DnD and vore: It's been a fixture of this forum for a couple of years now, but so far it's all been of the 3.5 variety. I think it's time we see if we can get the excellent fourth edition to work for the same purposes. Combat in 4E is more complex and tactical, with a lot more doing stuff on other people's turns, so it'll be slightly more difficult than the 3.5 games to run in a forum.<br/><br/>In several of the older DnD games, each post tends to become a short story in and of itself. They've produced some fantastic roleplay, don't get me wrong, but it tends to ensure a slow pace when all players AND the DM feel obligated to put six paragraphs in every post. Ergo, in this game, particularly in combat, short posts that center around what actions you're going to take will always be acceptable and encouraged. Mechanically speaking, we're going to be starting at<span style="font-weight: bold">4th level, with standard gold</span>. Combat is, as always, easier to handle on a smaller scale, so it's not a problem if we only have two or three players to start with. If I want to have a suitably climactic battle, I can always even out the encounter with some NPC allies for the players (who are quite easy for me, as DM, to run, compared to a party with five or six PLAYER characters).<br/><br/>One element of previous DnD vore games that I'm going to be importing basically unchanged is<span style="font-style: italic">nutrions</span>, a special sort of magic item that is eaten and permanently becomes a part of one's body; on the bright side, they are impossible to lose, so long as you live, but the downside is that whoever eats you will gain their effects. Mechanically, nutrions are identical to magic items such as rings of protection, cloaks of charisma, or pretty much anything that's not a weapon, armor, or other item whose function depends on it being a physical object. Nutrions do not stack with normal magic items that occupy the same slot they usually would. You must choose for either the normal item or the nutrion to be active in any given encounter. The players can buy any eligible magic items from their starting gold as nutrions, and they will also be available for sale during the campaign (and, of course, through other means<img alt=":gulp:" src="./images/smilies/munch.gif" title="Eat!"/>)<br/><br/>Now, a note on one of the simplest ways to get the character you want in 4E: Reskinning. The books provide mechanically balanced classes and races. The thing is, you can describe those classes and races any way you want. Powers, weapons, magic items... as long as the mechanics don't change, the description can be anything that fits the setting. Therefore, there will be no custom races or classes in this campaign, although playable races from the monster manuals may be used with approval. For instance, Drow and Gnolls would be acceptable player races in this campaign.<br/><br/>At the outset, this game will be conceptually fairly simple; the players are the leaders of a small band of mercenaries in a lawless land who have been hired to take control of an economically important village from the petty tyrant who holds it, and to drive away the bandits who hunt the surrounding farms. Once the players are established, the plot will develop further.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">EDIT: Ignore these. The vore rules in the post following the demo-battle supercede these rules.</span></span><br/><br/><span style="text-decoration: line-through;"><span style="font-weight: bold">Vore rules</span>: the part you've been waiting for. By default, all races native to the eastern continent, including humans, tieflings, shifters, orcs and half orcs, gnolls, halflings, dragonborn and goliaths, in addition to dark elves and half-elves, are capable of vore. They can swallow a creature their own size and fully digest the resulting meal (though they can only process flesh, bone, and other organic matter: metal or stone resists). This game will be using a slightly harsher version of the 'stuffing penalty' from the other vore games: The penalty is -4 penalty to AC and your reflex defense, and an inability to take standard move or run actions in combat. A creature can digest his or her size category's worth of food in six hours, or three if resting. <br/><br/>As far as how you get them in your belly in the first place: much like many things in 4e, I've decided that vore works differently depending on the 'rank' of enemy. Minions make easy meals: if you make a melee attack against one and hit, you can automatically swallow them in a single action. This isn't necessarily a good tactic, though, since you're still stuffed afterwards, and minions only have a single hitpoint anyway. <br/><br/>Normal enemies are still reasonably simple to eat. You first need to successfully grapple them, then hit them with any melee power, either on the following turn or with an action point. Instead of doing standard damage, they are swallowed. Targets don't take any damage unless the pred takes an attack action to digest, which is an STR or CON attack vs. the prey's fortitude that does 1d8 plus Str or Con damage. The prey rolls STR or DEX attacks vs. the pred's fortitude to escape; if the pred used his/her last action to active digest, the prey takes a -2 penalty on this attack. If the prey escapes, they're still grappled and can't move away; the pred can try to swallow them again next round.<br/><br/>Elite enemies are more difficult, and can't be swallowed without softening them up a bit first; elite enemies can only be targeted with a swallow attack if they are bloodied. Solo enemies are so fierce that swallowing them in battle is almost impossible; the only way to devour a solo enemy alive is to beat them down to 0 hit points with subdual damage, then ingest them at your leisure.<br/><br/>One important thing to keep in mind is that grapping someone is a double-edged sword. If someone has been grappled, they can make a grapple attack of their own against the pred as a minor action. If this hits, the "prey" can attempt to swallow the would-be pred on the same round. More than one overeager predator's overeager charge has landed them in the stomach of their "target".<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">New rule on stuffing:</span> While fighting with a struggling belly can be very difficult, once they've gotten the prey 'settled in', moving and fighting gets much easier for the pred, even if they're still very stuffed. After the end of the encounter in which the prey was eaten, the stuffing penalties are reduced to a -1 penalty to AC and Reflex and a -1 penalty to movement speed.<br/><br/>Also, I think that these vore rules will give a decent balance between fighter-types and magic-user types. Although melee combatants will be better at vore and do more damage due to their better STR and CON, magic users and those who specialize in ranged attacks will be inconvenienced less by the loss of mobility that accompanies being stuffed.</span><br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">New section: Nutrions and nutriuum</span><br/><br/>Gaining nutrions is one of the many perks of vore. Nutrions 'spoil' almost immediately when a creature is killed; eating a dead creature does not give access to it's nutrions. The process of absorbing them only works if the prey is swallowed alive. Vore is, after all, a quasi-magical ability that bends the laws of physics and biology. The new nutrion only becomes available for use after digestion is complete (3 or 6 hours).<br/><br/>If the pred already has a nutrion in the 'slot' the new nutrion would normally take up, he/she must choose to either switch to the new one or keep the old one. You cannot keep an 'inventory' of nutrions, but if you gain a new one you don't want or switch out an old one, the discarded nutrion is converted into 'nutriuum' just like a normal magic item would be converted to residuum. Nutriuum can be used for all the same purposes as residuum, but is harder to transfer from one person to another, requiring a magic ritual. The upside is that it's harder to steal... of course, that also gives the would-be thief an incentive to eat you.<br/><br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Explicit content</span><br/><br/>Hard vore is out. For reasons the backstory will explain, it's very rare in the eastern continent. The prohibition is only on truly 'hard' vore, i.e. dismemberment and shredding. Drawn blood doesn't make it hard, necessarily. However, a certain amount of 'hard' detail in the digestion stage is acceptable. The 'setting default' type of vore is oral soft vore, though other types of soft vore aren't neccessarily prohibited, they shouldn't be predominant. Needless to say, there is, generally speaking, no 'reforming', and since the body is almost totally destroyed, most raise dead spells don't work.<br/><br/>On that note, the matter of scat content: some (including me) like it, others hate it. Many players and readers hate seeing it, so all explicit scat should be in spoiler tags. However, be warned that scat will occasionally be implied or referenced in un-spoilered dialogue.<br/><br/>Addendum: No underage characters, obviously. On that note, conventional sexual content will probably appear from time to time. It's hard to imagine who would be offended by that and not vore, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to have a disclaimer.<br/><br/><br/>Backstory and mythology coming in the next post.