The First Coin of Luck - An Artifact for Shadowrun

 

A Recent History of the First Lucky Coin

    Known by the title Lu (wealth), this magical artifact in the form of a humble bronze cash coin supposedly brings prosperity and riches to it’s bearer. Originally given to a Hong Kong fisherman named Sun Yat-Sun through a bequest in Dunkelzahn’s will, the coin was stolen by a group of Yakuza from a now defunct branch of the Watada-rengo. After their murder of Sun Yat-Sun and theft of the coin, they family was rocked by a series of disastrous unlucky breaks; within months, every single member of the crew that stole Lu was dead, and the clan itself broke apart. From there the coin passed into the hands of the Great Eastern Dragon Ryumyo. Sensing the curse associated with acquiring the coin through dishonest means, Ryumyo quickly gave the artifact to one of his underlings, the Oyabun Fukumoto Kanzaburo. It only took a few days to prove how effective the coin really was—Kanzaburo’s horse won 13 races in a row, and the Yakuza boss won the lottery 3 times in spite of the fact he never bought any tickets.

Kanzaburo

    Seemingly a boon, the influx of cash brought along with it attention from the authorities. Even with their substantial influence, Kanzaburo was still imprisoned for a “mere” 25 years. Unwilling to pass up on such an obviously powerful magical artifact, Ryumyo tried to give the coin away to another one of his underlings. Politely rebuffed by nearly everyone with whom he was willing to trust with the coin, Ryumyo was annoyed but undeterred. The Dragon gave the coin to a homeless man by the name of Bakin Kita. Mr. Bakin went from being destitute to owning a mansion and driving a Maserati within 3 weeks. However, to Ryumyo’s horror, the man was murdered while in possession of the coin during an altercation at a casino in Macau, in spite of the fact that several dozen Yakuza soldiers were acting as surreptitious bodyguards for him. After disposing of the failures, the Dragon was able to arrange for someone to retrieve the coin; it should have been a milk run, Kita’s body had been dumped into a shallow grave in the city limits by the ignorant goons of the casino. Astonishingly, his agents were successful, but the plane that they were traveling in fell out of the sky, and the coin was lost somewhere in the East China Sea.

Ryumyo

    Searching exhaustively for the coin in their backyards, Ryumyo unwittingly tipped off Lung, Mang and Masaru to the fact that he was interested in something in the ocean. Not willing to let sleeping dogs lie, the other dragons sent out feelers. They soon discovered the truth, and began searches of their own. After nearly a decade of fruitless hunting, the plane’s wreck was finally located by a team which had been hired by Lung. The dragon told those who found the coin nothing, had them dead-drop it at a pawnshop in Hong Kong, and then paid them a truly exorbitant amount of money for their trouble. The coin sat, untouched, in storage for another four years as it was studied by a number of Lung’s apprentices. They declared that while Lu was as powerful as ever, it had been tainted by being party to so much greed and violence. They suggested to their master that the coin never be entrusted to anyone that Lung didn’t wish ruin upon, at least until Lu could be purified.

Lung

    The Great Dragon decided that the best course would be to hand the coin over to an organization, rather than to an individual. The Red Dragons and Wuxing are too central to Lung’s power-base to be risked to protect a single magical item. Resolving to kill two birds with one stone, Lung founded a new magical society made up of former Yellow Lotus members. No longer needing the Lotus within the ranks of Wuxing or in scattered gangs, the Dragon gathered 9 awakened former members, he named them the Siblings of Ill-Fortune, bound them with terrible oaths, and then bid them to stand vigil over whatever he turned over to their care. He smoke-screened the true purpose of the society by shipping them a bevy of mystical items before the coin was to arrive. Assigning a group of the 58^th Battalion to look over the Coin as it was being shipped from Hong Kong to Shanghai, Lung plotted a ruse to steal the coin from himself using a trusted minor triad known as the Bronze Sharks. The leader of the gang, Toothy Ruogang was a former apprentice of his, and her loyalty was unquestionable.

Stats for the First Coin of Luck

Befitting a relic from the Fourth Age, the Lu coin is incredibly potent. It grants the following bonuses to any character who has been willingly given the artifact:

• The bearer of the object gains +5 dice on any check related to gambling, games of chance, financial endeavors, or any action that is directly seeking to build wealth.

