MORE D&D Mechanics Inspired by Assassin's Creed Odyssey (Fate of Atlantis)

So it turns out Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, along with its expansion pack Fate of Atlantis, is so big that it deserves a second article on Pretzel Lectern! After putting around 130 hours into a single playthrough of the game, and after spending almost an entire year playing one Assassin's Creed game or another, I've decided to take a month or two break before I play Valhalla. Anyway! This is about the mechanics that you can use in your D&D game, so here we go. Oh yeah, and there are spoilers for the expansion, if that matters to you.

Conquering and Large Battles

As I was playing through chapter 1 of Fate of Atlantis and conquering the world of Elysium, I realized I completely forgot to talk about this key feature of Odyssey in my previous article, even though it's an important one. Each region of the game has a level of influence by either Athens or Sparta. To lower that influence, you can kill military commanders, burn war supplies, assassinate state leaders, and pillage war chests. Once you make the region vulnerable enough, the opposing side attempts to conquer the region through a Conquest Battle. Whichever side wins the Conquest Battle gains control over that region.

Of course, you as the protagonist are the driving force between every aspect of these power struggles, including the Conquest Battles, so they had to make it fun to be able to singlehandedly turn the tide of a large battle while also feeling like you're part of something bigger. I thought this was a great example of how to do this in D&D, which is most often a small group setting where each person controls one player. The last thing your players want is for the DM to sit and roll dice and tally up hit point pools for fifty NPCs fighting each other that have no effect on the PCs.

The trick that Odyssey does, and the trick for making it work in D&D, is to have the battle take place amid many other warriors fighting each other, but treat the other warriors as background setting for the players' conflicts. Keep a track for which side is winning, perhaps that leans into the side of the opposing source so that the players won't win without doing anything, but keep it abstract and focus on letting the PCs shine.

Start the scene of the fight in the middle of the conflict, with both sides clashing in the same general battlefield. Make the fight go in stages, with each of the PCs having a one-on-one battle with a low-CR foot soldier, then maybe two at once, then an officer. I would probably separate the players for this as well, and make it clear that soldiers from both sides are scattered everywhere, so a fireball spell would do just as much damage to your side as theirs. Moving closer together or from one area to the other would only provoke opportunity attacks from your current attackers, not every single enemy along the way, so some repositioning would be allowed.

Each kill can move the track farther towards victory, with officer kills giving more points than foot soldiers, and when the track runs out for either side, consider that side defeated and the survivors retreat.

If you did want to emphasize the raging battle around the players, you could have Lair Actions each round that describe one side getting an advantage over the other in a surge of morale, siege weapons raining down on one of the armies, or a cavalry charge that may knock players prone.

Understanding Truly Epic-Level Heroes

At least for me, Atlantis took place toward the end of the game, when a lot of secrets were revealed about the main character. I had already done some major questlines all across Greece, both on the sea and on land, won a wreath in the Olympics, assassinated high-ranking polemarches from both sides of the war, hunted down members of an entire cult, and met famous figures like Aristokrates, Hippokrates, and Aristophanes. Descending into the completely separate worlds of Elysium, the Underworld, and the gods*-ruled Atlantis was a completely new experience that really hit home to me what the "Masters of the World Tier" of D&D (levels 17–20) should feel like.

Since I've never run or played in a D&D campaign that's gotten all the way to 20th level and beyond, I didn't understand this concept until I played Atlantis. After leading a rebellion in the heavenly realm of Elysium itself, making peace with my past and recruiting legendary heroes in the Underworld, and forging god weapons and learning the secret of godhood itself in Atlantis, returning to Greece felt... awkward.

I had the power of the gods themselves infused into my normal abilities, as well as an arsenal of weapons that were stronger than anything found on the mundane earth, and I was riding on an otherworldly steed I had tamed in the Underworld. It felt like I didn't belong anymore. That I had transcended the reality that all the other humans were part of. I didn't have any desire to finish any more quests in Greece. I think I finally understand why D&D worlds still have problems even after they have epic-level wizards that can solve any problem with magic: the heroes realize how big the universe is, and small issues bore them and don't concern them anymore. Even if it is devastating for a family to have lost their cow, and some high-level adventurers could find and bring it back in an instant, the adventurers would just not have the time or care for such petty jobs anymore.

I'm rambling at this point and not entirely sure what I can get out of this, but basically it just gave me inspiration and understanding of the tiers of D&D. Make the players fit their role and level of fame in whichever tier they are currently in level-wise.

Challenging High-Level Players

The road to feeling like a god was not easy, and I commend the game developers for making that path challenging. I started the Atlantis expansion already feeling super powerful. I was around Level 50 and had access to all of the abilities in the game, and I had no idea I'd be getting enhancements to those abilities to make me feel truly godlike.

But each chapter of the expansion challenged me in ways I hadn't been before. The encounters were made up of roughly the same number of enemies with the same leveling progression as before, but they fought differently and had the power to temporarily disable my abilities. Later on, I fought enemies that would temporarily cut my life in half, making me more vulnerable, and in the last level of the game, all of my abilities were taken away entirely.

