Category: Gaming

Learning Pathfinder 2e as a D&D Player

In the past couple of months, starting with the Beginner Box, I have been learning how to play Pathfinder, second edition, which came out in 2019. It is a successor to the original Pathfinder edition, which in turn was based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 through the Open Gaming License (the same one under attack recently by Wizards of the Coast).

Speaking from personal experience, Pathfinder has suffered from a bit of an image problem…

But I picked up the Core Rulebook lately, which has been a fun read. The artwork is top-notch, and the guide does a pretty careful job walking you through the rules. However, the sheer size of the rulebook makes it hard to mentally absorb all at once, so I found this excellent series of videos by Jason Buhlman, lead game designer, that walk through all the essential aspects of playing Pathfinder.

First lesson, character creation
Second lesson: understanding magic
Lesson three: designing encounters
Lesson four: combat

I enjoyed this series, and it really helped the rules Pathfinder 2e “gel” in my mind. It also made it easier to go back and make sense of the text in Core Rulebook without having to reread multiple times.

So, I went ahead and made a first-time character to get used to the new ruleset: Tharivol a Wood Elf Druid. Pathfinder does not yet have an equivalent online character sheet storage system like D&D Beyond, but it has been fun to make on paper.

Transitioning from D&D

But, what’s it like going from Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, which I have played since 2017, to Pathfinder 2nd edition?

Mechanically speaking, many of the rules, especially combat rules, make a lot more sense in Pathfinder than they did in 5e. The feel is more or less the same, but when you get into the grey areas, the Pathfinder approach often makes more sense, and there’s usually a contingency for everything a player wants to do. Some rules look more familiar to old time players like me (for example the spell “slots”) who played older editions, others look like fresh design improvements over older games. It’s an interesting mix of complexity with novelty.

Weapons also make more sense. For example, I complained previously about the lack of Asian-style mundane items, weapons and magic items in 5th edition and I was surprised to find, for example katana weapon stats in Pathfinder right in the Core Rulebook. This means, my old elf-samurai character, if adapted for Pathfinder, would probably look a bit more realistic (as much as fantasy elves in a Japanese-style setting would 😅…) than before.

Speaking of character creation the Pathfinder system relies less on character “tracks” to follow as one levels up, and more on a kind of buffet where one picks feats over time. Sometimes, the feat choices and skill increases are limited in scope, but you still usually have room to choose. This makes it hard to create the same character twice, and means each one will have a bit more individuality.

In the Advanced Player’s Guide and Lost Omens: Ancestry Guide there are quiet a few more character races and classes to choose from beyond the Core Rulebook. I was surprised to see a more diverse set of options. My son who is half-Japanese, was excited to be able to play a Japanese-style kitsune (fey fox) character, for example.

Even the human characters, unlike 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, get a lot of attention and care and are a lot more compelling to play. The artwork alone depicting humans in Pathfinder is amazingly diverse and fascinating. Take a look at a couple pages from the Lost Omens: Character Guide…

Holy cow, the amazing detail and artwork really brings the various cultures of Pathfinder to life, and makes it much easier to find cultures you can identify with. Paizo really needs to pat itself on the back for this effort. Speaking of artwork, the Lost Omens Travel Guide is simply amazing. The Guide is written as a travel guide for players who might venture in the default setting of Absalom and surrounding areas, but provides amazing detail about everything from fashion, to card games, and even recipes that you can try out in real life.

Speaking of which, the fact that Pathfinder is not limited to hardcover books (which are fairly expensive) and openly available online through PDFs, or just through official reference sites makes a lot of this easy to fit your budget level. You can start as you are and learn pretty quickly and cheaply, but if you’re like me and like physical books, you can easily order those either through your local game store or directly through paizo.com.

For all these wonderful aspects of Pathfinder, there is one area I have personally been frustrated and that’s the world building and lore.

A lot of the familiar old settings that I knew from Dungeons and Dragons, such as Eberron and Barovia, both of which predate 5th edition, simply don’t exist in Pathfinder. There are probably good reasons for this due to licensing issues, intellectual property, and so on, but the loss is definitely felt. Fan created conversions for such settings do exist, but they ran the gamut in terms of support and quality. It would have been nice if Pathfinder had found a way to provide more official versions that were maybe similar to the D&D settings, but obviously not carbon copies. Such things may exist, but it’s a bit hard to sift through all the different adventure packs and settings that are printed already.

Some of my Ravenloft novels, along with Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII.

It isn’t all that hard for an enterprising DM to also just convert 5th edition settings into Pathfinder ones, but I do miss being able to just have the reference books handy, for lore if nothing else. Pathfinder focuses on the Lost Omens setting as its introductory setting, and if you played 5th edition, this will feel in some ways like the classic Forgotten Realms Sword Coast. Beyond that though, things get a bit muddier in terms of lore that’s familiar to old D&D players.

Conclusion

In short, compared to Dungeons and Dragons, I have found that Pathfinder has more to learn up front due to slightly more complicated rulesets, and the vast array of books that Paizo has printed for 2nd edition already in the last 3-4 years. But Paizo recognizes this and provides a number of choices and options to help ease the transition. It took me about 2-3 weeks reading Core Rulebook and watching the videos in my spare time, but once I got past that initial hurdle, the rest of Pathfinder 2nd edition just made sense.

I’ve played a bit with my kids, but I would like to find other groups to play in the near future, but as with any TTRPG, finding players is…. challenging.

