The Tombs of Akrasia

The Folly of Lucian

2010-12-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

Just over 50 years ago Lucian III, the father of the current Baron Halfax, was a young and adventurous man. The heir to a large and prosperous barony (really a duchy or even small kingdom), he was proud and demanded the best in life. He was determined to have no ordinary bride, but an elven bride - a princess of the forest realms. Lucian III wanted a bride who would not grow old or lose her youthful beauty during his lifetime.

Unfortunately for Lucian III, no elven princess was interested in such an alliance. Although human-elven love was not impossible, Lucian III was not the type of man to attract an elven maiden. Undeterreed Lucian III decided to simply take an elven bride, and set his sights on Nadonna Silverhair, daughter of Serris Greenhands, an elven lord who frequented the hills to the west.

Lucian III plotted carefully and personally lead a raid into the elven hills, taking Nadonna Silverhair for his own. Things would no doubt have gone differently if Serris Greenhands had been there with his band, but Lucian had timed his raid carefully and caught Nadonna alone in a forested glade with only a few retainers for protection. Quickly he retreated back to his family's Castle Halfast and locked Nadonna in a tower while preparing for the wedding.
Nadonna did not wish to marry this human lord, nor waste away a few decades in a dreary human castle. But Lucian would hear none of it. Plans for the wedding continued, and Nadonna was given the choice of showing up for her wedding in a bridesdress or in chains. She pretended to agree to the match while planning her escape.
On the night before the wedding Nadonna Silverhair made her escape. Lucian had expected this and had patrols in the fields and woods west of the Castle to catch her, but Nadonna did not flee west towards her father's realm. Instead she fled east to the port of Savinsc, where she intended to stow away on a ship leaving the Barony of Halfax and Lucian's authority.
Lucian and his men caught wind of her escape and followed Nadonna to Savinsc, finally catching up to her on the docks of the city just as she was about to board a ship. Lucian and Nadonna were both furious with each other, and in a fit of rage Lucian drew his rapier and stabbed her through the heart. With a look of surprise on her face Nadonna's body slipped off his blade and fell into the water, sinking instantly into the depths of the sea. The spirits of the air and water cried out at the passing of Nadonna Silverhair, and felt an anger towards the humans that had harmed her. The fog that covered the bay that night never left and the currents never again followed a safe channel to the sea.

In the decades that followed hundreds of sailors lost their lives, and thousands more lost their livelyhoods, to the fogs and treacherous currents of the Sargonne Bay; to the folly of Lucian III.

And deep within the Feywilds, Serris Greenhands still weeps for his daughter. Waiting.

Brand New Day

2010-12-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

You might think I'm a slacker for not posting these last several months, but I've been real busy "in real life". Honest! As it happens, I've started a new job and moved my family to a new state, so gaming has been pretty predictably on the back burner for a while.

But now we're back!

Since I don't have any gaming buddies in my new town (and am not in a real rush to collect ones either, honestly), I'll be running my wife solo through some quests and adventures. I've decided my core rule set for this campaign will be James Raggi's Weird Fantasy Role-playing ("WFR"). It's a pretty cool ruleset, and in particular the rules for the Specialist (and thus how Thief Skills mesh with demi-humans and the game engine at large) are so close to my house rules as to risk copyright infringement. (That's a complement to Jim - he's clearly a man of intelligence and refined taste, if not originality). Plus the flavor text for alignment and magic really digs my ditch. I'm looking forward to it.

A review of the game, inevitable house rules, and gaming reports to follow.

If your name is not Wendy you can click on THIS LINK for a description of my introductory town and adventure.

Saving Throw categories

2010-08-08T09:48:00.001-07:00

One of the things I really liked about D&D 3 (and preserved in 3.5 and 4) was the saving throw categories. As a DM is often required to adjudicate novel situations, and the three descriptive categories of Reflexes, Will and Fortitude were much easier to adjudicate than the "five random things" used in previous editions (I also like Castles & Crusades for this reason), I just found it better.

I have decided I would like to bring some of this ease to my Labyrinth Lord game, but not by adopting the D&D 3 method wholesale, or going with the "one save number" used by Swords & Wizardry. Rather I will keep the five categories as written, but they are now interpreted as "mere examples" of a larger, broader category. Following the example of the Master Set and D&D 3 these categories will also be modified by other numbers.

Here are the five old categories: Breath Weapon, Poison/Death, Paralyze/Petrify, Wands, Spell/Devices

Here's how I've reinterpreted these (some are a better fit than others):

Breath Weapon --> Explosions. Includes fiery dragon breath, many traps, black-powder kegs, Fireballs, and the like. You cannot dodge these things, only take cover. It is modified by your Shield bonus to AC (including any magic bonus) or a Cover bonus, whichever is greater.

Poison/Death --> Death. Includes poison, disease, and putrefaction, as well as magical afflictions attacking your life force such as level drain (when saves are allowed) and Finger of Death. This is similar to the Fortitude save of D&D 3. It is modified by Constitution.

Paralyze/Petrify --> Paralysis. Includes the Web spell, pythons, a Giant's bear hug, and the like. These sort of things trap you physically or prevent you from moving. This save is modified by Strength.

Wands --> Beams. Includes lasers, wands, balista bolts, bullets, and the like. Stuff you can dodge, but cannot resist if you're hit by them. Modified by Dexterity.

Spell/Devices --> Mind Control. This category is the furthest from its original category. It attempts to capture all effects that try to subvert, steal or harm your sense of self and personality, from a vampire's gaze to Charm Person to Magic Jar. It is modified by Charisma. This save category also includes unwilling physical transformations, includingPolymorph Other and a petrifying gaze.

So that's it. There are no saves modified by Intelligence or Wisdom.

I don't like paying for used books

2010-05-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

This isn't exactly a "deep" thought, but I've just recently come to appreciate how much I now dislike paying anyone but an author for a book.

Back in the days of yore I appreciated the economic role that used book sellers provided (acting as archiver and curator for out of print works). But in the modern day of electronic media and close-enough-to-infinite disk storage, I find the thought of paying money for a used book to be somewhat offensive. Why can't I just buy a PDF, with that money going to the author? Why do I have to pay several multiples of the original price to some E*bay seller when RPGNow could be offering it for 1/2 or less of the original price? It's offensive.

