The Archer Sucks

Hello anyone reading this. As you are aware, I sort of fell off the horse with updating this blog. I'm trying to get back on said horse. This is my first attempt.


So before I make this post I'd like to give a little back story so it all makes sense. I started playing D&D with my uncle in his homebrewed AD&D game. He updated his games on this site and currently updates rules and posts logs on this forum. This post is in regards to the Archer class used in his world, originally published in Dragon 45. You can read it here.

It sucks.

I feel that this class encapsulates many of the frustrations that I have with the system I first learned on. It embraces the boring, number-y aspect of the game while ignoring anything fun and interesting that could go along with the concept. In addition, it sets a precedent for more and more boring uninteresting classes which only serve to complicate the game and make it more focused on numbers and die rolling and less on the fantasy of the world and role playing.

The Archer is a Fighter who is really good at bows. That's all. Conceptually this class should be taken by characters who like to kill things with bows. The difference between a Fighter who uses a bow and an Archer is just that the Archer likes using bows so much that he is better at it and looses xp if he doesn't fire any arrows in an adventure. This brings about nothing interesting. A Druid embodies a different world view from a Cleric and is part of an archaic order, defining properties about the world they exist in and providing additional opportunities for adventure. Though an Alchemist (found here) is just a Wizard who is really good with potions, they open up a whole new realm of powers, salves, and potions to be explored by the player. An Alchemist plays drastically different to a Wizard, changing the perspective of the party as they find new monsters to exploit for their body parts to put in new and wonderful concoctions. An Archer just shoots monsters really really well.

There is even already a class for characters who wish to become masters of one weapon: The Kensai. In order for a class to be worth making it has to fill a conceptual space which is interesting and not covered by other classes adequately. Though the character concept of a master bowman has merit, it can already be made by either a Fighter who specializes in bow or a Kensai who chooses their specialty to be in the bow.

You may argue that more options are always good and worth having, even if some of the options are bad, but I don't think that is true in this case. First, having multiple classes crowding one concept makes the game world more confusing. Is that Dwarf wielding a cross bow a Fighter or a Dwarven Arbalist? Is that captured human forced to fight in the Colosseum a Fighter, a Pit Fighter, a Gladiator, or a Barbarian?I find it difficult to relate to a world where I can't understand what different characters are and what they do. Seeing a nature priest and knowing what to expect helps me get into character and think of the world as a real place instead of a giant unorganized hodgepodge of different ideas that don't fit together. Having a class like the Archer just sets the precedent to have tons and tons of niche classes that only take away from the game.

But all of these sins could be forgiven if the class was good, if it provided something unique, interesting, and fun when it was played, but the Archer is none of those. This is the main feature of the Archer:

You are good at shooting things. Really good. In addition, magic bows make you even better at shooting things. You can specialize in long bow, making your shooting faster and better. The most interesting thing you can do is making your own bows and arrows, which has so much potential. Unfortunately, the only cool bows you can make are pull bows which let you shoot things better if you have strength. At high levels you also get to cast a few lame spells with no explanation besides, "Eh, I guess Magic Missile is sort of arrow-y."

The Archer focuses on doing one thing: shooting things better. There are no powers which give you roleplaying opportunities, nothing which allows for a character to be clever or innovative in combat, no possibility for fun effects, just lots of high damage arrows. AD&D has so many wonderful things about it and so many cool games can be played using it, but the Archer class highlights the most boring and un-fun parts of the system.

Blizlorplorp

Blizlorplorp is the only person in Rochut to have a word based off their name.

Plorp
Verb
To irredeemably mess something up at the expense of others.
"So you're saying you vomited in Steve's stew before he served it to the Queen?"
"Yeah, I really plorped up."

Children in the city have also taken to calling people "Literally Blizlorplorp" as an insult, though most adults find it to be reprehensible and insensitive to compare others to one as vile as him.

Blizlorplorp started as John, an orphan in the city of Rochut. He was taken in by Blugund the Peeved of the now defunct Fougundian College, and quickly learned magic at the foot his master. Where Blugund was a master of waste disposal, (having "created" the sewers of Rochut) John was fascinated by the fungus and slime which took hold of biological matter and broke it all down. John was christened Blizlorplorp the Unctuous and granted membership into the Fougundian College at the age of 23 after presenting a mold he created which could grow on anything blue.

The aspiring wizard then failed to do anything for a number of years.

After his mold destroyed Blugund's favorite sapphire ring the two Fougundian Magi got into an altercation culminating in Blizlorplorp calling his former master a "sad sack of shit" and Blugund kicking his former apprentice to the street. It was after this incident that incident that Blizlorplorp moved into the infamous building on the corner of 3rd street.

The wizards in the Fougundian College needed very little pressure from Blugund to demand some progress Blizlorplorp who had provided nearly nothing since his induction into their order. It was such that Blizlorplorp received an ultimatum: provide a magical project in the next month or be kicked out of the college.

One month is not nearly enough time to put the finishing touches on a grand magical accomplishment, much less create one whole cloth, but the young wizard was determined to keep his status as a Fougundian. Such was the situation when Blizlorplorp decided to try to create the transformative slime: a creature which could theoretically transform animals into other animals.

