Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday!

The season is upon us now. I'll be spending the next three days with friends and family, as much as we can get together in the middle of this pandemic insanity. We are going to make the best of it of what we have, each other. There will be food, drink and games. I can't wait to tell you about it next week.  

Peace! 

The Modelling Post - Figures for 1:144 scale models

I've been building some 1:144 scale models by Bandai. I have a snowspeeder and AT-ST built. I also have a couple of X-Wings, TIE fighters, two different Millenium Falcons and a few other things to build. 

I can't wait.  

I want to make some ground crew figures and have had difficulty sourcing them. The best I could find was 1/75 architectural figures. They're not a bad fit for the scale, being just a little too tall. I am going to end up modifying them, so I don't mind the off size. I'll be cutting and painting them to look like Star Wars characters. 

To get a sense of scale, I stood one up next to the models. They aren't too badly scaled. (Ignore the tape I used as a base.) For less than 10 bucks, I picked up a 100 of them. For the price, they're great. 

Towers - Tiny Maps

I started drawing a few towers this week. They came out pretty well.

The first is a 35 foot tall tower, meant to be placed on exterior wall. The exterior is on the left and the interior of the walls is to the right. The first floor has no windows, just a door. The door opens inward while a pair of barred doors open outward. 

I haven't filled in the walls because I don't know what pattern I want to use. The walls are tapered from bottom to top so this is not a good design against siege engines. The bottom might hold, but the top could be collapsed by catapults. 

I drew no interior designs, not even stairs, so I can adapt them for different purposes. 

The next tower is 55 feet tall. Again the walls are tapered. This design is basically the same as the tower above, except the barred doors open inwards.

I like the details on the doorway at ground level, except I made a mistake. The scale in the profile view is one square equals 10 feet, while the side view is one square equals 5. The door is a massive 10 feet wide. As you can see from the tiny doodle on the upper right, I tried to fix that by making the door multifunction with two sally doors.

Additionally, I didn't like the way the windows looked. I changed styles and neither one looks very good. Plus, with the tower being so tall, there has to be a way to reach the walls. 

That won't do, so I decided to redraw it.  

In my third iteration, I came up with some ideas I liked such as the door leading to the top of the walls on the 4th level. I forgot to fix the door on the first level. Actually, this is the point where I realized the door was so big. I added some arrow loops next to the ground floor door. 

I think that I can fix the door digitally, but maybe I'll just redraw that level or the whole tower tonight. 

I really like this design and I'll use it to work up some designs in both Inkscape and Worldographer. 

YT-3000 Type Freighter for Star Wars Campaign

My Neimoidian bounty hunter, La'ow Houd needs a ship. I started working on a rough image for it. I'm trying to get some sense of proportion and I think I got that down. 

What is missing is details on the front view. A lot of those lines just don't mesh up. One of the issues is, I work in a place that doesn't allow electronics so I am working on paper and from memory. 

As you can see, it has lines similar to the Falcon, but it is not the hot rod that the Falcon is. It has only one gun turret, the radar dish is on the bottom in place of one of the gun turrets and it has a massive cargo hold in the back. I wanted to the ship to be reminiscent of the Clone War ships. To that end, the cargo bay has a massive wing like structure. 

Where Han tricked out his ship for speed, this one is customized for cargo. That cargo bay is designed for holding a sailboat. Weird, eh? 

Well it is the ship of a Neimoidian bounty hunter. La'ow is a technological bounty hunter, he uses data. The sailboat is proof against counter-technological attacks. It is also low profile. 

As a consequence, this freighter is not very fast or good in combat. 

On another note, my next build will be the Millennium Falcon by Bandai. See my Snowspeeder and At-ST builds at these links. 

DRIVETHRURPG PRODUCTS BY DUNROMIN UNIVERSITY PRESS Ad Post

Over in the lefty column are ads for DriveThruRPG. It takes a bit of work to get them looking nice and when I delete them they are gone. For this reason, I am creating a post with the links so I can save them for the future. I hope you have taken a look at all that Dunromin University Press has to offer. I'll be adding new links in the sidebar the next day or so. 

