On All Saints' Day: The Arduin Saint

In my misspent youth, I used to play Arduin with a gaming group that also introduced me to the Hero System via Champions. One of the characters that I chose to play was a rotund Saint in the classic -- ahem, D&D-inspired -- RPG known as Arduin.

Playing a saint is a bit difficult because the character class never uses weapons, never dons armor, and never fights.

Rather than being easier pickings in the ridiculously monster-choked world of Arduin over the rest of the poor adventuring sods, the saint get natural protection -- a naturally increasing Armor Value (AV) as one progresses in level. The saint may also don armor or artifacts that increase AV, provided they are holy artifacts consecrated within the saint's religion.

In addition, the saint gets a plethora of unusual abilities that grow as the saint goes up in level, some of the more significant include:

• an ever-increasing ability to pacify all those in the range of the saint's voice (pacification means that those affected will stop fighting);
• immunity to undead- or demon/devil-inspired terror;
• the ability to read magic automatically, and to speak in an ever-growing catalog of tongues;
• an arsenal of senses and detect abilities: undead, evil, and poison, infravision, direction, and weather
• at higher levels, the ability to walk on water, walls and sheer surfaces, and even phantasmal surfaces
• at higher levels, the ability to exorcise by force of will alone -- first lesser demons, then later greater demons
• at higher levels, increasing to eventual total immunity to undead paralysis, mesmerization, and life force drain

Cheesy ways out of the "no-fighting" rule include choosing a patron deity with war in its portfolio -- so I suppose "sword-saints" are a possibility. Furthermore, there can be evil saints for evil deities, with all the descriptions talking about 'good' substituted with evil.

As an aside, I remember having an ability to "hide like a saint" -- rendering my character effectively invisible after declaration so long as I did not attack (which I obviously wouldn't) or speak (which I might) -- but can no longer find it in the rules. Was it a house rule from my old group? I may never know.

Arduin was a funky place to adventure, but a fun one.

Banes and Weaknesses in Fantasy RPGs

This is pretty much common sense, except common sense isn't that common.

To survive against the dangers of the dungeon, do research and ready some commonly available (and not so commonly available) combat options for creatures that you're likely to encounter.

In haunted tombs, for example, holy water, magical weapons, and the like are pretty much standard. If you can't afford the full-on magical sword, spend on a dagger or smaller backup weapon. Daggers are great because the mage can use 'em if all other party members have dropped.

Here's a quick checklist for weaknesses and banes:

• Holy symbol -- only if the GM is feeling generous
• Holy water -- does damage to most undead
• Silvered weapons -- affects various undead and the werecreatures as well
• Magic weapons (primary if possible, check the pluses) -- always good to have anyway
• Fire -- great with webs, cubes, spores, and - in conjunction with oil - folks in the other room whose only door you've spiked shut
• Electricity -- good stuff for metallic things or things in water
• Slings -- useful for distanced bane use
• Water -- not always that useful, but you have some already anyway, right? Find out if it'll save your life against something, especially in conjunction with electricity
• Herbs and Vegetables -- they say wolfsbane helps, and garlic, and seeds (your GM mileage may vary) but there's no sense in carrying this stuff unless you know you're gonna need it 

Now, while you may not have the money to buy everything, it pays to pick up and hold onto these things as treasure in the dungeons. They can save your life in surprising ways.

Case in point...

Arduin, Wraiths, and Coins

True story. In one of the Arduin dungeons, we encountered a wraith. We were a party of six, but let me read to you the description of the Common Wraith in Arduin:

Only weaponry of silver of magik may harm them, silver doing but half damage...They cannot be mesmerized or mentally controlled, but the priestly Glory Glow will bum them at the rate of 4 HP each melee round they are inside it. These beings, because they are non-corporeal, can drift through solid walls with no difficulty or reduction in speed.

Well, being a relatively low-level party we didn't have a single magic weapon to our name. Silver weapons? Nope.

So when we encountered this nasty thing in a room, only magical spells had effect and that resulted in our mage being targeted and using up his valuable memorized combat spells! So what to do?

We realized that we did have silver weapons: our silver coins, in the purses tied to our belts. So we had a thief with a sling hurl his coins at range while the rest of us descended upon it like mad hooligans, swinging our coinpurses through it (the pouches went through it, but the coins did not) until we beat it back into the afterlife.

Most of us survived, as opposed to none of us.

Moral of the story: never underestimate your more mundane gear. A bane is a bane is a bane.

High Level Fantasy and Super-heroic RPGs

There's a tendency to associate much old school gaming with low level adventuring.

And, truth be told, there are very good reasons for that -- two that come to mind (though I'm sure the more senior OSR folks could posit far more):

1. the game has you start off at 1st level and if you die, you created another 1st level character and continued play. Until everyone had a whole bunch of characters beyond 1st to 3rd, much of the gaming tended to stay at that level.
2. the ceiling was still low -- 10th level was considered frickin' monstrously high-powered. 12th level? What kinda Monty Haul campaign are you playing in, fool?

However, part of my experience in D&D was looking longingly at those high-level tournament modules -- the ones with tricks, traps, and monsters aplenty -- and wondering when the player PCs would reach that level and I could finally run them through those killer dungeons.

Furthermore, I was also a fan of the Arduin series of supplements and modules and not only were you always scared at higher levels of play, you tended to die a lot too. (Stay in the back till you're of some use, new guy).

But I think that when I began alternating play between superhero RPGs and AD&D, I finally got a good grasp of GMing high level play. Well, at least from the point of view of creating challenges for PCs, and for surviving things that nasty DMs throw at you.

So this week's attempted series will tackle several approaches that deal with superhero RPGs and high-level gaming (primarily in the Arduin vein). Topics will include:

• Teamwork
• Variety
• Well-rounded characters (attack, defense, movement, and factor X)
• Science and the rubber it's made from
• Generalization, Specialization, and the trap of the Swiss Army Knife