Hecuba's Harridyns

Grand Alliance: Order
Allegiance: Daughters of Khaine
Temple: Hagg Nar
Realm: Aqshy

Slaughter Queen Hecuba - Unlike most slaughter queens, who earn their rank by dint of their fearsome reputations, Hecuba has done nothing noteworthy. At least, nothing noteworthy that anyone save Morathi knows about. She eschews the normal flamboyant hairstyle of her kin, and has been given command of a rather eclectic group of lieutenants.

Shryke Queen Iryss - It is rare that a khineri is elevated to the priesthood of Khaine. Iryss is known for her speed, her multicoloured hair, and her ability to whip her witch aelves into a murderous frenzy.

Witch Queen Evanora Mawbane - Evanora earned her epithet after stabbing a Maw-Krusha in the nose. She has earned a reputation of surviving impossible odds to hold important objectives, swaying the outcome of many battles, and is believed to have the blessing of Khaine himself. And she's no slouch in fighting, having once taken out an entire squad of skeletons by herself. Unfortunately, she has so far outlived all of the slaughter queens she has served under.

Witch Queen Phariss - Until recently, Faryss lived on Chamon, but after the recent fall of her home temple, she has joined Hecuba's warband. She is said to have iron constitution and steely resolve.

Ophelia Blackblood and Veyra Nightshade - Little is known about the strange gorgon-sorceress Ophelia, and her constant companion, the shadowblade assassin Veyra. Ophelia is skilled at shadow and blood magic, having knowledge of the fearsome Mindrazor spell. Veyra wields a very unusual weapon for an assassin - a bladed goad-stave, traditionally used by the guardians of Bloodwrack Shrines.

The Loremaster: Tezzeret

Tezzeret was born in Tidehollow, on Esper, one of the shards of Alara. Unlike most planeswalkers, Tezzeret has no surname. In fact, he didn't even have a name until, as a boy, he stabbed a bully with a shiv - tezzeret being the local slang for an improvised weapon. Tezzeret is a highly-intelligent gifted artificer. However, he has a rather explosive temper, and when he loses it, people tend to end up dead.

When he was seven years old, his mother was killed, run over by a guildmaster's carriage. That was when Tezzeret decided that he would do anything he could to become a powerful mage, so no one could ever take something from him again. To that end he began stealing small amounts of the rare, expensive and highly-in-demand magical alloy etherium, a metal that only a group called the Seekers of Carmot knew the secret to making. He was helped in this endeavor by discovering he had a natural talent for rhabdomancy, the magical ability to locate metal. With the money he earned from this, he joined the Machinist Guild, and at the age of 19, amputated his right arm, replacing it with an artificial limb made of etherium filigree. The guild immediately elevated Tezzeret to master status.

Using his newfound status, Tezzeret joined the Vectis City Academy, and applied for entry into the Seekers. In order to gain entry, he had to best Silas Renn in a dual, which he was unable to do. The Seekers denied him entry. Tezzeret worked hard to get a second chance, but kept being passed over. Finally, he had enough and broke into the Seeker's vault to steal the Codex Etherium...only to find that the pages were blank. The Seekers didn't know how to make etherium. No one did.

Unfortunately, this time Tezzeret got caught. When the Seekers tried to kill him to cover up their lies, his spark ignited, and he planeswalked to the shard of Grixis. There he met Nicol Bolas - who offered him power if he would work for Bolas.

For some unknown reason, Nicol Bolas appears to actually care about Tezzeret. Most of his minions find themselves discarded and killed if they fail him, rebel against him, or just outlive their usefulness. But Bolas has spent great effort and considerable rescources to bring Tezzeret back in line when he strays (which has happened multiple times).

Tezzeret, for his part, deeply resents Nicol Bolas for his role in creating the Seekers, as he spent much of his life working to become one, only to find that their teachings were all lies. But, Nicol Bolas did promise him power, and has delivered on that promise.

Tezzeret was placed in charge of one of Bolas' organisations, the Inifinite Consortium, which exploited the power vacuum on Ravnica in the aftermath of the original Ravnica storyline. He repaid Bolas by assassinating everyone who knew the Consortium answered to Bolas, and taking it for himself. It worked, for many years Tezzeret operated with impunity - until Liliana, who was secretly working for Nicol Bolas, manipulated him into starting a war with Jace Beleren. The war ended with Jace erasing Tezzzeret's mind, cutting off his etherium arm, and leaving him in the hands of the nezumi on the plane of Kamigawa.

Bolas managed to retrive Tezzeret and spent months rebuilding his mind and body. He then sent Tezzeret to New Phyrexia to keep an eye on the Phyrexians, and sabotage their leadership structure. At some point after this, he was ordered to relocate to Kaladesh, where he infiltrated the government (known as the Consulate) and was eventually appointed Grand Consul. He used his power to seize control of a powerful artifact Bolas needed - the Planar Bridge - and despite the fact that Jace and the Gatewatch blew it up, Tezzeret escaped with the core, allowing him to rebuild the Bridge, and later, use it to transport another powerful artifact - the Immortal Sun.

Both artifacts seem to be of great importance to Bolas' decade-spanning plans, though exactly what he plans on doing with them is still unclear. One thing is for sure, when Bolas enacts his endgame, Tezzeret will be right there too.