• Whenever the owner spends Edge for the purposes stated above, they only expend every other point used.

• The bearer will never be cut off from a source of funding. If their assets are frozen, they will be loosened by a coding error. If they are without cards or in an area that doesn’t take them, they will miraculously find the necessary type of currency that they need.

• The owner gains a re-roll on any test to check for availability or legality for anything that they wish to purchase.

    While originally the curse of the coin would only affect those who procured the it through violent or deceitful means, the relic’s long history of violence and greed has contaminated it. It now strikes anyone who bears it:

• The bearer can no longer re-gain Edge, short of completing a major story beat.

• When the owner is out of Edge, they gain a form of anti-luck; any action seeking to detect, track down or harm the character are at +2 dice. Further, they are subject to some sort of freak accident or run of bad luck every 1d6+2 days.

• The coin seeks to flee those who have run out of favorable luck; every 1d6 days when the owner is out of edge, the coin tried to slip from their pocket, grasp or possession in some way.

The Centaur - LotFP & OSE Custom Class

    Wild and untamed by even the standards of what little civilization that exists on Nysa, Centaurs were, and still are, seen by Nysans as possessing a purer way of life than the rest of populace. Even with their seemingly exalted position, they were kept largely at arm's length, and generally only tolerated in the vineyards and towns during festivals. Seen as uncontrollable, especially while under the influence of wine, the Centaurs found themselves pushed to the plains surrounding the Lykaion Woods and into the embrace of the Limnio. 

     The fall of Nysa did not affect their lifestyle, except to remove the last checks upon their behavior and allow them to descend into barbarism with the rest of their vintage. Their dark reputations aside, Centaurs are known to be strong, martially inclined creatures, well suited to a life of adventuring.

Level	Experience	HP	Paralyze	Poison	Breath	Device	Magic	Primitive Weaponry	Archery
1	0	1d8	14	12	15	16	16	+0	+1
2	2,500	1d8	14	12	15	16	16	+1	+1
3	5,000	1d8	14	12	15	16	16	+1	+1
4	10,000	1d8	12	10	13	14	14	+1	+1
5	18,500	1d8	12	10	13	14	14	+1	+2
6	37,000	1d8	12	10	13	14	14	+2	+2
7	85,000	1d8	10	8	10	11	12	+2	+2
8	140,000	1d8	10	8	10	11	12	+2	+2
9	280,000	1d8	10	8	10	11	12	+2	+3
10	420,000	+2*	8	6	8	9	10	+2	+3
11	560,000	+2*	8	6	8	9	10	+3	+3
12	680,000	+2*	8	6	8	9	10	+3	+3
13	820,000	+2*	6	4	6	7	8	+3	+4
14+	+140,000/lvl	+2*	6	4	6	7	8	+3	+4

B/X & OSE Rules

Requirements	Minimum STR 9, DEX 9
Prime Requisite	STR and DEX
Hit Dice	d8
Thac0 Table	Semi-Martial
Maximum Level	14
Armor	Leather, including Shields
Weapons	Bows, Primitive Weapons
Languages	Alignment, Common

    Larger and possessing both a frame and legs far different than others humanoids, Centaurs are subject to several special rules. Centaurs may not climb objects such as ladders or ropes without great difficulty, suffering a -4 penalty to all such attempts. Any armor that a centaur has made for them costs double the normal price. They cannot use armor designed for humanoid or equine use.

    Centaurs are far quicker than humanoids, and are gifted with a movement speed of 50' in a round in combat. Owning to their large size and quadrupedal nature, Centaurs gain a bonus of +50% to both their carrying capacity, and the amount of weight necessary for them to be suffer an encumbrance penalty. They may carry others, but their passengers reduce their speed by 20', and those riding them do not gain any bonus for being mounted.

    Centaurs are extremely skilled archers, gaining a bonus to all attacks they make with bows or other similar weapons, as reflected by their Archery bonus on their class table. In addition to this, Centaurs also gain a bonus to any damage rolls that they make with primitive or otherwise improvised weaponry such as stout branches, rocks, or stone weaponry.

