Lairs & Encounters Sneak Preview Errata

Skimmed the draft sent to backers today, found the following:

Rock baboons lair description, only “babo” is bold, missing the ons

Polar bear: “Characters clambering into the hole crawl will discover a 10’ long tunnel” Is crawl a verb or a noun here?

Blink dog: “The pack leader is well aware of how valuable his offspring is” offspring are?

Blood hound: “mentioned frequently for his dark and abominable deed in local folklore” deeds?

Cat, Panther: “but for now they remain a fiercely loyal kin-grip” kin group?

Cat, Sabre-Toothed: “Adventurers who bypass the den without taking appropriate precautions to mask their travels may marked by the troop leader as potential prey” → may be marked

Centipede, Giant: “while their legs and mandibles are worth 3gp each as special components” Presumably per centipede and not per leg? :stuck_out_tongue:

Chimera: “The chimera themselves” Previously chimera has been pluralized as chimeras

Child of Nasga: “The floor of the gallery is cracked with age and vines grown from the cracks in many places” Vines grow?

Got bored at cockatrice, started skimming faster.

Faravahar, weren’t satrapis the domains of satraps? Use of satrapi as a title is somewhat confusing.

Monsters don’t get Wisdom? Even just as a bonus to saves against spells?

In the beastman components table, “Bubear, dire”

Dao component spells, “invisible” should be invisibility?

Flay fiend component spells, why parenthesized?
Vampire components spells, “torpor (blood)” ?
Carcass scavenger component spells, “swift strike” → swift sword?

Sidebar on square-cube law, “A giant tarantula’s weighs 500lbs” → giant tarantula weighs

Sample monster creation, “With a weight of 1,380lbs., the double-headed eagle is a With a weight of 1,380lbs, the double-headed eagle falls within the Large size category”

“As creatures of elemental earth, Dao are very strong” Capitalization of Dao inconsistent with previous paragraphs

Dire orc description, “Each gang encountered has a 10% chance to be mounted on on giant boar.” double-on

Dire ogre description, “There is a 75% chance thata dire ogre camp” → that a

Hyena header, “Hyena, Giant (Hyaenodon” is missing close-paren

Khepri description, “the dominant race in Aurëpos in era before man” an era before man?

“from time to time hapless adventurers will stumble upon on of the ancient vaults” upon one of

Kraken description, “Kraken able to swallow whole creatures of man size or smaller” are able

Leyak description, “This affect passes if the leyak leaves the victims range of vision, or if the leyak engages in combat.” victim’s, effect?

Zaharan description, “slaves sorcererously bred” sorcerously

jedavis, regarding your last point I think you are correct, but it could be interpreted in an extra creepy way if they actually were bred with sorcerers in some kind of bizarre eugenics program instead of just with the assistance of magic. I can imagine adventurers kicking in a door and coming across such an act in progress, and just deciding to back away, close the door and go home.

maybe set the complex on fire on the way out.

Eh… my mental model of my players predicts a joking, “Hey, you need any help with that wink?” followed by “Hooray, backstabs for everyone while they’re out of their armor!” Maybe even a “beast with two backstabs” joke.

Clarificaiton on the Dire Orc: Is it each gang is mounted on a dire boar, or each member of the gang has their own boar? Are there five orcs riding a boar like a tandem bike?

 

Re: Sorcerous Sphere: My players are just going to call it the Behander. 

 

 

Maybe they've got sidecars on the boars? I think that calls for a new D@W unit type.

Behander: Nice.

Sounds like a chariot variant to me.

