Experimental XP system for D&D 5e

Here’s the proposed system:

Characters no longer receive XP points or Inspiration Points in the standard fashion.

At the start of a level, you receive a number of “Persona Points” equal to the level (so 1 at first level, 19 at 19^th). When you gain a new level, left over Persona Points are lost. You can spend Persona points like Inspiration Points. When you spend a Persona Point, you gain an Experience Point.

At the start of a session, each player (sans the GM) puts a fate token into a Fate Point pool. At any point in the session, you can take a point from the Fate Pool and use it like an Inspiration Point. Players can spend multiple Fate Points. Whenever a fate point is spent, all the other players (not including the player using the point) gain an Experience Point. You then pass the GM the Fate Point, and he can use it like an Inspiration Point for a villain or monster.

At the GM’s discretion – like a climactic battle or negotiation—the Fate Pool can be refilled, but it can never have more Fate points than there are players at the table (not characters in play, but actual players).

Players should record their XP on their character sheet and can note when they will gain levels using the following table:

Level	XP needed
1	0
2	5
3	11
4	22
5	40
6	57
7	75
8	94
9	120
10	145
11	171
12	198
13	232
14	265
15	299
16	334
17	374
18	415
19	457
20	500

Rationale:

A good experience system is vital to an RPG’s success. The most successful XP system is the one devised by Gary Gygax: you gain XP after defeating foes or challenges (or collecting treasure) and then level up on a chart. It is simple and effective. It encourages a kind of greed on the part of the player and provides an almost Pavlovian commitment to gaining levels.

As RPGs developed, new XP systems arose: BRPs use-of-skills system, which reached its apotheosis in Burning Wheel. The small points that you spend, common in games like Shadowrun or World of Darkness. Savage Worlds uses a similar small points, combined with an implied level chart (in fact, I think if Savage Worlds simply had a level table, it would be even more popular). The Cypher System rewards players for discovery, and for participating in the game well. The GM gives XP in game, and XP is a commodity that can be spent in game or saved for improvement.

Even more abstract, many gamers have discarded the awarding of XP for a “you level when needed” approach. I’ve been experimenting with this system over the last year. I made no major announcement to the players, it just occurred slowly as I forgot to award XP. I think this level of abstract leveling is interesting, as it allows the GM to control the challenge of the plot, and I suspect it occurred because the use of abstract level is a symptoms of a disconnection between plot and development of character. 

The major problem of all editions of D&D is a tendency to grind combat. This is most prominent in post-3e D&D. Paizo’s well-plotted Adventure Paths are great, but I think they suffer from the “grind” problem: in order to level the characters to match the plot, they have to engage in long, sometimes meaningless combats (the second adventure of the Age of Worms 3.5e Adventure Path is a textbook example).

As the post-3e era developed, the designers incorporated quest XP and skill challenges as a way to legitimate non-combat XP sources and allow the game to level faster. But the problem was they never gave enough XP to make them the center of the system, unless the GM modified the XP tables, which I did throughout 3^rd and 4^th edition.

However, there’s another dimension of D&D XP to be considered: it usually awards characters for doing things, but in all the small-point systems, or the “use-based” models, the player is one who’s rewarded. XP is for the player to spend, game, engineer and seek. In D&D, you only seek it as a contribution of the game – some players fixate on it—but you don’t participate in it. Games like Burning Wheel or Numenera actively have players giving away XP to other players, either at the end of a session or in play.

Likewise, the inspiration points of D&D (and the earlier non-D&D ideas of Willpower, Fate Points, Hero Points, Bennies, or Artha) are attempts to mitigate the problems of arbitrary dice and character-to-plot connections. They are a resource players draw on, but do not necessarily control, because the GM gatekeeps it. I’m bad at remembering to give out such points, because my GM style is either bad or ossified. But I think that the solution isn’t to give the GM more at-the-table work, I think the solution is to make the Players or the system itself the gatekeepers of XP.

So, we reorient the Inspiration Point system to be a static source and then we reward players for playing the game. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing with the points – fighting, sneaking, politicking, child-rearing, animal-taming, bird-watching—it only matter that they care enough about success or failure to use the points.

But the points can also be tied to the social contract of the table. So, persona points reward the player who uses them, but the fate points can be more eloquent: you draw from a common pool, reducing your party’s resources and empowering the GM, but you give everyone else XP. This means you want to spend the pool!

