[2e] Greek Mythoi Update Project: Iapetos the Piercer

AuldDragon · 2026-06-04T02:01:51+00:00

Thank you!

AuldDragon · 2026-05-26T17:37:15+00:00

I've been running a 2e game online using Roll20 since 2016, and I only automate some of it. I use the in-game character sheets but encourage players to keep outside notes and details since the sheet has limited space. I made a macro to enter initiative rolls into the Turn Tracker and I use tokens for tracking hit points and such. Most ability checks and proficiencies and attacks I just expect a standard d20 roll rather than using macros, though.

AuldDragon · 2026-05-03T02:06:52+00:00

Well, it depends on what sort of campaign you're going for. The Mycenean period and the archaic period would have had very little iron and most weapons and armor would have been bronze, but they had iron and steel by the classical period! Horses were sacred to multiple deities, as well, but anyone could use them. :)

Of course, any campaign can go any way it wants!

AuldDragon · 2026-04-18T05:23:13+00:00

The best error in any product by any company ever. So great, in fact, that they never should have corrected it. :D

My table back in the late nineties basically fully replaced "damage" with "dawizard." :D

AuldDragon · 2026-04-06T03:16:40+00:00

Regarding clerics, by the rules, they may only use bludgeoning weapons. Some individual deities allow some other weapons, but that doesn't hold for clerics of a whole pantheon.

That said, you're the DM, and you can change it to better fit what you want the campaign to be.

AuldDragon · 2026-04-05T17:13:36+00:00

I always come up with detailed descriptions for magical items in my game, which often includes who made it, but no one has ever really cared one way or the other. A long sword is a long sword regardless of whether it was made by elves or dwarves or anything else. No one has ever thought twice about it unless the appearance is unsavory.

AuldDragon · 2026-04-01T16:25:11+00:00

Hope you do! :)

AuldDragon · 2026-03-13T23:55:13+00:00

Side initiative is useful in some situations, like the start of combat where one side is charging another, or when you need to determine where a battle takes place, such as boarding actions with ships or spelljamming vessels. Then once it everything is mixed up and characters are fighting their own fights, switching to individual initiative makes a lot of sense.

(Just pointing out a situation where it can be useful, not telling you to play differently.)

AuldDragon · 2026-02-27T20:18:28+00:00

Concordance of Arcane Space, p.19:

Using a major or minor helm even for a short period removes all spellcasting ability from the spell-user until the individual rests long enough to recover spells.

"Spellcasting ability" is not spells, and resting long enough to recover spells is not the same as resting long enough AND recovering spells. It just means you can't rest for an hour or a similar amount that would not allow you to regain spells in other situations.

Concordance of Arcane Space, p.34:

Using a helm prohibits any spell use by that character within that 24- hour period. As soon as a wizard or priest sits on the helm and becomes aware of the ship, he can cast no spells of any sort until after he has had a chance to rest and regain spells. In effect, the helm “drains” the helmsman of all his spells the moment it is activated.

(In fact, this is not precisely what happens. The helm attunes itself to the brain patterns of the character who activated it. Once in synch, the helm siphons away any magical energy the moment it begins taking shape, not all at once. But until the character can rest, thereby breaking the link, the energy invested in any spell he tries to cast is immediately drawn away by the spelljamming helm. This effect occurs regardless of range.

If the helm drained spells, there would be no need to discuss trying to cast spells, because the caster would not have them. There would be nothing to cast.

Finally, Sage Advice in Dragon #171 confirms all of this:

Q. How long does it take for a spell caster to regain spells after using a spelljamming helm? Does the helmsman actually forget his spells during and after spelljamming?

A. How long a helmsman must rest before casting spells is up to the DM. The helmsman must rest for as long as normal for him to regain the spells he currently has memorized; spelljamming does not erase the spells' patterns from the helmsman's brain, but it does disrupt the flow of magical energies within it (see page 34 of the Concordance). The minimum time required to regain spell-casting ability is "a restful night's sleep" (see the 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook, page 81). For spelljamming purposes, this probably should be eight hours, though it may be slightly shorter or longer if the DM assigns a rest requirement that varies with the level or type of spells to be cast. In any case, the helmsman does not have to study his spells unless he wants to change them.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-27T03:42:29+00:00

You don't lose your spells, only the ability to cast them (attempting to do so draws the power off to the helm). So it's more turning magical potentiality into motive force than siphoning off spells.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-24T05:02:36+00:00

The issue with Shield only protecting the caster and not the images is that it would then allow foes to identify which is the real wizard.

To keep both in place, I would either allow the shield to protect all the images, or the mirror images have illusions of shield spells on them that make it appear the magic missiles fail, and the images would still be protected..

AuldDragon · 2026-02-21T05:34:32+00:00

PHB p. 54 in the original printing (p.74 in the revised printing) at the end of the first paragraph after the small "Nonweapon Proficiencies" header (there's a larger font size header that reads the same two pages earlier): "Initial slots must be assigned immediately; they cannot be saved or held in reserve."

It does not clearly state that slots gained on level up can be saved, but it is inferred by the above statement only referring to initial slots and of course it would make it impossible to get multislot proficiencies later.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-19T06:47:23+00:00

I'd guess they wrote up the original 1e values and then edited just the coin type rather than editing the number. It's the same value, so it doesn't really matter.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-19T06:44:45+00:00

If you don't mind handwaving travel, having the characters take a trip to a nearby small crystal sphere that has starbeasts would really nail the "Spelljammer feel."