In any case, Pathfinder is dynamic, exciting and has a lot of offer. They are hungry for customers and are making great efforts to help educate people, and stay responsive to their needs. Where 5th edition has lost its luster for me, Pathfinder is a lot more exciting and compelling.

Of course I still enjoy 5th edition, and it has a lot of memories for me and the kids, but it also feels increasingly like it’s run it’s course, the corporate greed has homogenized the game to the point of being moribund.

A Nerd Dad’s Review of Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box

The recent fiasco by Wizards of the Coast (who owns Dungeons and Dragons) has left me pretty bitter toward 5th edition1 and the company that owns it. If Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes wasn’t frustrating enough (“buy your $50 book again!”), this was the final straw.

I decided it was time to try Pathfinder again.

Again, you say? Allow me to explain.

Aeons ago, circa 2016, my coworkers and I played an after-work campaign of Pathfinder, 1st edition. The campaign lasted about 2-3 months but it was a miserable, stressful experience for me. The DM pushed us to optimize (e.g. “min-max”) our characters for awesome battles, using lots of custom 3rd party content, feats and builds that made really confused even as I was still to wrap my head around the basic rules. The DM knew the rules and feats like the back of his hand, but frankly wasn’t very empathetic to new players, and just wanted to host cool battles. Looking back, I believe the issue was more with the DM than with the game.2

I gave up, but I always felt someday that I should give it another try … someday.

Enter Pathfinder, 2nd edition (Pf2e): a major update to Pathfinder that came out in 2019. It streamlined and updated a lot of challenges with 1st edition, and includes a lot of good introductory material to help new players ease into this. A prime example is the Beginner Box which I ordered direct from Paizo.com after my local game store already sold out (believe me, I am not the only one locally who is mad at WotC).

My goal was to learn Pathfinder 2e properly, and at my own pace, so I could avoid the unnecessary stress of learning a new system, and actually keep things fun.

A week later, my box came in the mail:3 🎉

Yay, new package in the mail! Sadly, the little Starfinder figurine that was included was already smashed upon delivery.

The Beginner Box contains everything you could possibly need for both a DM and a group of players to start from scratch:

  • a self-contained adventure (more on that later): Troubles in Otari.
  • a full set of dice, color-coded to match the symbols on the character sheets
  • pre-made character sheets with very easy to read stats, plus blank sheets if you still want to make your own. These look really nice by the way.
  • Two step by step guide adventure guide for Troubles in Otari, one for the DM and one for the players. These two books also function as a very slimmed down core Rulebook for Pathfinder 2e, including character building options, combat rules, etc.
  • fold-out adventure map for Troubles in Otari.
  • monster stand-up cardboard “tokens” for map, both a variety of player characters and all the monsters necessary for the adventure.
  • laminated “action cards” to help players decide what they can do during their turn
(please pardon the messy table…)

My kids, both experienced 5e players, were a bit hesitant to try Pathfinder since the only game system they knew and grew up with was D&D 5th edition, and as a busy parent I didn’t have much time to prepare Troubles in Otari either. So, both the kids and I essentially went into this first adventure blind.

I let my kids each pick from the pre-made character sheets for now, and I ran any character not chosen (Valeros the Fighter in my case) to ensure the party was rounded out. I read over the adventure guide for a couple minutes to get my bearings and off we went.

As a stand-alone adventure Troubles in Otari is a good, classic dungeon crawl. What makes it genius though is how each encounter teaches you another aspect of gameplay, each one slightly more advanced than the previous. So it is also a tutorial to the game.

The adventure guide for Troubles in Otari walks you through each step of the way: what happens if players do X, what happens if they hit a skeleton with Y, etc. Experienced DMs can gloss over if they want, but it helped me a ton in making the mental transition from 5th edition to Pf2e and keep things running along. I hand-waved a few spots for pacing, but what DM hasn’t?

Also, the DM and Players Guide both can standalone as introductions to Pathfinder 2e without having to invest in the Core Rulebook. Since it is a minimal introduction, a lot of character build options and combat details are missing, but this does ease new players up into the game, without having to read all the rules upfront.

My kids loved the “3-action” combat system, the change to perception rules, and the pre-made character sheets. Pathfinder 2e, as a whole, was familiar enough for kids who’ve played 5e to quickly adapt, but also fresh enough to keep their attention. The cardboard tokens were also popular as they made the combat fun, without investing a ton in figurines that I may or may not have.

We completed most of the 1st floor of Otari in about 2.5 hours before we got tired and took a break (my teenager also had homework to do). We will try to finish next weekend, and the kids are already looking forward to generating their own characters using the Core Rulebook (which I purchased at the same time, and will review separately).

As an introduction to Pathfinder, this was a pleasant experience and a useful teaching mechanism to myself and my kids. It was a far cry from the stress-inducing experience I had ages ago, and a fresh start to Pathfinder, as well as a great alternative to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Even if you are a pretty experienced TTRPG player, it really helps to have a nice hand-holding tool like the Beginner’s Box, to help with the mental transition in rules. Also, the materials included are re-usable in other contexts as well, so it’s not a one-and-done investment either.