I’m going to pitch this to my D&D group and see if it works…Here’s a breakdown of the XP table. I’m assuming a 3-4 hour session. If you play longer sessions, maybe refresh the pool after that time has elapsed or a logical break point in your routine.

Level	Sessions	Fate	Persona	XP Needed	Total XP
1	0	0	0	0	0
2	1	4	1	5	5
3	1	4	2	6	11
4	2	8	3	11	22
5	3.5	14	4	18	40
6	3	12	5	17	57
7	3	12	6	18	75
8	3	12	7	19	94
9	4.5	18	8	26	120
10	4	16	9	25	145
11	4	16	10	26	171
12	4	16	11	27	198
13	5.5	22	12	34	232
14	5	20	13	33	265
15	5	20	14	34	299
16	5	20	15	35	334
17	6	24	16	40	374
18	6	24	17	41	415
19	6	24	18	42	457
20	6	24	19	43	500

In which I tell you about my setting...

When 5e was announced, I hummed-and-hawed about what kind of a setting to run it in. 

For 4e, I wiped the slate clean and ran a homebrew setting that fulfilled a few personal goals I had at the time. Those goals were to get away from feudal Europe as a default. I swapped feudal Europe for feudal China of the warring states period. It wasn’t a huge leap, but the Chinese cultural default worked great. This was arguably because 4e was essentially a Wuxia version of D&D.

I debated using that same setting, the Six Kingdoms, again for 5e, but encountered two stumbling blocks. The first was the amount of work I would have to either finesse the structure of the setting to fit 5e, or vice versa. Neither of those options really seemed like it did the setting or the game justice.

The other problem was one of the pay group. Two out of my seven players had played in the setting, and it felt like the prior campaign’s success would rear its head disruptively. It seemed better to let thos group build their own setting along with me and create their own narratives of success and failure.

So I wandered back to feudal Europe and doubled down on the medievalism of the setting. One Catholic Church which worships a dual set of deities, one male, one female. There are cults, knights’ orders, kings, merchants and a generalized lack of convenience.

My campaigns tend to wander into a tension between realpolitik and heroic-action adventure, which would be fine. I even know the endgame of the campaign, that is, I know roughly what levels 18-20 should look like. Everything else was loosely sketch, and the players have done a great job of adding to that sketch, providing me with strange holy relics, oaths to retake lost dwarven cities, and the curse of a dying dragon, to round things out.

I wanted the setting to be loaded with potential conflict. If much of D&D is set in a post-collapse setting, where there’s fallen kingdoms to discover, I wanted to have a setting which was in the process of collapsing. Evil is winning on all sides. There isn’t much of a place to call safe. To leave the borders of the main human kingdom is to risk life-and-limb or mind-and-soul.

Here’s the elevator pitch for the setting, The Dying Lands:

It is a dark time for the realm. The king is slain, fallen in battle. The king is but a child. The regent is strong, one of our best men, but the barons of the land have fallen into squabbling and sword-rattling.

The darkness they say began at the edges of the world has encircled us. Kingdom after kingdom has fallen to its forces.

The lands of the elves and gnomes were consumed by the Empire of the Red Moon, their blood drained and their forests and barrows unhallowed. Now undying lords and their skeletal armies stalk our eastern border.

The great Northern fortresses of the dwarves were broken by the hordes of the mountains and now their great forges lie cold while their treasure halls seethe with the twisted hatred of the Orc and Goblin.

The Southern lands of the Zala and the dragonborn have been slowly consumed by the swamps of the Oligarchy. Ancient towers crumble as the scaled worshipers of the Unclean Gods flay themselves and commit blood sacrifices to the sun.

The trees and vales of the halflings have been scorched and burned, turned to the Charnel Wood, where demon lords rule from a great unholy throne. Only a few, scattered fey linger at the edges of what was once a fair and peaceable land, but they are shrunken and terrible things, tainted by the ash which they eat.

This is a dark time indeed. We face the darkness without, but I fear there is a darkness within.

Animal NPCs and Traits

Each animal that you train is essentially an NPC. You should name it, and probably record its stats. A Beastmaster Ranger should be able to take advantage of these rules, adding a trait to their companion and, if the DM allows it, adding an advanced training ability to their companion.