The Loremaster: Ajani Goldmane

Ajani Goldmane was one of the first five planeswalker cards, printed in Lorwyn. We knew little about him, as the Lorwyn 5 didn't actually show up in the storyline of Lorwyn, but he was interesting in that he was a grizzled and battle-scarred leonin with abilities that didn't really fit that sort of image - mostly he was about healing and protection.

We didn't have to wait very long to get Ajani's origin, however. He was born on Alara, a plane that had long ago been split into five pieces called shards. Ajani was from Naya, a jungle covered shard linked to white, green and red mana. Due to being born an albino with white fur, Ajani was shunned by all the other leonin, aside from his brother Jazal. Not even his royal blood (Jazal was kha, or king, of the leonin) saved him from their derision.

The five shards of Alara were on a collision course with each other. When they collided, Alara would be reunited, but a nexus of powerful energy called 'the Maelstrom' would be formed. The ancient dragon-planeswalker Nicol Bolas was dying of old age, and, believing the nexus could restore him, enacted a plan to empower it. If the inhabitants of the shards went to war with each other, the excess energy of spells that they cast in battle would be gathered by the Maelstrom. there were a few obstacles to his goal - one was that Jazal was a rather moderate leader, unlikely to be drawn into a war. Furthermore, he may have convinced the elves and humans of Naya to remain neutral as well.

So Nicol Bolas had Jazal assassinated. His plan succeeded (Naya did later go to war), but he inadvertently made an enemy of Ajani, whose spark ignited due to the trauma of his brother's death. Planeswalking to another shard - Jund - Ajani met the planeswalker Sarkhan Vol, who explained to Ajani that he was a Planeswalker. Sarkhan (sounding very Sith) encouraged him to take hold of his anger and use it to track down his brother's killer. He also showed Ajani how to planeswalk back to Naya.

Whilst on the trail of Nicol Bolas, he was attacked by another leonin and severely injured. Planeswaking away, he found himself on another shard - Bant - where he was rescued and healed by a third planeswalker, the knight-errant Elspeth Tirel.

Eventually Ajani, with the help of a combined army of elves and leonin, managed to track down and confront Nicol Bolas. Bolas absorbed the Maelstrom Nexus, restoring his youth and much of his power. But he underestimated Ajani, who blindsided the elder dragon by absorbing the remeining energy of the Maelstrom and using it to create a reflection of Bolas that banished the dragon from Alara forever.

At some point after the events of Alara, Ajani joined an unofficial group of planeswalkers that also included Tamiyo, Elspeth and Narset. Dubbed the 'Story Circle' they travelled the multiverse collecting stories.

Elspeth was a rather broken soul, having been tourtured by Phyrexians when she was young (which would make her one of the oldest living planeswalkers). But Ajani felt he owed a debt to Elspeth for healing him. After failing to get her to return to Bant from a self-destructive sojourn on Dominara, he followed her to the plane of Theros. Though he helped her succeed on her quest to defeat the evil planeswalker/god Xenegos, he was unable to prevent her from being killed by the sun god Heliod. But this time Ajani's vengeance took a very different form. Donning Elspeth's iconic cloak, he traveled the length and breadth of Theros, telling all about the bravery of Elsepth, and about the betrayal of her supposed patron Heliod. The gods of Theros derive their power from their worshipers, and Ajani's tales have turned many away from following the sun god.

Eventually Ajani felt the story of Espeth had become widespread enough that it would continue to be told without him, and he left Theros, travelling to Kamigawa to tell Tamiyo of Elspeth's death, and giving us the awesome scene of Tamiyo's little children clambering all over Ajani demanding he tell them stories.

But Ajani had one more task to take care of - Elspeth had told him of the planeswalker Tezzeret's actions on New Phyrexia, so when Tamiyo told him of crimes committed by his followers on Kamigawa, Ajani decided to track down the renegade artificer and bring him to justice. Tracking Tezzeret to the plane of Kaladesh, Ajani fell in with the Gatwewatch - a group of planeswalkers consisting of Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra and Nissa - and helped them defeat the oppressive Kaladeshi Consulate, but not before Tezzeret revealed he was working for Nicol Bolas, and made of with a powerful 'planar bridge', which would allow Bolas to transport objects between different planes.

Although the Gatewatch wished to confront Bolas immediately, Ajani was no fool, and admitted that while he had defeated Bolas in the past, the elder dragon had been caught off guard, and would not be defeated so easily again. Ajani left to find others to help fight the dragon. Meanwhile, the Gatewatch ignored him, and...well...lets say that ended badly for them...

Dungeoneering: Making a Memorable Villain

Originally published in issue 9 of 'The Scene Unseen' newsletter.

In my two-year Pathfinder campaign I made a lot of mistakes, but also had some unexpected successes.

The runaway success in my campaign was the character who ended up being the main villain, Lucretia. In the Adventure Path I was following, she was only a minor stumbling block on the way to bigger and better baddies, but she caught the attention of the party like nobody else had. Something about her grabbed their attention. What exactly was it? She managed to escape them during their first battle, but she was not the first villain to do that. There was an aboleth (a giant psychic fish monster) who escaped them on multiple occasions, but the level of animosity the players had towards him was far less than against Lucretia.

