Death Frost Doom Takes Place in a Crypt There Should be a Crypt Thing

Please Don't Touch Anything. It's Not Yours.

In the Revised version of Death Frost Doom. There are some skulls of clerics that sacrificed themselves to seal the death cult. Once you enter the tomb/temple the skulls start dropping from the ceiling.

I didn’t think this was cool enough.

I decided to replace one of the skulls with Adalhard the Crypt Thing. I made him the first thing to reanimate when you entered the crypt. He was the head Cleric who led whatever sealing ritual or whatever it was that the clerics were doing in the crypt when they became a skull chandelier. He had damned himself by sacrificing the souls of his comrades to seal the evil in an in doing so damned himself to watch over the tomb/temple.

I had been wanting to use something from the Fiend Folio and there wasn’t a lot in the adventure that would prod players onward if they got confused.

I feel in love with the Fiend Folio for the same reason I think a lot of people love the fiend folio.  A lot of the monsters seem gimmick or stupid an when you figure out a good way to use one of them you feel like a genus. I like to feel like a genius. Also, the art is good.

I chose the Crypt Thing because: 

1. The Crypt Thing is Neutral 

The most interesting thing about he Crypt Thing is that it’s neutral but undead. I decided that Crypt things were in life lawful good clerics who had died under a curse somehow. Adalhard had been lawful good in life but had damned himself by casting a forbidden ritual and doomed himself to undeath. He was now an abomination to his god and could no longer be lawful good. He wasn’t evil and died to prevent chaos from engulfing the world so he became neutral. Adalhard like all Crypt Things was lost, confused, and mad. Crypt Things do not understand that they are dead and are completely unaware of their powers.

2. I Have Bad Reading Comprehension/ The Teleportation Gimick

This feeds into the second interesting thing about the Crypt Thing, teleportation. Crypt Things will teleport people and then say that they are destroyed. Of course I misread the part about teleportation. I thought that his touch caused someone to be teleported away in a random direction. So, I stuck with that. The Crypt Thing, when it touches you it doesn’t deal damage but teleports you with no saving throw. In Death Frost Doom this made it more likely that the party would actually find all the crazy stuff behind the gross baby thing.

3. I Thought the Crypt Thing Would be fun to Roleplay

The default, by the book, Crypt Thing is probably guarding a crypt. The Crypt thing doesn’t want adventurers to ransack the crypt. The Crypt Thing reminds players that their characters are, at least in part, grave robbers and plunderers and not heroes. I imagine that by Default Characters are selfish and insane. They are so driven to amass wealth and power that they will gamble their lives against really bad odds. I wanted to pretend to be an insane talking skeleton that would give a diatribe along these lines and then teleport one of the party and then break down crying about how he had destroyed the pc by accident because of his horrible curse. I was right; it was fun.

The Mommy Daddy

DM: You can hear screaming. Underneath the screaming you can hear a high pitched sing song voice.

Werbin Blerbman: I motion for the party to stop. Werbin tells Elfstar to peak around the corner and use her infravsion to see what the screaming is.

Elfstar:Elfstar tells Werbin not to tell her what to do and then sticks her head around the corner.

DM:    You see a hobbling misshapen form

Elfstar: -great

DM:    -the bottom half which resembles a lurching human appears to be cooler and the upper half appears to be some sort of torso popping out at an improbable angle. The singsong voice and the screaming both seem to be coming from this figure.

Werbin: what... I light another torch and throw the old one to illuminate the creature.

DM:    You see Catherine Zombiesmasher, the cleric from town. She is twisted and bent over, her face in an expression of abject horror. Her back appears to be broken because her torso is bent at what must be a painful angle and her left arm dangles lifelessly to the ground. Her legs jerk haphazardly as she shambles towards you. The screams are her screams. Sticking out of her chest is another torso this one is comfortably upright. It is leathery and demonic. It is cooing to Catherine Zombiesmasher, “Mommy, look its your friends. Let’s go say hi, mommy.”  The voice is high pitched and child like. The whole amalgamation starts running towards you haphazardly but fast. Catherine Zombiesmasher will not stop screaming.

Werbin: We’re leaving. Fuck this dungeon.

Elfstar: What is wrong with you. I am going back to 5E.