Not every animal players owe or use are necessarily NPC-level. If a horse, dog, cat, familiar, or similar creature is regularly part of the adventure and important on some level to the continuity of the game, then you should name them and make them an NPC animal. An NPC animal tracks its levels, which starts at level 1. 

At first level, an Animal NPC has the Trained trait plus one additional trait. Each session of downtime allows you to train your animal with your Wisdom (Animal Handling) or you can pay a trainer 50 gp per level to train for you.

Every increase in level allows you to choose an Animal Feat for your animal NPC.

TRAITS

Loyal: The creature is immune to fear effects in your presence.

Fearsome: The creature gains advantage on all Intimidation checks.

Mangled and Mangy: The creature is a bit slow, -5 move, but tough, +1d6 Hit Points.

Loveable: The beast gains advantage on all Persuasion checks.

Hardy: Add 2 to the beasts Con.

Fast: Add 10 to the creatures move.

Sturdy: The beast is slow, -10 move, but strong +1 Str, and tough, +1 AC

Trained: The animal can be called, responding to an audible signal. The animal is not hostile around your friends and treats strangers with caution, but is not violent.

Aggressive: The beast has advantage on Initiative checks. You can have the creature roll initiative instead of your character, but it must take the action on the first round.

Attentive: The beast has advantage on surprise and perception checks.

Weird: You may roll on the following table. A weird beast is difficult to train (disadvantage on all training rolls) but it has a special power.

D6	Result
1 Bit of Blink Dog in her	The animal has the Blink Dog’s teleport ability.
2 Displacer beast blood	The animal has the Displacer Beast’s displacement ability.
3 Speaks	The animal can speak 1d3 languages, plus one language your character does not know.
4 Telepath	The animal is telepathic within 60 feet.
5 Undead	The animal is a zombie. It gains the Undead Fortitude ability, but it is also rotting.
6 Berserker	The animal can use the Barbarian’s rage ability once per long rest. It rages as a first level Barbarian.

Blessed: You may roll on the following table. A blessed beast is rare, but has special powers. However, it cannot hide from undead or fiends, who detect its nature.

D6	Result
1 Healing presence	The animal can heal its owner of 2d6 damage during a short or long rest.
2 Singing voice	The animal can speak and sing; it us proficient in the Perform skill.
3 Angelic might	The animal can cast Smite Evil 1/long rest.
4 Tireless	The animal cannot become exhausted.
5 Winged	The animal has wings, and can fly at its base move.
6 Angel eyes	The animal can see lies, as per the Zone of Truth spell.

Cursed: You may roll on the following table. A cursed beast is rare, and has strange, possibly evil powers. The beast cannot hide from angels or Paladins.

D6	Result
1 Haunted by ghosts	A ghost haunts the beast.
2 Fiend in animal form	The animal is a fiend, and cast hellish rebuke once per long rest. Hell hath no fury like a fiend released from a curse.
3 Blood-drinker	The beast is vampiric. It gain the Vampire’s blood drain ability.
4 Cursed Lover	The animal is actually a PCs former or current love, transformed by a foe/evil entity into an animal.
5 Witch blood	The animal curdles milk, rots food, and scares livestock. But it has a hidden nipple. If you drink it’s milk, the owner gains 2d6 temporary hit points until their next long rest.
6 Old Familiar	The animal use to be or is a reincarnation of a wizards familiar. It can speak, knows one cantrip, but constantly compares you to his former, much grander master.

ANIMAL FEATS

You may choose one of these feats every time your animal levels. 

Advanced Training

You can choose an advanced pet ability for your animal.

Experienced

Your animal increases its proficiency bonus, affecting its attacks and skill checks. You can take this feat up to 4 times.

Toughness

You animal gains a hit die and you should roll hit points.

Additional Trait

Your animal NPC gains another trait. Please discuss this trait choice with your DM, as some choice may not work with the current game.

ADVANCED PET ABILITIES

You can train your animal in the following abilities.

Guard: The animal actively protects you. If you are attacked in melee by an opponent, the animal can take an opportunity attack.

Reactive Charge: IF you are charged by a foe, your animal will intercept the foe. It interposes itself between you and the foe as a bonus action.

Harry: The animal will make quick attacks at a foe and then retreat. Each other round in combat, the animal makes an attack on a foe without drawing opportunity attacks.