The Doppelganger From Another World

 

    I do not find Doppelgangers that interesting. It isn’t that they’re terrible, it is that their use is either mostly off-screen in the form of replacing NPCs and causing havoc with social connections, or they are used as a surprise source of conflict, taking the form of some familiar or new face so that they can lure a lone PC away to try and murder them. These aren’t necessarily bad encounters, but rather they’re fairly one-note. Ultimately they rely on effectively ambushing and hiding from the PCs, revealing themselves only when absolutely necessary.

    My main issue is that ultimately once they are revealed, they lose most of their efficacy as a threat. There’s also the simple fact that attacks against player cultivated NPCs tends to lead to either murder-hobos, or to PCs who always, tragically, have no living loved ones left. But this is really dancing around a greater point, they are just not that physically imposing. They are only consistently capable of killing PCs who have been separated from the group, and even then, only characters not specialized in fighting. I have included statistics for both the AD&D and the 5^th Edition Doppelganger below.

AD&D Doppelganger

FREQUENCY: Very rare

NO. APPEARING: 3- 12

ARMOR CLASS: 5

MOVE: 9”

HIT DICE: 4

% IN LAIR: 20%

TREASURE TYPE: E

NO. OF ATTACKS: 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-12

SPECIAL ATTACKS: Surprise on a 1-4

SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below

MAGIC RESISTANCE: See below

INTELLIGENCE: Very

ALIGNMENT: Neutral

SIZE: M

PSlONlC ABILITY: Nil

Attack/Defense Modes: Nil

Dopplegangers are able to ESP and imitate with 90% accuracy. They are subject to neither sleep nor charm spells. Despite having only 4 hit dice they make all saving throws as if they were 10th level fighting men

5^th Edition Doppelganger

    Who Goes There?, The Thing From Another World & The Thing, as well as two episodes of the X-Files, Ice and Firewalker, are all horror works based a simple premise: An alien is found in an isolated environment. It either has the ability to either cloak itself as a human, or is able to infect/convert them into more of itself. The alien can work as a group of autonomous beings, or as a single entity that unifies together for tasks requiring brute force.

    These works have an advantage over typical Doppelganger tales in that they are in a secluded and generally extreme environment. Social mysteries are difficult to write for D&D, doubly so for ones like Doppelgangers demand, rife with social cues and deceptions. Instead of a familiar setting, the Thing works best in a crowd of strangers, some of whom will need to help and trust the PCs if they are going to have a chance of survival against it. Unlike a Doppelganger, the Thing isn’t a single creature, and any part of it can continue to survive and infect others until it grows back into a threat once more. While it has a ‘natural’ form, there’s no reason to ever reveal it to the players.

B/X and LotFP Stats

HD: Variable, see Special

Armor: 15

Move: 30’, 30’ Climb, 30’ Swim.

Attacks: Variable, see Special

Special: Things begins with 3 HD, and only 1 attack at 1d12. An attack resulting in the victim’s death gains the Thing an additional 1 HD for Small creatures like cats or dogs, 2 HD for humanoids, or even 3 HD for especially large creatures such as Giants. It takes a number of rounds equal to the HD of the creature’s for the Thing to assimilate their victims. Things gain an additional attack per round for every 3 HD above their original.

Things may split themselves into multiple creatures with as many HD as the original has to contribute, (e.g. a Thing with 4 HD could split into a pair of creatures with 2 HD each, or two creatures with 1 HD and 3 HD, etc.) Each of them is an independent creature and has no inherent loyalty to the Thing that it originated from. Things can communicate with one another by means of an ultrasonic frequency that most creatures cannot hear.

Things can perfectly mimic any creature that it has assimilated, both mentally and physically, though this imitation only extends to organic materials. It cannot replicate things such as a victim’s weapons, armor, tattoos, make-up or objects such as fillings or earrings.

Things are immune to effects such as critical hits, sleep, paralysis, stunning, and anything that modifies their physical forms such as Polymorph spells.

Things may use Stealth as if they had a 5-in-6 in the skill, or as if they possessed an 80% in Hide and Move Silently, as appropriate for the system.

5^th Edition Stats

Things to do in D&D After You're (Not Quite) Dead Part IV - Going out in Style

    Death and dying happens in old-school D&D, a lot. In the three articles preceding this one, I laid out some rules for playing a PC returned to a half-life, playing in the afterlife, raising the dead, and replacing dead characters. This installment is going to go over an oft-discussed aspect of D&D’s combat system: Dying. On the surface this seems like a fairly simple topic, when a PC/NPC/Foe is reduced to 0 HP, they die. Dungeons and Dragons is undoubtedly more on the simulationist side of table-top role-playing. Hit points are at best an abstraction meant to give us a sort of heroic tone to the game, rather than having a single stab to the gut putting a character down for weeks. This does however come at the cost of a sort of critical existence failure, where a character can seemingly fight on as an automaton, undeterred by injury and just as able until they collapse and die.