P.S. Basic Liches did a really nice review of the Beginner Box here too, and it pretty much lines up with my experiences as well:

1 My kids had to talk me down from selling most of my D&D 5e books to the local used bookstore. It was a sunk cost, and doesn’t do much good to sell now, as we might still play in the future. Instead, we agreed that we’d buy no more D&D products for the foreseeable future. In any case, One D&D doesn’t interest me anyway, so I see little point in that either. My D&D Beyond subscription has already been cancelled too.

2 The same DM also took us through a D&D 5th edition play-through of the Mines of Phandelver, which started out well enough but eventually spiralled out of control too. So, there might have been a pattern.

3 Given that I live about 45 minutes by car from the Paizo headquarters, it’s quite amusing to watch my package go through an elaborate, Byzantine series of handoffs with one carrier to another before it finally arrived. In theory, I could have driven down to pick it up myself, and saved a week of waiting. I don’t blame Paizo for this, but I do blame the amazingly inefficient shipping process. Also, to be fair, I did pick the cheapest shipping option, and well, you get what you pay for…

A Brief Introduction of Yogacara Buddhism

For this year’s fall Ohigan season, I wanted to provide a brief introduction to fascinating and highly influential school of thought within Mahayana Buddhism called Yogacara (as in “yoh-ga-cha-ra”), also known as “Conscious-Only Buddhism”.

I first encountered Yogacara Buddhism through a book that was translated from Japanese by Professor A. Charles Muller titled Living Yogacara: An Introduction to Consciousness-Only Buddhism. The book was written by head of the temple Kofukuji, Rev. Shun’ei Tagawa. Kofukuji Temple, a place I happened to visit in 2010, is one of the last temples in Japan of the once powerful Yogacara, or Hossō-shū (法相宗), sect in Japan. It once dominated political and religious thought in Japan until about 10th century, when it was increasingly eclipsed by the Tendai sect, while its political entanglements with the powerful aristocracy eventually led to its downfall.

However, the Yogacara tradition extends all the way back to when Buddhism flourished in India, starting with two half-brothers Vasubandhu and Asaṅga in the 4th century CE, who wrote the first treatises in the region of Gandhara (a place mentioned here, here, here), where modern Pakistan is now. It was one of the many innovations in Buddhism that happened in Gandhara that then traveled the Silk Road to China and beyond. The famous Chinese monk, Xuan-zang, who journeyed all the way back to India to collect more teachings was also a Yogacara monk. What we read and enjoy today is due to the efforts of all these monks and teachers.

But enough about history. What is Yogacara Buddhism?

Screenshots from Chrono Trigger, the iOS edition.

In the book, Rev. Shun’ei Tagawa bluntly summarizes the Yogacara teaching that reality is:

“nothing but that which has been transformed by consciousness.”

translation by A. Charles Muller

Further Rev. Shun’ei then quotes a famous poem that encapsulates the teachings:

JapaneseMeaning
手を打てばAt the clapping of hands,
鯉はえさと聞きThe carp come swimming for food;
鳥は逃げThe birds fly away in fright, and
女中は茶と聞くA maiden comes carrying tea —
猿沢の池Sarusawa Pond.
Translation by A Charles Muller
The famous Sarusawa Pond in Nara, Japan. Taken in July 2023. Kofukuji Temple can be seen to the left behind the trees.

The idea is that with a simple noise like the clapping of hands, each creature (or person) responds differently according to their background or how they view the world.

Using a more modern example from the book, imagine two people looking at a mountain together. One is a mountain climber, another is a painter. As a pile of rocks and magma formed by geological processes, a mountain is just a mountain. And yet, each person will perceive the mountain differently from one another. And such people will also interpret it differently than a goat on the mountain. It’s not a conscious effort either, it’s how our mind naturally works. Sort of a bubble of perception that we each live in, colored and reinforced by the constant feedback of our own thoughts, feelings and actions on the bubble’s inner surface.

Yet another example might be a fresh pair of jeans you bought and started wearing. Depending on what you do, or how you live your life, the jeans will absorb that. If you spend a lot of time in bars, your jeans start to smell like tobacco (or puke), if you work in a fast-food place your jeans smell like french fries, and if you visit Buddhist temples a lot, it will smell like incense. Your conduct, how you live your life and such, all play into a feedback loop that tends to reinforce itself, and in so doing “filter” your perception of the world. And this dynamic process is still ongoing every moment of your life.

Through this process, we also unknowingly isolate ourselves from the world around us, because, whether we are aware of it or not, we see ourselves as the center of the universe. This is why later Buddhist schools, such as the Zen Buddhists would use terms like the “mind as mirror” and such: what we perceive, we transform and filter in our conscious and project back out. We project ourselves back out onto the world around us all the time.

or, put another way…

What makes Yogacara Buddhist so fascinating is not just the concept, or its surface-similarity to Western philosophical ideas like Idealism, but how the early Yogacara Buddhists analyzed the “how” and “why” living beings do this, and further, how to apply this toward the Buddhist path toward liberation. Later Buddhist schools, I believe, applied Yogacara Buddhist teachings in their own ways, but the teaching remains more or less the same to this day even if couched in different language.

Anyhow, we’ve only scratched the surface here, but it’s a fascinating thing to look at, and hopefully I’ll be posting more content from Shun’ei Tagawa’s book.

Hope you’re all safe and well this Ohigan season, that the weather is pleasant, and you can take a moment to breathe easy and take it all in. Take care!