Protect area: Your animal will watch over an area and alert its owner to strangers, odd noises, and supernatural events.

Fetch: Your animal will fetch an object. This requires verbal instruction.

Read: Your animal can read. (This may not suit all animals...great for familiars though.)

Track: Your animal can track foes using their Wisdom bonus.

Search: Your animal is able to search an area for hidden objects, secret doors, and invisible foes. The search is Wisdom-based.

Silent Commands: You can give your animal commands through hand gestures.

Mounted Attack: Your steed attacks on foes in battle. You gain advantage on mounted attacks. 

Leaping Charge: The animal can leap over terrain or pounce. The animal can move through difficult terrain as normal if attacking and it and its rider gain advantage on the attack.

Quick move: The animal is able to move through any space of a creature larger than them; this does not draw attacks of opportunity. If the animal moves twice in a turn, its movement does not draw opportunity attacks.

Beast of War: Warhorses and the like remain steady in battle. The animal has advantage on fear-based tests and does not flee if injured.

Pathfinder: the animal can move through difficult terrain as though it was normal.

Straight Jump: the animal can leap straight up and over foes, with a successful Strength test. 

Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition (a run review)

Dungeons and Dragons is a game with baggage. As the earliest major/popular example of a role-playing game is casts a long the over genre. It is the money-maker (however small the pie actually is), and its influence is fairly ubiquitous thanks to video games. The concepts of cooperative play and continuous character improvement are two of the most important innovations in game history. Arguably the success of collectible card games, non-historical war games, and the current tabletop board game phenomenon all owe a debt to D&D.

All this is meant to say one shouldn’t review D&D lightly. Each edition has been met with the gnashing of teeth and the grinding of axes. My thinking is that you should reserve judgement until you’ve given the new system a descent workout, perhaps a year or so. This is what I did with 4e, and while I eventually soured on it in 2010, it did provide the backbone for a very enjoyable 2 year, 5 month campaign which is among the more memorable I’ve run. This review is essentially a DM’s review. I have not played 5e, but I have run it.

By way of background: I started playing D&D in 1988, after some proto-rpg experiences, and then moved on the AD&D, mostly a mix of whatever 1e and 2e material we had, along with some BEMCI material. I played a lot of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and then played 2e through the late 90s until 3e came along in 2000. I ran a lot (and played a little) 3^rd edition. From 2000 to 2006, it was essentially the only game played weekly. Gaming was a bit sporadic in 2006, but again, 3.5 was the game. Like I mentioned above, I felt it necessary to give 4e an honest try, and ran it from 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2014, I ran a mix of different games, including 3.5 and Pathfinder, until 5e came out in 2014.

My group and I have had two 5e campaigns: the first was a play through of the starter set and its adventure “The Lost Mine of Phandelver” (silly name though). Then we switch to a homebrew setting and we’ve been happily playing along a developing series of stories. So far the players are at 6-7 level, and so I won’t be commenting on high level situations until I get there.

My Review of 5e: Fifth edition is a very good game, four stars.  

That’s really the summation of a year of play.

The best parts

Like 4e, 5e is easy to run. There’s less rulebook review than the first 3 editions, DCs are broadly easier to set. The whole “bounded accuracy” idea, which just creates a game with lower numbers of math is great. The game is robust and fun to play while reducing the prevalence of magic items and returning to an ethic of homebrewed ideas and DM interpretation.

The art is more inclusive, and generally well done. The cover on the Monster Manual is great. I’m glad to see artists other than Wayne Reynolds gracing the covers of a major fantasy game. I’ve enjoyed many of his covers, and I think his work on the Eberron books was genius, but he’s gotten a bit omnipresent and the choice of different artists is to be commended. The humorous doodles in the indexes and appendices are wonderful and a welcome change from the seriousness of 4e.

