Courageous Magus

“Oh… thank you. That looks… delicious.”

Main ingredients (1 or 2 d20)

Potatoes

Rice

Corn

Red meat (1d4)

Beef

Pork

Venison

Sheep

Fish (1d4)

Carp

Trout

Fry

Eel

Poultry (1d4)

Chicken

Duck

Pheasant

Turkey

Barley

Legumes (1d4)

Kidney beans

Peanut

Lentils

Split peas

Flour

Meal (1d4)

Cornmeal

Bonemeal

Oatmeal

Mealworms

Turnips

Cheese

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Chickpeas

Onion (1d4)

Green

White

Red

Shallot

Tomato

Eggplant

Eggs

Seaweed

Flavouring (roll 1d20)

Garlic

Sugar

Salt

Saffron

Cinnamon

Hot peppers

Sap

Savory herbs

Citrus

Chocolate

Lard

Wine

Berries

Cilantro

Blood

Vanilla

Olive oil

Figs

Cumin

Sumac

Preparation (roll 1d10)

Baked into biscuits

Baked into a loaf

Mashed into a paste

Served as a thin soup

Smoked and cut into strips

Boiled into a stew

Rolled into nuggets

Baked into thin crackers

Sandwiched between slices of bread

Faience polyhedron inscribed with letters of the Greek alphabet

The Met has a few d20s with Greek letters in its collection, they are all from Egypt and dated anywhere from 2nd century BCE to 4th century CE. They might be Roman, they might be Ptolemaic.

The British Museum also has some of these, apparently Ptolemaic. Now, assuming that these are indeed the earliest examples, I’m not sure if the question “who invented the d20” even means anything. Ptolemaic Egypt was a melting pot, Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city for all intents and purposes. It could have been anyone from around the Mediterranean (or beyond), and whoever they were, they were part of the same cultural continuum anyway. The necessary theoretical background was already there: Euclid included the icosahedron in his Elements (~300 BCE), and that made it common knowledge.

Public domain, if you like. :)

Incidentally, there was at some point a fascinating claim that the first d20 comes from Scotland, of all places, and dates from the neolithic period, but it was debunked. “Carved stone balls” is a more apt description for these. :)

INKTOBER Day 14!

The world of Airth. Literally torn apart by an ancient war between the gods who created it, Airth is divided into 4 sections: 1. the Stratos, a chain of islands high in the sky where the Sylph people live 2. The Rimland, a massive ring of continents and giant islands where Most of the inhabitants of Airth live. Wake lives here. 3. The Abyss, a stretch of atmosphere filled with incredible cloud formations and tiny floating islands. Limberg and Grimm are from here. 4. The Core, an ocean covered rocky sphere filled with colossal caves. The Tengru, monsters and beasts, and the Dark Lord live down here.

There is a prophecy that the Dark Lord will regain his power and destroy what’s left of Airth to start a new planet with him as ruler. The only thing that can stop him is the Star Seed. It is the key to making Airth whole again and destroying the darkness forever. But is the Star Seed only a myth?

Utility and Builds

One of the most versatile classes in the game, the bard is truly a jack of all trades. Having great diversity in skills and magic make them capable of fulfilling and supplementing lots of different roles. The bard spell list is arcane, but was the first arcane class to mix in healing, while also providing an array of utility spells, buffs, debuffs, and damaging spells that are below the curve compared to damaging spells of the same level on the sorcerer/wizard list, but generally have unique mechanics and/or deal sonic damage, which almost no enemy resists. From there, their biggest mechanic is their bardic performances, magical performances that provide different magical benefits, mostly buffing and aiding allies, but also warding allies against certain charming sounds and debuffing foes. In 3.5, the bard was more restricted in using this alongside other techniques, able to maintain a single performance forever, but unable to do much else until they ended it. Pathfinder, on the other hand, made maintaining the performance a breeze while doing other things, but also limiting the total duration of performance they could maintain in a day. Furthermore, pathfinder opened up performance to more than just music, even giving a few vision-based performances that work with them. A bard’s next biggest defining feature is their skills, having all knowledges being considered trained and lots of skill points makes for a very useful lore skill monkey. Additionally, the pathfinder ability versatile performance allows them to use a single perform skill in place of a few other skills, freeing up said skill points for other skills.

So on one side of the coin, bards are an excellent skill monkey class, while on the other, they can be built in a variety of ways to fulfill multiple roles. You could make them a diverse support able to fill in roles that the other party members can’t or are not able to at the moment. Or they could go for a specific strategy, such as focusing on buffs, debuffs, healing, and whatnot. Therein you can find some pretty interesting builds, such as a bard that can boost itself into a deadly combatant, or a long-range sonic damage dealer. Of course, these become stronger with the application of archetypes. Be warned though. While the bard can fulfill many roles, they are a buff support first, and everything else second. You may find yourself coming up short compared to allies that are doing the exact same thing.

Overview

It’s time for another core class review, and this time we’re covering everyone’s favorite support class, the bard! The term ‘bard’ comes from a Celtic loan word from Scottish Gaelic, and was originally a derogatory term for a wandering musician. However, it was later used to refer to any professional musician or poet that was not affiliated with the church. Bards were often associated with composing songs and poems to honor deceased nobles and warriors, describing their great deeds. Careful not to short-change a bard though, or your dead relative might get a satirical song poking fun at them instead. Of course, bards were known for composing songs about the living as well, and given their worldly status, they often knew a little bit of everything, especially where hearsay and local legend comes into play. Other bards even studied at colleges built for them, which was a common thing in places where a desire for honor after death met with organized education.

In the worlds of the world’s oldest roleplaying game and Pathfinder, bard is now a general term for any performer of any sort, from oration to comedy to instruments and dance. The vast array of human and nonhuman performance art serves as the basis for their many abilities. However, true to their worldly nature, bards retain a vast knowledge of the world around them. What’s more, the performances of bards seem to hold a supernatural power, somewhere between magic and evoked emotions, they can manipulate the behavior of others to aid or hinder. Finally, they also have a selection of spells themselves, which might be their performance magic crossing the barrier into actual magical power, or they might simply be like their body of knowledge and be a selection of tricks they’ve picked up on in their travels.

I’m playing and epic D&D campaign in which I play a centaur scout and her cohort, a housecat who is also a bard, rouge and shadowdancer. Our current objective is to find and kill abominations scattered throughout the world and defeat them before they destroy the world.

In our last session, we were trekking up and down a mountain, looking for an ice abomination while fending off all sorts of monsters only to find out later (as we all tumbled hundreds of feet to the ground) that the mountain was the abomination.

After several round of combat damaging this guy in amounts similar to stabbing an elephant with a toothpick, I lamented aloud that my cat couldn’t use Otto’s Irresistible Dance, mostly to stop it from murdering us. The DM then stated that if I rolled a perform check of 50 or more, he might allow a similar effect. This was a mistake. My cat has 44 in perform, and I was more than willing to make that roll.

As my cat breaks out into song, the rest of the party slowly began to join in with a lyre, a flute, some dancing, even a fog machine and a light show. My cat’s high perform stat combined with the entire party’s assist totaled to a roll of 111. Not only did we make this mountain dance, we created music so beautiful, a performance so inspiring, that the abomination began to rethink the whole “destroy the entire world” angle.