Question about casting spells/terrain/crafting

[Scorponox]

Hi all,

I am new to D&D, and am reading as much as I can off the 3.5 and 4.0 books. However, I have a question.

I like to make monsters for my campaign. I am DM this time, and the other players know the monsters really well, so the other, more experienced DM said I should maybe make a few monsters of my own to throw them off a little. She is away on a work term, so I can't ask her this, so I thought I'd ask here.

One of the monsters I wanted to make is called a Silent Pot. What this is, is a magical pot, created by a powerful magician, that 'eats' spells. It looks like an ordinary pot, except it has a face on it that looks kinda like the mask from V for Vendetta.

So whenever a sorcerer/wizard/cleric casts a spell, I am guessing the person yells the spell out. The silent pot would eat those sounds from the air, and essentially, the spell would be cancelled. Does this work the same way with wands that cast spells? Say, if a character has a wand that casts magic missile, does the caster say something before the spell comes out? If the spell is automatic, this could be a good way to counter the silent pot. Also, should the silent pot be something that swallows the spell all the time, or something vs. the character's stats (fortitude, reflex, willpower, etc.)

Second question is in regards to terrain. I am making some of my own terrain boards, and one of the features is ponds. If I draw the pond in squares, it doesn't look very nice. I'd rather have it look more like a real pond, i.e. using circles and curved lines. Is there rules for when a player steps on a square that is half in the water and half on dry land? Or should I keep the terrain as squares?

Thirdly, I dunno if this applies to version 3.5 or just to 4.0, but I've been reading bits of the Adventurer's Vault for 4.0, and in some of the Alchemy items, it says an item of level x should be worth this much, while an item of level y should be worth a lot more. Why is this? Obviously, a potion created by a high level chemist will be of higher quality than one created by a low level chemist, but item ingredients should be the same, right? So why the much higher cost? There are some things that do extra damage, etc, but the cost hardly seems to justify buying a 35,000 gold silvered potion.

Thanks for your help. So far, DMing is fun, but challenging.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Re: casting spells & using magic items-

Most spells have a "verbal component" (see the 'spell components' description) so silence would shut them down, though there a few spells that don't require speech to cast and would be unaffected by a creature that "swallows" words.

Magic items are used in different ways. Presumably, only those involving speaking (many scrolls, and all command word items-- but not wands) would be affected.

Re: Silent Pot

I'm not absolutely sure if this is a monster or an item, or approximately what level you're aiming for? My first thought is to make it a Construct type creature. Easiest thing to do might be simply to use an animated object of the appropriate size (ie, level) and give it a supernatural silence ability, which would force a caster (or anyone else!) to make a Will save to overcome. This would only work against casting spells and using magic items with verbal components, however. Also this would affect ALL sound, not just spell casting (unless the DM decided to somehow specifically target it at spells, of course).

I imagine there are many more elegant ways to do this so that it's more specifically targeted at spells. But that's how I'd start given the info you've provided. Hopefully others have better suggestions!

Re: terrain and ponds

I just rule that a square is the terrain type that dominates that square. Thus a square is considered "pond" terrain if water takes up more than half the square. So you can make round ponds, just try to draw them so you can easily tell which ones are primarily water, primarily quicksand, primarily dry land, etc.

Good luck!

 

[radmod]

I feel your pain. When I first started DMing, there was only MM1 (then later FF) which everybody knew. So I would just use monsters as 'templates'. In addition, what can be fun (for the DM) is giving them a monster that they are sure works one way, but then actually works another. Remember, though, if someone successfully makes a Knowledge check or if the info is common knowledge you should tell, or hint, that the monster is not what they thought it was.
"It's a red dragon, I cast Resist Energy Fire."
"It swoops down and acid spews from its mouth."

Re: Silent Pot
I actually just ran across a similar monster, possibly in Fiend Folio or Monster Manual 2. I even think it was even called a spell eater.
If you wanted to have it eat all spells in the vicinity, not just spells aimed at it, and didn't want to have the place silenced, then you could always rule that a command word or verbal part of a spell is treated as 'magic' speech which alerts the Silent Pot that it's suppertime!

Re: terrains

Often squares that have two types of terrains in them are treated as half of each. An example is from DMG p. 88, Marsh, Bogs:
"Deep bog squares are usually clustered together and surrounded by an irregular ring of shallow bog squares."
A shallow bog has slightly different features from a deep bog. So you might want to treat it as half and half.

 

[Jhaelen]

I am new to D&D, and am reading as much as I can off the 3.5 and 4.0 books. However, I have a question.

I have a question, too:
Are you going to play D&D 3.5 or 4e?

The games are quite different from each other, so you may want to avoid mixing stuff from both sources.

So whenever a sorcerer/wizard/cleric casts a spell, I am guessing the person yells the spell out. The silent pot would eat those sounds from the air, and essentially, the spell would be cancelled. Does this work the same way with wands that cast spells? Say, if a character has a wand that casts magic missile, does the caster say something before the spell comes out? If the spell is automatic, this could be a good way to counter the silent pot. Also, should the silent pot be something that swallows the spell all the time, or something vs. the character's stats (fortitude, reflex, willpower, etc.)

This sounds more like a trap/hazard to me than a creature.

If you'd like to customize monsters, there's three main ways to do it:
- 'reskin a monster': If the players don't recognize a monster for what it is, they'll be clueless how to effectively engage it (at least initially).
- apply a template (and/or a them (in 4e)): this modifies the basic monster in interesting ways.
- apply class levels (in 3e) or borrow abilities from monsters with a similar level/role that fit your monster concept (in 4e): this requires the most work but is the most effective way to create monsters that are different from the standard.

Second question is in regards to terrain. I am making some of my own terrain boards, and one of the features is ponds. If I draw the pond in squares, it doesn't look very nice. I'd rather have it look more like a real pond, i.e. using circles and curved lines. Is there rules for when a player steps on a square that is half in the water and half on dry land? Or should I keep the terrain as squares?

There's a rule that the terrain-type that covers the center of the square is the one that counts (it might be a rule from the D&D Minis game, but it's perfectly appropriate for the RPG, too).

Thirdly, I dunno if this applies to version 3.5 or just to 4.0, but I've been reading bits of the Adventurer's Vault for 4.0, and in some of the Alchemy items, it says an item of level x should be worth this much, while an item of level y should be worth a lot more. Why is this? Obviously, a potion created by a high level chemist will be of higher quality than one created by a low level chemist, but item ingredients should be the same, right? So why the much higher cost? There are some things that do extra damage, etc, but the cost hardly seems to justify buying a 35,000 gold silvered potion.

This is purely a 4e thing. Make sure to read the DMG section about rewarding treasure. It's a result of the careful balancing that went into the rpg's design. Don't try to think about it in terms of 'realism'. It's purely a gamist thing.

For alchemy items the high level versions are required because they have fixed attack bonuses. You wouldn't be able to hit high level monsters with low-level alchemy items.

In 3e, alchemy items use your character's attack bonus, so, no high level versions are required. However, they tend to be too ineffective at high levels to waste actions using them.