Here’s my list of things I noticed while reading through. (I removed the ones that were doubled with Jedavis’ list.) Not all of them are necessarily errors, some are just thoughts I had!

page 15: Cat, Saber-Tooth Tiger says “the other’s tusks are worth 4 gp each (18 gp total)”. There are 3 other tigers, so at 4 each, this should be 12 total.

page 21: Dog, Hunting has the value of a pup listed in copper pieces. Although the price is accurate, this seems odd (probably done to keep from having to include a decimal, but it seems like it might be confusing since I didn’t notice any other animal with a price listed in cp).

page 23: Dragon, Brown; while discussing how likely he is to be asleep, Kirashi is referred to as Kathus.

page 27: Dragon, White; Namazu’s meager hoard has two units of silver listed (200 sp and 750 sp).

page 35: Faravahar; When talking about turning undead, “earning a T result of a roll is normally required”, of should be if.

page 36: Faravahar; Phyladia has a 6th level spell slot, but no 6th level spells in her repertoire.

page 42: Storm Giant; The solitary storm giant doesn’t have a name, unlike most other important or interesting creatures (especially Lawful ones).

page 45: Gnome; In the Gnomish Arbalestier description, Explorer is typod (Exploer). I also note that Qyra’s AC of 10 is potentially confusing, since that’s her AC with shield, but she is more iconically using her arbalest.

page 45: Goblin; Xathrites’ spell repertoire lists magical missile instead of magic missile.

page 48: Grimlock; the grimlock witch doctor’s repertoire lists choking grasp instead of choking grip.

page 49-50: Hag: The hag lair description and mini stat blocks never explicitly mention that their caster level equals their HD. In addition, their repertoires all list 2nd in place of 5th (counting up 1, 2, 3, 4, 2).

page 56: Khepri; “may assume that weak or suppliant adventurers…” probably means ‘supplicant’.

page 63: Lizardman: Bottom paragraph starts “Sum’iddin has been experimenting with shamanic alchemy…” which would be terrifying if true! I think more likely though that Azriyaho, the tribe’s shaman, has been experimenting.

page 66: Lycanthrope, Werewolf; last paragraph says that they have five sacks of 5,000 SP totaling 30,000 SP. Either this should be six sacks, or only 25,000 SP.

page 72: Man, Pirate; in the description of Doukasi and Magosi, their class is listed as barnarian instead of barbarian.

page 75: Man, Mages; “The map leads to an ancient calender inlayed with jade”; inlayed should be inlaid.

page 89: Phase Tiger; is referred to as a displacer beast when talking about its pelt.

page 94: Sorcerous Sphere; last paragraph beginning “One of its tentacles” should be “On one of its tentacles”.

page 105: Wraith; the note about extra treasure refers to the current lair as the shadow lair.

page 107: Bottom of the page, “maximum load is adjusted by its STR modifier x (normal load/5).,” has an extra period in there.

page 111: First example, last sentence; “of the panther” should be “if the panther”.

page 112: “Baby monsters are two size categories small than” should be “smaller than”.

Notes on coloration in tables. I’m not sure if these are intentional or not (if it were me, it seems like something I’d do to remind myself to check these out again later), but I figured I’d mention them in case they were not.
page 122: The hyena’s trained value, adult value, child value, and baby value are in red.

page 124: The hag’s weight, size, and normal load are in red.

page 125: The Sea Serpent’s child value and baby value, along with the Skittering Maw’s baby value, are purple.

page 136: Last sentence, fourth paragraph: “This is why divine power why XP value…” has some extra sentence in there.

page 138: Bronze and iron golems can be used as a special component for +4 weapons; is this a typo or an intentional expansion for future mention? (ACKS Core only gives prices for +3 weapons, and doesn’t have an explicit formula for +X, although it does seem pretty easy to just say ‘take a +3 weapon and add 40k to the price’).

page 139: Storm Giant components list “lightning bold” instead of “lightning bolt”.

page 140: Greater Hell Hound spell listing seems to be missing a line break. Hippogriff spell listing “eyes of eagle” should be “eyes of the eagle”.

page 141: Dragon table, in the special abilities section, tail bone lists giant strength [tail bone] instead of listing which ability allows the tail bone to be usable for giant strength.