It's not good to make players in D&D feel helpless, but temporarily taking away or countering things they depend on, or their "go-to" combos and whatnot, can be a great way to make high-level play challenging again. Below are some ideas inspired from Atlantis that would be good to try on higher-level players if nothing's a challenge for them anymore:

• Spells (or possibly all class abilities) are suppressed within a certain area until they destroy an object that is generating the field of suppression.
• An effect cuts the players' maximum hit points in half temporarily (or even just gives them 4 levels of exhaustion)
• In order for an enemy to be vincible (or vulnerable, or prevented from coming back to life again), they must weaken the enemy by doing a set of tasks.
• Spells higher than a certain level (say 3rd) cause a Wild Magic Surge every time.
• A villain is invulnerable as long as he has minions around him.
• If a monster is attacked in a certain way, or is not killed quickly enough, it calls for help or gains a protective layer of temporary hit points.
• The players have to escort vulnerable cargo (or a person). They might feel like gods, but how well can they protect something with very few hit points?

As I said, I haven't had the chance to do enough research into this myself, but it seems to me that high-level players are hard to challenge because their class mechanics and magic items themselves are powerful, and relying on them without too much thought is easy. If you can dig down into what they needed to do as low-level players, that is, think through situations that have genuine risk, they'll start relying more on thinking through problems again.

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*Technically the Isu are not "gods" as such—they're much more complicated than that, but I use the term for the purposes of explanation and attributing it to D&D.

Short Story: Dakren's Visit

Today I felt like writing about my D&D character from DM Quest, Dakren of Swanbow. He's the character I've played the most throughout my time as a player in D&D, and the character who's gone through the most character development. It's been interesting to see him come to life as a character and to go in directions I didn't expect. The following is a short story that takes place around Episode 100 or so, and it's taken from the point of view of Dakren's mother.

Dakren's Visit

Otilia woke up with a start. She looked around the hovel with curiosity. The sun shining through the linen curtains in the window still seemed as bright as noonday. Her afternoon nap was usually what the gnome folk would call “like clockwork,” lasting until the sun had dipped behind the forests outside Swanbow. And yet she suddenly felt wide awake.

Otilia took the faded book from her lap and placing it on the stool beside her, then tied up her long, gray hair and stood up from her cushioned chair. She couldn’t help but smile as she noticed yet again the lack of creak in her back in doing so. She looked over on the windowsill above the wash basin, where a single ornate empty glass decanter reflected the light of the sun shining in. Out here in the backwater of the kingdom of Hardale, one would consider expertly-blown glass like this specimen a notable luxury, even if the glass wasn’t decorated with handsome curved patterns or gilded with gold filigree. Even the hourglass-shaped cork, which lay next to it on the windowsill, had a bit of gold dust inside it, which sparkled. Such a bottle would fetch at least seventy or eighty silver coins from any passing merchant, but to Otilia, it would always be priceless.

Otilia was snapped out of her admiration for the decanter as she heard a click behind her. The front door opened, and a dark figure stepped into the dimness of the hovel. A flash of red eyes glinted in the gloom on a bearded face.

Otilia frowned. “Dakren?”

“Hello, Mye.”

Otilia looked around, her hands on her hips. “So I haven’t woken from my nap yet.”

“Oh no, Mye, I’m here for real this time.” As Dakren stepped into the light away from the front doorway, a smile spread across his face.

Otilia gave her nose a pinch just for good measure, making Dakren laugh. And suddenly her son was there, lifting her in a tight embrace before she could even outstretch her arms.

“I must have woken you, Mye. I’m sorry,” said Dakren in her ear.

“Dawn, son, you didn’t sail your ship to my doorstep, did you?” said Otilia. “You still smell of the sea!” She pulled away from him slightly and put her hand on his cheek. “And what on earth have you painted on your eyes?”

Dakren laughed again and shrugged. “It’s the fashion of sailors. And I realized that the darkness of the ink takes the glare off the sun, even away from the sea.”

Otilia looked him over. Compared with the fishermen and miners of Swanbow, Dakren looked like a noble in his polished breastplate, with a blooming orchid pinned on his shoulder just below the pin of his green cape. “And you’ve still got your lucky hat, I see, but your hair is in a tail? Is that sailor fashion as well?”

Dakren set her down. “Actually, it’s apparently the fashion of Hardale’s nobility,” he said, running his hand along the familiar wall of the hovel. “Picked it up when I landed in port. What do you think?”

Otilia smiled. “I think it’s a wonderful look for you, son. You look much more like a gentleman sailor than a pirate that way.” She gave him another squeeze and walked to the larder. “Pfeh. I’ve got nothing for you to eat. Why didn’t you warn me you were coming today?”

“I wanted to surprise you. Besides, I’ve got us covered.” Otilia looked back as Dakren pulled out an embroidered bag and began to unload it onto the table. It was clearly a magical bag, because when he was done, an entire spread of food that couldn’t possibly have fit in it lay on the table.

Dakren grinned broadly and pulled out a carving knife. “Could you just hand me a couple of plates, Mye?”