P.S. In the Chrono Trigger screenshots above, if you’re curious what the original Japanese text is (because you’re a big nerd like I am), it is:

あんたの目に見えてる世界とアタシの目に見えてる世界とはまったくちがうものなのかもね。

いい？宇宙の生命の数だけ存在するわ。見えるもの、さわれるものだけが本当と思っちゃダメよ。

The English translation is spot-on.

When It’s Over…

I loved this song back in the day, but the music video sure hasn’t aged well…

Last night I finally got to play Adventurer’s League at the local gaming store for the first time in maybe a year, patiently waiting since for my kids’ school activities to end for the school term, and getting my character dusted off and ready to go.

But it was a terrible night. The adventure module we played, something from Season 7 Tomb of Annihilation, was poorly designed, and our DM was just an inexperienced kid who tried his best but hadn’t prepared enough.

The worst part though were some of the other players. I sat in the farthest back, surrounded by a number of “power players” (including one dad who brought his teenage daughter), who kept talking over me and one another. They kept pushing the rules envelope, and the DM didn’t really have the confidence or experience to make decisive choices about allowing this, or saying no to that, so the power players ran roughshod over the game. Within the first hour, I checked out, and spent the evening on the phone, venting on Twitter (rant since deleted) and hardly said anything for the rest of the night. I was all too glad to leave when it was over. The module had been scheduled for 2 hours, but we stayed almost for 5.

And yet it was more than that. The gaming store, which thankfully weathered the pandemic, still felt very different. Overly-complicated food menu, unfamiliar staff, flashier “gamer” vibe, etc. The large community of AL players I used to know back before the pandemic has almost entirely disappeared, or play their own table exclusively leaving occasional players like me at the “little kids table”. Where before we usually had 4-5 tables a night, and I knew all the senior DMs, I recognize almost no one now. That goes double for the other players.

In short, the local AL community really sucks now, and the gaming store isn’t what it used to be. When I last played during the pandemic, it had also been a bad experience, though not quite as bad. So, I just chalked it up to the occasional bad night. They happen, and you move on.

However, it’s clearly become a pattern and I finally had to face the fact that the local gaming community that I once knew is over. The pandemic and WotC’s tinkering with AL rules drove off a lot of committed players, and in a sense gutted my local community. Further, I’ve lost interest in newer D&D rule books,1 and our local regional Discord channel is very quiet now.

As I wrote back in the day, sometimes it’s better to just not play D&D than subject yourself to a frustrating and disappointing experience, but I kept trying through the pandemic hoping things would eventually recover. They haven’t. And as with Magic, I have to face that sunk-cost of investing any further in it, and give it up.

Never say never, of course. Even if I don’t like the community now, who know how things will look say five years from now. Maybe I’ll find another, healthier AL community someday. But for now, I’m putting that hobby on a shelf for the foreseeable future.

Contrarily, playing at home with my kids has been a lot of fun, and my daughter’s friends want to play with us too, so while my local gaming community has faded away, I suppose a new one is being formed right under my nose.

1 The new Mordenkainen’s book somehow just feels flat, homogenized, and takes a lot of fun out of playing certain character builds. I did get Witchlight and Candlekeep Mysteries, but have hardly cracked open either book since.

Playing a Warforged in D&D

Front cover art for Eberron: Rising from the Last War, adapted from free wallpaper art (see link), all rights reserved

My kids and I have been playing a longer D&D campaign in the world of Eberron, a noir steam-punk magic setting for almost a year now, and the kids consistently seem to enjoy this setting more than other D&D campaigns we’ve run. Since we have only two players (my daughter and my son), the party consists of:

  • Daughter: Swiftstride shifter fighter / ranger, Latisse
  • Son: Halfling bard, Kirby1
  • Sidekick: Hobgoblin cleric (knowledge) / wizard, Borsheg
  • Sidekick: Warforged fighter (samurai), Malbus 414
  • Sidekick: Valenar (wood) elf fighter, Tantalus

I run the sidekick characters myself, and some have come in and others rotated out.2 The hobgoblin and warforged sidekicks have been with the party since the beginning and have been a pretty integral part of the story.

Our hobgoblin cleric’s backstory is that he secretly wanted to be a wizard instead and only did the cleric role out of familial obligation. However, since Borsheg was rejected by the wizards guild, he has since gotten private tutorship on the side with a shady teacher named “Dak” who, currently unknown to the party, is a Rakshasa.

Our Warforged has become the most central character to the party though. Originally, Malbus 414’s backstory was that he had, like all Warforged, fought in the Last War, particularly as part of the 523rd Battalion in East Breland. However, it became clear that his entire platoon had been secretly conditioned by their gnomish creator, Dr Vilnius Volrani Vishkik, to attack any gnomes from a certain rival house on sight. Eventually, the kids were able to find an artificer who could remove Malbus’s conditioning, and scrape up enough money to pay for it, but at the cost of partial memory loss. The kids really got choked up when they realized that Malbus wasn’t going to be quite the same.

Out of all the stories that I’ve teased in front of kids, including demonic cults, Borsheg’s evil tutor, smuggling jobs, etc, the kids have really attached themselves to Malbus’s and have since pursued Dr Vishkik (who unknown to the kids, is now a glorified brain-in-a-jar) across continent only to discover that he has reconstituted most of the old 523rd platoon, and means to take on the Lord of Blades in Cyre in order to become a new ruler there, assert dominance over all Warforged at large. Malbus is torn between his loyalties to his old platoon, but also his new purpose in stopping Dr Vishkik, especially where violence is required.