There was a point, earlier than their first meeting with Lucretia, in which I realised I had given the players too much treasure. A large part of that was to do with them coming up with a plan to sell a house in Sea Gate, the deed to which they had found. In a locked chest. After killing the owners. Who were, to be fair, rather evil. The AP didn't actually account for this possibility, and in hindsight, instead of letting them successfully sell it for a lot of gold, I should have had the city guard show up and chastise them for trying to con the good people of Sea Gate, and have them narrowly escape some prison time.

At any rate, things had gotten to the point that if villains were going to survive more than a single round against my player, they had to be a much higher level than them. But that put their damage output to dangerous levels. Whichever side got off a full attack first was going to straight up kill the other side. Which is not a great point to be at. So I had to somehow eliminate my player's most valuable items, to bring them back into line with where they should be. Someone suggested making them fight rust monsters, but I thought they were a bit too random, I wouldn't have much control over which items they destroyed.

Enter Lucretia. What if she had been plotting this whole time, planting cursed items in various places, including on her underlings that they had already killed, so that by the time she had to fight them, she could cause chaos by messing with the groups items? She was my fix for a trap that new GMs fall into, that of giving the players all the stuff they want. (At least, I hope it's not just me.)

The group fought Lucretia in a fort that had been taken over by giants. Despite her ambushing them just after they killed the leader of the giants, they still almost killed her. The only reason she survived was due to her messing with their stuff. The paladin's favourite weapon was a light-infused greathammer that dazzled anything it struck. Now it flared with light everytime he used it, temporarily blinding him and causing him to miss. The goblin's dexterity-boosting shirt (in my defense this was an actual item from the campaign, whoever thought this was balanced should be shot) entangled him, and had to be ripped in two for him to escape. Thr cleric's trident dealt extra damage...by drawing on the cleric's life force, injuring him every time he used it, not good for a squishy merfolk. And the sorcerer's fear-protecting ring started amplifying his fears instead of removing them. Only the cavalier escaped unscathed, mostly because he was a miser that refused to spend his gold on anything except mithral armour and weapons.

Then she realised she had 2 hit points left, summoned a wall of water, and ran away.

Lucretia had escaped and outwitted the group (barely) in their first major battle, which was bad enough, but she also permanently harmed and traumatised them by taking away their stuff. It's amazing how players can get attached to imaginary stuff. Strangely, though, the cavlier was just as bent on finding her and eliminating her, despite her not doing anything to him directly, and over the course of the campaign, reminded the rest of the group that they still had to deal with her. When I asked him why he was so keen on stopping her, he replied that it was due to her sister dropping a cathedral bell on him earlier in the campaign - despite the fact that Lucrecia had nothing to do with it.

So what is the point of all this? If you want your players to care about a villain, you have to make them somehow invested in bringing her (or him) down. Having them permanently harm the characters in some way worked for my group, but. But just as much, your players need to buy into the narrative (even if thier thinking is a little flawed, as in the case of the cavalier). You can have the best villain, but for some reason your players don't care. If this is the case, you may have to let go of your villain, despite how much you like them, and look to see if there is another enemy that is better suited to the group.

Dungeoneering: What are the Drow?

This is an updated version of an article originally published in issue 8 of 'The Scene Unseen' newsletter.

When Gary Gygax was developing the Dungeons & Dragons game in the 1970s, he wanted a powerful, distinctive race to be the rulers of the Underdark, a vast network of caverns deep below the surface of the world of Faerun, d&D's primary setting. He got the concept of dark elves from the Prose Edda, a work of norse literature written by Snorri Sturluson. The word drow however, comes from Shetland folklore, used for a used for a dwarf-like creature, and is related the the word trow, usually used for creatures we call trolls. This shows that in folklore a lot of these creatures are interchangeable. Indeed, the Edda makes no distinction between dark elves and what we would nowadays call dwarves. (It is hard for us to imagine such things in an age where fantasy is so heavily influenced by the works of Tolkien, in which dwarves and elves are races with vast differences between them.)

Gygax's drow are despicably evil elves, worshippers of Lolth, the demonic spider goddess. Their society is matriarchal, lead by the female priestesses of Lolth and the matrons of the great houses. They have dark purple skin and white hair. They are incredibly powerful, nearly all of them have spellcasting capability. They rule the underdark with an iron fist, enslaving most of the other races, and spend a lot of time plotting against other houses in an attempt to gain more political power.

Despite this, the most famous drow, Drizzt Do'Urden, was a kind-hearted ranger who had been exiled from the drow capital due to his beliefs. Drizzt's novels became so popular that everyone and their dog wanted to play as a good-aligned drow ranger, leading to the notion that Faerun must be filled with hundreds of good-aligned drow rebels, rather undermining the whole evil elven society thing. The other problem was that drow were not created to be used by players, and were inherently overpowered compared to other characters.

Drizzt's popularity has made drow a staple feature of D&D and most other fantasy worlds, though many give them other names.

The Warhammer Fantasy game, which came out in 1983 also had an army of evil elves. They were originally called the night elves, but later renamed dark elves. Their darkness was entirely in demenour, as they looked identical to the high-elves, with the same pale skin. Their clothing was darker, and their armour was adorned with spikes. They were the followers of the exiled elven prince Malekith, a rather nasty chap, and lived in the equivalent of North America – which seems like a strange choice, until you remember that Warhammer is made by a British company. Oddly, Marvel Comics has a dark elf named Malekith too, who is an enemy of the superhero Thor, and the two Malekiths seem to have been created completely independently.