SM03 Cityguide to the City of Karan SM03 Cityguide to the City of Karan

SM00 A Traveller's Atlas of Dunromin and the Land of the Young

SM12 The Trials of a Young Wizard SM12 The Trials of a Young Wizard

SM06 The Warren SM06 The Warren

SM04 Gazeteer of the Land of the Young SM04 Gazeteer of the Land of the Young

SM01 A Players' Guide to Dunromin SM01 A Players' Guide to Dunromin

AD&D Hoodlum

In June, I typed up a character class for a Unicorn. It worked very well for this off-kilter game session. The other three characters are a Druid, a Gangbanger, and a (Space) Marine. 

Today, I would like to work on the Gangbanger character class. First, I think gangbanger should be a title of the class, so the class name will be Hoodlum. At first, I thought hoodlums would be a fighting man or thief, but after some consideration, I believe they are more like clerics than anything. They have a clan, family and they have friends that believe the same thing they do. So, they are reskinned clerics. 

Hoodlums are anachronistic to the fantasy setting, being people from the 20th century. Skaters, punks and gang members. That being said, they can't use heavy blade weapons just like clerics. They will use knives and daggers plus blunt weapons. Oh, how a good baseball bat can feel. They use slingshots over bows and regular slings, knives over darts but can use a crossbow. 

They don't use shields and generally will not dress like normal fantasy characters, so AC is difficult. The Gamma World conversion rules are a nice option, but I think I will stick to just 3 types of armor. 

A leather motorcycle jacket will count as AC 8. Adding helmets and padded will get them to AC 7. Also, they can modify any type of armor found in a fantasy setting to get to AC 6. This is the lower limit for them, as they are wearing real armor in a fantastic way, it's more for looks than function. It really doesn't matter that they pull parts off of full plate, they are wearing it wrong and can't improve their AC score below 6. Creating their own signature armor is level dependent, which grants improvements at 1st, 3th and 6th levels. 

Hoodlums have the ability to pick pockets, sneak and hide, so in respects to those three talents, they operate like thieves of like level. They do not climb, detect or disarm traps as thieves. These skills aren't in their field of practice. Plus booby traps are for losers. 

Their next ability is improvised healing. Once per day per person, they can heal 1-3 hit points. It takes an hour. This ability comes from their desire to avoid hospitals and police involvement. Normally, they patch themselves up with items on hand, such as Mr. Clean, vodka and scraps of fabric, but it also works on others. It hurts. 

Hoodlums can use any magic item without a class restriction, they may not use magical weapons, shields or armor that they can normally can't wield. 

Their last ability is very powerful - technological adaption. Their ability to use crossbows, sling shots and create custom armor are minor variants of this skill. The ability to use horses and scrolls is a major expression of this skill. 

Hoodlums are current on all technologies to support their criminal activities. They will seek out a horse by 3rd level and will gain ability to fight from horseback at that level. This is not a magical animal like the paladin's warhorse but just as treasured. At 5th level, they will be competent with driving and maintaining wagons and carts. At 7th level, they can ride war chariots. Much of their money will be directed into pimping out these vehicles and conveyances.  

Hoodlums see scrolls as codes and secrets to be deciphered. This is a two step process. They must study a spell for one hour to see if they understand it, which they have a 50-50 chance at first level. Success means they understand the spell enough to try it in combat later, which also requires a roll with the same chance of success. For every level of experience, their odds improve by 3% to a maximum of 80% at 11th level. This is a once per day skill. They can only work on one scroll, one spell at a time. The level of the spell in irrelevant. Hoodlums will not be able to activate a scroll which would cause a loss in ability points (wish and the like). They know this and will not try. 

If they decipher a scroll with hostile magic (a curse or explosive runes) they will set it off. 

In combat, reading a scroll takes one whole round. Failure during combat indicates they get tongue tied and can't activate it. They may not make a second attempt until the next day when they can take an hour to study it again (and possibly fail).  

For the purposes of the hoodlum class, each and every spell and scroll combination is unique due to the handcrafting of the scroll. Deciphering a spell on one scroll does not confer the ability to read that spell on a different scroll, unlike clerics and magic users who use a different methodology to practice magic. 

It is interesting to note that this skill is more akin to code breaking than spell casting. They do not have the ability to read magical text in any meaningful way. Clerics and magic users will be confounded by the hoodlum's attempts and will understand how risky this talent is. 

The Hoodlum receives 1d6 hp per level plus Constitution bonuses. They fight and make saves as clerics and have limited armor and weaponry. They are always human to start the campaign as they are dimensional travelers, but once a gang is established in your campaign, they could be of any race. 

I'll update once I create a pretty table like the one I used in my Unicorn post. 