Mechanically speaking, a Warforged is an interesting character race since it’s fully artificial, yet is also a living being. According to the 5e guide, if you play a Warforged, you (among other things):

  • Gain a +1 bonus to Armor Class.
  • Have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage, and are immune to disease
  • Do not require sleep, but when you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you appear inert, but it doesn’t render you unconscious, and you can see and hear as normal. Further, you don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep.

These things all come from the Warforged’s artificial nature. However, as a living sentient being, you can still benefit from things like healing magic, potions, etc., so you are not a construct either. It’s not entirely clear to what degree a Warforged is a machine vs. a living being, but I’ve mostly leaned toward the artificial, and focused on the “power core” as a source of their sentience and humanity.

The mechanics of a Warforged are fun, but the role-playing side of the Warforged is what I find most compelling. Because the Last War is over, Warforged are kind of superfluous now. Society doesn’t need them anymore, and they are no longer manufactured (at least in mass-production), so they have been tossed out on the street with no clear picture of what to do with themselves. This leaves plenty of room to decide how you would want to play a Warforged. Malbus 414 initially took mercenary jobs because war was the only thing he knew, but once he met the party during the initial session, he gradually took his life in a new direction with them.

The official interview with creator Keith Baker helps clarify this and is worth a watch:

I tend to roleplay Malbus 414 similar to Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, in that he is searching for his humanity, and trying to forge a new identity for himself bit by bit as something more than just a war machine. One could conceivably do the opposite and play a Warforged who never really left the Last War. The noir, brooding atmosphere of Eberron really lends itself to this, because of the heavier emphasis on character backstory, personal challenges, etc, but if you play a Warforged within the larger universe, such as Planescape or even the Forgotten Realms somehow, the brooding war backstory can still come into play and create a good starting point for the character.

Or you could just make a character like this one:

Comment posted in linked video above

I wish Warforged were more available in other settings, not just for its useful mechanical reasons, especially in Adventurer’s League, but I am happy to play one when the opportunity comes up. Its nature lends itself to good role-playing, and its mechanics allow for all kinds of interesting character / class options.

1 My son is a huge Kirby fan.

2 Our half-orc rouge-scout sidekick died a few weeks back in a random encounter, and the elf fighter replaced him since the party was near Valenar anyway. I keep a pool of sidekicks in the backlog in case I need to replace one. Still, the half-orc scout was a good character in his own right, and the kid and I kind of miss him already, even as we enjoy the new character.

Meet Darahl Firecloak: the Elven Forge Deity

Photo by thevibrantmachine on Pexels.com

For some time now, I’ve been actively playing a high-elf cleric of the forge domain named Fenmaer Wasanthi in a small play-by-post community for Dungeons and Dragons’s Adventurer’s League. It’s been great fun, and one of the few consistent bright spots in the last two years for me. Fenmaer had initially been something of a throw-away character that I had intended to use for the new season 10 rules of Adventurer’s League (and never did), but when the season 11 rules came out, fixing a lot of issues, I decided to bring back Fenmaer and try things out.

My characters home is Elventree, near the city of Mulmaster, where a small, dwindling community of high-elf forge masters still maintains an obscure cult to Darahl Firecloak. Fenmaer being (comparatively) the youngest has been tasked to rekindle the community through acquired knowledge and experience. When our PbP group started doing adventure season 7 modules (“Tomb of Annihilation”) in Chult, I also had a small side-story where Fenamer got in touch with a scattering of Darahl worshippers in Port Nyanzaru as well.

Darahl’s sketchy history makes him an interesting “anti-hero” elven deity, who is not affiliated with evil, but also sundered from the rest of Elven pantheon too and forced to “go it alone”. That said, when trying to flesh out Fenmaer’s backstory and role-playing, I realized that there is not a lot of information about his deity, Darahl Firecloak.

The main source of information comes from one issue of Dragon Magazine, issue 251, which can be found online in PDF form. Fifth Edition material on Darahl (i.e. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes) largely preserves this without adding much too it. Below, I’ve included basic information both canonical (Dragon Magazine + Mordenkainen’s) followed by additions that I’ve added for Fenmaer specifically. If you like, feel free to use it, adapt, etc. Spread the faith of Darahl to player characters far and wide. He’s not a picky deity, as you’ll see. 😋

Canonical Information

Starting with the basic stats:

  • Name: Darahl Firecloak, originally Tilvenar
  • Nicknames: The Even-Tempered, Lord of the Green Flame
  • Alignment: Lawful Neutral, leaning toward good
  • Follower Alignments (optional): typically LN, LG or NG
  • Symbol: A greenflame between two outstretched hands
  • Domain: Forge (5th edition), Earth and Fire (3rd edition?)
  • Symbolic Weapon: longsword

Darahl Firecloak was originally part of the elven panthan, the Seldarine, and served under Rillifane Rallathil, but after being offered a cursed artifact by Lloth and the Unseelie Queen of Air, his avatars went beserk and caused a great deal of destruction before being pacified again. However, the damage had been done and Darahl lost many followers, while also being shunned by the other elven deities. Darahl left the plane of Arvandor and made his home in the 1st layer of Arcadia where he first took the name “Darahl Firecloak” and began to reinvent himself. Darahl is now much more open to non-elvish followers, and alliances with non-elven deities such as Dumathoin of the Dwarves, Urogalan of the Halflings, and Flandal Steelskin of the Gnomes for example.