Mommy Daddy: AC: 5 HD: 4* XP: 425

Larva: AC 3 HD: 1d4 XP: 5
 

The Mommy Daddy is a parasitic demon. It is rumored that they have an independent larval form but they are usually encountered already mature and attached to unlucky adventurers. The Mommy Daddy is fully connected to the body of its host. The body of the Mommy Daddy consists of a torso, a head, and one or two arms. The Mommy Daddy’s body is filled with larvae that if touched will attempt to burrow and infect the person dumb enough to touch them.

The Mommy Daddy shares the same hitpoint total as the host. If the amalgamation is attacked for enough damage to kill the host, both demon and host will die. It is possible to kill just the Mommy Daddy with luck. A Mommy Daddy gets 1d4 hit points of its own that can be damaged as follows: every time an attack is targeted at the demon and hits, roll a d20; if the number rolled is over 20 - the damage dealt the demon takes 1 hit. If you roll over, the damage is mostly felt by the host.

If the host wants to attempt to do something, they must save vs. paralysis to overcome the control the demon has over their body.

The Demon attacks as a 4hd monster. It has two attacks per round, one claw 1d6 dmg and one bite 1d4 dmg. After a successful attack demon larvae will crawl into the bite marks and scratches. The person hit as one round to try to kill the larvae before they get inside the wound and a new Mommy Daddy bursts out of wherever the wound is. The gestation period for a Mommy Daddy is 1d4 rounds.

Eventually the host will die. Then the demon will have full control of the body until it rots away. 

Merchant Class

I have wanted to add a merchant class to my game for a while. DH Boggs described a merchant class in Dragons at Dawn but the rules were different enough to be incompatible. I created my own based on what I imagine would be the same basic idea but, compatible with the rules that wound up being published.

Merchant Class

Prime requisite: Charisma

Save and fight as: Cleric

Hd 1d6

	Hit dice	Persuade	Experience
Peddler	1d6	25%	0
Salesman	2d6	30%	1,501
Smuggler	3d6	35%	3,001
Speculator	4d6	40%	6,001
Entrepeneur	5d6	45%	12,001
Trader	6d6	50%	25,000
Distributor	7d6	55%	50,000
Merchant	8d6	65%	100,000
Tycoon	9d6	70%	200,000

Restrictions: Merchants must be of neutral alignment. Merchants can wear any armor but have not spent the time to train how to fight properly with armor and are at -3 to hit when wearing anything heavier than chainmail. They are at -1 to hit when wielding shields. They can use any weapon.

Appraise: Merchants can assess the value of any item they are familiar with. E.g. Once they have seen an opal and found out how much it is worth they can appraise all opals. The dungeon master is free to establish what the categories are and how broad. If the dungeon master wants to treat elven chairs of the Pang Theocracy as categorically different than dwarven chairs of the Late Sleetwind Guild Era as categorically different, deal with it.

When Merchants become Entrepeneurs, they are able to learn the read magic spell if someone will teach it to them. They can only cast the spell directly from a spell book and it takes 2 hours.

Persuade and Reputation: Peddlers start with a base chance of 25% to sell any item for 20% more than it is worth to anyone who can afford it. This increases by 5% per level (you can read the chart). For every point the merchant’s charisma is above the potential buyer’s intelligence add 2%. If the buyer’s intelligence is higher than the merchant’s charisma subtract 2% for each point of difference.

Merchants can try to make more modest offers. If a merchant only seeks 10% profit they double their chances and if they go for a more audacious 40% profit they half their chances. Merchants may make multiple offers.

Merchants can even sell goods for a profit to people that clearly do not need the goods. If a merchant does so however, it can lead to a negative reputation in the community. Subtract 1% from persuasion chance for every unconscionable deal the merchant has made in a town. E.g. Werbin Blerbman decides to make some quick cash he buys a barrel of wine from the Salty Nymph and takes it across the street and sells it to the owner of the Vestigial Toe for a 20% markup. The owner of the Vestigial toe did not need to buy wine when he has a perfectly good wine cellar of his own and he certainly didn’t need to pay an extra 20% for it. Werbin Blerbman will now have -1% on all future persuade rolls in the town of Caladan.

Merchants get 1xp per gp of profit regardless of whether they got the item they are selling from adventuring or not.

Stronghold: I haven’t figured this out yet. I am also working on some complicated rules for holding auctions.