In 2002, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos came out, and gleefully trampled all over traditional RPG tropes. After the orcs fled across the sea to new lands in order to escape persecution, they began building settlements, only to be attacked by a civilisation of mostly female purple-skinned elves. These night elves launched a campaign of guerilla warfare, appearing out of nowhere to slay orcs with arrows and throwing stars before melting back into the shadows. It was eventually revealed that these elves were not evil, and were merely trying to stop the orcs from cutting down the forest which was actually their home. They were nocturnal moon-worshippers, whose religion actually had a lot in common with the 'light' worshipped amongst humans. Inverting the normal stories even more, the night elves tuned out to be the original elves - the light-skinned high elf allies of the humans were a younger offshoot, descended from night elves exiled for practicing banned arcane magic. Of all the games featuring dark elves, Warcraft seems to be the only one where the vast majority of dark elves are inherently good.

In 2009, the Pathfinder RPG was launched, Based on the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, it's drow are nearly identical to D&Ds, the only difference being the identity of the god they follow. Though they initially came into existence after a group of elves pledged their allegiance to the evil god Asmodeus, any elf that is evil enough will spontaneously turn into a drow. Conversely, a good drow will spontaneously transform into an elf. Though this does seem a bit odd, it means that there are no good drow in Pathfinder, thus maintaining their identity as a culture of evil creatures.

A couple of years ago, Warhammer Fantasy released a series of books named 'The End Times', in which it was revealed that Malekith was actually the true heir to the Phoenix Throne of the high elves. The books even gave him a partial redemption arc on his was to reclaiming said throne – though this mostly involved him deciding to not instantly murder anyone who disagreed with him, because that might upset some of his newfound allies. Malekith was one of the few characters to survive the End Times, becoming the god of Shadow in the new Warhammer universe crated after the destruction of the original. After this he renamed himself Malerion, which conveniently distances him from the Marvel Malekith. The former dark elf army has been split into a few factions that are actually now allied with the forces of Order, living primarily in the cities of Azyr and Anvilgard alongside their human and dwarven allies. Most prominent are the Daughters of Khaine. Whilst you may think that fanatical worshippers of the elven of of murder would not make great allies, in practice, they focus their efforts on killing demons and the undead, and are quite effective at it.

After Tolkein's novels heavily influenced the fantasy genre, elves, who were formerly depicted in folklore dangerous and capricious, became automatically aligned with good, and often their danger and inhumanity got played down in a lot of rpgs and strategy games. Dark elves bring those old traditions right back into the fantasy world, and in the case of Warcraft and Warhammer, have divorced both race from being aligned with good or evil. You can get good dark elves, and conversely, evil light elves, which is a lot more believable.

Dungeoneering: The Death Lord

Originally published in issue 4 of 'The Scene Unseen' newsletter.

It's been a long time since a goblin rogue, a merfolk cleric, a human knight and a dragonblood sorcerer first met, saved the small town of Stoneforge from a band of maurauding goblins, and learned that on Zendikar, everything is always out to kill you. I've been running the Pathfinders of Zendikar campaign for one and a half years now, and as it draws to a close, I find myself thinking of all the unexpected stuff has happened. Where once the continent of Tazeem was an untamed wilderness with only brief descriptions of notable places, a few characters from the card, and just three mentioned gods, it now has a fully fleshed out fortified town, three cities, and many interesting people and places.

At first I was very hesitant to add things to Zendikar that were not estabished lore. But in the case of gods, I had to, as the Pathfinder mechanics for clerics require their existance, and for them to each be tied to various domains and alignments.  Needing a lawful neutral god, I created the death god Vaasgoth, and built his identity in a way that facilitated playing a vampire from the non-evil Clan Kalastria. Vampires on Zendikar imitate many aspects of undeath without actually being undead, and can survive perfectly well on the blood of animals, allowing them to choose not to hunt down humans and the other races for nourishment (though many of them do anyway). It was not really necessary, as we later discovered that playing as a vampire is hard on your allies, as your connection to the negative energy of death makes it difficult for healers to heal you. At any rate, Vaasgoth existed as a story hook. He was intended to be misremembered tales about the planeswalker Sorin Markov, and thus, not actually exist. A minor role if there ever was one.

It might seem strange to have a non-evil god of death, but Pathfinder had already gone down this route with their own death goddess. Pharasma is true neutral, sends the spirits of the dead off to their eternal reward (or punishment) without bias, and is adamant that dead things should remain dead, viewing undeath as a perversion of the natural order. Her followers hunt down the undead even more fanatically than paladins do. Vaasgoth is similar, but shifted towards the legalistic side, with a focus on enforcing the laws of mortality, and requiring those who walk close to death (like vampires) to act nobly, lawfully and ethically, lest they find this privilege taken away from them.

Vaasgoth ended up being not only the patron of Clan Kalastria, but also of the near-extinct Clan Sorn, a house I created on the spur of the moment to save a player character from death, now a house reborn after the marriage of Dragor Sorn to Tyri Kalastria. Vaasgoth then branched out into other races, being linked to the death-revering (but ultimately useful) Mul Daya elves led by the shaman Mira Sarith. And of course, hovering quietly in the background the whole time was Stoneforge's resident mistrusted ogre, Victor Creed, who turned out to be a rather pleasant and knowledgeable High Inquisitor of Vaasgoth, and eventually granted my players a boon that makes it harder for them to die. (Because I'm so good at killing players I need to give them extra resilience to stop it happening so much.)

