Wuxia / Oriental Adventures Archives - Tribality

Tribality Publishing – Ki Unleashed

Brandes Stoddard — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 15:27:08 +0000

The Myriad Pathways of Ki We have a new publication on DriveThruRPG today. This is the fourteenth product we have released: Ki Unleashed, written by Brandes Stoddard. Ki is so much more than a monk’s personal reservoir of power. Its nature defies definition and comprehension. For some, it reconnects the dead with the living. Others use it to armor themselves against the powers of dream and nightmare or emulate the instinct and ferocity of wild animals. The monastic traditions herein describe […]

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The Fighter Class, Part Nine

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 12:00:37 +0000

As I write this, my younger son has gone to his first day of preschool. Friends, this is an exciting day – the most important milestone of my life as a stay-at-home dad until my older son can safely handle a lawnmower. Sure, I said I’d be reviewing an adventure this week, but I changed my mind when faced with more writing time. Instead, I’m covering the Book of Nine Swords, which may be the most anticipated entry in the […]

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The Fighter Class, Part Six

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 13:00:31 +0000

I’m mostly over my cold, even if the rest of my family is still under the weather. Today, I’m pressing on toward the samurai classes of 3.x, found in 3.0’s Oriental Adventures and 3.5’s Complete Warrior. I’ll probably work in a few other things along the way. Now, if you’re thinking, “but isn’t this just the fighter class?” then… Oriental Adventures has no particular contributions to offer fighters. The mechanical differences are one new option for your bonus fighter feats, […]

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The Fighter Class, Part Three

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 12:00:49 +0000

By reader request, I’m returning to AD&D 1e to cover the three fighter-like classes in Oriental Adventures. The bushi, kensai, and samurai are similar enough that 5e would probably present the bushi and samurai as the same subclass with two different backgrounds, while as we know the kensai is now firmly lodged as a subclass of monk. In 1e, which has neither subclasses nor kits, all of these differences go into the same “character class” container. OA does also introduce more ways to talk about personal background and social class, though.

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The Monk Class, Part Eight

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 12:00:36 +0000

At a reader’s request, I’m going back to the 3.0 Oriental Adventures and covering the monk prestige classes found there. In this series’ broader conversation on monks, this and the 1e Oriental Adventures are our only examples of settings that explicitly do suit monks, without even a whiff of Eurocentrism. Because it embraces Rokugan, OA and its monks lean heavily toward mythic Japan rather than mythic China or India.

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The Monk Class, Part Two

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 15:50:24 +0000

Another Monday without a UA article, so another Thursday with a new History of the Classes article: to every cloud, its silver lining. (Just a few hours late; I have a pretty unforgiving head cold.) Today I’m tackling one of the most tangled steps in the monk’s development, otherwise known as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (First Edition). As a reader kindly pointed out in the comments of last week’s article, there are three monks in 1e: the Player’s Handbook, a variant in Dragon Magazine #53, and finally Oriental Adventures. In terms of development over time, keep in mind that the 1e PH came before Mentzer’s BECMI, and BECMI was the source text for the Rules Cyclopedia, so it’s logical that the Mystic in last week’s article shows more development than what you’ll see here.

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Unearthed Arcana: Monastic Traditions Breakdown

Brandes Stoddard — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 05:47:13 +0000

This week’s Unearthed Arcana is another of the less-represented classes, in terms of quantity of archetypes: the monk. Admittedly, the Way of the Four Elements monk has a lot of internal customization, so it could be a ton of different things. The new Monastic Traditions are the Way of the Kensei and the Way of Tranquility, which are about as opposite in concept as they could be. As part of this, I want to talk about the challenges of playing […]

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Oriental Adventures – Ninja

Michael Long — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 14:00:30 +0000

Since I first put together a Ninja build last year, I’ve done some formatting changes with how I present characters on Tribality. So going back I wanted to reformat the Ninja and with this layout, the Ninja can be used to play at the table listing all of the actions that can be made during combat. I didn’t want to make a complete rehash, so I went ahead and leveled up the Rogue to 5th level. I also found some […]

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Deities & Demigods – Part 2

Michael Long — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:00:46 +0000

Last week, I put together the stats for the demigod Hachiman from the Japanese Mythos found in the 1980 Deities & Demigods. A lot of people asked me to continue, and so I am putting together a trinity of Shinto gods; Amaterasu-ōmikami, Susanowo-no-Mikoto, & Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto from the Japanese Mythos. These three are all siblings and children of Izanagi-no-Okami. So here is the first of the Trinity, Amaterasu. She happens to be one of the most powerful Gods in the Mythos: […]

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Deities & Demigods – Part 1

Michael Long — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 18:28:08 +0000

I have been reading through my library of old D&D books for some campaign ideas. I stumbled across Deities & Demigods, and pulled it out and sat back and began to flip through it. I really like the original AD&D book because of the history, the artwork, and detail about the characters behind each of the Mythos (Plus I have a lot of memories from reading this 35 year old book.) What really caught my eye are the character stats […]

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