This is how norms change. I bought many a book from my local used book shop as a kid and never resented it, but now I see the used book trade as a "collector's" market, not something for ordinary consumers who just want to read the content.

In case anyone's wondering, this rant was set off by my recent desire to acquire a copy of Dr. J. Eric Holmes' edition of the D&D Basic Set. I can't find a PDF anywhere (legal or otherwise) and I just can't stomach paying $30+ for one on E*bay just because Hasbro is sitting on the publishing rights like a OCD hoarder. Yes it's their legal right to not publish it if they don't want to, but I don't have to like it.

The World of Aehr - Introduction and Session 1

2010-03-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

First, our ~~heroes~~ level 1 noobs:

Finnigan, Lawful Elf 1 (Wendy's PC)
S-15 I-13 W-10 D-13 C-11 C-13, HP 6, AC 5
Longsword, shortbow, hand-ax, studded leather, shield
Spells known: Detect Magic, Charm Person, Sleep
An elven swordsman with promise from the Sylverde (sill-VER-day) Coast.

Grondo Teabottom, Lawful Halfling 1 (my DM-PC)
S-10 I-8 W-7 D-13 C-17 C-11, HP 8, AC 5 (3 vs. Large)
Short sword, crossbow, hand-ax, dagger, sling, studded leather, shield
A halfling whose life was recently saved by Finnigan. He owes a life debt. Loyal and tough, but don't expect good sense on matters other than trout fishing.

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SPOILER WARNING: I am running the Cave of the Morelocks adventure out of the back of the Labyrinth Lord rulebook as our starting adventure. There will be spoilers.

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Our story begins at the Hostel of Gurion Del. Like so many Hostels and Inns that dot the Trade Road every twenty miles or so between the southern Dale Lands and Shun-Go, the City-State of the Immortal Overlord in the north, Master Del's establishment is a small walled compound without village or town nearby. The Inn, the stables, and a few nearby farms is all. The nearest village is the town of Hommlet, two days travel north. Finnigan and Grondo arrived just this evening, coming by dirt track from the east, out of the Seven Shires.

The common room has a reasonable number of patrons, but not too crowded. Two merchants from Bristle Dale show their scissors, pins and knives. A Dwarven copper magnate on his way to Iriador keeps his own counsel while his four hired guards dice with a local herdsman. A Lieutenant Guardsman from Shun-Go shares a drink with two of his men while the third joins the dice game. Four Wasters from the Pomarj keep their dust-brown robes wrapped close about them while their green turbans almost touch, so closely do the lean in towards their conversation. A few local farmers share dinner and beer while they listen to the minstrel in the corner. Finnigan and Grondo finish their soup as a local boy comes to speak with Master Del; they go into the back room.

Having just arrived on the Trade Road and without news of the goings on in the human lands, Finnigan and Grondo decide to spread out and collect news. Finnigan starts buying drinks for the Bristle Dale merchants while Grondo joins the dice game. They pick up some rumors:

The soldiers from Shun-Go have a prisoner in the stables - a bandit they captured a day's ride south of here. This being the second time this fellow was caught (he was flogged and branded the first time) he faces the gibbet at the next town the soldiers come to with a magistrate. When first captured he was jabbering about "They was eaten! Butchered like a pig and gnawed on!" but he's since clammed up.
A local shrine to Habbukuk was defaced. "Ain't nuthin' but kids, I'm sure o' that." says the herdsman.
The Duke of Bryth-Tanan appears to be making a move to control the sea trade between Shun-Go and the Rythian League. Prices of many goods could be in flux until the matter is settled.
Master Bender, a local farmer, swears he's danced with elf maidens the last two nights when Lunitari was full. "Bender ain't his name though, that's just what they call 'im - if you take my meaning."
Brandy Shire has been buying up all the garlic available.
Herdsman to the south have been losing livestock. The raiders come after the moon has set, in deepest darkness.

Finnegan and Grondo are comparing notes on the rumors they've collected when Master Del returns to the common room after an absence and has a desperate looking conversation with the Shun-Go Lieutenant. The Lt. repeatedly shakes his head however, denying the request. Master Del returns to the kitchen despondent. Inquiries with the staff are made and it's learned that news had come that Master Del's brother was killed and the brother's children were missing. (hand on hip the elder barmaid couldn't way to say "Not just killed, mind you! They was eaten!").

Finnegan goes back to the kitchens and speaks with Master Del, stating that he could look into this. A price is arranged for a reward of 10 ep¹ per child. Master Del states that his brother's farm is about a day's walk to the south, but he'll ask a friend to lend them horses to get them there tonight.

Finnegan then heads back out into the common room and confirms with Grondo that the bandit the Shun-Go soldiers have in custody was also caught a day's travel to the south ("Yup, that's right."). Before approaching the soldiers however Finnegan has two tasks to complete. First he slips under the table pretending to pick up a dropped coin and casts Charm Person on the Lieutenant. No one notices. Second he approaches the guards working for the Dwarven copper magnate to see if any of them are willing to work for him instead, but they're bound to the Dwarf at least as far as Hommlet. They promise however to post a notice in Hommlet of an immediate need for men-at-arms, and any of them released by the dwarf will return immediately for the job with Finnegan. They can be at Bengur Del's farm in five days. ("I guess that will have to do then. See you in five days.")

Approaching his good friend the Lieutenant from Shun-Go Finnegan merely asks if he can talk to the fellow about his claims of folks being eaten. This being a quire reasonable request the soldiers quickly escort him out to the stables and agree to play "bad cop" to his good cop. They tell the bandit ("What's your name, fellow?" "Karl. You?") that there might be mercy from the magistrate if he cooperates. Karl reveals that he and some "friends" had been living in a cave, but on a day when Karl went out "fishing" he came back to see his friends had been butchered and hung from hooks, and the bones gnawed on. He ran and didn't see who did it. But he can lead you to the cave where it happened!

A few silver pieces change hands and the Lieutenant agrees that since there wasn't no record of the fellow being caught yet there didn't really need to be a trial and all. If he helped rescue the children, call it mercy. If he died in the attempt, call it justice. Finnegan, Grondo and Karl head to the courtyard, where they're met by Master Del and his friend with the horses. Master Del gives them food for the road and an old mace for Karl that a customer had left at the Inn the month before. By the silver light of the moon Astalon, they ride south.

