First things first, you need to click through this link to Goblin Punch and read the blog post there:

A Spell Called Catherine

Okay? Done? Good. Because this next bit isn’t going to make any sense unless you know what I’m talking about.

Let’s start with a random rules check: Summoning spells physically bring the creature or object from some other place, they don’t create them out of whole cloth.

I’m not sure if that simplifies the ethical implications of this concept or makes it much, much worse: Are these actually versions of Catherine from alternate dimensions? If so, does the Catherine of this dimension actually deserve any recompense for their labors of her other-dimensional “siblings”? They’re effectively immortal while here and if they’re actually returned to the same place and time as the one that they left, are they actually being exploited? What if people start disappearing from this dimension and it’s determined that it’s a result of people summoning them?

Not all of these issues actually require “Catherine” to show up in your setting: The summon monster spells already allow spellcasters to summon intelligent beings to come and do their bidding. There’s a really tremendous ethical mire lurking there. “Catherine” just brings it into sharper focus and puts it center stage.

And even if you’re not interested in the ethical conundrums presented by this particular “what if”, consider all the immediate fantasy plots that fall out of it: You’ve got wizards fighting to gain (or protect) arcane secrets. You’ve got the wizard’s guild encroaching on the whore business. You’ve got mobsters trying to get their hands on the spell (and wizards possibly trying to stop them because they’re uncomfortable with that sort of thing). You’ve got people obsessed with the summoned/created Catherines trying to stalk or kidnap the “real deal”.

If you can’t find at least a half dozen potential scenarios in all of that, then you’re not really trying.

(In a modern setting with magic I’m imagining a similar scenario also resulting in organ donor scams. The PCs get called in when recent transplant recipients start dropping dead because their new organs have vanished inside them. Although I suppose it doesn’t take much imagination to imagine angry diabolists hunting down an arcanist because their human sacrifice retroactively vanished and their demonic patron is unhappy about it.)

It includes all three original rulebooks and all four supplements. Each booklet has new cover art, but is “otherwise a faithful reproduction of the original, including original cover art”.

As you can see, the mock-up promotional picture shows eight booklets. I’m guessing that’s an error. OTOH, if WotC had somehow convinced Rob Kuntz to finish Supplement V: Kalibruhn (the original unfinished manuscript of which Noble Knight auctioned off a few years back) so that it could be included in this thread, I’d be spending the next nine months drooling. (Or maybe they’ll include either Chainmail or the Swords & Spells supplement, although neither is listed among the current contents.)

If you get less than eight hours of sleep in a night, you must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – the number of hours you slept) or become fatigued.

If you get less than four hours of sleep in a night, you are automatically fatigued and must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – the number of hours you slept) or become exhausted.

Elves only require four hours of meditation in a night. If they get less than four hours of meditation, they must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – twice the number of hours they meditated) or become fatigued. If they get less than two hours of meditation, they are automatically fatigued and must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – twice the number of hours they meditated) or become exhausted.

If a character’s rest is interrupted by movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task, subtract 1 hour for each period of interruption from the amount of rest that they received.

JET LAG

If a character rapidly shifts to a different time zone (or the equivalent thereof) due to teleportation, dimensional travel, flying carpet, or jumbo jet, they must make a Fortitude saving throw for sleep deprivation even if they get 8 hours of sleep. In addition, they suffer a -1 penalty to their saving throw per time zone they’ve shifted. Once a character succeeds at two consecutive sleep deprivation saves, their circadian rhythm has acclimated to the new time zone and they are no longer affected by the jet lag.

Characters using magical or pharmacological aids — like a sleep spell — to force a rest period that’s properly synched with the local time zone gain a +5 bonus to a sleep deprivation saving throw caused by jet lag.

Taking your shoes off and scrunching them into the carpet grants a +2 circumstance bonus to sleep deprivation saving throws caused by jet lag. This bonus rises to +4 if you happen to do it during a terrorist attack.

CIRCADIAN EFFECTOR
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Cleric 1, Sorcerer/Wizard 1
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: 1 creature
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

When cast on a character suffering from jet lag, circadian effector immediately removes the effects of jet lag. (It has no effect on other forms of fatigue or exhaustion.) The spell can also be used to induce the effects of jet lag on a character not currently suffering from it.

If cast on a sleeping character, circadian effector has the immediate effect of cancelling their jet lag. If used in this fashion, the effect is instantaneous (which means that it does not wear off and cannot be dispelled, although a character can be subjected to fresh jet lag if they move to yet another time zone).