Because Darahl is so open to other followers, he has even some followers from the Underdark, particularly Duergar. For this reason, both Lloth and Laduguer oppose him. Darahl, according to Dragon magazine, is often invoked by followers at the start of a new undertaking such as digging a new mine, or crafting a magical artifact, or to help avert disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires. Offerings by the faithful include precious minerals or minor magical items. Priests are also called firecloaks and often dress in motifs of yellow, red and brown with a green flame somewhere.

That’s the canonical stuff. Let’s move on to Fenmaer’s religion in particular.

The Molten Path

Fenmaer’s high-elf community in Elventree were more prosperous in the past and their craft earned the respect of their neighbors as well as other traders from afar. I was heavily inspired by the Noldor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion who also had unparalleled crafting skills in comparison to other elves and races. The Elventree high elves remained somewhat apart from their more numerous wood elf neighbors and fellow residents in Elventree, yet as the human community of Mulmaster later flourished, the elves diminished. Thus, the high elf community did what elves do best: retreat further in isolation, only to their detriment.

The elders of Fenmaer’s community teach an offshoot of Darahl’s religion called the Molten Path. Contemplatives, priests and some mages as well, seek to burn away their own “impurities” (just as metal is purified by fire) through a hard work ethic, devotion to their craft, and community. Through this they believe they see the handiwork of Darahl in all things, and in themselves.

According to the high elves of Elventree, Darahl dwells in Arcadia at a place called Maldinnon, the Peerless Forge, where he guards the Eternal Flame,1 and uses it to mold and craft the many things of the world. In Platonic philosophical style, that which He crafts is said to be the peerless example of that object to which all others seek to emulate in their craft. By contrast the elemental evil represents attempts to corrupt the peerless works of Darahl and profane his craft, and must therefore be opposed by all followers.

Through the PbP adventures, I’ve had Fenmaer recite a few prayers and liturgy, sometimes more serious, sometimes more joking:

“Hail Tilvenar full of fiery grace…deliver us from elemental evil… and lead us not down the path of rust and ruin…”

and a benediction like so:

I call upon Darahl Tilvenar, the blessed Firecloak, who keeps the Sacred Flame free from impurities, and molds metal as he molds souls into fine vessels for the good of others. Be ye most kindly disposed to us, let your warmth and radiance fill the hearts of this family and guide them through the darkness with your light. Let not the elemental evil obstruct their path. May their coffers be bountiful and their worries few. (then in Elvish…) Vardo nu luini yassen Tilvenárii eleni ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

or:

Tilvinarë na-molonen! (Tilvenar don’t fail me)

Fake elvish

or:

Tilvenar, may your fiery Cloak descend upon us!

and:

In the Name of the Firecloak

When Fenmaer reached 7th level, he acquired the Divination spell, and used it to contact Darahl for some questions concerning their next adventure. I described the ritual like so:

Using the ground iron, copper, silver, gold and copious coal dust, Fenmaer draws a large, intricate “sand mandala” on the ground between him and a small lit brazier. The different ground materials form different colors in the mandala. Once that’s done, his chanting continues on in Old Elvish for a while until observers notice that the filings have somehow heated up and are glowing red hot. Not melting, just red hot. Finally, he poses his question…

So, those are some non-canonical examples of how I applied Darahl’s religion in role-playing Fenmaer. Like any religion, one can imagine many regional differences, or even liturgical differences among communities, so in role-playing a follower of Darahl, feel free to adapt, adjust or innovate your own liturgy or community teachings. Or feel free to use what’s here and help spread the Word.

P.S. a big thanks to my DM and my fellow players who put up with Fenmaer’s religious antics. 😄

1 I had envisioned it as a white-hot flame until I saw the Dragon Magazine article later. You are welcome to decide what the actual color is, dear readers.

Yo Mando! The D&D Version

Lately, I’ve been re-watching The Mandalorian and while I enjoyed it the first time through, I enjoy it a lot more the second time around. I’ve been thinking about how I might make a Dungeons and Dragons character for Adventurer’s League that mirrors the Mandalorian, Din Djarin.

I wrote recently about hobgoblins in D&D and how they mirrored Klingons in some way, and at that time I made a character named Kargoth toward that end. I played a couple tier-1 sessions, and it was fun, but the character wasn’t as interesting as I would have liked.

Then, after re-watching The Mandalorian, I got an idea. Since the new, season 11 rules allow for much easier rebuilding of characters, I decided to use the opportunity to rebuild Kargoth as a Mandalorian-style hobgoblin fighter, eldritch knight:

Kargoth’s backstory is that he was adopted after being a child on the losing side of a war by a fanatical cult of warriors (e.g. Children of the Watch), but hides his hobgoblin identity in public using a helmet, as well as following the religious ethos he was raised with. Helmet is cosmetic only and provides no additional armor class. Kargoth also has the hermit character background unsurprisingly.

Eldritch Knight as a subclass made surprising sense because first and foremost he would have to be a warrior anyway, but as an Eldritch Knight he would have many additional tricks up his sleeves that can be approximated as magic spells:

It’s fun to be a little creative here since every Mandalorian will be a little different anyway.

The real challenge is the hobgoblin racial character stats. A bonus to Intelligence helps with playing an Eldritch Knight, but the bonus to Constitution doesn’t have an overt benefit beyond more hit points.

