Friday, January 28, 2022

The Sorcerer of Xiccarph

In light of a recent Pulp Fantasy Library entry, I thought readers might enjoy this write-up of Clark Ashton Smith's sorcerer, Maal Dweb. The description originally appeared in the "Giants in the Earth" column appearing in issue #30 of Dragon (October 1979), written by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay (though I suspect, given his love of Smith, that Moldvay was likely the author of this particular character).

13 comments:

  1. Obvious peculiarities that stand out to me:

    Intelligence 18(96): Since when does Int get a "exceptional stat" percentile roll like Strength did? What's it going to do for him, let him Bend (Mind) Bars better? Increase his (spell) carrying capacity? :)

    Special Iron Golem: Description starts with "Huge brazen automatons..." Very special indeed. Brass is not iron. I suppose Maal might have transformed them with a Wish or something. You know, to help keep the rust monsters away from them. Darn nuisance, rust monsters.

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    1. Yeah, the 18(96) jumped out at me as well, but my reaction was a little different. I imagine players might enjoy having this feature attached to the prime requisite for each character type, and I can think of any number of reasonable applications. Might give it a try some time.

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    2. I'm pretty sure I've seen several homebrew articles (maybe one in Different Worlds?) that had "exceptional" percentile rolls and charts for all stats - but it's surprising to see something like that showing up in Dragon itself. Maybe they did an article for it as well at some point?

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    3. IIRC, quite a few Judges Guild products from this era used percentile secondary stat scores like this, as a sort of house format. I don't remember what they were used for, though I think there was a stat advancement mechanic that involved tracking slow increases in the percentile bit until you gained the next point of the base stat score.

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    4. Giants of the Earth often seemed to playing with its own unique version of the AD&D rules, with free multi-classing, percentage stats, more open alignment requirements etc. It's a little odd that presented with obvious evidence that the D&D rules could use some tweaking to better emulate the fantasies that its creators so enjoyed that they didn't put this sort of rules variants into Deities & Demigods or Unearthed Arcana...

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    5. @Dave Pulver I've been reminded of the fact that the UE Cavalier class had rules for gradually advancing some of their stats with a similar percentile system, accumulating a % score till it reached 100% at which point the main stat bumped up one and the % re-set. So perhaps there was some lesson taken from Giants In the Earth, even if it might not have been a good one.

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    6. Those stood out to me as well.

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  2. I loved Giants in the Earth. It was such a joy to see all the classic literary characters I grew up with being adapted for D&D. Even if they were wildly over powered, you could feel the love the authors had for the characters.

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  3. They explained in an editorial why percentile figures were given for Intelligence (and sometimes other characteristics too) - namely, so many of the "Giants in the Earth" had 18s that it was felt important to try and differentiate them in some way. A slightly odd decision, but I think it is better than giving Maal Dweb and other human sorcerers 22 or something.

    I too love Giants in the Earth. Thanks for posting this, James.

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  4. This is the best big bad evil guy I've read in a while. I was able to visualise the whole description of the special maze spell like I was there. I'm a big fan of BBEG having pocket dimensions they can banish you to.

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  5. Giants of the Earth introduced me to several fine fantasy novels. The two Maal Dweb stories are among my favorites of Smith's work, and give a good insight into high-level wizardry.

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    1. They certainly rival Vance's Rhialto the Marvellous stories for that, albeit with a rather darker tone.

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  6. This is awesome, and yep, Moldvay for sure.

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