DM Entry: Improvised Traps

Improvised Traps

Improvised Traps, or booby traps, are makeshift traps that have a Challenge Rating less than 1. Anyone can craft such a trap and the cost and crafting times are much less than those of normal traps.

Craft (trapmaking) Check: When you craft your trap, you make a single Craft (trapmaking) check. The result sets the crafting time, Spot DC, Disable Device DC, Reflex DC (if any), and Attack Bonus (if any). As with any Craft check, you take a -2 penalty if you are using improvised tools (0 gp), a +0 bonus for using artisan’s tools (5 gp), or a +2 circumstance bonus for using masterwork artisan tools (55 gp).

Crafting Time: The time to craft an improvised trap is 1 minute times your Craft (trapmaking) check result. If you choose to build your improvised trap from materials you have on hand around you (see below), add 10 minutes to the total crafting time.

Spot DC: Improvised traps are so simple and cheap that they are easy to spot. Thus, improvised traps have no Search DC and spotting one does not require the trapfinding class ability. The DC to Spot an improvised trap is equal to your Craft (trapmaking) check result. A character with the trapfinding class ability gains a +5 bonus to Spot an improvised trap.

Disable Device DC: Your Craft (trapmaking) check result sets the DC for someone to disable the trap. A character with the trapfinding class ability gains a +5 bonus to disable or bypass an improvised trap.

Reflex Save DC: If your trap requires a Reflex save, the DC is equal to your Craft (trapmaking) check result (or any lower number if you so choose).

Attack Bonus: If the trap makes an attack roll, it has an attack bonus equal to half your Craft (trapmaking) check result (or any lower number if you so choose).

No Reset: All improvised traps have no reset.

Materials: Each improvised trap will define any materials that are required to build the trap. If you accept a -10 penalty to your Craft (trapmaking) check, you can build the trap from materials that are on hand around you without using any gear or supplies you personally possess or own (unless the DM determines that the surroundings are particularly barren).

Example Improvised Traps

Falling Object

You rig a dart, rock, or other object to fall onto a creature passing under its location, such as above a door.

Mechanical; location trigger; melee attack against flat-footed AC (+1 for higher ground); 1d4 points of damage, materials: Falling object.

Noisy Tripwire

You string a piece of wire, section of rope, vine, or leather strap, etc., across some span where you expect a creature to enter. Once the wire is tripped by a Tiny or larger creature, one or more objects fall and make noise. Anyone within 10 feet of the tripwire per noisy object (up to 60 feet) can hear this clearly The Listen DC within this area equals 7 minus 1 per noisy object, up to 6 noisy objects, and sleeping creatures take a -10 penalty. Reduce the distance by 10 feet for each interposing closed door and by 20 feet for each substantial interposing wall. In quiet conditions (such as while your party is sleeping), the noise can be heard faintly as far as three times this distance. The sound lasts for 1 round. Creatures within a silence spell cannot hear the noise. Anyone who knows about the tripwire can bypass it. The crafting time is per 5-foot square in which you set a tripwire. All tripwire squares must be adjacent to either another tripwire square or the noisy-objects square (and the noisy-objects square must be adjacent to at least one tripwire square).

Mechanical; location trigger; melee attack against flat-footed AC; nonmagical audible alarm for 1 round, materials: Five feet of wire (or just about anything that can serve this purpose) per 5–foot square your trap occupies, plus whatever objects that will make noise when dropped and/or broken, such as bottles, metal objects, window panes, chairs, plates, etc.

DM Entry: Class and Prestige Classes

The document called Aryathan Jiil Classes and Prestige Classes.pdf has gotten a long overdue clean up, correcting the Level Adjustment for many of the monster classes and template classes (most of them were too high).

New features are several new monster classes, such as several beholderkin, abyssal maw, abyssal skulker, vine horror, walking wall, and many others.

Check it out on the google drive.

Two Native Kine of the Nine Hells

The Stench Kow (above) and the Gathra (below).

Fires of Dis: ECL 1 Mithil human wizard 1: Bio

Benai' Evaerist Misthril was raised in a small rural town in Glorium. She is 18 years old, 5'6", 105 lbs, a wisp of a young woman, with curly shoulder length ginger hair which she usually stretches into in a pony tail. She has a haughty demeanor but does not seem cruel. She wears her explorer's outfit as it were a costume or some kind of joke. If she becomes angry and unable to act, she has a habit of twirling her hair around a finger and pulling. The angrier she becomes, the harder she pulls.  The pony tail is a way to avoid this tic.

She was always called Mithil since she can remember and that is the only name she uses. Although her home town was poor, Mithil grew up in relative luxury, raised by an Aunt Ea'vol, the midwife to the village, who taught Mithil some of the arcane arts. Ea'vol, for reasons of her own, taught Mithil and her sister knowledge of the ways of aristocrats and nobility.

