D&D 5E [5e] QL's Al-Qadim Game


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Just as a quick aside, Quickleaf: The Adventures In Middle-Earth guide actually does have disposition charts for 5e. Not exactly a representation of "Station", but I think it could certainly be adapted. Theirs is mostly to help solidify the fact that their many disparate cultures ... generally don't see eye-to-eye, but I could certainly see something for Al-Qadim where your Station with others is interpreted in a similar manner.

They use the levels of "Favored, Friendly, Neutral, Askance, Mistrust, and Unknown", which may allow for more dynamic reputations: Our 11th Level Beggar-Thief may be a veritable Prince of Thieves with the Favored Status with other such bandits and brigands, but certainly Mistrusted by the Mamluk who pursue him, and Unknown in The Pantheon Cities which he stays far away from.

Mechanically, if you wanted to incorporate this, you could make it where having these Reputations either adds a positive or negative to non-violent checks in an encounter with others: maybe +1d6 for Favored, +1d4 for Friendly, +0 for Neutral, -1d4 for Askance, and -1d6 for Mistrust. It's very easy to use Persuasion to convince your friends to let you stay longer than 3 days, but the Al-Badia who are askance of this party of Al-Hadhar would be a little harder to persuade.


This is off the top of my head, but it may allow a bit of Intrigue to develop, as well as player goals too: PCs may legitimately want to try and reach Favored with as many people as possible, which in turn leads to quests to help these people, etc., etc.
 

Hey, you got it! Guess I succeeded in getting them together, was ransacking through everyone's equipment lists to find distinct things.
It's a great little program, the minis themselves are not too shabby either. Pretty hard to put together Arabian fantasy attire, though ._.

Indeed! You did pretty well with the limited tools they have.

Here's one for Salahuddin's tasked genie valet Sinjin!

HeroForgeScreenshot.png
 

Just as a quick aside, Quickleaf: The Adventures In Middle-Earth guide actually does have disposition charts for 5e. Not exactly a representation of "Station", but I think it could certainly be adapted. Theirs is mostly to help solidify the fact that their many disparate cultures ... generally don't see eye-to-eye, but I could certainly see something for Al-Qadim where your Station with others is interpreted in a similar manner.

They use the levels of "Favored, Friendly, Neutral, Askance, Mistrust, and Unknown", which may allow for more dynamic reputations: Our 11th Level Beggar-Thief may be a veritable Prince of Thieves with the Favored Status with other such bandits and brigands, but certainly Mistrusted by the Mamluk who pursue him, and Unknown in The Pantheon Cities which he stays far away from.

Mechanically, if you wanted to incorporate this, you could make it where having these Reputations either adds a positive or negative to non-violent checks in an encounter with others: maybe +1d6 for Favored, +1d4 for Friendly, +0 for Neutral, -1d4 for Askance, and -1d6 for Mistrust. It's very easy to use Persuasion to convince your friends to let you stay longer than 3 days, but the Al-Badia who are askance of this party of Al-Hadhar would be a little harder to persuade.


This is off the top of my head, but it may allow a bit of Intrigue to develop, as well as player goals too: PCs may legitimately want to try and reach Favored with as many people as possible, which in turn leads to quests to help these people, etc., etc.

Great find!

5e's Renown system is pretty much this without any dice modifiers; a PC could have renown 5 (Soft Whisper holy slayers) and/or renown 8 (Thieves' Guild of Tajar). And I think it's great to keep track of the PCs' reputation with various cities, tribes, and organizations!

Attaching extra modifiers to Charisma checks however IMO is not the way to go for Station because (a) originally and conceptually Station only influenced an NPC's initial starting reaction, not how easily persuaded they were, (b) 5e strives to limit modifiers, especially when Bardic Inspiration and spells like bless already can add dice to d20 rolls, by using the simple advantage/disadvantage mechanic, and (c) a lot of this stuff transcends dice rolls.

For, example with you "extend the bond of salt & duration of guest hospitality with Persuasion" idea...

A friendly NPC might just say "yes", unless there was a reason I had doubt about how they'd respond. Whereas a suspicious/askance/mistrustful NPC might outright refuse, unless there was a compelling reason they wanted to keep the PCs around. No roll necessary. IF there was doubt about the NPC's reaction, a roll could be called for...potentially with advantage or disadvantage according to the context of the situation; for example, if the PC's just slew a monster threatening a normally isolationist tribe's oasis, and asked for more time as their guests, that might call for a Charisma (Persuasion) check with advantage.
 

So looks like I will need:

100 gp Pearl
50 gp of charcoal, incense, and herbs
10 gp? small brass brazier (No cost used price of bulls-eye lantern)
40 gp (various other components like sulfur and phosphorus)
200 gp worth of material to make genie prisons

So that is 400 gp. Looking over my list I only have a couple spells with costly or rare material components. Figured 40 gp should cover most of what I would need if any.

We don't have to worry about bringing food and water. Between Salahuddin's decanter of endless water and Sinjin's ability to cast create food and water once a day we can feed everyone and their mounts with no issues.
 


We don't have to worry about bringing food and water. Between Salahuddin's decanter of endless water and Sinjin's ability to cast create food and water once a day we can feed everyone and their mounts with no issues.

Wow. Those two things alone are ... Just wow. Talk about cheating your way through the desert, lol. Might need to store that decanter in Najiyah's super-locked chest when we see unknown riders on the dunes!
 

Wow. Those two things alone are ... Just wow. Talk about cheating your way through the desert, lol. Might need to store that decanter in Najiyah's super-locked chest when we see unknown riders on the dunes!

Yeah that on top of my Elemental Protection feature and I can survive in the desert indefinitely. As for keeping it hidden I have a bag of holding so I'll just keep it in there.
 

We don't have to worry about bringing food and water. Between Salahuddin's decanter of endless water and Sinjin's ability to cast create food and water once a day we can feed everyone and their mounts with no issues.

Wow. Those two things alone are ... Just wow. Talk about cheating your way through the desert, lol. Might need to store that decanter in Najiyah's super-locked chest when we see unknown riders on the dunes!

Oh, offhand I can think of a few situations where you might want a back-up to a tasked genie valet serving you food and a decanter of endless water...

I did mention I'm DMing on "hard mode", right? ;) Nah, that goes without saying you being mighty 11th-level adventurers after all. /teasing
 


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