Otilia’s lip quivered as she looked over the table.

Dakren stopped carving slices from a loaf of bread. “Mye?”

Otilia pulled up her apron and wiped her eyes.

Dakren stood up from his chair. “I’m sorry, Mye, I can get the plates if you need me to—”

“It’s not the plates, you silly ass, sit down,” Otilia chuckled through her tears. “It’s you. It’s all of this,” she said, gesturing to the table. Then she pointed at the glass decanter on the sill. “It’s that.”

Dakren smiled, then returned to slicing the bread.

“What did I do to deserve such a son?” Otilia took two clay plates from the cupboard and brought them to the table.

“Mye—”

“No, I’m serious, Dakren,” said Otilia. She placed her hand on Dakren’s hand. He stopped slicing. “I wasn’t prepared at all to bring you into Amara in the first place. I was stupid enough to let the Elf make that decision for me.” She reached up to touch Dakren’s slightly pointed ear and then froze. “Is that a…”

Dakren followed her gaze and reached up to touch the metal earring. “Sailor fashion,” they said at the same time. Then they both laughed.

“Son, all your life you’ve had to take care of me, and you did it far longer than any of your friends did. They all had families to take care of them, but after my parents died, it was just… me. How are you not bitter about all this? Your entire childhood passed by, your sweetheart lost during the war, Stefana…” No one but Otilia would have noticed, but an ever-so-slight hesitation in Dakren as he assembled a plate of food made her cut the sentence short.

Dakren finished filling the plate in silence, then placed it in front of her. She looked down at the cold smoked meat, Cloudcaster cheese, pickles, and white bread. The type of meal someone of high station far away from Swanbow would eat.

Dakren reached for a bottle of Appleshire brandy, then realized they had no mugs and stood up to get some from the cupboard. “It’s been a long ten years away from home,” he said. “A lot of time to make mistakes and learn from them and think about the past and the future.” He sat again and filled a mug for his mother.

“I’ll admit, I am bitter about some things in my life,” said Dakren, and Otilia thought she saw another red gleam reflect across his eyes. “But the principles of Tonna have taught me to flow around problems or dash them apart, not to be dammed up by them. And I have so much to be grateful for as well. If it weren’t for my father—I mean, the Elf—my childhood would have been over so much more quickly. I’m in the middle of my fifth decade, Mye. All those ‘friends’ I grew up with are well past their prime, with only a few decades left to live. But I get to enjoy an elvish youthfulness they’d all envy.”

“Speaking of youthfulness,” said Otilia, glancing at the decanter again and gesturing theatrically to her face. “Does it show?”

Dakren looked her in the eyes. “It didn’t get rid of all of your charming wrinkles or gray hairs, Mye, but you have a sprightly air about you that you didn’t have even before I left.”

“It was as if ten or fifteen years just melted away from my back and joints the moment I drank it,” Otilia sighed, recalling the fond memory. “Now, you promised two or three dream-visits ago you’d tell me where you ever found it. Where did you come across such an elixir?”

“It was quite the adventure,” said Dakren thickly, his mouth full of bread and meat. “Do you know what a marid is? …Actually, no. I think I’ll tell you tomorrow when I’m less weary from travel.”

“Will you at least tell me how much gold it cost you?”

“Dawn, this is good,” said Dakren absentmindedly. “I bought this bread just outside of Hardale at the start of the week, but my bag of holding seems to keep it as fresh as if it were baked today. A magical bonus I hadn’t realized before.”

Otilia glared at Dakren. He stared back for a few moments until at last he rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to tell you! Besides, Mye, I’m glad you feel younger, but I didn’t just give that to you as a gift. I have selfish reasons as well. You say how much you needed me as I grew up, but I need you more.”

“What nonsense, boy! You’re the one supporting me even as you galivant across Amara saving lives. And you have the Firebrands, not to mention your own keep.”

“There’s more to life than friends, or money,” said Dakren, thoughtfully rolling a pickled carrot around his fingers. “I just… don’t know what I’m going to do when you’re gone. I wanted you to have a few more years of life. You’re the only blood I have. Or will ever have.”

They both continued to eat and drink in silence. A breeze rippled the curtains in the windowsill, and Otilia could hear a dog barking down the street.

“You may not be able to bear descendants of your own blood, Dakren,” said Otilia after a few minutes, “but your legacy will never be forgotten. You fought in the Third Hobgoblin war. You were there to stop the Armada of the Black Flag. You piloted one of the five treants of fivent… fif nut pum—”

“Fifentpummel,” Dakren smiled, leaning against his hand on the table.

“Whatever the gnomes call it. …The gnomes! You played a big part in bringing their entire culture back to the Twain Kingdoms. You’ve adventured alongside Hargus of Hargus himself. You’re the bearer of the White Sword of Argee—”

“Argonath!” said Dakren. His eyes flashed red once again, and a spiral of smoke whipped around his hand and blew away, revealing a gleaming white sword with a red jewel in its hilt. Otilia smiled at the look on Dakren’s face. It was the same look she had seen on his childhood face so many years ago, playing with wooden swords and shields with his friends.