When Mithil was eight years old, her older sister Benai' Rael Misthrol was seduced by an illusionist, going by the name of Frale, who was passing through small village. Mithil did not trust the woman and it was obvious neither did her aunt, but Misthrol was in love.

One night, Mithil followed the couple to a barn determined to discover their secret. Mithil learned her sister had been bewitched and arrived just in time to see her handed over to slave traders. To her lasting shame, the eight year old girl did not intervene but hid, trying to understand what was happening.

When she could escape without being caught, Mithil ran to her Aunt who conducted her own investigation. Ea'vol concluded that Misthrol been enslaved and taken to the lower planes by Frale.

Mithil has devoted her life to learning arcane arts and her Aunt has done her best to prepare her if a chance came to rescue Misthrol. When Mithil was 17, the illusionist came back to town. Few could see through the woman's disguise but Mithil knew because the woman's face and voice had haunted her dreams. Mithil followed Frale and, knowing the town and its people, snuck into Frale room at the inn. There she found Frale asleep, drunk, on the bed and her trunk flung open, its contents in disarray.

The item that intrigued Mithil most was something that looked like a pass for travel in the plane of Dis so that the bearer could establish a spice trade franchise for some man named Dermont. A note was attached to the pass and Mithil rushed back to her Aunt to see if she could decipher the note.

The note read, "Daughter, I know that you will use this pass for your own purposes, but the opportunity is real. Dermont will help you establish a spice franchise which will further our families' interests and your own far more than your excursions in the slave trade. You will note that I have destroyed all of your other passes so this is your only chances. Please, daughter, make something of it! Your devoted father."

Mithil returned to her Aunt who whirled into action making a copy of the pass. Mithil questioned Ea'vol but was gruffly rebuffed as the old woman concentrated. Finally, satisfied, she handed the copy back to Mithil, "put this back in her trunk just like you found it. It should pass Frale's inspection but the guards will know." A wicked smile of a kind Mithil had never seen before curled her Aunt's lipls.

"What guards, Aunt?" Mithil asked, but the old woman hurried her on her way. Mithil returned the fake pass and the note and ran back to her Aunt.

They both monitored the inn until they saw Frale leaving in a sulk. Mithil and her Aunt followed the woman, even to Dis, and Ea'vol gave her life to save Mithil. They had only one pass, and had been exceptionally careful, but eventually they were simply ambushed. The old woman fought with a ferocity which shocked Mithil.

After she buried her aunt, Mithil travelled without care looking for some hint of Frale, whom she had lost.. Mithil was asked several times for her pass which she dutifully gave but one night she saw the illusinonist again at an inn. Mithil bribed the innkeeper to call the guards and, just as Ea'vol had predicted, the guards instantly recognized the fake pass.

Mithil and her Aunt had hoped to use this brief moment of vulnerability to leverage information as to hat happened to Misthrol. They had hoped for a chance to get information with a promise to aid the vile Frale into divulging information as to Misthrol's whereabouts.

Neither Mithil or her Aunt realized there would be no delay. Frale was taken away screaming and Mithil had no chance to follow. It now appears that Mithil is trapped in Dis with no clue how to find out if her sister is alive. 

DM Entry: Magnus Arcana (beta 5)

The Magnus Arcana has been updated some more.

Spells from the following sources are included in this latest update:

All Dungeon magazines from the 3.0 and 3.5 era
Diablo 2: Diablerie

Did some other minor updates and formatting.


The Aryathan Jiil Magnus Arcana.pdf has been uploaded to the google drive and is ready to view. You may have to re-download it to get the latest version.

There's not a whole lot of spells left to add, so the next updates may slow down. 
Its been since 2009 when this project was first started and its very close to completion (relatively speaking).

DM Entry: Magnus Arcana (beta 4)

The Magnus Arcana has been updated some more.

Spells from the following sources are included in this latest update:

All Dragon magazines from the 3.5 era


The Aryathan Jiil Magnus Arcana.pdf has been uploaded to the google drive and is ready to view. You may have to re-download it to get the latest version.

Up next I'll be working on adding spells from Dungeon magazines from the 3.0 and 3.5 era.

The beta 4 release pdf weighs in at 18.2mb
a bulging 913 pages long
index: 19 pages
spell lists: 63 pages
and the full text of the spells occupy most of other pages.

The document stands at 963,030 words and over 4.8 MILLION characters not counting spaces.

Rules and Format (**read before posting**)

This blog is for posting your PCs journal.

Please keep all posts on this blog in character.

Comments may be in or out of character.

