Well, another
Quid Novi? has been e-mailed to subscribers. Here's a sample of what you missed if you've not signed up for this free, twice-monthly e-letter.
The furniture's disarray, the broken table, the scattered personal effects, including various knitting needles and mouldering yarn. This sewing room once hosted violent events. Indeed, that dark stain on the rat-chewed rug could be long-dried blood. As you move into the room, you spot a dessicated corpse curled into defensive posture behind a tattered loveseat.
The Unsightly Sewing Room was the site of a horrible murder. The victim's corpse rots behind the loveseat. This poor soul was killed by knitting needles wielded as improvised weapons. One of the needles is still lodged in the corpse's left eye socket. The unspeakable violence has combined with the victim's undying thirst for vengeance to haunt the chamber.
CR 4;
XP 1,200
CE haunt (20-foot square sewing room); persistent
Caster Level 4th
Notice Perception DC 12 (faint spectral knitting needles appear in the air)
hp 18;
Weakness triggered by touch;
Trigger touch;
Reset 1 day
Effect The haunt remains inactive so long as the contents of the sewing room remain undisturbed. Should any living creature touch the contents of the sewing room, however, the malevolent spirit manifests itself as a pair of spectral knitting needles that unerringly strike at the eyes of the offending creature. The victim must make two DC 13 Fortitude saves, using the lowest total. Failure means the victim is struck blind as if targeted by
blindness/deafness modified by the Persistent Spell metamagic feat. Since the haunt is persistent, it continues to attack those in the sewing room once per round on its initiative rank until destroyed or it no longer has a target.
Destruction The haunt must be reduced to 0 hit points via positive energy. The sewing room must then be subjected to a consecrate spell, which permanently destroys the haunt.
This haunt doesn't appear in
Quid Novi? alone. It is accompanied by an infernal hound as well as some recommended reading for GMs. Speaking of recommended reading, take a gander at this:
Prep-Lite Wireframe How To by DNAphil
Prep-lite master DNAphil offers his latest installment on how to construct great adventures with minimal prep time. This article looks at prep-lite NPCs. For me, it's full of win because it embraces one of my GMing rules, namely that the GM doesn't have to follow the same rules the other players do. As DNAphil explains, "[A]s a GM I do not have to create an NPC with the Character creation rules that the players used." He then gives examples of how to streamline the NPC creation process by distinguishing between what is important and what isn't.