I debated back and forth and opted to make Kargoth mostly a ranged fighter, to match the Mandalorian as a crack-shot. I gave him the Archery fighting style, equipped him with both a hand-crossbow (for later Crossbow feat) and a heavy crossbow. But, I also gave Kargoth enough Strength to handle melee combat too.

For armor I settled on Medium armor with the goal of getting good half-plate someday. The Mandalorian seems to wear half-plate rather than full-body armor and this allows me to continue focusing on Kargoth’s Dexterity based build.

Lastly, the kid. I debated using my “free spell choice” as an Eldritch Knight to cast _Find Familiar_ but a pet raven is a lousy substitute for Grogu (a.k.a. baby Yoda). So, for now Kargoth doesn’t have a sidekick … yet. Then again if I want to rebuild I can certainly do that too.

Enjoy!

This is the Way.

A Nerd Dad’s Review of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything

Late last year, I picked up a copy of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but with so much going on, I never got a chance to properly read through the book until last month (one year later 🤦🏽), which I now regret. What an excellent addition to the D&D canon.

Tasha, also known as Iggwilv, is a famous “witch” (more correctly an archmage) known as the Witch Queen in some sources. She is more of a chaotic character than the somewhat stodgy Mordenkainen, both her colleague and rival, and she has been known to consort with some demonic characters, but is not portrayed as evil either. One could draw some parallels with Liliana the planeswalker character from the Magic The Gathering series, but Tasha has a much longer history in the gaming world.1

The book is written from her perspective, and has some witty anecdotes from Tasha, and terrific artwork of Tasha herself. Mordenkainen never looked that good in heels. 😋

When I first bought the book, I wasn’t sure what to expect, apart from it seeming like a kind of “rules update” or reboot of some aspects of original Player’s Handbook. The book states off the bat that all the rules contained therein are entirely optional and meant to enhance the 5th-edition D&D experience, while also addressing some shortcomings with certain classes (rangers for example) or outmoded racial-character designs. But again, they are all optional.

Tasha’s focuses on four main areas, I feel:

  • Optional class options.
  • Spells and Magic items.
  • Additional tips and tools for world-building, including group patron options.
  • Custom background and character creation options

The first section struck me as the most immediately useful. My daughter, when she first played with me years ago, had a half-elf ranger with a beast master archetype. She loved that character, and her cougar companion, but as the adventures became more and more difficult, it was hard for her companion to keep up. This happened back before I (as the DM) knew about alternate house rules and such, so we played pretty closely to the book. Although she loved her animal companion, she couldn’t risk bringing it on adventures anymore, so she would often leave it in the care of NPCs and go off by herself.

But, using the new Tasha’s optional class features, the same animal companion gets a much needed improvement (as well as the rules for how to use it), and it properly scales with the character class.

In separate example, my elven forge cleric has Channel Divinity options that are seldom used in Adventurer’s League settings. Now, with the new Tasha’s options, I can choose to exercise that Channel Divinity option and regain spell slots (something clerics couldn’t previously do). Thus, he can stay on par with his wizard and druid party companions.

I also went back and made similar updates for my son’s Eberron halfling bard character, by allowing him to take some spell options he didn’t have previously through the Player’s Handbook. He enjoys his new Enlarge/Reduce spell.

For each character class, the optional updates from Tasha’s fall into two general types:

  1. Options that replace older, less desirable class features.
  2. Expanded options that you can chose to add alongside whatever you’re already playing.

The flexibility here is great, and works with D&D Beyond if you have purchased your book that way. Simply enable one or both of these options on the first page of your character creation:

I haven’t delved much into the magic items and spells, but I have seen a number of colleagues use them in Adventurer’s League games and my play-by-post group, and they seem pretty useful. The “summon” spells for each type of monster: celestial, fey, fiend, undead, etc. all seem pretty intriguing, and address some of the existing challenges of the classic summon spells. Other spells, like Tasha’s Mind Whip help fill a gap by allow more psychic magic options while staying roughly on par with other similar spells.

The custom background options in Tasha’s are also surprisingly useful in that they allow you to convert features of one background into another one using a simple conversion chart. This helps, for example, with my aforementioned elven forge cleric he may not necessarily spend his time in the woods, but perhaps in a more urbanized setting, so using a longbow seems a bit out of place for him, but perhaps a crossbow might. This gives plenty of options to customize the character the way you want, without negatively impacting the mechanics of the game or affecting character balancing.

All in all, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, just like the re-introduction of Tasha herself, gives 5th-edition Dungeons and Dragons a much needed breath of fresh air. I would be hesitant to call this 5.5th edition, but if heavily adopted, it does provide some far-reaching changes to a particular table. The flexibility of allowing DMs and players to adopt and implement the rules on an a la cart basis is an effective way to keep the classic look-and-feel of 5th edition, but also make updates where groups would like to see them. One can think of Tasha’s as an officially sanctioned set of house rules.

Having tried out the new rules, rather belatedly, my kids and I found some of them pretty handy, and look forward to trying other ones as the opportunities come up. Tasha is a welcome addition to the Dungeons and Dragons “Core Rulebooks”.

1 The trope of the independent, confident woman as a “bad girl” is kind of annoying in a way, and not limited to class TTRPG fantasy settings. You see it a lot in anime too. I won’t go into why I think it’s so prevalent, but suffice to say it’s nice to see women in fantasy settings standing on their own two feet, deciding their own fates and getting some representation. Tasha as a character still has a lot of baggage from older D&D versions and tropes, but it’s cool to see her get some updates as well.

