The Deck of Manly Things

Yea I know this is stupid, shut up. We got too much pretty girly stuff on this blog.

The Fool: You become capable of riding any four-legged beast. They instantly recognize you as alpha and obey standard horsemanship commands, even if they shouldn't.

The Magician: If you are a woman, you become a man. If you are a feeble man or a wimp, you become brawny and strong. If you are hairless, you become hirsute. If you're already all these things, you become so masculine that it's kinda toxic. You become emotionally insensitive, unconsciously bigoted, and you become unable to tolerate doing unManly things.

The High Priestess: You are now an inexhaustible lover. She never gets pregnant and you never get crabs or diseases. You're great at sex and everyone in town seems to know.

The Empress: You are embued with a magical 'MOM' tattoo on your upper arm. It alerts you if she is in trouble and reminds you to get her something nice on her birthday. She appreciates your visits, but understands that you're busy saving the world. If your mom isn't alive, you will never love, cry, or smile again.

The Emperor: Your entire wardrobe is replaced with manly versions. Everything you wear is incredibly cool, made of leather, and provides at least +4 AC. Your existing armor, if any is modified with sculpted abs and pecs. You invent Aviator shades.

The Hierophant: You know the law, and can argue it rationally and eloquently. If you were chaotic, you become neutral. If neutral, you become lawful. If the local law enforcement are overwhelmed (aren't they always), they put a badge on you before you leave the tavern, mutating you closer to the stereotype of a scary, tough cop.

The Lovers: Everywhere you go, unimaginably beautiful young women throw themselves at you shamelessly. You may indulge in their attention as much as you want, but you never become attached to any one female.

The Chariot: At any body of water you need to cross, you grapple a shark, who swims you to the other side. You subtly become more like a pirate.

The Justice: You become a master at arm wrestling. No one can beat you.

The Hermit: You grow a massive, manly beard. Even Dwarves will envy your beard. It has an AC of 15, is hard hard to break as diamond, and can lift 300 lbs.

The Wheel of Fortune: In every man's life, there comes a time when he has to make a decision. You choose BACON. You can now cast Grease at-will, due to having eaten so much bacon without washing your hands.

The Fortitude: You become capable of skinning and cooking anything you kill. You have an infinite supply of barbeque sauce. You can drink any volume of alcohol with no negative consequences. Your diet consists solely of meat and ale.

The Hanged Man: You become significantly well-endowed. Yes, just that one anatomical part. You will need a new codpiece for your armor, and probably looser-fitting pants. You have a third equipment slot for magic rings.

The Death: It takes enough arrows to darken the sky, or a moon crashing on you, or a similarly insane amount of awesomeness to kill you. You are immune to disease, papercuts, gangrene and old age.

The Temperance: What? There's no temperance in being manly. You rip up the card, eat it, and knock out an opponent by spitting it at them. Someone yells "Blackjack" and you win 100 gold.

The Devil: You encounter an Owlbear, and you wrestle it to the ground bare-handed. You may choose to slay the Owlbear and wear its coat (which makes monstrous humanoids afraid of you forever), or it will follow you as its new pack leader (which makes humanoids afraid of you forever).

The Tower: You become impervious to fall damage. Regardless of height, you land on your feet, or crouched with your fist to the ground. You leave craters in dirt, and crack stone.

The Star: Forever more, after you have defeated an enemy, something behind you explodes!

The Moon: You become immune to fear. You stand brave in front of Ancient Wyrms and Liches alike. While it doesn't make you invincible, you think that you are.

The Sun: You become immune to fire, even magical. You can walk across coals, strike a match on your knee, and start a fire with just two sticks.

The Judgement: You can spot an unmanly man, regardless of magic or disguise. You immediately intimidate any man lesser than yourself, and can spend a Downtime/Haven turn making such a man half as manly as you are.

The World: Your lifting and carry limit skyrocket. You can carry up to 30 times your own body weight without difficulty or encumbrance.

Homestuck Trolls

So. Homestuck. That webcomic that took over the internet from 2009 to 2014. I'm not going to make a big thing about explaining the lore, there's way too much here. I'm just going to adapt the Troll race. For fluff details, go to the wiki here.

Mechanically, Trolls have a subrace for every blood color, but there's commonalities. Simplified, they are:

+2 STR, +2 DEX, -2 WIS, with Daylight Sensitivity as a Drow.