The classes are interesting, but as I’m not playing them, I can’t comment on them too much. I will say that I’ve liked the way characters have leveled. The PHB follows the same pattern as all the PHBs have. The backgrounds are really well done and fun. Character creation is simple and fast. Levels 1 to 3 are fragile and dynamic. Characters between 4 and 7^th level feel hardened and defined. The spell system is good and flexible enough. The majority of classes are interesting from a story perspective. We’ve had multiple fighters, a rogue, barbarians, wizards, a monk, a paladin, a druid in the party and each one has had good hooks to present a game.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide is very good. For a new DM, it offers strong advice and practical tools. The magical items are gold and loads of fun. The treasure tables are awesome. If anything, this stands out as the best contemporary DMG. The 1e DMG is eccentric and inspirational, and the 3e (not the 3.5) DMG was brilliant. All the other DMGs have been lacklustre and unappealing to me. This book provides ideas for an experienced DM and makes prep light.

The Starter Set is great. It’s cheaper than other “starters” and while it lacks the same production quality and goodies of other games starter kits, the content is solid. The adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” is a great adventure, especially for new DMs. We had fun playing it and I thought it developed very well.

The legendary monsters are fun and a good mechanical solution to the problem of outnumbered big villains. I do miss the “elite” monsters of 4e though. 

What’s bad

The cover of the PHB is another bad cover. We haven’t had a good cover on the PHB since 1e, although the unified codex appearance of 3e/3.5e gives that edition a pass. I don’t know why it’s so hard to commission a painting that is clearly dynamic and shows the player characters doing what they do in the game. Also, I'm rather bored with the "plotting/threatening monster/wizard" on the DMG cover. 

Here's a much better image for a DMG: 

It's dynamic and properly reflects the DM's responsibilities to create fun and challenge. 

In all fairness, Paizo’s Pathfinder books demonstrate a much better approach to art, but in all honesty, the graphic designers of 3e were probably on to something with the unified codex appearance of the books. 

The encounter design system is interesting, but needlessly math-heavy and not really effective. 4e did this better and maybe Pathfinder does, too.  The encounter design is so unwieldy, it seems odd, mostly because my biggest “mechanical” gripe with 5e is that it seems adverse to procedural rules, except in adventure design. Many smaller press games, I’m thinking of Burning Wheel games, or Dungeon World, use procedure very well, and I think the downtime rules are a major missed opportunity for adding a bit of procedural clarity to the player’s side of the game, while the DM is burdened with poor encounter design advice. I'm now building encounters like I did in 2e and 3e. 

The inspiration rules are interesting, and provide a way for player’s to manipulate the game a bit, but they aren’t well integrated to the play style of D&D. Games like Fate and Numenera add these features by making them integral, but with D&D, it seems like I’m having to remember the rules even exist. This is possibly a behavioral flaw on my part – two plus decades of habit is difficult to overcome. But, on the other hand, D&D has an established moment in which PCs are rewarded: the procedural moment at the end of the session when XP is handled. I think I'll be houseruling an inspiration procedure similar to Burning Wheel's end of session Artha recounting.  

The Monster Manual is a real mixed bag. Yes, the quality of production is fine and the monsters well-chosen and diverse, but there’s two big problems:

One, the art lacks a sense of presence. Monsters are presented is good written detail, but the visual images place the creatures against a smoky parchment background and there is little sense of motion or intent to the art. Even more maddening is the lack of scale in most pictures. There are images that look small and others that look huge, but the images convey incorrect impressions of the monsters. It’s too bad the art doesn’t show the monster doing something, or including some element for scale.

Two, the monster design is boring. Compared to the 4e Monster Manual, 5e feels like a step backwards, and not in a good way. Most monsters are simply a melee attack and a multi-attack. There’s not much interesting about the creatures and a DM will have to work to make the majority of encounters interesting. Encounters can become static 2e slugfests if things go badly or the DM and players are having off nights. There’s also a lack of depth in the NPCs presented in the back. Many of them are great, but there needed to be clear analogues to the PC classes – there’s no ninja/monk, no wizard, no barbarian analogue for me to just drop into a session. 

While the Monster Manual is a necessary book and the writing is good, the mechanics are a big let-down. The DMG and PHB are full of creative and sometimes imaginative mechanics, but the MM seems oddly devoid of those elements. Given that it is a book of monsters, that’s kind of unforgivable.

The Tiresome parts

Skills are still floating about, and I’m not sure why…Non-weapon Proficiencies would add a bonus in the same way as skills, and so I’m not sure why we’ve kept skills about, especially as everything is supposedly an ability check. So long as you’re including “skills” players will think of them as “skills” and not “proficiencies” and there’ll be a level of dissonance at the table. Either use skills or ditch ‘em, I say.