And so, like the gods of Terry Prachett's Discworld, Vaasgoth exists because people believe in him. It was a thing that just happened because it needed to, but it turns out, it does have precedence in Magic, as the gods of Theros were revealed to work this way, and there are some hints that Amonkhet operates similarly. It also, usefully, gives me reason to divorce the only lore-mentioned gods - the merfolk deities Emeria, Ula and Cosi - from their origins as warped memories of the Eldazi Titans. They were based on them at first, but now they exist separately.

Vaasgoth's presence has spread rapidly due to in-game events, such as House Sorn and Creed uniting to build a temple in Stoneforge. The town, now heavily fortified after multiple attacks by giants and dragons, already had one to Emeria - meaning that it now has temples to two different lawful gods, an interesting development. One that will probably come up if people visit Stoneforge in my sequel campaign.

There is something to be said for having all of the mythology in place from the beginning. On the other hand, I think it is nice that my players have had a significant effect on the world in a way not directly related to killing a bunch of bad guys. House Sorn would still be a minor footnote in history without their actions, and Creed would not have had to reveal his true nature, making people look at ogres in a new light. The temple to Vaasgoth exists because of them, and their infuence spreads way beyond even this. Should they survive the final battle, they may very well show up as powerful allies (or even enemies) in future campaigns.

Dungeoneering: A Kind of Magic

Surprisingly, spellcasting in D&D Pathfinder actually has it's origins in historical tabletop wargames. Players began to ask things like "If we can recreate Waterloo, why not the Battle of the Five Armies?" The next question was how to include spellcasters like Gandalf. The easiest way to slot them in was to base them on units that already existed, with some tweaks to the rules. Wizard units in these fantasy tabletop wargames were based on artillery - they had powerful long-range damage, but had limited ammunition and little protection if an enemy unit could get into melee with them.

The limited ammunition idea coincided neatly with the depiction of magic in the novels of Jack Vance, and thus was coined the term Vancian magic. In his novels, wizards had to study their spellbooks to prepare spells. They could only memorise a certain number of spells at once, and once they had been cast, the spells faded from memory until the wizard could take time to study thier spellbooks once again. When smaller-scale roleplaying games developed -  where each player had a single character unit instead of an entire army - the Vancian system was retained.

There are two main types of magic in D&D and Pathfinder: arcane and divine. Arcane magic is used by sorcerers, wizards and bards, stemming from the caster having a connection to the essence of magic itself. Divine magic is used by clerics, paladins, druids and rangers, and is magic granted by devotion to a deity or some sort of ideal or concept, like nature. Later versions of D&D have split off the nature classes like druid and ranger, and classed their magic as a third kind, 'primal'. Pathfinder still views them as divine casters, but has also added a third kind of magic - psychic. I have included more info on each of Pathfinder's magic categories below.

Arcane Magic
Wizard, Witch, Sorcerer, Magus, Bard

All arcane spells have two main components, called verbal and somatic. Think of the spells in the Harry Potter novels - each one has words that must be said (verbal), and a gesture that one must do with the wand (somatic). You don't need a wand in Pathfinder, however. These two components mean that it can be easy to shut down wizards - if they are gagged, put into a zone of silence, or have their hands tied up, they will be unable to cast spells. Arcane spellcasters are limited in what armour they can wear, as any armour besides the expensive mithral chain shirt will interfere with their somatic component. (And yes, that is very much a Hobbit reference.)

The wizards of Pathfinder, like the old tabletop wizards, still have to walk around carrying spellbooks filled with their spells. They must spend time consulting them at the beginning of each day, in order to prepare a number of spells up to the maximum number they can cast each day. These days, they are usually referred to as prepared spellcasters. The wizard class is extremely powerful, with access to a wide variety of spells for every occasion, but the preparation rules limit them significantly, as they can easily get stuck with prepared spells that are useless for the current situation.

Many people greatly dislike the preparation rules. The sorcerer class was made as an attempt to alleviate the problems with it. Sorcerers are based on a different sort of literary magic user - one born with inherent magical abilities, who does not need to learn magic. Sorcerers are called spontaneous spellcasters and don't have spell books. They don't need to prepare, but can choose to cast any spell they know, as long as they don't exceed the maximum number of spells they cast per day. They are, however, limited in spell knowledge - they only know a small number of spells compared to wizards.

Witches are prepared arcane casters, but have a significantly different spell list to wizards and sorcerers, a list that included a lot of spells previously only castable by clerics and druids. Witches cast these formerly divine-only spells as arcane spells, thus blurring the lines between arcane and divine magic.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Divine Magic
Cleric, Oracle, Inquisitor, Paladin; Druid, Shaman, Ranger
Compared to arcane spellcasters, divine casters have it easy. They don't need spellbooks, can use armour without worrying about spell failure, and prepared divine casters like clerics and druids know every divine spell that it is possible for them to cast. Need a niche spell to pull off a clever strategy? If you have enough time, they can just prepare it and you're good. They even have better health and attack bonuses than the arcane classes! (Prepared divine casters, like oracles, do have a limited amount of known spells, like sorcerers.)