The amount of work that Blizlorplorp managed to get done during his month was truly unheard of. His work was so astounding that it actually brought on an investigation by THE TIME POLICE, but alas, it was not enough. He was brought before the council and begged them to give him just a little more time to show them what he had made, but his request was denied. Blizlorplorp was stripped of his membership and the college guards were to seize everything in his residence the next morning.

In a foolish attempt to save his place in the school, Blizlorplorp ran home and attempted to bring his experiment to life. Of course it failed miserably. Where Blizlorplorp intended to make an organism which would maybe turn a rat into kitten or a lizard, instead he made an ooze which transformed all creatures it touched into copies of itself. In addition, Blizlorplorp exploded this creature all over himself and the street outside. It wasn't long before hundreds of people had started to transform to match the slime.

The chaos that issued lasted for a whole day, with the guard running around killing any person who started to take on ooze-y traits. The chaos finally ended the second morning after the accident when a mob of angry residents swept through the city to Blizlorplorp's house on 3rd street, killing any mud-men (as the ooze-people hybrids began to be known) they came across. Once at the house, they attempted to burn it down, though the building mostly just smoldered thanks to all the fungi that took up residence after Blizlorplorp moved in.

The council and populous blamed the Fougundian College though they insisted that Blizlorplorp was no longer a member and they were free of fault. Within the week the college was forced to leave the city. Most of the houses near 3rd street remain abandoned to this day, though the neighborhood has become a favorite for greasy drunks.

Eleanor Rigby

When a person dies, their bodies are usually taken care of by loved ones, family, or at least people offended by the resulting smell. Some bodies are just left there, but even these are usually eaten, buried under the elements, or even just decompose. To a very small number, none of this happens. The body simply lies there for years and years.

Most times that the dead are not cared for their spirits haunt the places of their demise. These ghosts torture the living, or at the very least haunt them. Sometimes this is not an option for the uncared for dead, or perhaps the spectral life just doesn't suit them.

When bodies are left truly alone after there death, neither touched nor burnt nor rot for years on end, sometimes they sigh. At this point there eyes have probobly rotted out and there flesh no longer resembles anything close to that of the living. A few days or weeks later, the body will sigh again. After a few cycles of this, the body may stand up, and continue whatever business it was pursuing before it died.

A painter who died in their secret painting dungeon and was never found would stand back up and resume rubbing a paint brush on canvas. A star gazer who died in a abandoned observitory would tilt their head to the sky and watch. Of course the passage of time makes these actions impossible: the paint dried, the brush ruined, the canvas torn, the view obstructed. The actions themselves are also empty, the brushstrokes falling in poor form and even if colored with paint not depicting anything. This is obvious even just from observing the body and the empty way it approaches it's once and always routine.

The apearence of these undead varies with the state of their bodies before they reanimated. One thing that always stays consistent is the futility with which they take any actions. Seeing the boredom and emptiness of these creatures monotonously performing their daily routine is known to send shivers up the spine and put an empty pit in the stomachs of even the most hardened warriors and faithful priests.

They seem to be completely lacking in any emotion, and feel no ill will towards the living: content to simply continue their monotony forever if undisturbed. They will, however, lash out at anyone who tries to keep them from completing their tasks, usually clawing with fingerless hands. This does very little physically to the injured, however the experience is described as one of the worst every felt by survivors. A cold numbness spreads over the victim, followed by a feeling of emptiness in the gut, as though one has not eaten in days. This is accompanied by a feeling of isolation and pointlessness in the effected person. Those effected have been reported to simply lie on the floor and stare at the undead who caused them to feel this way till they starve to dead or are removed by their companions. This feeling is also experienced when viewing the creature for too long, usually over the course of hours.

Physically, they are quite weak, and unable to overpower any reasonably strong adult. In addition, any movements they make are slow and methodical, and they are easily out run. When destroyed, their bodies quickly turn to dust, revealing huge cavities inside their chests, their organs filled with simple air.

In Game

If only in a dungeon to be killed by a party and looted, these are a piss poor monster. An undead who employs no strategy when fighting, and won't even attack unless the party interferes with them? Might as well have them fight blind pillow golems. Where I think these monsters can play an interesting role is first to set a scene and second as a role playing opportunity.

As the party uncovers a body hunched writing in a storage room in the sealed tomb they are exploring they realize that the workers here were sealed in. By seeing this scribe from when the tomb was built, they can see the place "in action" and have the dungeon be more than a stupid dungeon crawl. In addition, the party now has to decide what they want to do with the scribe. Do they leave it unmolested to continue its work forever? Do they kill it to let it rest, or because of some duty they feel against the undead? Maybe an evil priest binds them to their will, and uses its to untraceably kill an important figure. Whatever ends up happening hopefully you have managed to get your players to interact with the dungeon, world, and game meaningfully without nessesarily resorting to combat.

For stats, I would only give these creatures a few hit points, and fairly terrible AC. Their attacks should be harmless except for their psychological damage which I would represent as Charisma or Personality damage. Perhaps 1d4, save to 1 point. If in an enclosed area with them for over an hour I would probobly have the party make saves or suffer the same effect.