Additionally, roll a 1d100 for Blood Color, or ask your DM.

01-20:  Rustblood
21-36: Bronzeblood
37-52: Goldblood
53-64: Oliveblood
65-74: Jadeblood
*69: Candyblood
75-82: Tealblood
83-88: Ceruleanblood
89-92: Indigoblood
93-96: Purpleblood
97-98 Violetblood
99: Fuschiablood
00:  Limeblood

Rustbloods receive +1 INT in addition to the above traits and tend to live 40-60 years.

Bronzebloods receive only a -1 WIS penalty, and tend to live 50-90 years.

Goldbloods receive +1 INT in addition to the above traits and tend to live 70-120 years.

Candybloods receive +2 to a stat of their choice, and have lifespans equal to a human's. This is a mutant blood color, and should not technically exist.

Limebloods receive +3 CHA and have no Wisdom penalties in addition to the above traits, and live 100-160 years. This is, in most settings, an extinct blood color.

Olivebloods receive +2 DEX in addition to the above traits and live 150-240 years.

Jadebloods receive +2 CHA and have no Wisdom penalties in addition to the above traits, and live 180-270 years. In addition, they do not have Daylight Sensitivity.

Tealboods receive no Wisdom penalty, and live 225-400 years.

Ceruleanbloods receive +1 to CHA and one other stat of their choice, and live 300-500 years.

Indigobloods receive +3 STR instead of the normal STR bonus, and live 325-800 years.

Purplebloods receive +2 STR, +3 CON, -3 WIS, -1 INT instead of the usual ability modifiers, and live 450-1000 years.

Violetbloods +2 DEX in addition to the usual ability modifiers, and live 750-1500 years.

Fuschiabloods receive +2 to every ability score, and can live forever.

Your Blood Color gives a modifier to Saves vs. Psionic Powers and Mind-Effecting affects as follows:

Rustbloods: -5
Bronzebloods: -4
Goldbloods: -3
Candybloods: -2
Olivebloods: -1
Jadebloods: 0
Tealbloods: +1
Ceruleanbloods: +2
Indigobloods: +3
Purplebloods: +4
Limebloods: +5
Violetbloods: +10

Fuschiabloods are utterly immune to psionics.

To determine whether or not your troll gains Psionic powers, roll a d100 and add the following modifiers
+30: Rustbloods
+25: Bronzebloods
+20: Goldbloods
+10: Olivebloods
0: Jadebloods
-5: Tealbloods
-10: Ceruleanbloods
-20: Indigobloods
-40: Purplebloods

If the result is a 50 or higher, your troll is a Wild Talent psionic, however that's handled in your system. At 60+,they gain an additional psionic power for every ten points above 50 they rolled.

Seadwellers  (Violetbloods and Fuschiabloods) may not have Psionic Powers through this racial trait. In compensation, they can breathe water as well as air and can maneuver perfectly in water as aquatic lifeforms.

Candybloods are to be treated as Jadebloods due to being similar to humans in most ways, and Limebloods are always psionic and need not roll. In fact, when determening their Wild Talents, treat them as if they rolled 100.

As a final note, if you're using Race-as-Class, simply have them advance as Fighters, Psionics, or as a modifier Elf that has stagger psionic progression instead of spellcasting. Also, I'd like to thank my friend Carson for helping me crunch some numbers. He's a boo. <3

Platinum Pieces Are Bullshit

So I'm not going to retread old ground, here; if you're reading this blog you've probably heard of using Silver Standard or perhaps even Copper Standard currency in D&D. In case you haven't, the basic low-down is that using gold as the standard is not only historically inaccurate, but is bad game design; starting level 1 players with 3d6 x 10 GP is way too much, and creates a set of expectations where 40 GP in a chest is a rounding error instead of a reason for people to squabble, draw swords, and go crazed with greed. Fuck that.

In such a Silver/Copper standard, you basically change all instances of 'GP' to the proper coinage, increasing the value of everything else accordingly. A sword worth 10 GP in your player's handbook is now 10 SP in Silver Standard, etc. To facilitate this, atleast one adventure module I've seen (Isle of the Unknown for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess gameline) uses Tin Pieces as a lower-than-Copper coinage.

