1d10 Ways to Make that Attack Action Sound Cooler

You just swung a 'sword' at a 'bandit' and you hit them for some 'damage.' Let's make it sound cool.

1d10 Ways to Make that Attack Action Sound Cooler

1. You feint a thrust to the head and the foe loses their nerve, flinching momentarily to cover their exposed eyes. In that moment, you slash your cutlass across their thigh, tearing through their clothing and inflicting a shallow cut.

2. Your opponent eyes you warily and shifts their footing, only to stumble momentarily over an uneven flagstone. She looks at the floor momentarily and you strike, a slash to the wrist that clearly stings but fails to pierce their mail.

3. A sloppy mistake- your opponent fails to withdraw their weapon after you parry a thrust. Using your free hand, you grab the spearshaft and pull it to the side, causing the foe to stumble forward into your deadly counterattack. He stumbles backward, bleeding heavily from his now-empty eye socket.

4. Your foe over-commits to an overhead cut, which you catch on the blade of your longsword and turn aside. While they are off-balance, you strike them in the side of the helmet with the pommel of your sword, then a second time, then a third. She falls to the floor, motionless.

5. You barely give your opponent a chance to blink, sprinting across the chamber with sword in hand. They barely get an inch of blade from their sheathe before you run them clean through the stomach, twist the blade violently, then kick them free. The swordsman staggers back, but somehow manages to stay on his feet. One hand raises his gladius, the other presses down on the mortal wound in his stomach.

6. The opponent surprises you with a lightning-fast kick to the groin, which horribly backfires upon them when their toes break on your armour.

7. Wasting no time, you simply let the weight of your greatsword carry its point through the front foot of your enemy and into the dirt below. A well-placed strike to the forehead with the guard causes the bandit to lose his footing and hit the floor, before you tear the blade free from what's left of his foot.

8. After your first flurry of cuts deflect off the target's plate to no effect, you turn aside their counterattack with your buckler and follow through with a shield-assisted punch to the face.

9. You stare down your opponent for several seconds, pacing in a circle, before you end the fight with a single, precisely-placed rapier thrust through the eye-slit of their greathelm. Your victim barely makes a sound when you withdraw the blade and watch them fall.

10. Your opponent is a skilled swordswoman, and manages to deflect your first chain of attacks with great effort. When you step back to recover her arm is visibly shaking, and you see obvious dents in the blade of their cheaply-made jian.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Calamari Special (Part 3)

Ignoring how they're misused, an 'unknowable' deity can work wonders in your setting. A God who is truly a higher being, detached from concepts such as mortality, morality, linear time and three-dimensional space.

If you're going to use a cosmic horror themed deity, be willing to accept the consequences! Everything in your setting feels a little less important when it's contrasted to the uncaring whims of the infinite void, and "your characters are just flotsam in the tides of fate" isn't the sort of mood you want to set in a heroic adventure full of PC empowerment! Settings like Arnold Kemp's Centerra (sorry I'll try and stop leeching off them eventually) thrive in an endless fractal nightmare of billions of concentric, pointless conflicts. Settings that want to focus on individual heroics and triumphs will feel a tad undermined by that sort of thing. 

Also, in a touch of irony, a setting such as 2011's Dark Souls with a central theme of "player struggling to hold onto the last few embers of light left in a dying world" would actually be made less bleak by the introduction of gods beyond time and space, since that would mean that the end isn't inevitable everywhere, at least not yet.

PUTTING THESE ENTITIES IN YOUR SETTING IS NOT A THROWAWAY DECISION.

Some of the most interesting uses of 'eldritch-adjacent' themes (in my opinion) are seen below.

Doctor Manhattan

Doctor Manhattan in all his blue glory.

Image taken from DC Wikia

Minor spoilers for Alan Moore's Watchmen. As you can see, Doctor Manhattan's not crazy or tentacular or horrific. He's just blue and (mostly) naked. He's a comic book superhero. Jon gained powers after a freak lab accident, took up a cool codename, and fought evil. He's got a pretty basic suite of powers, like flight, the ability to make copies of himself, complete invulnerability, reality alteration, the ability to see all of time and space at once, and can rearrange individual molecules into anything he wants.

