Category: Uncategorized

Another quickie for buffer reclamation purposes. Why are they called “orcs?” This one here includes a dive into a completely made up language by the only one who has ever done fantasy languages right, JRR Tolkien. The Elvish word for “goblin” is “yrch” in JRR Tolkien’s complete, properly developed, “I have an actual PhD in this field” constructed language of Sindarin. The word “yrch” is Romanized or…I guess Westronized? Into “orc” by human speakers.

That quick dip into Tolkien lore is not actually the answer, though, because the foundations for the word “orc” existed in real languages already. The connection to Sindarin was just Tolkien adding fictitious etymologies to his world, something he did because he had the attention to detail to actually get languages right. Has it come across that I really dislike the constructed languages of most Tolkien imitators? That’s a thing I’m not fond of.

In any case, the real world etymology of “orc” is not entirely clear. There are four possible antecedents some of which may have informed one another, and any or all of them could have been the predecessor to “orc” (and the etymologically related “ogre”). The Latin Orcus is another word for Hell or the Underworld, and is where D&D gets the name of its most famous demon prince, but a more direct connection comes from the Old English “orcneas,” which means “monsters,” and the Italian “orco,” which means “monster.” Italian is informed quite a bit by Latin and not so much by Old English, so my guess is that this is a word spreading from Latin or Italian to Old English, but actual real linguists are apparently undecided on the issue, so I wouldn’t bet anything on that.

This bit of trivia brought to you by the ongoing horrorshow that is my buffer.

Continue reading “Why Are They Called “Bugbears?”” →

So, the following came up in a Reddit thread recently and since I’m still doing damage control on the buffer, I need to post it. It contains a snipe at GRR Martin, which is always fun, because that always brings out of the woodwork all the people who’ve never read any literary fiction before ASoIaF and are so blown away by the concept of literary foreshadowing that they assume GRRM invented it himself and is therefore an unqualified genius who can do no wrong.

So, here’s some stuff I wrote about how to run an effective erotic RPG. I’m aware the audience for this is super niche, but if that audience isn’t you, you don’t have to read it.

Continue reading “How to Run An ERPG” →

We’re rebuilding our buffer a little now that we’ve found the time to start actually producing content again, but the effects of the past couple of weeks are still with us in that our buffer is in a scarily damaged state right now. So, we’re going to post some more random stuff from the vault in an effort to rebuild. This is some musing on Dark Heresy 2 power gaming I wrote at about the same time as FFG announced they were giving up the license and wouldn’t be producing anymore DH2 splats. I don’t actually know if it’s good advice at all, since it was originally written spur of the moment and was never really meant to be a guide for other people. Indeed, it doesn’t even provide detailed build advice which means it’s probably only comprehensible to people who know the system well enough that the advice is already obvious. But hey, content is content.

Continue reading “Dark Heresy 2 Shameless (and Possibly Wrong) Powergaming” →

Generally speaking, a dungeon has enough firepower in it to completely slaughter a party. Generally speaking, a party beats the dungeon. Why does the party win? They have a number of key tactical advantages that players tend to get good at over time. They aren’t usually able to articulate why the things they’re doing work, but they figure out what works and stick to it, leveraging these advantages without even being able to tell other people what they are. So what are they?

Continue reading “How Dungeons React to Intruders” →

At low levels, like LMoP, necromancers work fine. At mid-to-high levels, things go nuts.

At mid-levels, especially right around the level 9-13 area, necromancers can command armies of skeleton archers dozens strong. It’s fairly easy to issue commands to archers that allows them to send an obscenely large rain of arrows down on enemies, and few things are more deadly in 5e than a large number of incoming attacks. Damage reduction is very rare and AC isn’t often 20 or higher until the end game, so your skeletons aren’t going to be fishing for crits against level-appropriate opposition. A level 11 necromancer has 3 third-level spells that can command up to 4 skeletons each, 3 fourth-level spells that can command up to 6 skeletons each, 2 fifth-level spells that can command up to 8 skeletons each, and 1 sixth-level spell that can command up to 10 skeletons, for a total of 54 skeletons. CR 11 creatures – who are supposed to be a decent encounter for the entire party, not one character – typically have an AC in the neighborhood of 17. A skeleton archer has +4 to hit and hits AC 17 40% of the time, and deals an average of 5.5 damage for each hit. 5.5 times 0.4 hit rate is an average damage of 2.2 per skeleton per round. With 54 skeletons, he’s got a per round damage output of 118.8 (slightly higher, actually, I’m not counting crits). CR11 creatures usually have between 150-200 HP and will be dead in two rounds. The roc and marid will take three.