Please use the following format in the Title of your post:

Campaign: ECL Character Name race class level: Journal Entry Number

For example, one might look like this:

Shackled City: ECL 4 Shushan Turanis lesser fey'ri marshal 1, truenamer 3: Entry 1

Blog and Player Loyalty XP Bonus

Posting a blog for your character on this site earns that PC a percent bonus to XP during the next game session equal to:

+1% per consecutive number of sessions attended and blogged  (not to exceed your effective character level)

Bio XP Bonus

Posting your character's bio on this blog earns your character a flat, one-time +200 XP, multiplied by your Player Loyalty Bonus. This bonus only applies during the first three sessions after character creation, after which the bonus drops to a flat +200 XP (without multiplying by your Player Loyalty Bonus).

Fires of Dis: ECL 1: Oriboth Bonegrip dwarf fighter 1: Bio

About fifty years ago in the Hopeless Rise, a dark red mountain that was said not to have any gold in it, was born Oriboth Bonegrip. The Bonegrip family had lived there for generations with many other dwarven clans. They had made a huge community of dwarfs inside of this red mountain. The community thrived for hundreds of years. Then one day, they had mined into the biggest vane of gold that has ever been seen before. The gold made every dwarf very greedy and drove almost everyone to insanity. The Bonegrip clan left before any real chaos happened. But they ran out of gold very quick and even some of them ran back to the Hopeless Rise. Oriboth struggled as a young dwarf. He decided that he could make a better living at adventuring than being a house builder. He traveled to the city of Greyhawk looking for some exploration of some dungeons. But he only found some gold and some gear. He heard of a way to travel to the great city Sigil, the stranger said that he could find all kinds of adventuring in the city. But he couldn't find anything in Sigil so he just began making stone houses like he was before all this. And there is where Oriboth Bonegrip sat waiting for the opportunity to adventure.

DM Entry: Fires of Dis 3.5 Introduction and PC Gen Information

Setup Text
"The Great Bazaar! The kind of place that’d drive even a Sensate barmy, with so many things to sample from so many different worlds that it’d take ten lifetimes to try them all. This whole part of Sigil’s swamped in a sea of caravan tents and breakaway stalls, topped with flags draped with banners, festooned with hangings of every color and design. Here, the merchants of a hundred planar and prime worlds set up their carts, offering food, drink, rugs, pots, clothing, rope, stoneware—anything that a visitor to the City of Doors might want or need. And since just about every berk and blood in the multiverse tromps through the Cage at some point or other, it’s a bet that the merchants here have something to meet every taste."

PC Gen Information
This game is for beginners. The only book available to use is the Player's Handbook. No other books are permitted for character creation or later on for the extent of this adventure.
Edition: D&D 3.5
Level: 1st
Origin: Your character should choose a normal game world to be from, and this is pretty wide open. You can be from a certain place in the Realms or some place in Greyhawk, or some other game world.
Setting: Planescape. Your character's now live in Sigil on the outer plane called The Outlands, between the heavens and the hells. It is perfectly common to see angels and devils having calm discussions in the streets of Sigil, because this is a neutral meeting ground. The place is run by The Lady of Pain, who some believe is a god, others believe she is a tanar'ri. No matter what she is, she controls this place, and sends people who cause trouble to the mazes in an instant. They say, if you see her floating down the street, go find some place to hide or you will be trapped for ever in one of her mazes. You are likely to see all manner of humanoid and intelligent "monster" in the Great Bizaar, Stone giants carrying divans with some humanoid sitting on them. A night hag selling larva with human faces to the highest bidder. A dwarf with a flaming beard selling ceramic bowls that produce light like a torch while embers smolder inside, said to be made from stone from the Elemental Plane of Fire.
How Much Money Do You Start With? This is found on page 111 of the Player's Handbook. And don't forget your free set of clothing.
How Did You Get to Sigil? This is part of your character background that you are open to flesh out. If you are not sure what Sigil is or what the Outlands are, you can just explain how you simply don't know how you got here (which is true of many people here), something about walking through a doorway that strangely glowed for a second and you found yourself in this strange place.
What Does Sigil Look Like? Everyone lives on the inside of a ring that floats mysteriously above the Outlands at an infinite height...somehow.

Click on each of the following to enlarge.

DM Entry: Weapon Compendium

There is a new book added to the google drive.

Aryathan Jiil Weapon Compendium.pdf

All weapons published for 3.0 (updated) and 3.5 with full text descriptions and I even added silhouettes of each weapon for a way to visually find the weapons quickly. And all are grouped into kinds of weapons, such as "Swords and Other Long-Bladed Weapons".

As with all of my other compilations, if you notice something is missing, please let me know so I can add it.