“I said it to your friends when you were trapped in the Gem Forest, Dakren,” said Otilia. “You’re a damn good warrior. Our family doesn’t need a bloodline to be remembered when a statue of Dakren of Swanbow will be in every memorial garden in the Twain Kingdoms!”

Dakren set the sword against the wall, where it reflected a beam of sunlight coming through the window. “I’m glad I make you proud, Mye,” he said. “And I don’t know what new threat to Amara the Firebrands and I will encounter next, but my hope is that I fall in battle before you pass away. I don’t think I could stand to lose another person I love.”

“Whatever it is, that threat will have to take a hell of a beating before it can make my son fall in battle.” Otilia patted Dakren’s hand and squeezed it. “And when the end comes for both of us, we’ll both be together again in the Sunny Fields. Or the Green Seas of Glory. Both sound like lovely afterlives to me, as long as you’re there.”

Suddenly, Otilia jumped as the White Sword of Argonath vanished in another cloud of smoke. She was surprised to see a shadow pass over Dakren’s face, and for a single moment his eyes were like glowing embers, and he had a look of misery she had never seen in her life.

Otilia blinked, and Dakren’s eyes were gray again. He smiled, though there seemed to be no mirth in it. “I, um…” He cleared his throat and stood up. “I’ll go get my horse settled in, and then I’ll go chop some firewood for you. The pile’s looking pretty sparse.”

“You don’t have to do that now,” said Otilia, gathering the plates and mugs. “Sit and rest a bit at least. Or we could go on a walk through the town. I’d love for everyone to see that Hardale and sailor fashion you’ve got on display.”

Dakren hesitated as he looked into his mother’s eyes, then he smiled. “I’d like that.”

They stepped outside, looking at the golden aspen leaves in contrast against the evergreens of the forest. Otilia didn’t know how many more of these visits she would have with her son, but something told her this one would be the most important one they would ever have.

D&D Mechanics Inspired by Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

Well, I finally caught up with my purchased Assassin's Creed games. Now it's time to try Valhalla and maybe go back and play Assassin's Creed II to see who this "Ezio" character is all the other games keep referencing. Anyway! Except for the excessive number of hit points that all the enemies on this game had, I really enjoyed this adventure in Ancient Greece, and as always, it inspired some new mechanics and plot devices for D&D games.

Threatening Beasts

Let's face it: beasts are the most boring enemy type in D&D. I don't think it's because it's not fun to fight or hunt beasts; it's that there's nothing stronger in the game than a giant ape, except for dinosaurs (which are not common in my campaigns). Once your party is high enough, any sort of spell or ability involving beast types always seems like it gets nerfed. Odyssey, however, fixes that trope with legendary beasts. The game describes these beasts as being sent or created by the goddess Artemis, and from what I understand, the beasts sort of "reincarnate" or are brought back into the world whenever there's a hero to prove his or her worth to hunt them. This explains why I, as Kassandra, could hunt the Nemean lion even though Herakles killed it in his time already.

These legendary beasts are just that—legendary. Rumors surround their existence, and when you see each animal for the first time, the main character is in awe at its supernatural beauty and strength. The Lykaeon wolf is literally the Lykaeon wolf; the only one of its kind, bigger and more dangerous than any other wolf in the world. 

I think D&D could benefit from having legendary beasts in it, even if it is just beasts with legendary actions, legendary resistance, lair actions, more hit points, higher DCs, and something special about it that makes it a worthy challenge. I was going to say that if you're worried about your druid character Wild Shaping into a legendary beast, maybe change legendary beasts' type to Monstrosity, but a more interesting way that doesn't defeat the point of this idea would be to let them do it only once every 7 days, and without legendary actions.

Below are some ideas for legendary beasts, based on the ones you fight in Odyssey:

• Kallisto the Bear. Huge polar bear with resistance to all damage except psychic damage.
• Hind of Keryneia. Giant elk with Evasion; regenerates 5 hit points each turn unless it takes poison damage.
• Nemean Lion. Honestly, the fleecemane lion from Mythic Odysseys of Theros is a great blueprint for any of these.
• Lykaeon Wolf. Dire wolf that can howl, casting conjure animals (wolves) once per long rest.
• Kalydonian Boar. Giant boar that crits on a roll of 19 or 20. Critical hits made against it become normal hits.
• Kretan Bull. Beefed-up (lol) cow with at least 45 hp and a hoof attack. Gains advantage on its next attack if it takes fire damage. If it starts its turn with less than half its hit points, it becomes permanently Reckless.
• Krokottas Hyena. A giant hyena that can use its reaction to Bite targets that get within its range. While it has at least half its hit points, attacks against it have disadvantage.
• Erymanthian Boar. Another giant boar, this time with immunity to poison and 2d6 poison damage added to its Tusk attack and Charge ability. Can cast stinking cloud once per day.