They ride quickly, not saving the horses for a long journey, and arrive at the farm house with an hour of silver moonlight left (~1 AM). A cursory search finds the bodies of Bengur Del and his farm-hand as described by the messenger. Strangely the chickens and sole goat on the farm as unharmed, despite the harm to Master Del's friend takes the horses back north and the would-be heroes sleep in the barn for the night.

A more careful search in the morning² finds the house largely un-ransacked, but the bodies carefully butchered for their meat, and some of the meat eaten raw on site by the look of gnawed bones. Bloody bare footprints (about 3-6 in number, apparently human) walk out through the kitchen, over the fields and into the woods to the west (where the trail is lost). ("Where's that cave of yours, Karl?" "Same way those footprints are going." "Well, let's go then.")

Two miles into the woods (Karl - "We're getting close. About a mile to go, and there's a deer track that leads to the entrance so it's easy to find.") the party is walking under the boughs of the old forest, never logged by man, and something drops from the trees right onto Karl. Something big, yellow, and with way too many legs.³ Pincers grasp at Karl but he shoves the beast off with his mace and the adventurers square off with the hungry critter. The beast is fast though and immediately lunges again at Karl before anyone can act, this time drawing blood. Finnegan draws his sword and goes around Karl's left, slashing once at the beast and wounding it. Grondo goes around to Karl's right until he's facing the creature's broadside, and lets loose with this crossbow at point blank range - but manages to miss anyway. Mindless the beast still senses that Karl is almost down and lunges again, this time putting a six-inch piercing mandible directly through his heart, injecting just pointless amounts of poison. Finnegan and Grondo lunge in with sword and ax, and the beast dies. But Karl is dead too. Shun-Go's justice has been meted out.

Without Karl as guide the cave is not easy to find, but after a few more hours Grondo and Finnegan find the deer path, and then quickly find the cave entrance. About two hours of sunlight remain. Instead of venturing into the caves at this time however they abscond up a tree about 100 yards down the deer path from the cave entrance to watch. The lowest branch is 60' up in the air. Finnegan memorizes Sleep while the sun is up and then immediately gets some shut-eye. Grondo keeps watch through sunset and while Astalon is high. Around 1 AM Astalon starts to go behind the hills and Grondo wakes up Finnegan (Grondo - "I can't see any more, and I need sleep. Your turn to watch."⁴). Grondo closes his eyes for well deserved rest, but before he can get to sleep Finnegan notes movement at the cave as the moon sets.⁵

Five humanoids walk out of the cave in single file, and Finnegan tells Grondo to prepare to light a torch and throw it down to the dear path, but not to do anything yet. Finnegan gets out his bow and aims carefully at the lead humanoid.⁶ When the humanoids are 30 yards in front of the tree (70 yards from the entrance) Finnegan released the arrow. It was a direct hit to the center of the chest and the fellow fell face-forward in the dirt. The other four were in shock and did not react quickly, giving Finnegan time to draw and release again. Once more it was a direct hit, and the second humanoid fell over into the moss, silent as the grave. Not knowing where their attacker was coming from, or how many there were, the three remaining humanoids bolted back towards the cave. Before they were even halfway there however a powerful Sleep came over them. Finnegan lowered his hands, pleased. (Grondo - "What the hell is going on?!?! I can't see shit in this darkness.")

The adventurers lowered themselves to the ground and under torchlight Grondo recognizes the humanoids from fairy tales as Morelocks, once humans now given to living in caves and preferring the flesh of humanoids to all others. (Finnegan- "Do you think we should keep one alive for questioning?" Grondo- "They're psychotic cannibals! You wouldn't keep Hannibal Lector alive, would you?") The Sleeping psychotic cannibals were killed quickly and silently, and the bodies of all five dragged away from the cave entrance and buried in shallow graves where no one would find them. One of them had a nice silver torque however, set with jewels. Pretty!

Once the dirty business was handled the adventurers absconded back up the tree and Grondo slept while Finnegan kept watch until dawn.

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¹ In my campaign the standard coin is the silver piece, and electrum is worth 10 silver coins, so that's the equivalent of a 100 gp reward in a published adventure.

² [White Text Follows; Players Do Not Read] But not careful enough! They missed Bengur Del's life savings and the healing potion under the floorboards in the main bedroom. Wendy needs to get better at old-school searching techniques.

³ Giant Crab Spider.

⁴ In my campaign Elves do not have Infravison but instead have "elf eyes" that allow them to treat moonlight the same as sunlight and starlight the same as a full moon. They are just as blind as humans in complete darkness however.

⁵ [White Text Follows; Players Do Not Read] Given that the opening text of the adventure stipulated that the Morlocks were raiding for cattle and now humans I decided there was a 20% chance of a raid on any given night. Rolled a d10 and got 1.

⁶ Beyond the 90' range of the Morelock's infravision, and 60' up in a tree, the Morelocks didn't see the PCs and so no surprise roll was necessary at this time.

The World of Aehr

2010-03-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

Hi there! Sorry about the non-posting. Let's just say that babies are cute, but they play hell with posting and gaming schedules.

I will get back to my weapons and armor series, if only because I really want to use those rules myself, but this post is about how I finally got to game (finally!) again tonight and introduce the campaign to you all. I'm going to post session logs / story hour too, so you can look forward to those if you're into that sort of thing.

My "group" consists of my wife and I for now. I DM, she plays. I've advertised for players but honestly I'm not pushing too hard for them. With the baby our gaming session this night consisted of "game, play with baby, game, feed baby, game, put the baby back to sleep, game, ..." You get the idea, particularly if you've ever had a kid. This would be very hard for anyone but parents to tolerate I imagine, and everything took really long.

Rules: Labyrinth Lord. I originally wanted to use Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox but the wife looked through those little booklets and said "No." Not enough rules. She needed a few more of the blanks filled in. So we settled on LL, with some adaptations and adoptions from the Rules Cyclopedia.

House Rules: Of course! You can find them here. You might expect I would have re-written the Thief from the ground up, but I haven't ... yet. Still working on that, but there's no Thieves in the party so it's not a priority so far. There's quite a few posts worth of ideas in those rules though, so I'll elaborate on them later (and priority will be given to requests made in comments).