    There are various means to subvert this in systems both within and without D&D—wound penalties, massive damage, death saves—all of which attempt to address some of the inherent issues underlying the HP system. All of these are effective in their own ways, but unfortunately some of them bog down or otherwise slow the flow of combat—which already tends to have some issues. Instead of interacting directly with the HP system (which I’ve already covered in another article) we are going to look at what happens when a PC is already doomed, and death is inevitable.

Moment of Glory

    Sometimes you just have to go out with a bang. Horatius Cocles did it, Sturm Brightblade did it, Gray Fox did it, Cu Chulainn did it. Fiction and real life are rife with examples of people who lay down their lives in pursuit of a greater goal, or just an awesome way.

    When a PC is stated to have died by the Referee, the player may request a Moment of Glory. This should be thematically appropriate; it is difficult to have a Moment if the PC has fallen off a cliff, or been disintegrated. Moments of Glory are an enhanced state where the character is empowered beyond their normal abilities. The player of the soon to be deceased is allowed to select one of the options below for their last moments. The GM remains the final arbiter. Any and all conditions such as fear, holding, charm, or paralysis are removed. A Moment of Glory last a number of rounds equal to the character’s ½ of their Constitution score, minimum 3. The PC cannot die during their Moment, but they may still suffer from the effects of spells (other than damage), though they gain advantage to all of their saves. A PC who accepts a Moment of Glory cannot be resurrected by any means short of a Wish spell.

Name	Effect
On the Bridge	The PC’s attack bonus doubles. They also gain an extra attack per turn
Unerring Concentration	Skill rolls and tasks involving concentration gain advantage, and any relevant skills are doubled. Further, a means of transmitting some final message or missive will somehow be available during such time.
Herculean Effort	Summoning a burst of strength from their last reservoirs, the character can accomplish a single seemingly impossible physical task. This can include lifting up a portcullis, tearing the limb off of some massive beast, or smashing through a brick wall.
The Last Spell	All expended spell slots are restored. Spellcasting from the character may not be disrupted during their remaining life span.

Brutal Bargain

    In lieu of dying, the PC may alternatively ask the Referee for a Bargain. The PC is removed from the combat, and instead accepts a terrible consequence of the GM’s choice from the list below. Not all of the effects of a bargain are permanent, some of which can be remedied by high-level clerical magic. Referees are encouraged to make access to means of curing the consequences of a Bargain particularly difficult.

Name	Effect
Horrifying Scar	Some terrible wound has left the character with an awful, highly visible scar. This marring is so terrible that it acts as a -3 penalty either the PC’s Charisma, or checks related to the injury; e.g. a stiffened hand making a sword difficult to wield, or a scar across stomach or leg making exertion more taxing.
Severed Limb	One of the character’s limbs or other major part of their body has been ruined or cut off entirely. While the particulars of how a character would be affected by the loss of a hand, eye, nose or foot may change, they are all fairly negative. The GM is encouraged to levy fairly substantial penalties, with a -4 being suggested.
Battle Fatigue	The PC has seen too much suffering, death and destruction for their mind to bear any longer. They are jittery and easily frightened, and their sleep is interrupted by nightmares. There is a 25% chance that the character’s sleep is too fraught for them to gain the benefit of natural healing. They also gain disadvantage on any checks relating to Fear.
Mortal Injury	An awful and debilitating wound has made the PC unable to adventure until they can heal. Whether taking the form of crushed ribs, broken arms or systemic blood loss, the character is going to be out of commission for a substantial period. The PC is not playable for 2d4 weeks, and must recuperate in a place of safety during that time.
Lost Memories	Due to some injury to their mind, the character has trouble with tasks involving memory for the next 2d6+1 weeks. Maps, written and even spoken instructions require the character to make a successful Wisdom roll in order to recall. In addition, successfully reading something longer than a few words also requires a successful Wisdom or Intelligence roll, PC’s choice.