Season 43 - Deadly Poisons and Possible Perceptions
In this episode, the rules guru returns to talk about poisons and I rant about the overpowered perception skill. Welcome to Mythras Matters Season 1 episode 43 - Deadly Poisons and Possible Perceptions
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Hello and welcome to Mythras Matters, a podcast dedicated to the Mythras ruleset and all its supplements. As always, I’m your host, inwils, and welcome to December!
I actually can't believe I have just said December! I know probably old people say it, but where has the year gone?
December is a packed month for me, it's Christmas, Boxing day - which I think is a purely UK thing - then my birthday, then new years eve and then new years day! Sometimes I wish they would spread these holidays out throughout the year!
I always try to add value to these podcast episodes and rather than just chatting about my life and events I wanted to provide you with an update for our let's play every week!
In the past, we have had weeks where we didn't play because one or more of our players were unavailable. I wanted to change this, mainly because I miss GMing. So decided on a plan so that we could play every week! The players have characters all made up for Destined and they are willing to play even when there are only two of them available.
This has really meant that we have increased the number of times we play during the month and Destined, is a perfect system to dip in and out with and to play with few players. Indeed next month in episode 44 - (all the 4s droopy drawers! - sorry UK bingo call!) I will be chatting with two people who have perfected solo adventures!
We are currently playing SpellJammer on our regular Saturday stream - I hope it is ok to mention another system on the podcast! Even with this game, we will play with reduced players or, if needed, switch over to Destined.
If you haven't checked Destined out yet, please do. It's a fantastic system and we really enjoy playing both the heroes and villains. I've taken to watching the Marvel films again, to get me in the mood for GMing Destined and also making those supervillains!
In summary, I think there are always systems you can play when you're a person down, so try and be creative. I am really looking forward to chatting about the solo games. It reminds me of when I was younger, well a lot younger and we were controlling a whole group as they adventured down dungeons!
Okay, let's move on before I start reminiscing again!
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Later on, I am going to have a major rant about the perception skills, but
next up it is time to check in with the rules guru as he talks about poison and disease within the Mythras Rules - over to you guru!
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<Rules Guru - no transcript available>
I really found that rules guru section helpful. I have to admit, I didn't really understand how the poisons and disease worked so I'm very keen to get it into my regular campaign. So I thought I would share with some of the ideas I came up!
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So, first up the one that you might have already used - finding the antidote for a poison. Although this could be for a dying ruler or an important member of the town, sometimes I like to make things more personal. It could be someone who is very close to the party. In our campaign, this could be the burly innkeeper of the hairy hobgoblin, Basil Earless. Or even the party's contact Sylvester Mchoon, the obnoxious cartographer. Come to think of it, the second is probably not the best choice, since I think some of the party will want him dead after all the snide comments he has made. If you want more information about the cartographer then you can find an encounter involving him in my RPG shop - links in the show notes!
The other choice of a person needing an antidote could be a party member themselves. This could really add urgency to the adventure and could lead to come fantastic role-playing between the group members. Situations like, leave me and go on, with the opposing, we are not leaving you, could really add to any campaign. I really like these role-playing situations that can really add to the party's group dynamics and will be a situation that is remembered for a long time.
Staying with the 'find the antidote' idea, there could be a range of ideas for adventures when you think about what or who has the antidote. At this point it doesn't have to be a rare plant or mythical beast that has the antidote, it could be a group of people or even one person. The group with the antidote could be reclusive and never allows others into their homes or even a group of bandits that are busy terrorising the countryside. The party might have to use either the social conflict rules to gain the antidote or brawn and fighting prowess. Or even both! Also, the best approach might be a stealthy entry into the camp of the bandits using spells and those disguise skills. Again, things might go according to plan until that final moment when the party are about to grab the antidote and their spells and/or disguises fail.
Rather than looking for the antidote, you can make looking for the poison to be the focus of the adventure. For example, the local hamlet or group of people might want to rid themselves of a pest - whether that be a plant, animal or even person. As the plant continues to evade and take over their crops and buildings, the party is sent to locate, collect, harvest and return before the whole area and people is infected and destroyed.
And talking about being destroyed, maybe poison is the only thing that can kill that evil sorcerer who is leading their army to conquer the whole nation! I like situations like this because it provides conflict for the party. Would they poison someone? or is that too far away from their morals and values? If I ever got to play in a campaign, I would definitely play an animist who was attuned to evil spirits. my character would be happy sending a diseased spirit through the evil lord's stronghold, causing their followers and troops to die a horrible, puss-filled death, but whether the party would say, yeah, sure go ahead, would be completely different! Again, plenty of role-playing is available in that situation!
I do enjoy presenting situations to the players when they have to think carefully about what their character would do. For example, if the antidote or poison would mean the death of another individual, would they allow that? Who would the party choose to de-poison if there was a family needing it or even one of the party members vs the ruler of the land? So many possibilities there!