We have an entity that can see all of time and space at once, and change it according to their own whim. This entity can never die, be anywhere at any time, and can change any given piece of matter into essentially any other piece of matter. They could seize complete control over everything in the known universe and subjugate all sentient life, but just have better things to do. Oh yeah, and they used to be human, and their former relationships and perspectives are clashing horribly with their new existence.

I wouldn't recommend putting something like this in your game; they're just too powerful and too likely to derail the story to the detriment of everything else. They might make an interesting antagonist or 'force of nature' to contend with, however.

A Microbiologist

I'm going to cheat and just link directly to the article on Goblin Punch that introduced me to this idea. Thanks Arnold!

For those who don't want to check out one of the best OSR writers I've ever read, the summary is straightforward: What if the universe is just a petri-dish from some higher being? It acts upon us in macroscopic ways our microscopic selves simply can't perceive, to complete an experiment that only makes sense to macroscopic beings?

This is very much the 'classic' eldritch abombination. A creature that acts on a scale incomprehensible to humanity, and ignorant to the suffering they cause to us. A real-world analogy would be bulldozing a termite mound to build a cricket pitch- the termites have no concept of bulldozers, and would be completely incapable of understanding cricket. Oh yeah, and the destruction of the termite mound would simply be a side-effect of the cricket pitch's construction.

The Reapers

Harbinger, a recurring named Reaper.

Image taken from ME Wikia

Minor spoilers for the Mass Effect franchise. These guys aren't actually 'eldritch horrors.' They're big, their machinations span hundreds of thousands of years, they possess technology beyond understanding, they're physically imposing, etc. They're also very certainly not any sort of 'higher being.' Their technology is bizarre and advanced, but obeys the same physical laws as everything else. Their arrogance leads them to make fatal mistakes. Finally, we eventually learn their 'incomprehensible' morals... To breed. Just like every life form from bacteria, to mammals, to Turians and Asari.


These guys can end feeling like a cop-out to your players, if you've built them up as 'beyond comprehension' and reveal them to just be 'normal' and capable of being killed in a boss fight. Use with caution.

Bloodborne's Great Ones

A Caryll Rune, representing Formless Oedon.

Image taken from Bloodborne Fextralife Wiki

Minor spoilers for Bloodborne. 'Great Ones' exist outside of our world, but intersect with it in some ways. They are alien, even to experienced scholars. The Eldritch Calamari Special space gods of the Bloodborne setting are neither malevolent or dismissive of humanity- they're friendly. Many of the most twisted nightmarish places, scenarios and creatures in the setting aren't caused by malice, they're a direct result of people trying to understand and emulate these creatures.

This is a more personal horror than a traditional eldritch evil, seeing that the actual pain & suffering come from the actions of people and not the whims of a god.

So there's 4 things that I think make excellent use of the classic cosmic horror themed trope of 'unknowable entity from outside our reality that exists outside of our concepts of life, death, matter, space or time' in one way or another.

I've probably missed some great cosmic horror stuff, but I'll let it lie for now.

Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 3: Swords & Sword-Like Objects)

Part 1.
Part 2.

Treat weapons as physical objects in your games not just stats. Here's some stuff on how to do it. Stats listed are from the 5e Compendium. Let's go.

Part 3: Swords!

'Sword' is a really broad term, used for a huge family of weapons. Broadly, they're metal and used to cut and/or thrust, but that's not universal. Zweihänders and rapiers are both 'swords' even though the former is a heavy two meter long slashing weapon, and the latter is half the length and a quarter the weight, used in an entirely different fighting style. So let's look at the compendium again.


Shortsword: 1d6 piercing.

Longsword: 1d8/1d10 slashing.
To start with, the gaming definition of a 'longsword' is not on par with what was historically considered a longsword. The shortsword category could include such weapons as the xiphos, kopis, kukri, wakizashi and potentially the machete. What D&D calls a 'longsword' could include weapons such as the dao, jian, arming sword, gladius, Viking sword, scimitar or spatha. It's... kinda vague, honestly. Some models are intended to cut, others are intended to thrust, some can do both. Most are one-handed, some are two-handed. It's possible with most to punch with the pommel or strike with the guard on most swords with a pronounced pommel or guard, though it's definitely going to give a shorter reach.