In those three rounds the monster has basically no chance of killing the intervening seven hundred and two hit points of skeletons standing between them and the necromancer, nor do they have particularly good odds of sniping the necromancer for what is, if the necromancer is smart enough to make CON his #2 priority after INT (this even makes sense roleplay-wise, since it’s a perfectly acceptable archetype to have a necromancer be filled with the unholy stamina of the dead), over 50 HP. The roc has the best odds, because it can fly over the skeletons to target the necromancer directly with an average of 50 damage, so it only needs to get slightly lucky to drop the necromancer in one round, plus the necromancer is unlikely to kill it until it’s had two rounds to act, maybe three depending on initiative. It’s also got a fly speed greater than the effective range of the skeletons’ shortbows, so even when engaging at visual range it doesn’t have to spend a round taking arrows just to get in combat distance.

Still: One out of a half-dozen CR11 creatures stands a chance against a level 11 necromancer. The others are lunch meat. Most of them won’t even make an appreciable dent in the skeleton horde before dying. The necromancer doesn’t care that he has to sacrifice all of his level 3+ spells to do this, because nine spells would never solve half the encounters that his vast skeleton army can.

It’s not as bad at levels 15+. Just four more points of AC causes skeleton hit rates to drop by half, and the rate of new spell levels bringing in more skeletons to the horde is barely keeping pace, which means the average damage per round is only slightly higher (140.8), but most monsters now have about 300 HP, which means they take 3 rounds to kill. Monsters also have AoE effects slightly more often, which means that 3 rounds is more often actually enough to chew through a good number of skeletons, although it’s still the case that basically no monsters can win (closest is a stalemate by assassinating the necromancer before succumbing to skeleton volleys), just that the necromancer is much more likely to take appreciable amounts of damage to his horde if he fights several in a row. That still makes him approximately as powerful as an entire four person party.

To keep this post from getting any bigger, I won’t go into detail on mirror match or swarm battles except to say that the necromancer can split his damage into discreet chunks and this means he’s equally effective against lots of little enemies as he is against one big one.

So, are necromancer lords overpowered? Yes. Very very yes.

Generally speaking, a setting with a 10,000 year history could probably compress that down to 1,000 years and not lose a single thing, and getting rid of medieval stasis is by far the easiest way to explain medieval stasis. Few of the explanations typically posited to explain 10,000 years of medieval tech and society actually hold up to scrutiny (and by “few” I mean “not a single one I have encountered, but I’m leaving wiggle room in case there’s a better one I haven’t heard of”).

Continue reading “Medieval Stasis is Dumb” →

Elves are dicks. I wrote an article about it and I stand by it – in nearly every D&D setting, elves have been somewhere between moderately and extremely dickish (Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance, two of the biggest D&D settings around, lean towards the extreme side). So, when I say that elven lifespans should be a huge deal and that middle-aged elves should logically have crazy-high character levels even if they’re bog standard elven guards or the local apothecary or whatever, that’s not because I’m an ardent supporter of the “misunderstanding Tolkien” school of worldbuilding, it’s because being able to live for a very long time is a huge advantage which is pretty thoroughly underestimated by D&D. I use elves as an example here, but dwarves are quite similar.

Continue reading “Elven Lifespans Should Be A Bigger Deal Than They Are” →

This one is actually a forum post, which is why it references a conversation that this blog isn’t actually having. Other than the weird segue at the beginning, it’s a pretty self-contained post.

Continue reading “The Importance of Fluff” →

Of the big three D&D settings (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance, ignoring meta-settings like Planescape), Dragonlance is the setting used to exemplify epic fantasy. A titanic struggle between good and evil rocks Ansalon down to its core whenever Wizards can find the money to pay Hickman and/or Weis to squeeze out another trilogy, bold heroes facing off against tyrannical overlords, whose triumph is inevitable. The tyrannical overlords, I mean. Good guys never win lasting victories in Dragonlance.

Continue reading “Dragonlance: In The End, Evil Shall Always Triumph Over Good” →