Much of their magic still uses verbal and somatic components, making them susceptible to the same things that shut down arcane spellcasters. In addition, their magic requires a divine focus - a holy symbol for the more religious classes, or a sprig of mistletoe for those of a natural persuasion. Deprive them of their focus, and they can't cast spells. They are easy and cheap to replace, unless you want them to be really fancy.

I personally think it is silly that the three nature-focused spellcasters are lumped in with the divine casters, and in my games I usually make it hard for each group to recognise spells cast by the other - like how arcane and divine spellcasters struggle to recognise each other's spells.

Mechanically, there's not a lot of difference between arcane, divine and nature-divine magic, it's more of a story thing that needs to be played up by the GM and players for it to actually be relevant. Psychic magic, on the other hand...

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Psychic Magic
Psychic, Occultist, Spiritualist
Psychic magic is both elegant and problematic. D&D's psychic classes had spell-like powers that worked completely differently to other spellcasters. Pathfinder decided that they didn't want people to have to learn a whole new system of 'spellcasting'. So they decided that psychic magic would work just like arcane magic, with a two key differences.

Instead of the normal components, psychic magic uses emotion and thought components. This means that most of the usual ways to stop spellcasters, like silence and binding their hands, doesn't work on them. But, anything that messes with their emotions - like a fear spell - will shut off their ability to cast. The intense thought required also means they have difficulty casting defensively, making melee combat even less desirable for them than it is for wizards.

Secondly, all psychic classes use spontaneous casting. Prepared casting for psychic magic does not exist.

The problem with psychic magic being slotted into the game this way is that, despite the fact that you can always tell when a spellcaster is casting a spell, the game doesn't explain how this works for psychic magic. Wizards, clerics and druids visibly move their hands and mutter incantations, but psychics do not. You can't see the psychic components. So we have to come up with our own explanation. Perhaps their eyes glow blue, or mystical sigils appear in the air around them, or you just get this nagging feeling that the guy in the corner is trying to read your mind. It's not hard to come up with something fun for it, but it makes for a lot of initial confusion when you are trying to work out how to play one, as it isn't brought up at all, and you have to go searching through forums to find an official answer, that yes, you can always tell.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Alchemy
Alchemist, Investigator

Alchemy is actually just arcane magic. However, the mechanics used by alchemists and investigators (a class inspired by Arkham Horror) circumvent many of the limitations of arcane magic. They actually 'cast' all their spells at the beginning of the day, by creating extracts, which basically act as potions that they can later drink. While preparing extracts requires components, drinking an extract does not, and has no risk of spell failure. Alchemists and investigators can basically cheat their way around the restrictions by only putting on their armour after preparing extracts, and don't care about Silence. They are not without drawback - that their spell list is a lot more limited than wizards or sorcerers, mostly defensive spells that affect only them, and lack the three highest spell levels.

In all other ways, alchemists and investigators mirror wizards - they have a formula book with all their extracts written down, and they prepare them in advance.

The Loremaster: The Strange Tale of Ravi Sengir

You have probably heard of Barin Sengir, or his progeny, the Sengir Vampires. What you probably didn't know, was that his grandmother, Ravi Sengir, was a powerful planeswalker from Dominaria.

Ok, so, she wasn't actually his grandmother. She did, however, have a significant role in the baron's origins. When Ravi was a young girl, a plague swept through her village, killing her mother. At her funeral, Ravi met the future baron as young man, who told her that his father was responsible for the plague, having unleashed infected rats on the village in order to study the effects of black magic. The only way to save the village was to kill his father, said the boy, and he taught her how to control rats with a song. The reason Ravi had to kill him was that the law prevented a son who killed his father from inheriting his lands and title (which was, of course, Baron).

Ravi was hesitant at first, but after her father died from plague too, she attacked the elder baron's castle with controlled rats. The two youngsters, however, had neglected to remember that the elder baron could control the rats with his music too, and thus an epic rap battle was fought for control of the rats. Confised, that rats attacked and killed the only person who wasn't singing, the young future baron. Horrified, the elder baron stopped singing to cast a spell - allowing Ravi to use the rats to kill him. The younger baron had been restored to (un)life by his father's spell - now and forever he was Baron Sengir, vampire lord.

Years later, Ravi ascended and became embroiled in a war between two factions of planeswalkers on the plane of Ulgrotha. In an attempt to end the war, she used a powerful artifact: the Apocalypse Chime. After ringing it, she sealed herself inside a magical coffin to escape its effects. The Chime was, however, even more powerful than Ravi realised. Not only did it kill all planeswalkers on both sides of the war, it killed almost everything on the plane, and disrupted the plane's leylines, ripping away all of Ravi's mana bonds to the land - now unable to planeswalk away, she was trapped inside the coffin for centuries. The destruction spread further than Ulgorotha, affecting the nearby planes of Dominaria and Kamigawa, and forming rifts that linked the three planes together.

The rifts created by the Chime allowed the Myojin of Night's Reach and Toshi Umezawa to travel from Kamigawa to Dominaria. Toshi's desendant, Tetsuo Umezawa, later defeated the Emperor of Madara, Nicol Bolas, coming perilously close to killing the dragon with a meteor hammer. Thus, Ravi is indirectly responsible for the downfall of Nicol Bolas and his 400 year exile. Lets hope Bolas never finds that out.