Now, this is interesting, as metallurgically, tin is less common and thus more valuable than copper, but alchemically, this makes sense. The idea of coins having alchemical significance is an appealing one, because gold pieces and gems are implied by the rules to have inherent magical significance. What else could it mean to have spells cost arbitrary amounts of money in material components possibly mean? Gems might have mystical symbolism, like a Rose Quartz being an emotional healing stone, but gold seems to act as a natural conductor of magic for all general purposes.

 So, what do we do about Platinum Pieces? Most would tell you that there's not really any need for a better-than-gold piece, but we can justify it, because gold is not actually the final product of alchemy. Turning lead to gold is merely a process, not the end goal. Alchemy is about spiritual purification and elevation of the soul. The Magnum Opus is the process of purifying the soul by way of learning to manipulate the world; transmutation is essentially metaphor.

In this model, Tin Pieces are the unworked lead, and Copper Pieces are the first step; Nigredo, the blackening which represents putrefaction and spiritual death. It represents the soul meeting itself, and forced to face the worst of its inner nature. Obviously, Copper isn't a black material, but it does have associations. Copper decompose and oxidizes in time, becoming green and eventually blackish. Additionally, of all the major metals discussed here, it's the most biologically oriented, involved in dietary management, and often being created from traces of petrified organic matter. It even has associations with degradation of the soul; elevated copper levels have been linked to the onset of alzheimer's.

Silver is Albedo, the whitening or purification, and is quite an intuitive match, here. Silver is a metal of purity and sacred, anti-evil power in most mythologies; it has associations with the moon, and with harming or repelling evil or unnatural creatures. In many real-world magical traditions, it's also associated with witchcraft. The Alchemical Magnum Opus discussed Albedo as the separating of opposites for later reunification; remember this point.

Gold is usually associated with Rubedo, but it's also been associated with Citrinas, the yellowing or transmutation. It is here that silver is turned to gold, and the power of solar symbolism is utilized. This is also fairly obvious; gold has sun associations in D&D and various religions, and has a more celestial presence. It's associated typically with mainstream religions in power symbolism, and also has mystical governance over the material world. Money can buy everything, and all that.

Rubedo, the Reddening, is the finale of the process. The end of the Great Work. This is the wholeness. Silver and Gold and all other opposites come together to create spiritual and material perfection. It's the production of the Philosopher's Stone, and rather than the stone being a magical chemical that turns lead into gold or create immortality potions, it's in fact the ability to create them that lets the alchemist perform these tasks.

So, we'll call these Philosopher's Stone Pieces, or PP for consistency. What sort of society would produce these Rubedo Coins and be able to trade in them? This would be a society wherein anyone capable of minting coins is necessarily spiritually perfect and immortal. An entire society of eternal people in a D&D-verse? That's your high-magic ancient empire. Those are always decadent, and they either destroy themselves or become forces of villainy.

And if we're going to act on pop cultural interpretations of the Philosopher's Stone, like in the Fullmetal Alchemist anime? These red shits are made out of goddamn human souls.

Under a Silver Standard, a Philosopher's Stone Piece is worth 1,000 SP, or 100 GP, continuing the pattern. This would make their worth consistent with the material costs of most resurrection spells in D&D. This also implies unfortunate production methods.

Philosopher's Stone Pieces can only be produced through the sacrifice of sapient souls, equal to one coin per HD/Level of the soul. A 0-level humanoid would be worth 1/10th of a coin.

So there's a society of powerful immortals that are, if not extinct, are secretive, non-interventionist, and thus probably extraplanar. Why are children spirited away? It's not by the fey; it's this society, needing to print some more coinage. This could be the fate of their slaves and prisoners. The worth of this currency might not seem to be worth the sacrifices, save their high, high value. Non-human immortals like elves and fairies all respect this currency even if they don't recognize gold and silver, and when dealing with demons, devils, and other soul-merchants of the planes, these coins are worth six times their normal value.

To that end? An immortal who doesn't want to sell their soul could coax their heart's desire out of the Devil's mitts, if they can sacrifice a sufficient number of high-level adventurers, in a form convenient for innocuously passing around, laundering, and spending.

Carrying trade goods around isn't very practical after all. Whether they're bundles of crops, bars of gold, or the wailing damned...