Bounty Hunter Mercenaries

You're not an assassin in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, you're a mercenary (or místhios). And there are lots of other mercenaries that wander Greece at the time. Some of them have bounties on their heads, which is something that translates well to D&D, but one thing I enjoy about Odyssey is that the mercenaries can become bounty hunters for you. A good way to get players to stop being murder hoboes is to have bounty hunters start hunting them down very soon after they commit a crime.

But the thing I like most about the mercenaries in the game is that there's a clear hierarchy of who's the better mercenary than who in all of Greece. Every five or so mercenaries form a "tier" in this hierarchy, and if you defeat the mercenary above you, you take their place, possibly entering a new tier and gaining the benefit associated with it. These benefits generally take the form of discounts on certain types of upgrades or purchases, which makes sense realistically, as your reputation precedes you.

For your players who like to fight, consider making a hierarchy of mercenaries, assassins, or better yet if you don't want to worry about these enemies wandering the world and randomly encountering the players, arena combatants. Every champion the player defeats could gain them a reputation point of some kind, and after certain amounts of reputation points are attained, they could gain a benefit, such as a discount, access to a prohibited area, or even a magic item that gets passed on to the victor.

Hiring Lieutenants for Your Stronghold

I'll admit this one is a little silly, even in the game, but it could be fun in some cases. Whenever you nonlethally defeat a human opponent in Odyssey, you can choose to "Recruit" them instead of kill them. This makes them a "lieutenant" of your ship, and each lieutenant has different abilities that improve the way your ship runs, if you pay them.

Recruiting defeated enemies would probably not translate well as a mechanic in D&D, but the idea of different lieutenants or chamberlains giving different benefits if the players hire them for their stronghold could be fun. There could even be a limit on how many chamberlains (and therefore benefits) the players could have depending on what level their stronghold was, which could offer a great gold sink for them to spend on making room for more. See my post on Assassin's Creed: Unity for more of my ideas on how strongholds can be done right in D&D.   

Tracking Down Cultists with Clues

Spoiler alert: There's an evil cult in Odyssey that's trying to take over the world, and one of your goals is to hunt down each of its members and put them to your blade. I love the way the game handles the tracking down each cultist, as well as the rewards for defeating them.

The Cult of Kosmos is organized into several "branches." One gathers information, one specializes in piracy, one tries to undermine religion, and so forth, and each branch has five members and is led by a Sage. Cultists are identified as you move through the main story and campaign, and each one you defeat leaves behind a clue on who the next cultist in that same branch is. When enough clues are found, a cultist becomes unmasked and trackable. When all the cultists in a branch are defeated, there are enough clues to find the Sage of that branch, who drops the biggest reward. It's probably possible to accidentally find a cultist or to narrow down the wealth of incomplete, vague clues surrounding a Sage, but the real fun comes in taking down the cult one by one based on your current knowledge.

The rewards for hunting the Cult are great as well. Each cultist drops an "artifact fragment" which can be used to upgrade your most powerful weapon, the Spear of Leonidas, and each cultist also drops a piece of armor that is part of a set. Defeating an entire branch of cultists completes the set, which offers a "set bonus," and defeating the Sage rewards you with a weapon that synergizes well with the set.

Any D&D campaign that has a secret organization could benefit well from a system like this. It's fulfilling, intriguing, and the clues give players an endless supply of quest hooks to follow.

Engraving and Orichalcum

Lastly, Odyssey has an interesting customization system with its equipment, or in D&D terms, magic items.

Engravings

"Engraving" an item can be done at any blacksmith for a fee, and doing so adds an extra benefit to any piece of armor or weapon. You start with basic engravings to choose from, but gain additional ones as you level up and find them in your travels. You can engrave or re-engrave an item any number of times, but it can only hold one at a time.

Just like Feats add interesting aspects to character classes, engraving (or adding runes to items, or enchanting them, or having an artificer infuse them, whatever) could add an interesting way to subtly change magic items in fun ways. I think the key here is "subtly." An engraving that gives a +1 to a suit of armor or a weapon would be far too powerful unless it came with a heavy cost. It would also be less interesting. I'd go instead for engravings that, say, change the damage type of a flame tongue sword to something else, or add one of the Minor Properties listed on magic items in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Having a defeated drow give you an engraving for making any magic item "Drow" (half the normal weight but less functional in sunlight) or finding an engraving that makes a magic item "Unbreakable" would be much more of an interesting twist on an item.

You could find new engravings as rewards for quests, drops from enemies, or maybe you could simply learn how to replicate existing engravings if you found an already engraved magic item. You could even have "cursed" engravings that give a benefit that comes with a cost. There are lots of possibilities here!

Orichalcum

I actually don't use this system in AC: Odyssey because of the ease of already finding Legendary items throughout normal quests, but I thought it would be an amazing alternative to the crafting rules in D&D. There is one merchant in Odyssey who offers to trade Legendary magic items in exchange for a rare and mystical ore called orichalcum. This ore is found in remote, hard-to-reach areas and as a reward for certain quests. It's probably also found on cultists and other enemies as drops.