Campaign World: Homebrew - The World of Aehr. I've sucked in ideas from all of my favorite D&D worlds, novels and modules, as well as non-D&D fantasy-fiction sources.

A short interruption

2010-01-19T18:51:00.001-08:00

I really like this little video, and it giving me ideas on blog posts about how technology terms can make useful analogies for playing D&D.

All I Need To Know About Life I learned From Dungeons and Dragons. An IgniteOKC Talk. from Chad Henderson on Vimeo.

The third quality: to-hit

2010-01-12T18:58:00.000-08:00

In OD&D weapons only had one quality – damage. And they all did d6. I’m not sure why that is (though I’ve read several speculative opinions), but Occam’s Razor leads me to conclude that they were just so busy inventing the whole concept of RPGs in general that they just didn’t have the spare brain cycles to think about it that hard. “Weapons do d6 damage” was good enough. Who knows.

In my previous couple posts I have expanded on that by adding a second quality – AC bonus. Weapons aren’t just offensive, they are defensive as well. For every thrust and riposte there is a block or parry. And just as Supp I introduced variable weapon damage, some weapons will have a better AC bonus than others. The rapier is pretty good, for instance. Not “shield good”, but nice.

And this leads me to today’s quality – the to-hit bonus. This completes the triumvirate of weapon qualities that will constitute the tactical tradeoffs players in my game will have to make. Some weapons are just more likely to do harm than others. (There will be ancillary qualities, like two-handed and thrusting, but they aren’t the Big Three).

Some might think that I’ve borrowed this idea from D&D 4E, but that would be wrong. Mostly because the D&D 4E authors got the to-hit bonuses completely backwards in every respect. No, the to-hit bonus is my version of the infamous Weapons v. AC chart.

You see, I like the Weapons v. AC chart in theory. It would increase realism because it’s a historical fact that some weapons were better than others versus certain types of armor (in fact European history strongly indicates that weapons and armor were constantly being improved in order to negate previously invented improvements in the other category, culminating in full-plate armor and two-handed maces). It would also increase the number of tactical choices available to PCs, making the game more dependent on player skill that luck of the die (a good thing, IMO). But of course no one uses Weapons vs. AC (not even Gary used it) because it’s unwieldy and slows down combat.

A variable bonus to-hit, granted to weapons which historically are good at piercing armor, is 90% as good as a “Weapons v. AC” table and without the drawbacks. It creates a new “realism” drawback by making unarmored opponents easier to hit with axes that with swords, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. The bonuses should basically be the inverse of to-hit modifiers in D&D 4E. Here are some examples:

Bo stick: -3
Sword (any): +0
Axe/Hammer/2-handed Swords: +2
Pick/Mace/2-handed Axe/Hammer: +4
Two-handed Mace: +5

Certain weapons may not fit in their group category (the Estoc, a two-handed edgeless thrusting sword designed specifically to pierce plate armor, might get the Pick/Mace bonus) but that’s the general idea. Polearms would use the one-handed bonus of the weapon’s head (spears are “dagger on a stick”, halberds are “axe on a stick”, etc.).

Those bonuses may look big, but I suggest waiting until you see them in context with refigured variable weapon damage, bonuses to AC, ancillary qualities and my revamped armor and shield tables. It should all make sense, and the tactical tradeoffs should make life interesting.

Optional Rule: If you want even more realism, and are willing to deal with slightly more complexity, make the to-hit bonus applicable only versus armored opponents and beasts with natural armor, like dragons. That way rapier-wielding swashbucklers (with their superior AC bonus and big damage die) will be better off than mace-wielders (with their big to-hit vs. armor bonus) when unarmored (and swinging from chandeliers). En garde!

AC: Interlude II

2010-01-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

Two posts ago I promised that I would make "next post" about weapon to-hit bonuses, but I'm gonna hold that off for just one more post (really, this time I mean it). Before I get to that I realized that I didn't finish my post on AC, and that needs to be rectified. Before I go on I must talk about a rule I don't have - because the rules you don't have are just as important as the ones you do have.

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When AC was "just armor" it made sense that it didn't go up with level. I mean, why would it? Chainmail is chainmail, no matter what level you are when wearing it. But when AC expanded to include Dexterity modifiers and defensive fighting and (most tellingly) the Monk class, you got to wondering. "Huh, my to-hit and saving throws improve. Why not my AC? Aren't I any better at defending myself?"

And improving AC would make sense in our model too. Consider the room: You, and two enemies. The two enemies both have swords, but one of them is Vizzini and the other is Inigo Montoya. Which of them, all other things being equal (aka, Inigo isn't drunk), would you expect to be better at defending himself from your attack? Inigo, obviously. He can parry your blows with one eye closed, and a hand tied behind his back, while composing a sonnet. Naturally Inigo has a higher AC, right?

No. That's not how D&D works. In D&D your skill is represented by your Level, which gets you more Hit Dice, which gets you more Hit Points. Hit Points are your skill, which at high levels takes a while to wear down. That's why one 10th level Fighter can take on many 1st level fighters and prevail - his hits are deadly accurate (hit to-hit exceeds their AC, and weapon damage=1 HD) and his opponents' hits often miss and are mostly deflected (weapon damage= 1/10th total HP) even when they make contact. If he does fall (after felling many foes), it's only after the fatigue of combat and dozen bleeding "minor wounds" take their toll that a lowly red-tunic can get in that lucky blow (aka, take the last of his HP).

It's not perfectly realistic (because there's no chance the first red-tunic gets in a lucky blow), but damn if it isn't heroic. And that's how I like it.

So what does this mean for the house ruler? No bonuses to AC scale with level. Ever. They are fixed. Fighting defensively, using a shield, taking cover, and whatever other tactics come to mind will always grant the same static bonus to a 1st level Fighter as to a 12th level one. It's their To-Hit and Hit Dice that set them apart.

Could you make a game where AC scaled with level? Of course. Many have. But those games aren't D&D. We have chosen another path.

Please excuse this interruption

2010-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

I know I said my next post would be on to-hit bonuses for weapons, but I just saw this video on Vimeo. Watch it, oh DM's, and have many ideas your players will regret.

AC: shields, and armor, and weapons - Oh my!

