How Dwarf Trees are used for Fairy Cities.

This was originaly a comment I left on Jason Bricks discussion about a fantasy version of Dwarf Trees.The basic premise is, what appears to be a small tree above ground is actually a huge underground tree.
I decided I would post one of my responses here as I find it interesting and wanted to save it, since I will likely use it in later campaigns.

You can view the original discussion here. Which contains more fun ideas about The Dwarf's Trees.


When dwarf trees ( or The Dwarf's Trees as some people call them) grow in a circle cultivated by fairies, the underground cone of wood that is formed becomes almost completely impenetrable due to their tough nature and the fairy magic.

One of the few ways into an underground fairy circle, which is alot like a tiny city, is to first destroy the magic of the above ground circle of foliage. Which can itself be very difficult. Its like taking on an ant colony of fairy folk.

The above ground circle may appear to be between 7 to 13 trees only 12 to 15 feet tall sometimes even appearing smaller like sprawling bushes of branches. But underneath is a cone of dwarf tree trunks going hundreds of feet down with the trees interlocking making it wider then a human house or even larger.

 It is unknown exactly how many fairy folk, gnomes or other of their kin can live inside an underground fairy circle. But it has been seen that over populated fairy cities sometimes hollow out old parts of the trunk and 15 foot thick branches to make room for more fairy residences.

Sometimes the mischief caused by such a fairy city stretches hundreds of miles away from the source.

Some fairy mounds, as the traditional fairy citys are called, is actually a circle of dwarf trees who's branches have been buried over and grass and flowers grown right on top disguising the circle as a knoll or foot hill.

This may be further evidence that dwarf trees may be able to survive without sun light.

Themed Dungeon Dressing

	Mine	Cave	Arcane	Ruins	Dungeon
Wood Door	Timber Supports Archway or just a wood door	Roots	Polished Maple Door	Planked Door	Wooden Portcullis
-- Locked	Door and Keyhole	Overgrown	Alarm Spell	Barred	Lever on other side
-- Stuck	Cave In	Petrified	Hold Portal Effect	Rusty Hinges	Rusty Gears
-- Trapped	Tripe Wire drops rocks	Pit	Animated	Spikes or Darts	Tile drops Portcullis on you
Iron Door	Vault Door	Boulder	Reinforced Oak Door	Sliding Hatch	Jail Door
-- Locked	Combination Lock	Cave In	Wizard Lock	Mechanical Lever	Key Hole
-- Stuck	Rusted Turn Crank	Jammed in place or Transmuted Stone	Open/Close effect Re-shuts door	Rusted Gears	Rusted in Place Could be bars or hinges
-- Trapped	Gas Trap	Slime	Spell such as Magic Missile Or Fireball	Animated Dead	Chute to another cell
Small Chamber	Alcove, Break room or storage area.	Partial Cavern	Sitting Room, Bedroom or closet	Partially collapsed room	Cell or break room
Medium Chamber	Ore deposit, Loading zone or barracks	Cavern or serious of Caverns	Library, arena, Master Bedroom, Dining Hall,  Treasure room,  or workshop such as Apothecaries or Artificers	Storage room or old room with decayed furniture maybe bugs rodents or bones	Torture Room, Barracks, cafeteria or waste/body disposal
Large Chamber	Cavern or Rail Station, With Support beams	Serious of caverns and drops offs or underground stream or lake possibly a lair for creatures or a large monster	Cafeteria, Menagerie,  Statue room, garden, Music Hall,	Series of rooms with collapsed walls, ancient temple or throne room,  crypt or burial chamber such as for mummification or ceremonies	Execution chamber or common room for many prisoners to be locked to benched or walls
Passage Way	Tunnels with or without rails usually with support possible natural caverns	Tunnels usually natural and varying heights and depths	Hallway, possibly with pillars or statues. Sometimes chairs and small tables.	Sometimes hallways other times just holes in the wall or crumbled rooms.	Cramped or dark halls torch scones maybe skulls
Archway	Timber Supports	An odd shaped passage or crawl way	Carved Archway of stone or fine maple usually with many patterns possibly faces	Collapsed door or wall, possible a ventilation shaft	Door frame or bars on both sides
Stairs	Dug steps or a rope ladder	Sudden cliffs or drop offs	Spiral stairs or an elevator system	Damage floors or ceilings, old stairs sometimes a sudden collapse or a pile or rumble to climb up or down	Stone stairs, possibly chutes or pits
Secret Door	Concealed or caved in	Strange twists and turns make a passage almost unnoticeable	Illusion or finely crafted secret door such as a sliding wall or rotating bookshelf	Collapsed wall covers a door or passage, or an old sliding door.	Usually concealed construction or masonry such as an emergency escape route or hidden armory.