As for Ravi, she was imprisoned for over 300 years, long enough to drive her completely insane. She didn't even remember who she was - or recognise the man who eventually opened her coffin - Baron Sengir. Due to retcons, there is corrently no offical explanation for how the Baron ended up on Ulgrotha - but we can probably go with the easiest: 'He traveled there via one of the apocalypse rifts'.

The Baron gave a place at his castle on Ulgrotha, the aptly named Castle Sengir, and told everyone she was his grandmother. But all of these stories serve as mere backdrop for the Homelands set - though we are told they are evil, in the actual Homeland comics, the Sengirs don't do anything important at all. Instead, the story is focused on Feroz and Serra falling in love, and on Sandruu and Taysir fighting over Kristina (for such a backwater plane, Ulgrotha certainly attracts a lot of high-power planeswalkers). The Baron is actually quite pleasant towards Feroz and Serra, and after their deaths he seems genuinely sad, leaving a rose on Serra's gravestone.

While Serra's story is about the effect of loss and grief, and Kristina's is about the dire consequences of jealousy, I am left wondering what exactly the point of Ravi's story is. Her descruction of Ulgrotha in the distant past has no emotional impact on us, as we didn't see Ulgrotha before the Chime, and we are not given any information on any of the planeswalkers who Ravi killed. The story also makes it clear that the Baron wasn't looking for her, and his freeing her was nothing but coincidence, which is an odd angle to go for. Perhaps the story was written merely to set up the rifts, to allow laters stories to feature travel between Dominara, Ulgrotha and Kamigawa.

Dungeoneering: The Cleric Conundrum

“So who is going to play the cleric this time?” A phrase that was common in early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It was hard to heal damage without access to magical healing, and clerics were the only class that could do it well. So someone always had to play the cleric. Which is kind of boring.

A typical dwarven cleric by Chris Seaman

Technically, you can play Pathfinder without a dedicated healer. I know, because I've played in a group that pulled it off. You just have to play the right combination of classes. In my game we had a paladin, witch (me), alchemist and wizard. You may notice that everyone except the wizard has self-healing. My witch had the healing hex and quite a few cure spells, which was normally enough to keep the wizard alive, but in a pinch the paladin could channel. I'd say you need to know what you're doing to pull it off, but...none of us had actually played Pathfinder before. Which was why I was under the mistaken impression that witches were actually good at healing. So it is possible – but not very advisable, as I suspect our DM went easy on us. I just can't get him to admit it.

So how do you actually fix this cleric issue? Dungeons & Dragons tried to remove it in 4e (shorthand for 4^th edition) by changing how the healing system worked – they made it much easier to naturally regain hitpoints out of combat. They created the five minute short rest, which allowed them to regain health based on their hit dice (the dice you use to determine your health when making a character). They also reduced the amount of healing clerics could deal out, and gave some nifty healing powers to other classes. This worked well on the surface. But 4e Edition suffered from too much homogenisation – people complained all the classes felt too similar too each other. Which is still boring.

Druid & Bard by Tim Kings-Lynne

So in 5e they revamped healing again, and this time I think they got it right. It's not as easy to heal as it was in 4e, as short rests are now an hour (so you can't stop to rest between every battle), you have less hit dice to use on healing during short rests, and you don't always get them all back after a long rest. Life domain clerics are still the best healers, having access to mass healing via channel divinity - but they are not essential. Bards and druids are now as good at healing as most other clerics, especially with the flexibility of Cure Wounds and the existence of the new spell Healing Word that can be cast as a bonus action. Even non-spellcasters can get in on the action by taking a healing feat.

Pathfinder, on the other hand, took a different tack and created the oracle class. Technically the life oracle uses the main healing mechanic of the cleric – channel positive energy. Which means it's basically the same class, right? Well, no. Because somehow, playing an oracle feels totally different to cleric. Maybe it's because their casting is spontaneous like a sorcerer (and based on charisma, which is nice, because channel is charisma-based too). Maybe it's because they are dedicated to an ideal (called a mystery) rather than a specific god. Maybe it's because they all suffer from a curse, which gives a really nice hook to build a character around – as opposed to clerics, whose hook is usually the god they follow. Whereas clerics feel strictly religious, oracles are more like that friend you have who talks about being in tune with the universe.

Oracle by Wayne Reynolds

More recently, the Advanced Class Guide gave us a third class that can play healer – the shaman. The shaman is an strange hybrid of the witch and druid classes. She gains magic and hexes from a familiar, like a witch, casts nature-based divine spells like a druid, and has a feature called spirits, based, for some reason, on the oracle's mystery feature. Shaman dedicated to the life spirit get (of course) channel positive energy. But the hexes she gains are an odd twist – giving her the ability to reduce the amount of healing an enemy can receive, completely prevent healing for a short time, or drain her own health to heal an ally. Shamans bring a very nature-based feeling to the healing game, one that might leave you suspicious that they are not very nice. Shaman is notable for being the only class that allows an evil character to channel positive energy. Nature, it seems, doesn't really care about good or evil.

So the next time you find yourself needing to play a healer, remember, cleric is not your only option! D&D players can go with bard or druid, whilst Pathfinder players can pick oracle or shaman.