2010-01-08T06:46:00.001-08:00

I love Armor Class. It’s so abstract, so simple. One number that says “this is how difficult it is to hit me.” It is the epitome of abstract combat in D&D, right up there with “to hit.” It abstracts away all the cut & thrust of combat, forever keeping the focus of D&D combat on the ‘bigger picture’ and not letting players get caught up in the minutia of block and riposte.

Knowledge of (and respect for) just how critical AC is to the simplicity and abstraction of D&D combat is essential for any house-ruler. If you like D&D combat, you don’t want to touch AC. Leave it just the way it is folks – you don’t mess with perfect.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t modify how AC is calculated! No. The beauty of AC is its “one number-ness”. No matter what happens you want to keep “one number”, but how you get there is up to you.

Standard D&D is pretty simple. You have an AC that is determined by the armor you wear, with a +1 for shields. It’s all about physical layers of leather and steel. Later Editions have the Monk though, and Dexterity modifiers and rules about “fighting defensively”. The mental model AC expands to encompass positive actions taken by the PC to reduce the odds of getting hit, which combine with leather and steel to reduce the odds of getting hurt. This is the model of AC I like because it includes “anything you do to reduce the odds of suddenly developing new holes in your skin.”

So let’s think for a moment. Picture yourself (or your PC) standing in a room in linen trousers and a shirt. You’ve got a sword of some sort. Two enemies stand before you – one with a sword, and the other empty-handed. Assuming the empty-handed guy isn’t Jet Li, which of those guys do you think it would be easier to stab with your sword? Naturally the guy without the sword – he can’t parry your thrusts, or meaningfully threaten you with a counter-attack.

So clearly weapons-in-hand boost your AC. (This is Revelation #1).

Ok, we’re back to the two guys – one with sword, one without. Now you (or your PC) have a crossbow and you’re standing at least 20’ away. Which of them is easier to shoot (again, assuming neither of them is Jet Li)? I think they’re equally screwed. Sure you can try to parry a crossbow bolt with your sword, but I don’t see that being very successful very often.

So clearly weapons-in-hand boost your AC versus melee attacks.

Which is different from Shields. They’re equally useful against melee attacks and missile attacks. Touch attacks too (a concept from 3E that I like). Shields are pretty awesome. Armor seems useful against both missile and melee, but not touch.

And that brings me to my second revelation for today (Revelation #2): AC must have one number, but you can have more than one kind of AC (just like you have more than one kind of Saving Throw). How many ACs you have in your game is up to you, but I would keep the list small (definitely less than six), and the broad categories should be both distinct from each other and more or less combat-complete. I have three kinds, and they are: Melee, Missile and Touch. That covers pretty much every sort of physical assault, with most other assaults better handled by a saving throw category (e.g., you could have an AC v. Siege Weapons, but Save v. Death seems just as appropriate and doesn’t require a new rule. I mean, really, is an armored knight really that much better off than a magic-user when taking a ballista to the chest (or a trebuchet-launched boulder to the head) at point blank range? I think not.).

But let’s get back to weapons, because that’s the “new shiny” the incessant rule-tinker in my head wants to play with.

When it comes to self-defense, are all weapons created equal? I’d say not. A rapier is better than a dagger, and a quarterstaff is better than a pike. It’s not size, or weight, per se but the ability to interpose the weapon between yourself and incoming threats. Some weapons are two short, some two long. Others, like a warhammer, just aren’t as well balanced for defense as a broadsword. So different weapons will have different bonuses to AC, just like different types of armor do.

I have a new weapons chart for D&D, but before I can reveal it I must speak of another topic – why some weapons have a different to-hit modifier than others. But that is the topic for the next post.

The Long Con

2009-12-04T13:55:00.001-08:00

As part of my S&W expansion I am introducing the Rogue class and its
four sub-classes: Assassin, Bard, Con-man and Thief.

Three of these classes you know, but the Con-man is mostly new. This
post is about the Con-man's endgame, because I think it's funny.

My problem was the most endgames revolve around building some sort of
Guild or stronghold. That didn't seem right for con-men. Below is my
solution.

-------

Long Lost Heir (11th): Over a period of not less than one year you
find a dying minor lord or wealthy merchant without children and
convince him that you are his long lost nephew/cousin/etc. and are
here to take care of him in his dotage. Your mark will retire from
active leadership of his demense at the end of the year, but he can
disinherit you before he dies (usually in 1d6 years) if you don't keep
up the act and your end of the bargain. Treat this inheritance as a
Fighter's Stronghold.

Technical

2009-12-02T11:18:00.001-08:00

Sorry about the lack of posting. My office has recently cut off all
Internet access and I have not had the time to blog in the evenings.
Hopefully I will be able to get off a good post or two each weekend
for now, and shorter ones from the iPhone (like this one). I certainly
haven't run out of things to say!

See you soon!

There are some who call me...Tim

2009-11-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

As part of my Swords & Wizardry reimagining I have decided to use a class/sub-class structure for Fighting-men, Rogues and Magic-Users. No one is "just" a Fighting-man; you've got to pick a sub-class (aka, fighting style). Same with the other two.

But that left me with needing to think up some magic-user sub-classes. The easy two are "Wizard" and "Illusionist", where the former is just the M-U from the original rules and the latter we all know and love from AD&D. I want some more though.

Next I decided on "Enchanter", which would be the exclusive magic-user for Elves (and Elves can only be Enchanters). Here's the description:

Enchanter: The elven Enchanters are a subtle lot, and their magic focuses on changing the intrinsic nature of things rather then affect the “flashy” spells of Wizards or the “useless phantasms” of an Illusionist. Enchanters may make an ordinary appearing door as strong as a mountain, or a reliable and loyal retainer into a spy. They change the birds and beasts of the forest to serve as sentries, and change the very air of the deep woods so that only allies of the Winter Queen can breathe it. If there is any rule governing Enchantment, it’s that you’ll never see the change itself, only its effects (and those probably too late).

But it was the last sub-class I have made that makes me all shivery and excited. Not to toot my own horn, but this one feels pretty cool. Here it is:

Namer: In the gaps between the worlds are the Shadowen. They are the absence reality, just as shadows are the absence of light. In the Plane of Shadow, which is not a place but an un-place, there are nameless minds full of malevolence for the real, but no forms. The Names brings forth the intents and purposes of the Plane of Shadow and gives them name and form, and using their name binds them to his bidding. The Namer is the most aggressive and feared of all magic-users.