I’m not really enamored with the large format used by RPG publishers. In fact, I find the standard 8.5x11 book a lazy and unappealing default. Every game book I own that isn’t that size reminds me of how much I don’t like reading these unwieldy tomes. Also, why aren’t the booklets in the Starter Set perfect bound? The reuse value of the booklets is pretty limited as they get bent and torn easily.

The sorcerer is largely undefined and limited in interest.

The warlock is not bad, but always feels boring. I see how its different magic provides a different play experience, but the whole “deal with otherworldly power” doesn’t really do much other than force the character and DM into a Faust story. Any class should be able to do this (and yes, I know you can multi-class), and spell casters should be able to do so as a matter of story, not a mechanical class requirement. Overall, the warlock is a disappointing class to me, both in narrative and mechanical terms. The mechanic could have been folded into the sorcerer class and the room used to provide another nature-based class, like the 4e Warden, which was a great idea all around, or a psychic/divine class, akin to a mentalist or mystic.

Overall, in play I’d give 4 stars overall to fifth edition. It is a very good, fun, but somewhat expensive RPG.

If pressed, I’d give the following stars to the main products:

Starter Set: 4.5 stars

Player’s Handbook: 4 stars

Dungeon Master’s Guide: 4.5 stars

Monster Manual: 3 stars

The Ironforged

Apprentice’s Corner #3

I’ve been working on a setting for 5^th ed: the Torn Worlds. The torn worlds is, well, a torn world. It’s based around a multiverse-wide war between seven armies: the Iron Legion, the Fey, the Abyssal Army, the Celestials, the Savages, the Undead Horde, and the Monstrosities.

The Torn Worlds: Player Options

Here is a take on the soldiers of the Iron Legion:

Ironforged

The bulk of the Iron Legion, fighting alongside golems and massive siege engines, the Ironforged are metal men capable of attaching weapons and specialized objects to enhance their abilities.

All Ironforged have these traits:

Ability score increase- all your abilities except one based on your subrace increase by one.

Age- Ironforged do not age, and that concept is unknown to the Iron Legion.

Alignment- all Ironforged are neutral, but not always true neutral.

Size- all Ironforged are exactly six feet tall; your size is medium.

Darkvision- all Ironforged can see in dim light out to 60 feet and in darkness up to 30 feet.

Construct- Ironforged are immune to disease and poison, are immune to being charmed, frightened, and exhaustion, and do not need air, food, drink, or rest. If a Ironforged takes cold damage its speed is reduced by 5 feet for 1 round.

Fueled- once every 3 days a Ironforged must take a long rest, except you are fully aware. If you do not, your speed is halved and you have disadvantage on attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws until you do.

Metal Body- you have +4 natural armor (unless you’re a Ironforged Heavy). You also cannot wear or Fuse mundane armor and can only use magic armor if it is Fused.

Fusion- Ironforged can fuse items to themselves. It takes one minute to fuse a weapon or tool, five for a magic item or Enhancer, and 10 for an artifact. While a weapon is fused you cannot be disarmed, and with a magic item or artifact you are automatically attuned to it regardless of prerequisites.

Subrace

you must choose a subrace to represent your role in the Legion.

Ironforged Commando- You have +2 Dex, you’re trained in Dex saves, you can choose to automatically succeed on a Dex-related save or check (you can only use this once per day), and your speed is 40 feet

Ironforged Heavy- You have +8 total natural armor, cannot be knocked prone, and shields give you twice the AC bonus, and your speed is 30 feet

Ironforged Juggernaut- You have +2 Con, +6 total natural armor, you’re trained in Con saves, you regenerate HP equal to ½ (minimum 1) your level per round at the beginning of your turn, and your speed is 30 feet

Ironforged Brute- You have +2 Str, you’re trained in Str saves, your bludgeoning attacks have knockback 5 feet (DC= 9+ proficiency bonus+ Str modifier), and your speed is 35 feet

Ironforged Tactician- You have +2 Int, your trained in Int saves, once per day you can identify if the odds of success in combat or on a saving throw (DC 16+ is not in your favor) are in your favor or not, and your speed is 35 feet

Editor's Note: This is a bit overpowered, we suspect. Apparently other races get extra goodies too. Who knows. Use with caution, nerfing, or abandon.