I love the idea of having a singular mystical material that all magic items in the world are crafted from. What if orichalcum, or some other material of your choosing, could be used to craft different magic items depending on how much you could find? Not only could you use orichalcum as a reward for quests to give the players options on customizing their own arsenal of magic items, you could make it so that existing magic items the players don't want could be melted down and destroyed to reclaim the orichalcum inside them. I would lean away from using this for consumable items, and assume that orichalcum is specifically for permanent items.

The worth of orichalcum per rarity of the item crafted or dismantled is probably just as loosy-goosy as the existing pricing system in the DMG. You could simply divide the magic item's worth by 100, or depending on how often you reward your players with orichalcum, you could follow a system like this:

• Common - orichalcum dust worth 1/5 of one unit of orichalcum
• Uncommon - 2 orichalcum
• Rare - 5 orichalcum
• Epic - 10 orichalcum
• Legendary - 20 orichalcum

Applying the system above to Xanathar's Guide's distribution rules for magic items by level, you can expect to award players with a total of around 15 orichalcum from levels 1–4, 75 orichalcum from levels 5–10, 160 orichalcum from levels 11–16, and 300 orichalcum from levels 17–20, for a total of 550 orichalcum found throughout the entire campaign.

This system, coupled with the requirement to find a formula for the items in question, could result in some fun quests, and the players could have a lot of fun trying to get that last piece of orichalcum they need to upgrade their +2 weapon into a +3 one.

Adventures in Evimeria + The Horned Lord of Witherstone Tower

Yes, I've been uploading a lot of old stuff lately. This one is actually from two Junes ago when I organized an "all-day" (more like 7-hour) D&D session, to see just how much D&D I could take before I got tired of it. Childhood best friend and fellow DM Quest player Dustin acted as Dungeon Master of the world of Evimeria, and I played with other members of that group as well as my brother. It was a lot of fun to make a day of it, and I definitely wasn't tired of D&D at the end (in fact, I went on to DM my own full session soon after we finished). I've tried to organize similar events and have succeeded only once, in the Horned Lord of Witherstone Tower duology.

...Wait, have I not uploaded the Horned Lord videos yet either? Well, here you go! It was a really fun two-shot evil campaign that was heavily based on the PC game Overlord. I have a lot more planned for it, and if my players can find time to schedule another game again I'll continue it in a heartbeat.

DM Quest: The Firebrands on YouTube

It's been about 2½ years since I co-founded a weekly D&D group consisting entirely of Dungeon Masters who rotate each adventure arc. I've made some good friends along the way, had a lot of DM practice, and have collaborated to create a somewhat disjointed yet fascinating world called Amara. The adventurers in this storyline are called the Firebrands, and their adventures are finally up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure!

Aaron (you'll know him soon as the forest gnome Jasper Runewood) recorded each of our games together, and at last we've had time to share the files and get them edited, rendered, and uploaded to YouTube. I also had fun making intros, outros, and thumbnails for the show, and little editing secrets sprinkled throughout the series. 

Unfortunately, an extremely unusual error occurred during the filming of a big number of the videos. Anywhere from 30 minutes in to a couple of hours into the video, the sound occasionally cuts out for everyone except for Aaron. Some episodes were total losses. This is obviously super tragic for us, but also really confusing. Why would it do this? If Aaron could hear just fine, why would the audio cut out only for us and only on the OBS software he was using? Fortunately, around episode 56 or so, I started filming the sessions each week, and have had no problem since.

The audio issues aren't as bad when Aaron is the DM, since his audio at least gives exposition and whatnot, but when one of us was the DM, it's impossible to tell what happened in the session unless the recap in the next episode is detailed. We lost some of the most epic moments in the series this way, especially since the issue tended to happen later in the session when bosses were defeated or cliffhangers were set up.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun for us and we have no intention of stopping anytime soon. It's also been a labor of love to get all these uploaded and organized. So I hope you give the series a chance and aren't put off too much by the audio cutouts. Enjoy the story of the Firebrands in DM Quest!

Dubbing Differences: The Sword in the Stone

   Dubbing Differences:

The Sword in the Stone

I found the following notable changes in the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Disney's The Sword in the Stone:

• The minstrel at the beginning sings “A miracle happened; a king was born, thus saving the nation.”
• “And anvil” is omitted from the inscription on the Sword in letters of gold.
• The “who?” pun from Archimedes being an owl is lost.
• Quite a few changes right off the bat between Kay and Wart:
• “No one asked you to come hinder me.”
• “I’m not hindering.”
• “Ah, beauty! It’s gonna say bid goodbye to life.”
• “Agh, you idiot, look what you did!”
• “If I get my hands on you, I’ll break all your bones one by one!”
• Wart’s voice is unbroken throughout the movie, voiced by a younger actor.
• Merlin says “many centuries” instead of “hundreds of years.”
• Wart compliments Merlin for being “diligent” instead of clever.
• The song “Higitus Figitus” has the endings of some of the magical nonsense words changed to make them rhyme.
• Instead of giving Wart demerits, Sir Ector makes him lose “points.”
• Merlin calls the “wizard blizzard” a “nevada prisada,” which just means “heavy snowfall.”
• The word for “squire” in Portuguese translates as “shield-bearer,” which is ultimately the etymological origin of the English word too.
• Archimedes: “in the entire world” instead of “in all Christendom.”
• Some new opposites they sing about in “That’s What Makes the World Go Round”: light and darkness, superior and inferior, here and there, yes and no, sweet and salt.
• Instead of “You big, bug-eyed bully you!” Fish-Wart says “You donkey-abused toad!” Its delivery is a lot punchier and funnier in Portuguese too.
• Archimedes doesn’t make hardly any noise during the sequence of him trying to evade the pike fish and snatch Wart.
• Instead of saying “Snick, snack, snorrel” to turn Wart from a fish into a human, Merlin says “Wockity pockity ack.” However, later he says the normal incantation when turning Wart from a squirrel.
• Instead of “something fishy’s going on here,” Sir Ector says “something isn’t smelling good here.”
• Wart:“I didn’t fall, right?” instead of “I made it, didn’t I?”
• When Merlin says gravity is what makes you fall downward, instead of saying “Like a stumble or a trip?” Squirrel-Wart says “Like a banana peel?”
• Archimedes calls the squirrels “untranquil (restless) squirrels” instead of “squirrelly squirrels.”
• The girl squirrel doesn’t say “Oh no!” when she sees Squirrel-Wart in trouble.
• The enchanted kitchen scene has some differences: “What a mess!” instead of “Gadzooks!” and “Jumping hop-toads!” and “Sheesh Mary!” instead of “Heavens preserve us!”
• Instead of an “old goat,” Ector calls him a “devil” and the kitchen woman calls him a sorcerer.
• Instead of saying “Madame, you won’t” before he disappears, he says “Madame, see you later.”
• In English, Ector says “That’s three more demerits” and Kay says “Box his ears, Dad!” in Portuguese, though, Kay says “That’s very few, Dad.” And instead of saying “Ten more demerits!” Ector basically says “All your points are gone!”
• Instead of saying that Wart will get so mixed up he’ll wear his shoes on his head, he just rants about how he’ll be confused and end up “learning what he already knows.”
• Understandably, Archimedes’s extended sequence of laughter is largely left untranslated.
• It seems that Archimedes warns Bird-Wart about a “plane” instead of a hawk, but I’m guessing it’s some kind of metaphor or idiomatic term for “large bird.”
• Madame Mim: “Merlin? The biggest idiot in the world.”
• Archimedes refers to a wizard duel as a “fight of tricks” instead of a “battle of wits.”
• Bird-Wart: “There is no strength better than intelligence” instead of “Knowledge and wisdom is the real power.”
• The song Pellinore and Ector are singing about the “Blue Oak Tree on a field of white” is replaced by a simple song about “singing of victory until the end.”
• Archimedes specifically compliments Wart’s squire clothing instead of the news that he has actually become a squire.

Austin's Routine 2022

It's been a while since I've done one of these, and they're always fun to look back on to see how different they each are. Now that I'm in a new house in a new state and I've been here for a year, here's what my days go like week to week.

Austin's Routine 2022

Though my phone alarm is set for 6:50 AM, I usually wake up at 6:15 or 6:30 to my youngest son screaming as my oldest son bugs him, the dog next door barking at nothing, or my daughter coming in and whispering "Griffin soaked through his diaper and it stinks really bad." So I get up and restore order, and usually come back to bed to spoon my wife until my alarm goes off. Then I snooze it until her alarm goes off, wait for her to snooze it once or twice, and then finally get up around 7:30 or 7:45. Man, I'm so lazy these days. My self ten years ago would be appalled. But then, my self ten years ago didn't have three kids.

If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I try my best to motivate myself to put on my tennis shoes, take off my shirt, put in my one functioning Bluetooth earbud, and work out on my broken elliptical for 20 minutes. I usually listen to an audiobook on Graphic Audio or a podcast, but lately it's been hard to find something that keeps my attention for that long and makes the workout go by quickly. Afterward, I turn the shower on, then turn the master bathtub on full blast to make the water get hot more quickly. I don't know if it's because the water heater is on the opposite side of the house or what, but I've found if I don't turn on the tub as well, it takes literally like 2 or 3 minutes to warm up.

If it's Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, I usually just pour some water on my head and dry it off. A hairdresser once told me washing your hair every day makes it overly fluffy, and she was right.

I help with the kids until around 8:00 or 8:15, making sure to give my older son his daily dose of four squares of ExLax (he has bowel issues, but thank goodness this replaces having to do an enema every single day), and then I fill up my 32oz water bottle with water and ice and get ready for my Stand Up meeting at work. I'll be honest: I hate Agile work groups. Or maybe I'm just in the wrong company and position to benefit from it, because Stand Up just consists of me zoning out working on a personal project until someone passes it to me, giving a brief report about what I'm working on, and then zoning out and working on something else again while everyone else gives theirs.