Click here to download the Google File.

Stat-ing up the Neimoidian Bounty Hunter

I've picked a name for my Neimoidian bounty hunter, La'ow Houd. I have also modified some rules to allow him to be a bounty hunter. According the rule book, they need to 1d10 vitality per level. That means only soldiers become bounty hunters. Judging by The Mandalorian, any boob with a weapon and drive can call themselves a bounty hunter. 

As a Neimoidian, he doesn't have a long tradition of bounty hunting. La'ow is a hunter of data which sometimes involves people. He observed the Mandalorians at home as a trade representative and spy. He has collected many items from Mandalor, but most of it is the not equipment of a hunter. He appreciates their arts and beliefs but doesn't try to emulate their combat style. 

Not all bounty hunters look like this. 

He does have some tricky items that the Mandalorians perfected, the whipcord, a smallish jetpack and the flame thrower. The whipcord and flame thrower are stock Mandalorian weapons in his gauntlets. The jetpack is a modified Tankerenian hoverpack for picking fruit. It can't exactly fly, but it can allow swift jumps and can save him from a short fall. 

He wears light armor which is similar to Rebel combat suits, although customized to his liking. He often wears a short cape and high riding boots in and out of armor. 

He has a light repeating blaster rifle and a heavy stunner. The heavy stunner is specifically designed to shoot like the LR blaster, but with no damage just the stun effect. He also carries a stun baton and sometimes uses electro-nets.   

La'ow has a variety of tools for breaking into systems without a droid. He also has a couple of holographic projectors which stick to surfaces. One of them will project a distortion over his body, so he can appear as a holograph. He must set this up first, it doesn't work on the fly as it requires specific viewing angles to work convincingly. 

At great expense, he managed to get his hands on two lightsabers which he had on display in his sailboat. No, he did not kill Jedi or Sith. He bought them from some really dangerous people. He does not use them as he is unskilled. He has a variety of trinkets from Mandalor, Jedha, and Coruscant which are made of kyber crystals. La'ow thinks they are object de art and it has not occurred to him that they could have any other value or purposes. 

Statistically, I have decided that Neimoidian's have a +1 Dexterity and Charisma, and a -1 to Strength and Constitution. They receive a bonus rank of swimming and the bonus feat Cautious. La'ow is an 8th level Noble and 4th level Bounty Hunter. As an isolated Noble, he can only call in favors from Bergel and Green-5. He is not well known on this planet. 

His ship, the Gallant, is a heavily modified YT-1300 transport. It is not fast, stealthy or very combat-effective. It does have great hover and low speed maneuverability so he is able to deploy his cargo from the starship to the water.   

The cockpit is located between the mandibles and the dish is located on the bottom, in place of one of the guns. The top of the ship has a gun turret and a 12 meter tall sail like cargo bay in the rear. The turret cannot shoot backwards because of the cargo bay. There is a nasty surprise at the top of the sail, a mine launcher with 5 mines.   

The ship is much slower than other YT-1300's as a quarter of the engines are missing to allow the Gallant to carry the large sail shaped cargo bay. La'ow owns a staysail ketch and needed the modified design to carry it. The cargo bay is large enough to enclose the whole boat with the masts and 4 sails deployed. The whole boat is 12 meters long and is crew by light droids. While the ship does have crew quarters, La'ow often sleeps on his sailboat.  

Here is a test image from my phone of his ship. Sorry about the lightness, it's a photo of a pencil drawing taken under fluorescent light at night. 

Like I said, this bounty hunter is non-standard. 

Testing New Tech with Sketches

I bought a new phone, a Moto G Stylus and new Kindle Fire then started working at a place where neither are allowed. That's ok, it gives me time to draw. 

The first image was a warm up for pen work. Just some designs. Perhaps, they are windows, dias* or portals. (* I'm not sure if the plural is "dia", "dias" or "diases".) 

The next two pictures are of towers. Each tower is drawn in profile and then top down. The profile is 1 square equals 10 feet while the overhead view is in 5 feet per square. 

i didn't like how the arrow slits looked and completely forgot the side door. 

These towers are strange because the exterior of the castle is to left and there is no windows on the ground floor. I need to draw in stairs next. I love the detail on the doors. There is a main door plus two gates to bar it from opening. In this rendition, the fifth floor has no windows at all. 

Both need a top floor.

Anyway, it's late at night. That might explain the strange pink cast to the images. I didn't use a flash.