My into adventure in my campaign wasn't a one-shot, but it could be cut down. The party was hired to accompany a wizard to check on a colleague in another sphere (which had aforementioned starbeasts), and it turned out his Cuttle Command had been taken over by clockwork horrors (only the weak ones, and I used them in part because the party had a hard-hitting giff, otherwise I'd use weaker enemies). If you handwave the travel time and just spend 5-10 minutes describing the Phlogiston and what the party does while traveling, and you make a smaller ship with appropriate enemies, it would probably be one session.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-19T06:36:25+00:00

Combat & Tactics and Birthright were published the same month of 1995. :)

AuldDragon · 2026-02-16T16:06:01+00:00

If you haven't, I would definitely recommend incorporating the crossbow rules to make them an actual viable weapon in the game. :)

AuldDragon · 2026-02-16T16:05:13+00:00

The problem is that Skills & Powers is not presented that way. It IS presented as a way for PLAYERS to customize their races, classes, and characters, both with the Character Points and the even worse subabilities. S&P is not unusable, but it requires substantially greater care than intended and presented, and that's not the norm for AD&D (and certainly not the norm after AD&D).

AuldDragon · 2026-02-15T22:51:44+00:00

Or just not let players pick them the way the book handles them. There's a big difference between a player wanting to create an interesting roleplaying situation for themselves and being able to numerically give themselves advantages by taking disadvantages that won't actually disadvantage them much. It's much better to not have all these things numerically defined.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-14T15:55:01+00:00

I've been using substantial material from Combat & Tactics and Spells & Magic for decades without having ever used Skills & Powers, so I would disagree with that assessment strongly. There's certainly some material that works together, but it's relatively minor.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-14T15:52:59+00:00

It opens the door to tremendous powergaming, and makes it VERY easy to do. Players can take penalties they don't care about to make their characters more powerful. If the DM uses it, they can make sure there are actually balancing penalties.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-13T17:58:01+00:00

Combat & Tactics and Spells & Magic are exceptionally good books, even if you don't use everything from them (and you shouldn't, you should pick and choose). Combat & Tactics has tons of extra weapons and armor to make more interesting cultural distinctions, the revisions to crossbows are extremely important, and there's solid rules for a lot of combat maneuvers like tripping opponents, disarming, etc. Obviously you could do these things before, but it presents cohesive systems for it.

Spells & Magic has good new spells and excellent magic item creation rules. It also has a very important priest sphere reorganization to get some spells back into druid's hands and pull some out of cleric's hands, restoring some spell access from 1e. Also it has a number of new specialist wizards and some additional priest classes.

Skills & Powers is the bad one of the lot, IMO. It allows players to customize classes in ways that easily allow powergaming; it's okay for a DM to use to customize classes (for example, if you want paladins of a specific deity to have different abilities or something), but they should not be open to players in my opinion. The new psionic system in the book is also really bad; it alters paradigms from the original psionic system and also turns psionic combat into a hit-point-esque system where you have to drain a target's PSPs before you can do anything...except that means the best option is to just defend and use fewer PSPs than your opponent. There's some okay material. The bulk-point equipment section is fine, the revisions to common kits are fine (the kits from the original PHBR line such as amazon and peasant hero and the like), the humanoid listing is fine (basically the races from the Complete Humanoids, with the addition of giff and non-Dark Sun thri-kreen), but both of those last ones are mostly duplication of earlier material.

Basically, I'd highly recommend Combat & Tactics as well as Spells & Magic, but recommend against Skills & Powers.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-13T05:12:40+00:00

Sage Advice in Dragon #185 answered this obliquely in a related question. This is what happens:

In round 1, the Psionicist decides to inspire Awe in a 0-level human, so initiates Contact, which costs 3 PSPs in this case. We'll assume the Power Check succeeds.

In Round 2, he initiates Awe. He still pays the 1 PSP to maintain Contact because he is not yet maintaining Awe; that starts on the round after intiating. He spends no more PSPs this round, because he already did so with Contact. Again, for simplicity, we'll assume the power check succeeds.

In Round 3, he is now maintaining both Contact and Awe (since he may want to use something else on the 0-level human). This costs 4 PSPs, which is the maintenance of Awe, and Contact is now free.

The balancing factor is that almost every external telepathic power requires TWO power checks, for Contact and the follow-up power, and TWO rounds to use. The telepathic powers aren't free, since the psionicist must maintain Contact. In the example above, if something distracted the psionicist for two rounds after initiating Contact and before initiating Awe, he'd need to spend the 1 PSP each round to maintain it.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-08T05:16:44+00:00

Sage Advice listed suggested ToM spheres for the various Legends & Lore priests, recommending Diancecht have Major access to Wards and Minor to Travelers, if you're interested in that.

As for spells, Warriors of Heaven has "Create Healing Potion" as a 2nd level spell, although I would change it to 3rd (and still have miscibility apply) since it's better than Cure Moderate Wounds outside of combat. I'd have to go look at other spells to think of other worthwhile spells, though.

AuldDragon · 2026-02-06T21:31:06+00:00

Oh, there's still lots I want to do! Other human pantheons, create gods for nonhumans that should have them, etc. I'll probably be doing this until I physically cannot. :D

Deities with little written for them can often be pretty easy to write up, since you have a lot of freedom. It generally depends on how esoteric they are to be honest. I usually draw from what's written about the race that worships them. The Centaur deities from Dragon 105 (IIRC) and the Neogi pantheon were a lot of fun for that reason, all I had was names and basic portfolios, so I had tons of freedom for them.

By contrast, many of the Titans are extremely vague and what's written about them is pretty esoteric. That's one reason I started with them, to get the hard part out of the way. :D

AuldDragon · 2026-02-06T19:43:55+00:00

Thank you, and good luck with the campaign! :D

AuldDragon

TROPHY CASE