After Stand Up, I start remote work for the day. This consists of periods of coding and chatting with my Polish and Uruguayan coworkers on Microsoft Teams, interspersed by periods of getting stuck and waiting to have questions answered while I work on my latest project (lately it's been Wormie v3) and playing whatever Assassin's Creed game I'm currently trying to beat (right now it's Odyssey).

At 11:00 AM, it's brunchtime. I've been intermittently fasting for a few months now, and it is just perfect for me. Eating breakfast and lunch made me gain weight, and usually I wasn't even in the mood for one of the two types of food. But with brunch to break my fast, I can have a meal that feels bigger but ultimately has less calories, and it can be either breakfast food like a stack of whole wheat waffles with chunky peanut butter, or a steak or leftover feijoada. The hunger gets pretty strong around 9:00 and doesn't go away till 11:00, but I enjoy it. The anticipation makes me appreciate my first of two meals of the day a lot more. I usually watch a show while eating. Recently it's been Season 12 of MasterChef on Hulu.

After brunch, it's usually about time for my lunch break. I spend my hour/hour and a half or so with heightened focus on my personal project of the week or Assassin's Creed game, depending on how deep I am in project mode.

At around 1:15 or 1:30, I put my youngest son down for his nap if my wife's too tired or busy to. I change his diaper, put him in his pack-n-play, and turn on his sound machine. He usually asks for the "Ducky Song," the "Daddy Song," the "Mommy Song," and sometimes the "Grandpa Song" before he'll go to sleep. I know he's satisfied and I'm dismissed when he blows me kisses.

Once I'm back to work, I try and render or upload my latest episode of DM Quest. This uses up my home PC so I'm not tempted to work or play on it instead of my coding on my work laptop. I usually ease into work reading a couple of daily webcomics, and then transcribe a page of the Book of Mormon as my personal scripture study. Then I work, taking breaks every once in a while to watch any new YouTube videos on my feed.

At 4:00, my kids get home from school and my youngest wakes up from his nap, which means there's not much productivity left to be had. And my Polish coworkers have been long done for the day by that point anyway, so I'm usually done for the day by that point. Besides, my older son always comes directly into my office and asks if he can play his screen time for the day. He plays Goat Simulator or some other fleeting game with next to no objective, which is disappointing to me. I wish he'd get into strategy games or RPGs like I did at his age. Meanwhile, my daughter usually asks if she can go play with her neighbor down the street.

If big boy's not in the mood to play screen time, or after he's done, usually all the kids who are at home like to go outside and ride their bikes around the driveway. I like to go out and watch them while sitting on a lawn chair and reading a book. Otherwise, I might watch an episode of "Trollhuntins" (Trollhunters of Arcadia or one of its series sequels) with my youngest son.

At around 5:00, it's time to start preparing dinner. I usually like to make something fancy and complex, because it's usually more delicious and satisfying. But I can also make spaghetti and meatballs as a deeply satisfying dish. It usually depends on what I'm craving for the day (maybe from a cooking video I watched), what meats we have in Chester (our chest freezer), and whether I've already cooked too much for the week and we have an excess of leftovers in the fridge.

We try to eat dinner around 6:00, and afterward sometimes we watch an episode of Phineas & Ferb or another cartoon as a family, or go on a family walk if the weather is nice. Time seems to go by really quickly in the afternoons, and before we know it, it's already around 7:00 and time to start the long process of getting the kids to bed. I make bedtime snacks for the kids, which is usually cheese-on-toast or a Hot Monkey (a banana with peanut butter and honey in a toasted hot dog bun), and then give the older kids a melatonin gummy.

Then, I either put the girl to bed or both of the boys to bed. I'm the less-preferred choice between their mom and me, but she can't do all three of them every night, as we explain to them. The youngest boy's routine is the same, but the older son likes to listen to/watch a Parry Gripp song on my iPhone before bed, which he can if he didn't give me too much trouble getting ready for bed. For my daughter, I try to read a chapter of a book before she goes to sleep. Currently it's been hard to find a book that she's interested in, but earlier this year we red The Ickabog, which was great.

After the kids are in bed, it's quiet time. If my wife just wants to vedge, I continue working on my project if I have enough energy, or play computer games. Otherwise, we watch two or three episodes of a TV show together (right now it's Breaking Bad). We try to be in bed by 11:30, but my wife takes an inordinate number of trips to the bathroom while getting ready for bed (I blame that she takes her phone in with her) and we usually fall asleep at midnight or soon after.

If it's a Wednesday, I have D&D with my DM Quest group from 8:00 to midnight. On Fridays, I play Valheim, Heroes of the Storm, or Sea of Thieves with my friends or brothers. On Saturdays when my wife works at Red Robin as a server, I skip the "preparing dinner" part and just cook a frozen pizza for the kids. We set out a blanket and watch a movie together while eating. Then, if I can get them to bed on time, I stream a retro video game (since that's all my computer can handle streaming) on my YouTube channel until I get tired of talking.

And that's my life in Oklahoma! It's not much, but it's relaxing and I enjoy it for the most part. Most days are pretty much the same now that I work remotely, but I do enjoy going on dinner or lunch dates with my wife when I can, or going to Braum's for ice cream if the kids have been good.