Dungeoneering: Solving Problems Creatively

People often ask writers where their ideas come from. Its a difficult question to answer, as when you are creating stories, you don't often stop to think where your ideas come from. But I have noticed something important: the best ideas happen when you are trying to solve a problem.

In the past, D&D has suffered from the 'cleric problem'. Healing was vital, and the only class that could be a decent healer was the cleric, meaning that every party of adventueres had to have a cleric. Which tends to get a bit boring, especially if you have become the person who usually plays the healer. D&D solved this problem by making healing less important and also nerfing cleric healing to bining it in line with other classes. Pathfinder, on the other hand, solved this by giving us fun, viable alternatives to the cleric: the oracle and shaman. But this means there still has to be a healer in every party.

Unfortunately, the cleric in my first campaign was often absent due to work commitments, leaving the group without healing. I solved this by giving the cavalier a powerful artifact that mimicked the channeled healing of clerics and oracles. As this was a Plane Shift campaign based on Zendikar (a world from Magic: the Gathering) I called the artifact an Angelheart Vial (based on a card from MtG).

But where exactly does an Angelheart Vial come from, I wondered? This is the first important point: after you solve the problem mechanically, you need to find a storyline reason for the solution to exist. An Angelheart Vial, I decided, was the crystallised heart of a slain angel. But not just any angel, this was one on the level of the legendary angels of Zendikar – Iona and Linvala. The angel was named Numa, and was slain in battle against the mighty Eldrazi Titan known as Emrakul. There you go, a cool little tidbit, but not terribly important in the grand scheme of things.

Fast forward to a few months later, and one of my players is wanting to play a fetchling character. The problem is, fetchlings are not a thing that exists on Zendikar. These days I'd just refuse – you don't need to play a fetchling when you have access to unique Zendikar races like kor, merfolk and sphinxborn – but back then I was in my 'you must give the players what they want' phase. The main problem was that fetchlings are an outsider race linked to the Plane of Shadows. D&D and Pathfinder use a planar structure consisting of the material realm with other planes overlaying it (like ethereal and shadow) and higher planes stacked around it (like the elemental planes, heaven, hell, and so on). MtG, on the other hand, uses a multiverse model, where each plane is it's own distinct world, basically a series of unconnected material planes. In this model, the concept of a shadow plane doesn't make sense.

I had already discarded the idea of removing the traditional planes from Pathfinder. There are a number of spells that rely on the shadow plane (like Shadow Walk) or ethereal plane (like Blink) to function, and there is the concept of creatures called Outsiders, named because the come from other planes. Outsiders include everything from angels and demons to elementals of all flavours, and even include some playable races like fetchlings and tieflings. These creatures interact with spells like Summon Monster and Dismissal, with entire classes being built around the mechanics involving them. Altering all these creatures was a substantially larger undertaking than I was willing to undertake.

Which meant I had to come up with a way to include planes, but not make them actual planes. There was a possible solution for the Outsider problem, as angels and demons in MtG are currently described as 'mana constructs', beings made out of pure mana. When they 'die', their essence or mana is said to return to the lands that they were created from in the first place. Could lands and mana stand in for the idea of an overlapping Shadow Plane?

This is the second important point: When you have a bunch of semi-connected problems, what you do is smoosh them all together and make a story out of it. I didn't have the answer to everything yet, but I could come up with a solution that included black mana, demons, fetchlings and the Shadow Plane.

I know all sorts of obscure Magic lore, so I knew that the concept of a shadow plane did actually exist, back when Magic was more like D&D. Hidden away in really old stories about Leshrac are ideas hinting at the existence of a shadow realm, and that people have become trapped inside it. Though never officially explained, it is theorised that this has something to do with creatures called the soltari, a race encountered on the plane of Rath that had been abducted to populate the realm, but had somehow ended up stuck out-o-phase with the rest of the world. This is represented on the cards as a mechanic called 'shadow'. Aha! Rath is indirectly linked to Zendikar due to the fact that another race called the kor was also kidnapped to poulate Rath – and the kor were originally from Zendikar. What if, I thought, the soltari were also from Zendikar?

And so, pulling disparate threads together, I ended up with the following:

When the Archangel Numa died in battle against Emrakul, her spirit end up in the Shadowlands, a black mana realm populated by undead, demons and madmen. Being a protective deity, she took up the cause of the soltari, a group of humanoids also trapped in the shadow realm of Zendikar, who were slowly going crazy from the madness-inducing realm. Crafting a blade from her remaining light, and the shadows of her new home, she fought back the undead and darkness long enough for the soltari to build a fortified city called Solitaire. Leaving her Sword of Light & Shadow in the temple the soltari built to honour her, she vanished from mortal sight, but the people of Solitare have been under what is obviously divine protection ever since, leading many to believe she still protects the city in unseen ways.

And just like that, I have a god, a plane, a fleshed out idea of what black magic involves on Zendikar, a new city to populate with people, a powerful relic, and a great conflict between the soltari and the undead for the players to get drawn into.

You may recognise that I've taken ideas from all over the place. This is part of the third important point – you don't have to come up with it all yourself. You don't even have to come up with it all beforehand. A lot of the time I found myself making things up on the spot as players asked me questions. I intended to avoid anything to do with planar travel, but my players ended up spending a siginificant amount of time in the Shadowlands, and even gave me ideas for putting this all together (though they didn't realise it).