I think that these monsters work best nesseled in dungeons where they provide an explenation to the surrounding area, however here a few ideas for encountering them sort of ramdomly:

1.) A small cottage whose only inhabitant was a lonely writer who died of a stroke. She spends every day cleaning her house and then sits in front of her book for a 12 hour and writes one sentence. All of the books in the house have been written to completion,  and then written over again to make the text all but unreadable. If a character can somehow decider what the author wrote after their death they can gain a small talent at writing dark poetry in exchange for a point of Charisma perminatly.
2.) While walking, the party notices that some of the ground sounds hollow when stepped on. If investigated, they will find a trap door which leads to a buried prison room with one in habbitant. The corpse only rocks back and forth wispering nonsense go itself as it did in its final days before starving.
3.) The party comes across a still part of the forest where no animals come. There is a dead tree with a broken rope tied to a branch, and a corpse with a noose arround it's neck lying on the ground. The corpse will get up and walk to a nearby stump, preparing a painless poison before drinking it and trying to hang itself again, repeating it's last day over and over again.
4.) Overlooking a once beautiful place a corpse in robes is sitting cross legged. The monk was paralyzed by venom before sitting down and dying. No one has found his body until now with the players.
5.) An ancient wizard was cursed to read stone tablets till they died of starvation. Somehow the party comes across the wizards corpse still reading the magical writing.
6.) A flying ship with all of its rigging and sails destroyed. The crew is now just corpses who uselessly man the destroyed rigging. The characters will have to act quickly in order to board the ship before it drifts away. (I actually like this one a lot and want to write a one page dungeon about it)

Yes I know I never gave them a name

The Forgotten River

Yeah. The name is lame, I know. Read the url.

First reported by Grand Wizard Philonious of the Blue Wastes, the Forgotten River is generally misconstrued as a thought experiment or a philosophical way of representing memory loss. Most tomes refer to it as such, a simple way of understanding what happens to the brain when memories are magically removed from a subjects brain.

The truth was discovered (or at least recently rediscovered) when Philonious decided to read the mind of his victims as he destroyed their minds. When removing their memories, Philonious saw a grey river full of debris crashing through their thoughts, sweeping their most personal moments away. Curiously, the river did not appear when removing memories of public places or things, only cherished secrets of the individual.

Thinking it was perhaps a quirk of his method, Philonious studied an entirely new way to scour memories from minds. Even with his new dweomer, Philonious still saw the river in the minds of people who lost memories only they remembered. The river itself was recorded as being, "filled to the brim with archetecture ancient and strange, trinkets and people unrecognizable," in his published paper on the subject.

The last thing Philonious wrote was that he was intending to send an expedition down the mental torrent to explore wherever the stream took him.

I feel like in the past I've failed to have locations of significance in the worlds I've built, but I think this could be an interesting way to give the metaphysics of a world an interesting location. Not just a plane on the Great Wheel that hundreds of writers talk about and thousands of players encounter, but something unique and special which gives wonder and awe to anyone I DM for. I have a few ideas for how it could be used:

The villain is committing genocide against people across the multiverse, but where they are at any point is hard to pin down. By examining the river one may be able to recognize the archetecture of the memories which are lost forever, hence learning the location of the BBEG. Something similar could be done with a monster of person who eats and destroys thoughts and memories.

An ancient and forgotten relic must be found in order to save the world, but there is no recorded history of it anymore, and anyone who knew about it is long dead. You could search desperately through hundreds of ruins of civilizations, or risk travelling down the river to wherever it ends. (Note, I want to write about this eventually. Uncle David's game had an interpretation of the land of forgotten secrets, but I think that exploring that idea and it's ramifications could lead to some really cool and interesting destinations)

If everyone forgets about the river, it could swallow itself. What does that mean? Is that possible? Do you care? Idk, the idea of a river flowing into itself infinitely seemed interesting to me.

But seriously if you have a better name tell me because I hate this one.

Obligatory First Post

So I've decided to write a blog which will update once a week with my most recent gaming ideas. After spending the last two weeks reading through as much of Arnold K.'s amazing blog as possible, I've decided to try starting a blog of my own in the same vane. The current plan is to use this as motivation to write about D&D, DCC, roleplaying, or something gaming related every day, and then post the "best ideas of the week" to here. This is mostly for me and motivating myself to actually work on my ideas and keep consistent, but if someone else can get any sort of use out of my ideas it would be amazing. It may also function as a game log as I get games started, but I won't be too hasty.

Before I do anything else, I feel that I should thank everyone who has helped and inspired me on my path: my Uncle David for introducing me to D&D in the first place and allowing me to appreciate old school gaming and the consistent, rational approach, my friends and brother for the inspiration and ideas they have supplied to me and for listening to my ideas and allowing me to DM for them, and finally, anyone whose work or ideas I have read, seen, talked about, forgotten about and then remembered and claimed as my own, or influenced me in any way.

Without any further ado, here is my attempt at a blog of ideas.