This isn’t really an “advanced” rule. But I’ve got a whole series under that title.

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

Had a quick thought for handling bribes last night as I was slipping off into sleep:

1. Set a “bribe value” for the NPC.

You could put together a set of charts based on income, wealth, sense of duty, and/or potential consequences. But mostly you can just make a judgment call on “that sounds like about the level where this gal might be influenced by the offer of money”.

2. If a bribe equal to the NPC’s bribe value is given, grant a +1 circumstance bonus on associated checks.

Keep this in mind when setting the “bribe value”. It’s not the value at which the NPC immediately buckles like a well-worn belt. It’s the value at which they think, “OK. That’s slightly tempting.”

3. For each doubling of the bribe value, grant an additional +1 circumstance bonus.

So if the bribe value of the NPC is 1 gp, then a bribe of 2 gp gives you a +2 bonus; 4 gp gives you +3; 8 gp gives you +4; and so forth.

There’s no functional limit to the size of the bribe the PCs can offer, but obviously this exponential system does provide a practical limit. Start with a bribe value of 10 gp and you’d need a bribe of 10 billion gold pieces to get a +10 bonus. (Again: This is another reason to keep the initial bribe value at the “slightly tempting” level and not the “likely to accept this bribe” level.)

Note: The system assumes that you don’t tell the players what the bribe value of the NPC is. (Although maybe they can find that out through Gather Information or Sense Motive checks.) With that in mind, use some common sense and rounding while adjudicating the system. For example, pure math might say that you need to bribe 256 gp to get a +9 bonus and 512 gp to get a +10 bonus. If a PC bribes 250 gp, though, they should get the +9 bonus and if they bribe 500 gp they should get the +10 bonus. This is all meant to be an easy-to-use mental guideline for your benefit, not a binding contract written in blood.

Keep in mind that offering a bribe is risky: If the resulting Diplomacy check is blown even with the bribe in play, the target may become insulted or angry in response.

Rob Conley over at Bat in the Attic has posted some nice “rules of thumb” for long distance sighting in hexcrawls.

Meanwhile the Hydra’s Grotto points out that Conley is low-balling mountains in his post “Mountains and Mole-Hills“.

I’m posting this because (a) I find their posts useful and insightful, but also (b) because I think they’ve both missed the mark on mountains.

(Note that Conley uses a 5-mile hex, the Hydra’s Grotto uses a 6-mile hex, and I use a 12-mile hex. I use the 12-mile hex specifically because it simplifies away a lot of hex-to-hex sighting questions. But for the purposes of this post, I’m going to try to simplify things by converting back into actual measurements.)

When I did my series on Hexcrawls, I included a post on spotting distances. In that post, I included my rule of thumb that mountain ranges can be seen from 72 miles away, but I didn’t talk much about where I derived that value from: Basically, I did some quick research and determined that most mountain ranges have an average height of 3,000 feet or thereabouts. Notable peaks within a range will often be higher than that, but the average height of the range is 3,000 feet. And if you just do the calculations, you’ll discover that you can see an object 3,000 feet high from about 68 miles away (which I then rounded up to 6 hexes x 12 miles per hex = 72 miles). Or, if you reverse the math, I’m saying that at a distance of 72 miles you can see the occasional peak that’s up to 3,500 feet high in that range or thereabouts.

And so, for example, PCs can see the mountain range in my OD&D hexcrawl from about 6 hexes away. But there’s also a notable peak in hex L2 (the Stone Tooth from Forge of Fury) that’s not as high and can only be seen from 3 hexes away. And there’s also a volcano in hex K1 from which the smoke plume can be seen from much further away if it’s smoking. And a very tall peak of 10,000 feet in hex A1 which could theoretically be seen from 10 hexes away on a clear day.

The “clear day” proviso is an important one. The atmosphere itself will have an impact on your viewing distance (particularly for fine details) and haze can significantly decrease it:

But I digress: Conley makes his calculations on the distance mountains can be seen from based on an elevation of 1,000 feet. That’s roughly the minimum height of a mountain and, therefore, way too low for seeing a range of mountains from the distance. Hydra’s Grotto aims equally high above average with an elevation of 5,000 feet, which actually exceeds the maximum height of some mountain ranges.

One thing I would pick up from both Conley and the Hydra’s Grotto is the idea of adding a specific mechanic for “finding a good place to sight from” that chews up some time but allows you to see a little further than you normally would. That idea is inherent in the guidelines for determining spotting distance based on the horizon and height (find a tree and you can see further), but hooking it as a specific, mechanical choice might encourage its presence in actual play.