D&D Next: Future of Edition Wars.

For Many people the ideas behind D&D Next were exciting and appeared to be a chance to bring together many different play types and maybe bring a change to the conflicting world of Dungeons and Dragons editions. Most of this however was based on various promises by the development team.

“We saw an audience that had been divided by differences in editions and play styles, and wanted to design a version of D&D that all players could experience and enjoy” ~Mearls

I have been following D&D next as closely as I could as soon as I heard about it. I have joined in on the play test, read the blogs, and filled out the surveys and polls. Here is my opinion of what is going on in D&D next.

Wizards of the Coast Spoke very highly of these three things; finding what was common in every edition, establishing a strong and simple core and then adding in modularity.

In my opinion they are not doing this at all. First I’ll start with an example of not doing what is common in every edition. In at least three versions of D&D skills were optional, you could play completely without out them, with the exception of the rouge/thief. Currently in D&D next every class gets skills, every background gets skills and there is a skills specialty.

However maybe you could just cut all that if you wanted, right? Well that brings me to my next point every melee class gets Expertise Dice and practily every class feature is depend on these Expertise Dice, so to cut them would be cutting everything they currently have for the Fighter, Rouge and Monk. What makes it even worse is the Rouge is touted as being different from the fighter because he has Skill Mastery. So now skills are being used to balance classes against each other.

Sure maybe you could cut skills from all classes except the rouge and let them have skill mastery. But then lets not forget a lot of the rouges skills are not just “Rouge Skills” it could be Knowledge or Profession or Track it’s basically a complete list of 3.x skills with specific stat dependencies.

Well lets move on.

So what about these expertise dice, don’t like them and now every melee class doesn’t have their class features. Maybe you could play with no class maneuvers. Lets see you could rework sneak attack as that is now a maneuver and then remake the entire monk class and be left with a fighter who has no ability to cleave or precise shot. But that’s ok right not every fighter has to have maneuvers right, surely they even have an option for that. Nope every fighter has Expertise Dice if you don’t like it then rework the system yourself. Many people on the forums just say “well assume you use deadly strike every time.”

So for a straight and simple melee attacking fighter your either juggling when and how to use these special dice or at least assuming your spending them on Deadly Strike so for damage you’d be rolling something like 1d10 + 1d4 + Your Strength. That’s not too bad but certainly doesn’t look like a common thread throughout editions or a strong simple core.

Maybe you disagree with me though, maybe you think skills are a common thread and the Expertise Dice are a new way of handling common abilities. So lets move on again.

How about a very common thing like flanking or surprise, well in D&D Next this would give you advantage so Roll 2d20 and take the highest…..? Seriously roll 2d20 is a core rule for flanking and such. In what edition was this common? How about if your in a situation that’s bad were you would normally get a penalty; roll 2d20 and take the lowest. So unless your combat has nothing interesting going on your more then likely rolling two dice to hit. Sure you could just ignore it but as it stands that’s a core rule and has been for multiple playtest packets. I have seen no evidence that it will be bumped to being an optional rule, so you can’t just assume that either.

There are many examples of things like this but I’m going to give just one more. As it stands every current clerical healing spell works at range of 50 feet away. So cure light wounds is not a touch spell it is a power word that lets you heal your ally 50 feet away and still lets you attack that turn. This is the default option.

I have not seen any of these presented as optional or modular or any discussion from the development team saying that this is not their strong simple core. I see no common, strong simple core, and very little modularity. Even their critical hits are strange.

Maybe we will get lucky and by the end of the play test they will have a core that shows the common threads and simplest forms of D&D with options to adjust it to be what you want to play. But as it sits it is nothing more then an entirely new edition for which people will Edition War about!

My best judgment tells me this new edition will do nothing more the splinter the player base even further. I could go on with reasons why but this post is long enough already.

I wish the Development Team luck and hope the playtest goes well.

Unfortunately my players no longer want to play test D&D Next as they don’t want to deal with a new game or edition with new rules. We will likely be playing other editions of D&D and/or our own games. You can expect some future posts about Adventures Dark and Deep as well as a few custom content posts.


P.S. If anyone is interested in play testing the new edition I strongly recommend it as the more people play testing and sharing their opinions then the more likely it will become what the community or a larger community wants.