Scimitar: 1d6 slashing.Rapier: 1d8 piercing.

Scimitar is a strange distinction here, I'd personally roll curved swords such as the shotel, kilij, sabre, falcata, ōdachi or even khopesh into the regular categories above. Curved swords don't really thrust, so that part of your arsenal is limited, but many of the other elements are still there. Some, like the shotel, have a curve so pronounced that it's not out of the question to completely bypass an opponent's guard (if they're not paying attention). Likewise, Rapier is a narrow category that really could be rolled into the above. I'm pretty sure it's only distinct in 5e because of the designers not wanting to put the 'finesse' rule on the 'longsword.' Weapons like the rapier, estoc or smallsword are notable for their sharp (ha) focus on thrusting and their narrow blades. Weapons such as the cutlass or broadsword were also light weapons often designed for dueling, but had much thicker blades intended for strong slashing attacks.

For all the above swords, there's not much to say. Stab if they're pointy, chop if they're edged, both if they're both. Thicker swords such as the arming sword might be able to bruise if the user strikes with the flat of a blade, but it probably won't damage much more than the enemy's pride. Make sure, however, that you take into account things like 'sheathe shape and position.' I know, it seems pedantic, but having your players specify that the fighter has a gladius sheathed on their left hip can come in handy later if they're partially engulfed by an ooze and are saying that they TOTALLY could reach their weapon.


Greatsword: 2d6 slashing, two-handed.
There's a lot of different kinds of 'big sword' out there. European two-handed swords came in various sizes and names such as zweihänder (German for 'two-hander') or claidheamh-mòr (Scottish Gaelic for 'great sword'). Even the smallest of these swords is intended to be used with two hands (or possibly on horseback). These swords could cut or thrust, and in fact were sometimes held by the blade and thrusted like a spear, or even swung like a warhammer to bludgeon enemies with the pommel or guard. No, really. Here's a (detailed) video.

Some other weapons such as the Japanese ōdachi or Chinese zhǎnmǎdāo or chángdāo would also fall under the 'greatsword' category. These swords weren't designed to be used like the pointed and double-edged European swords above, but were still a deadly cutting edge with a lot of mass & momentum behind them. I'd personally use these with what 5e calls a 'longsword' statblock. In fantasy, some two-handed swords can get absolutely obscenely massive. I'd probably come up with a custom statblock for these monsters, more like an 'exotic weapon' (and I will get to exotic weapons).

So how to play with a European greatsword? I'd personally draw attention to the twin cutting edges, point, and the weighty guard and pommel all being potential striking surfaces. Let the user thrust like a spear, and maybe even use spear damage and range dice. Let them bludgeon enemies like a greatclub... and again, maybe even use the statblock of a greatclub for those attacks. A sword like this is truly a multipurpose weapon. Balance this versatility in two key ways. Firstly, a greatsword like this is bigger and heavier than a dedicated spear or hammer, and would be correspondingly harder to carry, store, lift, and even just hold in your hands. Secondly, the sheer difficulty of making a weapon like a greatsword would make one very expensive, and it would take the user a lot of time to keep it oiled, sharpened, and rust-free.


The last thing that's worth mentioning is that historically, swords weren't intended to be used against metal armour. Even simple padded armour like a gambeson can prevent a blade from cutting into skin and organs, and something like this suit of Swedish plate armour would turn even a larger sword aside with barely any difficulty. Most systems (such as Dungeons & Dragons, say) don't model armour with a great degree of fidelity, and that doesn't bother me too much. That said, it may be worth factoring an enemy's armour (or scales) into your combat narration. A roll of 16 against AC 17 doesn't simply 'miss,' it's a lethally precise sword-slash aimed right for the neck that simply doesn't pierce the target's armoured gorget.

A critical hit with a pata against a chitinous thri-kreen wearing a suit of mithral-alloy Gothic plate armour doesn't just 'cut through' the enchanted über-metal and the exoskeleton underneath, the attacker looks for a gap in the armour plates and strikes where the protection is weakest. The greatsword doesn't 'cleave through' the breastplate, the barbarian simply flips the sword over, grabs it by the blade, and crushes the foe's ribcage with the ram's head carved on the pommel.