I hope that provides you with some ideas to bring poisons and disease into your campaigns. If you have any other ideas to share, then please do let me know or share them within the discord or the tapatalk forums!
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As well as the chat about solo adventures, Loz will be coming in at the start of next year to give us an update about what will be coming to our shelves in 2023.
Remember, if you would like to contribute to the podcast then why not just drop me an email or message and let me know what you would like to cover? I am always looking for reviews or interviews with people. So if you are interested, you can email me at inwils@gmail.com or send me a message on the various forums I frequent.
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Next up I want to talk about perception and how I think we should be dealing with it! And be warned - there is going to be a rant!
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So when I was talking about introducing new players to Mythras in episode 40 - one aspect of their discussion that really stuck with me, was the idea that they wished they had known that certain skills need to be worked on since they play an important part of the game. These were mainly, skills like evade, endurance, brawn, willpower and perception.
Leaving the first four for another episode, I wanted to focus on perception and explain why I think it can be overused and how this could be adapted without providing another skill.
From the core rule book, perception covers everything from passive observation to more focused detection. It covers all the senses from seeing things, to smelling things, and it can be used as a free action within the combat to gain a quick overview of what is happening. If you want to see the other actions you can take as a free action, then do check out the video on my YT channel.
Also, perception is used to detect traps and possible sneaking characters, well, the list goes on.
Now, it does mention in the rule book, that the difficulty can be altered depending on what the character is trying to perceive. But I do feel that investing in this skill is a good choice since it covers so many roles. You can spot someone trying to hide overhearing a quiet conversation, notice a trap in the investigating room for clues! My feeling is that this is too much! - I've not told my players this, but should there be some sub-divisions for perception?
I really like how the lore and craft skill works. When taking it, you need to decide on a specialism for the skill. So Bartleby has Lore Monsters and recently took Lore Poisons - he obviously knew that the rule guru was going to provide me with some ideas!
Hasra in the campaign has a really great perception skill. The character is all about the outside, hunting and tracking so I always assume that he would be really good about perceiving things in the wilderness but let so in dungeons. In this case, a change of environment, and then an increase in difficulty seems appropriate. But would Hasra be good at spotting a trap? There is something quite specific about traps or clues, and I'm not sure with an increase in difficulty would be appropriate here or even effective at making it hard enough.
My thoughts, and do let me know in the comments or via Discord, is whether should we be specialising in perception like the lore skill. Initially, I would be thinking of the following specialisation.
The type of environment - this is a good start especially since it links to the culture and profession of the character. Investigation - looking for clues, Traps and other nasties, and possibly senses. Before you all throw your hands up in dismay, stay with me for this one because it relates to the previous segments in this episode.
I would really enjoy playing a bard character - I first talked about how I would create a bard in episode 38. So as part of the character skill-based, they were encouraged to check the king's food before they ate it to check for poison. Now a perception skill would be so specialised in this case that it would be perception (taste). I would say that my bard would not be able to spot traps or even assess the combat using their perception skill. If needed, I could increase the specialised perception skill even further and call it Perception (Royal Court) so as well as poison my bard is also a really good eavesdropped! I mean working in a royal court would also include listening out for rumours or even plots against the ruler. The third episode of Mythras Matters was titled, Politics and Poison Rings - this featured to supplement of Fioracitta and really got me interested in political intrigue!
I'm not saying that my bard would not be good at noticing things visually. This would be an increase in the difficulty grade. But they would definitely not be very good at noticing traps, just a character with a perception skill focused on the wilderness would not be good not be that good at tasting poison.
My thoughts are that there comes a time that the perception skill difficulty is so high that it is impossible for a character to achieve that roll. As an extreme of this, imagine a mystic who is blind. Their perception skill could be incredibly high but be focused on sound. No matter how 'hard' we make the roll, they will never be able to say what the sky looked like when the weather changed.
One aspect of Mythras I really like is the potential for specialisation. Within the party, you could have a number of characters with the same skill but it all be specialised. So in our campaign, Hasra would definitely have his Perception specialised in the wilderness, while Rohan, a street-loving rogue character would have his perception specialised into towns or traps or something like that.
Am I just being too over the top with this, or have a got a good point - with respect to the latter there is a first time forever!
Let me know what you think. Have you already specialised in your perception skills or do you like the idea of one skill for everything? -
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And that’s it, another episode of Mythras Matters completed.
Don't forget you can check out all my content by following my YouTube channel and the campaign areas on World Anvil. I really appreciate your support and do check out the TapaTalk forums, there are some great people there sharing their ideas within the discussions.
So, until next time have a great month of gaming and have a great Christmas, I will chat again with you all in January
Until then I hope that all our opposed rolls succeed and provide you with a well-deserved special.
Thanks for listening cya - Bye!