In Ptolus, the House of the Sacred Heat believes in the divine healing power of fire. They are not priests and they do not have truly holy magic, but their techniques “serve the needs of Ptolusites who cannot afford to pay a temple hundreds of gold coins to heal a wound or deal with an illness.”

This concept of fantastical healing lying somewhere between the naturalistic limits of the Heal skill and the magical extremes of divine magic has always been very appealing to me. Unfortunately, the purview of the sacred heat wasn’t given any mechanical definition. Without that mechanical definition, there’s no compelling reason for the PCs to ever interact with the Healers of the Sacred Heat. As a result, in a setting already teeming with activity, the Sacred Heat is a non-entity.

Reading through Reign t’other day, however, I found the esoteric discipline of Truil Bodywork. Greg Stolze describes this discipline, in part, by writing: “Some Truils argue, quite seriously, that bodywork functions by compressing a month’s suffering into ten or fifteen minutes. The bodyworkers themselves just roll their eyes at the jibe.”

Reign is built on the One-Roll Engine (ORE), so the pain-for-gain mechanics of Truil Bodywork don’t directly translate. But the basic concept was inspiring. Here’s the Healer of the Sacred Heat feat:

HEALER OF THE SACRED HEAT

Prerequisite: Heal 5 ranks

Benefit: The character gains access to the Healing Arts of the Sacred Heat. As long as they have access to an open flame, they gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Heal checks and they can also use any of the following abilities.

Burning Out the Poison: By using flame and heat applied to specific locations on the body, a Healer of the Sacred Heat can attempt to burn a poison out of a patient’s body. (Some ingested poisons will also require the patient to swallow specially prepared coals.) This treatments takes 1 round and deals 1d6 points of nonlethal damage to the patient, but if the healer succeeds on a Heal check with a DC equal to that of the original poison + 5 the patient is completely cured. (They suffer no additional effects from the poison and any temporary effects are ended. However, the treatment does not reverse instantaneous effects such as hit point damage, temporary ability damage, and the like.)

Cooling the Disease: By using strategically placed flames or heat sources around a patient’s body, a Healer of the Sacred Heat can create a biorhythmic vortex which will draw heat out of the body. As the heat departs the body, it draws non-magical diseases with it. The treatment takes 10 minutes and deals 1d6 points of nonlethal damage to the patient due to the sudden chilling of their body, but if the healer succeeds on a Heal check with a DC equal to that of the original disease +5 the patient will automatically succeed on their next saving throw against the disease.

Cauterizing the Wound: With 10 minutes of work and a successful Heal check (DC 15), a Healer of the Sacred Heat can convert lethal damage to nonlethal damage equal to their margin of success. A patient receiving this treatment also suffers 1d6 points of additional nonlethal damage due to the strain placed on their body by the technique.

DESIGN NOTES

I’m tempted to add a “once per day per patient” limitation to Cauterizing the Wound, but I’m  not sure it’s actually necessary. What do y’all think?

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

Savage Worlds uses playing cards for initiative: Each round, everybody is dealt a playing card and the rank of the cards determines the order in which characters take their actions. The system has the advantage of being quick, intuitive, and transparent. (It’s very easy to glance around the table and immediately see when people will be taking their actions.)

Here’s a variant of the same idea designed for D20 or D20-like systems.

PLAYING CARD INITIATIVE

THE DEAL: Each round, deal each PC and each group of NPCs a playing card. Characters with an initiative bonus are dealt extra cards equal to their bonus and get to keep the best card dealt to them. Characters with an initiative penalty are dealt extra cards equal to their penalty and must keep the worst card dealt to them.

(For example, Peter the Brave has a+2 initiative bonus. He is dealt three cards — the single card that everyone receives automatically, plus two bonus cards from his initiative: A ten, a nine, and a jack. He keeps the jack.

Brazz the Slow, on the other hand, has a -1 initiative penalty. He’s dealt two cards: An eight and a six. He must take the six.)

THE COUNTDOWN: Once the cards are dealt, the GM simply counts down from Ace to Deuce with characters taking their turns when their card comes up. In the case of a tie, actions can be resolved simultaneously. If the tie must be broken, resolve by suit order in reverse alphabetical order: Spades, then Hearts, then Diamonds, and then Clubs.

JOKERS: Jokers are wild. When you’re dealt a joker you can keep it even if you have an initiative penalty. A joker allows you to go whenever you want in a round, even if it means interrupting another character’s action with your full turn! In addition, you gain a +2 bonus to all checks and damage rolls for the round.

SHUFFLING: Reshuffle the deck after any round in which a Joker was dealt.

VARIANTS

TRADITIONAL VARIANT: Instead of drawing each round, you can simply draw once for the full combat. When characters take a readied or delayed action that changes their initiative, it’s recommended that players fish out a card of the correct value.

UTILITY VARIANT: Designate one of the players as the dealer. The GM can just tell them how many cards he needs and let them handle the actual dealing of the cards. Alternatively, if you’re all right handling simultaneous action resolution, there’s no reason the GM and players couldn’t have separate decks.

POKER VARIANT: For completely dissociated wackiness, let the players form poker hands by taking collective actions with various bonuses depending on the hand formed. Many poker hands, of course, would require some of the players to delay their actions for the round. (For example, two players with a pair attacking the same target could each deal double damage. What might a royal flush be worth?)