The Return of Heian Amakiiro

A while back, I posted about an elf-samurai character concept I created for Dungeons and Dragons, and from this character concept I created a character for Adventurer’s League named Heian Amakiiro (character sheet here). His backstory was based on my own Hamato Island series of adventures. After playing several adventures in Adventurer’s League, I wanted to share some experiences.

As of writing, Heian has reached level 8, and participated in 6 modules, plus 2 DM rewards I got from running adventures for others.

Not surprisingly, the way I expected to play Heian and the way I actually played Heian turned out to be different. I originally wanted a samurai who was more or less capable of both strength-based melee combat (with a katana longsword) and archery. To help with this, I did a magic item trade in Adventurers League to get Gauntlets of Ogre Strength. That way, I was free to focus on developing his dexterity.

But in reality, Heian rarely ever used melee combat. That’s because I kind of stumbled upon a neat trick that made his archery pretty powerful.

At fourth level I took the feat Elven Accuracy. When paired with the samurai sub-archetype and its Fighting Spirit ability this gave me a handy combination. I use Fighting Spirit to give myself advantage on attacks, and with Elven Accuracy, I can re-roll one of those attack dice. This means when I use the two together, I am effectively rolling 3d20.

Further, at level 6, I took another feat, Sharpshooter, since with an effective attack roll of 3d20, I can safely risk taking a -5 attack bonus to hit for +10 damage.

In a recent tier-2 adventure fighting a Hezrou demon, Heian had a round where he attacked 4 times (two attacks + Fighter’s Second Wind ability) and with the combination above hit 3 out of 4 times causing 50+ damage that round!

First Archery of the New Year (Yumi hajime) by Torii Kiyonaga (1787), courtesy of Wikipedia

Heian has become something of a kyūdō master between his Elvish heritage and samurai training.

Further, at level 5, per Adventurer’s League rules, he picked up a +1 longbow, which for flavor reasons I made as a Japanese-style daikyū (大弓) bow.

As a character he has been surprising fun. His samurai benefits as a courtier have been occasionally helpful in role-playing situations and in combat he clears the house.

Part of the fun of playing an unconventional character is discovering combinations and abilities you didn’t foresee. Plus, it makes the character more memorable in the long run.

So here’s to Heian Amakiiro, the best dang (imaginary) elf samurai archer I know! 🧝🏼‍♂️🍂🌸

Adventurers League: Starting Over

Recently, the admins of Adventurers League made a major rules announcement:

You can also read here for a detailed explanation as to why.

This a pretty exciting change after Season 10 introduced some pretty controversial changes (which have effectively been reversed) in 2020, which led to a lot of grumbling among D&D players on Discord. I remember some people talking about taking their business over to Pathfinder official play instead.1

The AL admin community evidentially did some serious thinking and finally, finally gave us an updated, compact, easy to understand set of player rules. I for one am genuinely excited to play again.

However, I also have a problem. When the transition from Season 9 to Season 10 began, a number of rules were introduced for character conversions, and such, and now with another move to a standard set of rules for the Forgotten Realms, some of my old characters are converting twice. Technically, no conversion is strictly required, but with the end of Season 9 players were encouraged to rebuild for either “historic” or “seasonal” and I did that for at least some of my old characters. Other old characters just got forgotten.

Breathing life back into some of my old AL characters, thanks to the new rules.
Binder above purchased at the Rook and the Raven

With the new rules, a lot of options opened up and rebuilding again is an option:

Whenever you could gain a level (even if you decline), you may rebuild any aspect of your character.

Adventure’s League Player’s Guide for the Forgotten Realms

With this in mind, I’ve been looking at all my AL characters up to this point, old and new. Some were too old and haven’t been played in so long that I decided retire2 them. I decided to keep my oldest character, Qisandoral, after dragging him out of retirement in season 10 during a brief window when they allowed a one-time rebuild. Using the rule above, I tweaked him a bit more but adjusting his feats a bit (he uses ice magic a lot, so I gave him Elemental Adept). In one case, I decided to rebuild my favorite Nature cleric from scratch, new name, level one, etc.

For newer characters, I have also taken advantage of the rules above, plus new options for character backgrounds and such to rebuild them as well. My elf-samurai Heian Amakiiro got the Far Traveller background now, which fits his character better. In the end, I wanted to have at least 1-3 characters per tier (I have no tier-4 characters as of writing), and it has been nice to finally “clean house”.

I, like many other players, are excited by the new ruleset, which will hopefully stay somewhat stable going forward. I have seen the rules change a number of times since I started in Season 8, and keeping up with the changing rules has been exhausting. However, my sense is the the AL admins want to come up with a simpler, more flexible set of rules that can run on auto-pilot going forward. And I for one fully support that. 😄

1 Needless to say, I did Pathfinder once and don’t plan on doing it again. To some degree, I blame that particular DM, who just wanted cool combat campaigns without any real plot. But I also got tired of the complicated character creation, tracking feats, and pressure to min/max.

2 “Retirement” here isn’t as dramatic as it sounds. I just exported and backed up their character sheets from DnD Beyond, and saved their logs into a different folder. If I really wanted to, I could still bring them back. Unlikely, though. I would more likely build a fresh, new version of that character instead.