What are the Shadowen? Are they demons? Lovecraftian horrors? Something else? I have purposefully left that vague for now, but I love both the Lovecraft and Wizard of Earthsea feel of the beasts being conjured. Besides, to the person who gets eaten by them these classifications are pretty meaningless.

I think the Shadowen will be some mix of Conjuration/Summoning spells and "dark enhancements", by wrapping otherwise ordinary things in Shadowen, like cloaks and swords. Perhaps Stormbringer was a Named blade ...

Frankly at this point I think my biggest challenge will be making the Wizards as cool an alternative as the other sub-classes I am writing up, and making sure no one infringes on the others' territory too much.

Cool things 4E did right

2009-11-16T14:58:00.000-08:00

Let there be no mistake: I play it Old School. There are wandering monsters, Gold = XP, player skill is more important than their character sheets, dungeons are cool, and "stories" are something we tell each other about last night's game, not something I tell to the PCs.

But that doesn't make me a hater of the modern editions. They're different games, ones I don't enjoy much, but there are a few plunderable gems in their rule sets. The following are a few of my favorites:

Unified XP Table
It's a belief of mine that PCs should be ballpark balanced in power and influence during a gaming session. Don't make a fetish of it, or use Microsoft Excel to "prove" balance, but at least eyeball it to make sure that no one player dominates the group like Superman could dominate The Justice League if he wanted to (most players aren't as nice as Superman; they'll want to).

Achieving ballpark balance is just easier in d20 D&D. In 0e through 2e that meant "balanced at a given amount of XP", but after 3e it became "at a given level." From a game design point of view it doesn't matter which one you use in theory, as long as you get the result. But from a practical point of view, it's just a little harder to compare larger numbers with more zeros - and makes you wonder why you have levels at all. Comparing a 5th level Fighter to a 5th level Magic-User just saves you a step. Plus, most slower XP progressions amount to 1 level difference at most; that's not enough of a penalty for what you get.

Fighters Can Do Stuff
I hate Feats and Class Powers as implementations (topics for another post), but I like the aspirational goal that a 17th level Fighter or Thief is just as effective and interesting to play as a 17th level Magic-User.

Maybe there's no good way to make all 17th level characters ballpark equals without stretching the believability of non-magical combatants and adventurers, but that's an argument for capping play at 9th level (or pick your preferred spot), not for playing a D&D group with both Rand al'Thor and Thom Merrilin[1]. What works in a novel gets old in a gaming group pretty fast.

Humans are a Good Choice
Really, how many human PCs did you see during the AD&D days? I didn't see many, and never played one except very briefly. Any sort of number crunching revealed it to be a pretty dumb choice.

But humans are supposed to be the most common race in most campaign worlds, and (in my aesthetic judgment) ought to make up the majority of the average adventuring group in bog-standard D&D. d20 D&D finally made humans an equal choice to the other races. I would take it one better and make them the strongest choice, so that so humanoids only make sense as a PC in limited circumstances. This achieves the literary flavor I want without "forcing" my players to take a sub-optimal race.

Rituals
From 4e, Rituals allow a spellcaster to cast spells outside of combat and without pre-memorization, for a price. This is great. If you make it too easy and costless every memorized spell slot will get used on Sleep, Fireball and Prismatic Spray (combat spells, when there's no time for Rituals), but with the right cost structure you can discourage the combat-cannon memorization scheme while also allowing the occasional Knock or Fly when it's really necessary (and you don't want the game to grind to a halt for 24 hours while the PCs re-memorize, assuming that waiting for 24 hours is even an option).

Holy Surge
Or something like that. I forget the exact term. But basically it means that Turn Undead is just one sort of Holy Surge, and different religions get other sorts. I think this is a great way to distinguish Clerics of Pelor (where Turn Undead makes sense) from those of Boccob (where Turn Undead makes less sense).

---
[1] Wow I'm a moron. Seventeen books and 16,450 pages (both numbers appox.) later, and I never realized until just now, trying to spell his name for this post, that Thom is "Merlin" from Arthurian legend. *facepalm*

My six alignments

2009-11-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Alignment is a fun topic, isn't it? I always find the message board discussions on alignment to be very informative and interesting, not to mention more cordial than most.

What? Too much sarcasm?

Ok, here's it straight: discussing alignment is a bitch. No one agrees on what it means, or how it actually guides a character's actions in the game world. And OD&D is particularly confusing, with just three alignments (Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic) and the suggestion that these are really just analogies for Good, Neutral and Evil (do why didn't they call them that?). And once you get to AD&D you have the added fun of the 3x3 grid, and what happens when a Lawful Good Paladin has to choose between Law and Good?

I think the main problem discussing alignment is so hard, and harder to adjudicate in the game, is because the alignment are not explicitly linked to human psychology. Humans aren't "good" or "evil" in everyday life, but they are jealous, angry, exuberant, empathic, courageous, etc. Socially we define what is good and evil pretty fluidly (almost as fluidly as we define "polite" and "rude"), but the basic human emotions and personality types are pretty well understood across languages and cultures. Those we understand.

On the other hand, D&D is a game, and it should only be a "fantasy world simulator" to the extent that being so makes the game better. With my rule changes I am always looking to improve player knowledge, DM adjudication and "fun factor", not recreate the Myers-Briggs personality test for its own sake. So I am sticking with the archetypal alignment names, but using the descriptive text to be a little more psychologically precise.

---

The Six Alignments

Good
Good characters put the lives and happiness of others before themselves. The unwise or unintelligent Good character may end up doing harm through ignorance or poor assumptions, but they do mean well. The competent Good characters of the world are a force for change to be reckoned with, and are a threat to monsters, tyrants and criminals wherever they may be found (even in the halls of power).

XP Awards: Good characters should earn XP whenever they accomplish their quest, whether that means saving the Princess or returning the Ankh of Allo-Mar to the sacred Temple.

