week		5	200
Rope	50’ length		1	50
Sacks:
Small	holds 200 coins		1	1*
Large	holds 600 coins		2	5*
Thieves’ Tools			25	10
Tinder Box	flint and steel		3	5
Torches (6)			1	120
Water/Wine Skin			1	5*
Wine	1 quart		1	30
Wolfsbane	1 bunch		10	1
Wooden Pole	10’ length		1	100

* weight in coins when empty

Also, for those of you who have trouble figuring out how to covert coin weight  to pounds, I have a magical means to figure it out. Take your opposable digit on your right hand and put it over the digit on the far right of the number in question. Viola! now it's in pounds. If you have an object from real life item that you would like to include in your game, and you know the weight of said object, all you need to covert it to coin weight is add a zero to the end of the number. Viola! more magic.