In the comments on yesterday’s post, I linked to my house rules for death and dying and my thoughts on save-or-die effects. One of the major thoughts in those posts was the fact that I’ve replaced death effects with Constitution damage in my campaign, and my hypothesis that non-deadly save-or-die effects could similarly be replaced with ability score damage. (For example, a petrification effect could inflict Dexterity damage. A flesh to stone spell would only turn you to stone if it reduced your Dexterity to 0. If your Dexterity wasn’t reduced to 0, then you can still feel your reflexes slowing down as your flesh stiffens and hardens.)

Using Constitution damage for death effects has worked really well: Death effects remain fearsome without bypassing ablative mechanics entirely, and the hefty hit point loss coupled to Constitution damage means that they have a meaningful impact even if death isn’t achieved.

Replacing other save-or-die effects with comparable ability damage, however, has run up against the fact that ability score damage can be a real headache in 3rd Edition. Dexterity damage, for example, means recalculating Armor Class, attack bonuses, and skill bonuses on-the-fly in the middle of combat. A certain degree of system mastery will allow you to simply note the penalty and then apply it to everything that you remember is based on Dexterity, but once you start tossing around multiple types of ability score damage it can turn into a real nightmare.

Recently, however, I’ve realized that the solution may have been staring me in the face. There’s another type of damage which would normally require massive recalculation of multiple scores and abilities: Energy drain. The designers of 3rd Edition, however, recognized what a pain-in-the-ass energy drain could be in previous editions and supplied a simple method for handling it in the middle of encounters: Negative levels.

Thus, in 3rd Edition, when you suffer a negative level you simply:

• -1 on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws
• -5 hit points
• -1 effective level (for level checks, etc.)
• Lose 1 spell from highest-level of currently available spells.

Can a similar solution work for ability score damage? I think so.

SUPER SIMPLE ABILITY SCORE DAMAGE

For every two points of ability damage you suffer during an encounter (regardless of which ability), you suffer a -1 penalty on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.

Constitution Loss: Constitution damage also subtracts -1 hit point per HD for every 2 points of Constitution damage suffered.

Spellcasting: Spellcasters who have their spellcasting attribute targeted must adjust the save DCs of their spells due to damage suffered.

When the encounter ends, re-calculate the actual penalties of any damage which remains.

(The rules for healing drain/damage remain the same. Similarly, the rules for what happens when an ability score is reduced to 0 remain the same.)

I’ve previously discussed the odd-ball interpretation I’ve been using of OD&D’s proto-system shock rules. In AD&D these rules were fully developed into the system shock and resurrection survival mechanics, but in OD&D these rules consisted entirely of a few table entries reading “60% to 90% of survival”, “40% to 50% chance of survival” and  so forth without any word of explanation. Ergo, we decided to interpret these passages as meaning “chance of surviving at 0 hp”.

In practice, our system is pretty simple. Whenever a character is reduced to 0 hp, they make a percentile check using the following table:

If the check is successful, then the character is merely unconscious and can be restored with normal (or magical) healing. If it fails, the character is dead and requires magical resurrection.

These mechanics are not the untested portion of this post: After dozens of sessions of play, they’ve been repeatedly tested and we’ve been generally pleased with the results. I may even be modifying my 3E house rules for death and dying to reflect my experiences with this system.

But recently I’ve had a desire to add some additional consequence for getting blasted down to 0 hp. So taking a page of inspiration from Jeff Rients, adding a dash from Chaos Wars (also by way of Jeff), stirring in some eldritch madness from the Vaults of Nagoh, and throwing in any other crazy ideas that I happened to have laying around my cobweb-filled mind, I came up with the table below.

Roll on the table whenever a character is reduced to 0 hit points but survives (either due to their percentile check or a raise dead spell).

Note that if you want to skip the more existential/supernatural elements of this table, you can just roll 1d20 instead of 1d30.

Yesterday I posted a conceptual system for generating the local market for magic items. Today, using the automatic treasure generator at Alderon’s Tower, I’m going to rapidly generate the local market for magic items in the City of Greyhawk.

THE MARKET LIST

(1) The City of Greyhawk has a population of 160,000. So using Treasure Type A I generate 160 treasure parcels and write down the resulting list of magic items. This took me about 15 minutes and resulted in a list of 137 items.

(2) While generating the list, I’m also jotting down ideas which occur to me during the process. For example, I notice that I’m generating an unusual number of cursed scimitars accompanied by a single magical scimitar. I’m struck with the idea of a con artist using the scimitar +2 to demonstrate how amazing his magical scimitar is, and then swapping it out for one of the cursed scimitars when the sale is actually completed. I also notice several water-themed items, including an Apparatus of Kwalish. Has someone discovered a sunken wreck in the Nyr Dyv?

MODIFYING THE MARKET

Greyhawk is a haven for adventuring-types and a hive of magic-users, so I’m going to posit that the market for magic items is fairly active and update it every session.

(1) I roll 16 new treasure parcels and add them to the market list:

oil of etherealness
wand of metal and mineral detection
libram of gainful conjuration
spear +2
bag of holding (500 lbs.)

(2) I roll 2d10 for (9 – 8 =) 1 + the 5 items I generated for a total of 6 items. I randomly eliminate 6 items from the market list:

potion of rainbow hues
cloak of protection +3
oil of air elemental invulnerability
pole arm +1
cloak of the bat
potion of blue dragon control

(3) Once again I try to keep the creative side of my brain churning: If a libram of gainful conjuration has been put up for sale, could it be from the collection of a local wizard? Is he dead and his estate being auctioned in pieces? Has she fallen on hard times and is trying to generate some fast coin?

And is there a reason somebody suddenly has a pressing need to control a blue dragon? Or is there perhaps a draconic cult trying to remove anti-dragon items from circulation? (If the PCs have such an item, might they be targeted?)