Evil

Evil characters put their own interests first, and actively do not care about the lives or happiness of others. The unwise or unintelligent Evil character is probably a petty thief or mugger, or maybe just a merchant who sells falsified goods or useless snake oil whenever he can get away with it. Fools and their money (or freedom) are soon parted, and the Evil character can help that along for a price. Competent Evil characters of the world are a force for change to be reckoned with, and are a threat to all people.

XP Awards: Evil characters should earn XP whenever they further their own interests in a big way, regardless of the costs to others. This may mean achieving political office through bribery, deceit and murder, or stealing a powerful holy relic, or anything else that suits their fancy.

Lawful
Lawful characters follow a Code, not morality or selfishness. They probably believe that the Code produces the best possible world for the greatest number of people (or their people, at any rate), but they don't really care what the cost of that code is to particular individuals (or non-people), or even themselves. If the Code says that this person or that is sold into chattel slavery, or put to death, so be it. The Lawful character submits to the Code, and obeys. A Lawful character may have his own Code, but most Lawful characters below to established institutions (Churches, Guilds, Knightly Orders, etc.) with an established Code.

XP Awards: Lawful characters should earn XP whenever they achieve a victory for their Code, such as breaking a ring of slavers, bringing an outlaw to justice, or over-throwing a "renegade" Nobleman who has broken his oaths to his peasants. Lawful characters can also earn XP by achieving some victory for their Order, such as rehabilitating a lost Knight, rescuing a holy relic or landing a decisive blow against an historical foe.

Chaotic
Chaotic characters are driven by their passions, whether that is for practical jokes, music, art, magic, bloodlust or sadism, not by any sense of ethics or morality. Chaotic characters are almost always in a good mood, as long as they can pursue their passion, but their good mood isn't necessarily good news for anyone else - for they might become positively ecstatic at the thought of pealing your skin off and seeing how all your parts fit together. On the other hand, maybe they just want to play their flute. You can never tell. Chaotic characters are almost always really good at what they do, because any lack of intelligence and wisdom can usually be replaced with sufficient practice, but they are bored by everything not their passion and may lack entirely skills not related to it. They are typically indifferent to standard sorts of wealth and treasure.

Creatures from the Feylands (elves, goblins, gnomes, faeries, and the like) are almost always Chaotic, and therefore not trusted by those of the Sunlit World.

XP Awards: Chaotic characters should earn XP whenever they are able to engage in their passions. These awards are typically small and recurring. Chaotic characters can also earn bigger chunks of XP by achieving some victory for their passion, such as teaching their Art to a new student, rescuing a lost musical instrument or work of art or landing a decisive blow against an historical foe.

Neutral
Neutral characters don't think about "it" too hard. Their hierarchy of needs stops at Self Esteem. They don't harm anyone directly, but they don't go out of their way to help either. Their goals are simple, and once their basic needs are met, the world can go hang.

XP Awards: Neutral characters should earn XP whenever they achieve basic needs, particularly acquiring treasure or land. 1 XP per GP of treasure hauled back to town is a good rule, and a nice big chunk of XP for building or acquiring a stronghold is also encouraged. An alternative rule (for non-Dwarves) is that Neutral characters earn XP whenever they spend the GP, whether that's on ale or whores (either is fine, and both is better).

Natural
Natural characters are driven by a connection they feel with the natural world of trees, stone, and beasts (both mundane and magical). They put the interests of the natural world ahead of the interests of other men. Like a Lawful character, they speak of a Code, but that "Code" is nothing more or less than "do what is necessary", red in tooth and claw, for it is the law of survival. The unintelligent Natural character is little more than a beast, running wild in the woods. A competent Natural character, usually a Druid but not always, can be a real threat to anyone seeking to tame the world to their own ends and upset the natural balance of life and death.

XP Awards: Natural characters should earn XP awards for preserving or promoting the natural world. This may mean rescuing unicorns from capture by elves, or restoring an ancient oak grove despoiled by orcs, defeating a Necromancer, or reclaiming a farmland valley for wild flowers and animals.

Closing Notes

The XP Awards are in addition to anything won for defeating monsters, overcoming traps, and the like. These "supplemental" sources of XP are generic to all, and should not exceed 20% of the total XP handed out during a campaign. The majority of XP should come from the Alignment related Awards.

GM's may also consider "1/2 XP per GP" for non-neutral PCs. Everyone is motivated by money to some extent, and this can tide players over between big pay-days from the "higher" objectives.

Note that the problem of "differing Alignments adventuring together" is now solved. The odds are really against characters of opposed alignments being able to meet their individual XP Award requirements from the same set of goals. Therefore they won't adventure together. This is particularly true for Good and Evil. But Neutral characters can work with pretty much anyone, as long as they're paid.

As for how "playable" all of these alignments are, perhaps some of them aren't. I'm okay with that. Truly Chaotic characters will probably be rare, because the player will have to figure out how that character's passion directly relates to a career in adventuring. That's fine. I fully expect most players will be Neutral or Good under this system.

Differentiating races II - Half-Elf edition

2009-11-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

As I converted the post from yesterday into my Swords & Wizardry document, I had an idea for how to introduce Half-Elves. Those rules are below.

--
Changeling (aka, Half-Elf)
Elves cannot handle iron or steel, nor forge metals of any kind, without discomfort. To get around this limitation they sometimes take a human infant and perform a ritual that partially exchanges the essences of the human infant and an elven infant, making them both into Changelings. The formerly-human Changeling is often returned to its parent’s home the same night without them ever knowing it was gone and with no visible signs of its ordeal. Changeling infants appear as infants of their original race, but grow into an adult that is an identical twin of its other half, half-way between man and elf – often leading to a difficult life. Changelings encountered as adults may have been human-raised or elf-raised, and have very different outlooks and personal histories thereby. They may be of any Alignment, but their Elven half’s Chaotic[1] nature almost always expresses itself during combat.

Benefits & Restrictions
Changelings ...

always succeed in their attempts to navigate Faerie Circles and Gates.
do not have to make daily Saving Throws v. Charm to avoid forgetfulness in the Feylands.
receive a +5 to Saves vs. Illusions, Charms and Sleep spells.
can speak to forest animals and understand their speech.
can choose to go Berserk during combat, and always have a 10% per round of combat round of going Beserk without meaning to. This is functionally identical to the Barbarian class ability.