page 143: Flay Fiend seems to still have placeholder spells, with a description of which spells should go there instead of specific spells. (Personally, I like choking grip and uncanny gyration for them, because their movement method seems like a pretty uncanny gyrate to me.)

page 150: Man-Sized is listed twice, in the smallest and second-smallest size categories. I’m not actually sure if this is an error, but it’s confusing.

page 153: The text says that minor abilities are worth one-eighth a special ability, then says to divide them by 4 to calculate specials. The lamia example divides by 8. Then later, on page 163 during the double-headed eagle creation, it says that “but since two such abilities were rolled, they count as one *”. (Since flying and double attack are each two minor abilities, this is consistent with dividing by 4.)

page 155: Spellcasting; says the monster “my” cast spells instead of “may”.

page 183: Sixth paragraph (third from the bottom) refers to hero points instead of hit points.

page 189: Second paragraph, last sentence, “shores” has a space inside it.

I assumed the golems-for-+4-weapons thing was intentional and correct, because it seemed awesome. You’re probably right, though.

p.74 (Men NPC Mages): Name switches between "Ambros" and "Ambrose" throughout the text.

Thanks for the edits!

page 56: Khepri; "may assume that weak or suppliant adventurers..." probably means 'supplicant'.

Suppliant is an adjective meaning "humbly entreating". https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/suppliant

page 138: Bronze and iron golems can be used as a special component for +4 weapons

It's intentional. There are already +4 and higher weapons in ACKS - the frost brand, for instance, is +6 and would have to be priced accordingly. "If the weapon or armor has a bonus that is restricted to a particular class or type of opponents, the extra bonus is half price."

page 150: Man-Sized is listed twice, in the smallest and second-smallest size categories. I'm not actually sure if this is an error, but it's confusing.

I never created size categories smaller than Man-Sized. I'll just list it as Small. 

page 153: The text says that minor abilities are worth one-eighth a special ability, then says to divide them by 4 to calculate specials. The lamia example divides by 8. Then later, on page 163 during the double-headed eagle creation, it says that "but since two such abilities were rolled, they count as one *". (Since flying and double attack are each two minor abilities, this is consistent with dividing by 4.)

Great catch, thank you. The correct divisor is by 8. Originally I used a simple system where 2 minor abilities = one major ability, but over successive iterations of development it became clear this was not granular enough. Eventually I concluded that some minor abilities were worth as little as 1/8th a major ability. The double-headed eagle's write-up was from a draft when 2 minor abilities = 1 major ability, while the references to dividing by 4 were from a draft when 4 minor abilities = 1 major ability. When I updated the draft to set 8 minor abilities = 1 major ability, most of the existing minor abilities were updated to be worth 2 # each at that time. Sorry for the confusion, but glad you caught the error!

page 189: Second paragraph, last sentence, "shores" has a space inside it.

Couldn't find this error. Might already be fixed.

Thank you! It's Ambros.

Thanks for the comments!

Monsters don't get Wisdom? Even just as a bonus to saves against spells?

Why do you think monsters don't get wisdom?

Its one orc per boar.

Its one orc per boar.

In the description of effects of ability scores on monsters, I only see entries for Strength (with accompanying table), Intelligence (with paragraphs on trainability), and then it skips straight to Dex for movement, with Con and Cha following and Wisdom nowhere to be found. I suppose it falls entirely under the “bonus or penalty is identical to that for human and demi-human characters”, and therefore did not receive an entry?

Neat, I learned a new word today!

(Also did not realize that you’d need special components for the total plus, instead of for the highest plus or for each individual plus. That makes it much harder to make a flame tongue or frost brand than I had realized!)

Right.

You should also do a find replace on "snack charm" -> "snake charm"

(Unless there's a new snack-related spell somewhere that I haven't seen yet.)

Snack Charm: Gives a +4 bonus to one reaction roll. Material component: an actual physical snack for the DM.