Classes Allowed[2]: Druid, Fighting-man (Archer, Guarder, Scoundrel), Herald[3], Magic-User, Rogue (Mountebank, Bard).

---

[1] I have six alignments: Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, Neutral and Natural. So Chaotic is not just another word for Evil in my rules. A Chaotic character is ruled by their passions, rather than ethics or morality. Elves are typically passionate about music, dance, art, practical jokes or magic, while a Goblin might be passionate about violence or sadism.

[2] Some of these classes (and their parenthetical sub-classes) have not been written up by me yet, but I will post them as I flesh them out.

[3] I have renamed the Cleric class "Herald". There are no substantial changes to the rules, I just though that "Cleric" sounded too Good. A "Cleric of Evil" just didn't sit right with me, while a "Herald of Evil" evokes the right sort of dread.

Differentiating races

2009-11-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

I'm currently going through the entire S&W rule set and considering how I would approach each of the rule "chunks" given a fresh slate. It's not my goal to change Swords & Wizardry into a non-D&D game (like Runequest or World of Darkness), but rather to present my own Arduin or Empire of the Petal Throne - an obvious D&D derivative but with each of the pieces given my unique spin.

Today's topic is Races.

Being steeped in the same literature as the D&D authors and most of its players (from Lord Dunsany to Terry Brooks) I like the races presented, especially elves and dwarves. I'm sort of ambivalent on halflings, but I don't hate them, so they're in. But the most accurate thing is to say I like all the Races conceptually but do not like their most common rule presentations. Let's consider a few reasons why:

Stat adjustments are boring, and once you make them you can't tell if a "16 Dex" means an Elf or a Human. After character generation they are quickly forgotten and do not help distinguish races.
+1 to attack with this or that weapon has the same faults as stat adjustments. The modifier has to be really big (like a Dwarf's +4 to AC vs. Giants, in some editions) to really stand out.
Sensory abilities (like Detect Secret Doors) are more unique, but they're too specialized to dungeon crawling (as a game designer I prefer rules that apply in the widest variety of possible D&D campaigns) and frequently are better suited as class abilities than racial abilities.

The following are some brainstormed racial benefits, including benefits for Humans. They "imply" a lot more setting detail than the ones normally given in D&D, but I'm cool with that. You can always tweak them for your campaign to make the fit better. What's most important to me is that they really evoke the race, and matter at all levels of the campaign.

Elves ...

always succeed in their attempts to navigate Faerie Circles and Gates, and do not have to wait until astrological conditions are optimal to use them.
do not have to make daily Saving Throws v. Charm to avoid forgetfulness in the Feylands.
suffer +1 dmg from ferrous weapons and suffer -2 to-hit when using ferrous weapons.
cannot wear ferrous armor.
impose a -4 to Saves when casting Illusions, Charms and Sleep spells.
can enchant items of any quality, not just High quality.

Dwarves ...

must make a Wis check to spend gold on anything other than (1) basic sustenance and shelter, (2) alcohol or pipeweed, or (3) fine arms and armor. (Grey Dwarves may also spend money on religious tithes without restriction).
ignore the first 2 HP of damage per hit from orcs, goblins and giants.
automatically succeeds Fatigue checks for 24 hours without rest, and thereafter treats Fatigue condition as 24 hours less Fatigued.
can sell metal-craft items for 150% of the PHB listed prices, and can craft metallic and wooden items of sufficient quality for enchantment by magic-users or used in clerical rituals. They must make a Wis check at a -4 penalty to not charge a friend for their work.
always cause a Faerie Gate's use to fail by their presence, unless they are unconscious, dead or incapacitated by alcohol.

Halflings ...

eat all the frickin' time.
make a Save v. Death whenever a blow would otherwise kill them. Success means they "rag dolled" with the blow, leaving them with 1 HP and knocked clear of the melee.
suffer only 1/2 the normal effects of Intoxication (suggesting a 16x capacity to handle alcohol and pipeweed, once you've adjusted for mass difference) and Poisons.
get a +4 to-hit and x2 damage when throwing stones or using slings. Does not stack with Backstab.
do not suffer from the "cumulative failure" penalties associated with Morale and Corruption.
do not suffer the racial penalty when making Reaction checks vs. Elves, Dwarves or Men.

Humans ...

can retain and lead 2x as many Hirelings as Chr Table I indicates.
do not suffer the racial penalty when making Reaction checks vs. members of any other race.
can dual-class into and out of classes without penalty. They declare at the beginning of an adventure which class they will be adding XP to for that adventure and must use class features from that class to solve at least half of the challenges, otherwise the XP is lost, but do not otherwise suffer any penalties from using class features from their other classes.
gain a free Secondary-Skill at character creation.

Reflections on Race & Class

2009-11-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Throughout my D&D career I've been all over the map on the concepts of Race and Class, and never happy with any of the solutions provided. The only thing I've consistently hated was level limits (as a game design element). Race=Class, as D&D Basic held, has appealing simplicity and archetypes, but is gratingly limiting. Races limited to certain classes, as in 0e-2e created specialties but not in a way I liked. And any Race being able to take any Class, as 3e and 4e allowed, just seemed to make the Races a generic collection of plusses.

I am intrigued though by the Dwarven Warrior and Elven Adventurer classes in Swords & Wizardry. The classes as written might need tweaking to suit my particular tastes, but the idea of classes reserved for different races opens up the possibility of both chargen flexibility and cool Racial flavor. More importantly it then asks the question - what's the Human's special class?

Maybe the Human classes are Fighting-man, Cleric and Magic-User. Each race would then need its own list of classes; an Elven, Dwarven and Halfling version of the other classes perhaps? You could easily make racial Magic-users by changing how they cast spells (Dwarves have to have their Rune Staff) and what spells they have access to (Elven spell-dancers cast divinations, illusions, charms, and nature spells). Their Fighting-man classes would reflect their Fighting styles best suited to their physiology (in the Halfling's case, I imagine a heavy emphasis on Slings and running away).

Here's my changes to the Dwarven Warrior, to make him about equal to a Fighting-Man.

The Dwarven Warrior

Dwarven Warriors fight as Dwarves are taught to fight - without giving ground. They hold.

Prime Attribute: Athleticism, 13+ (5% experience)

Hit Dice: 1d6+3 (Gains 4 hp/level after 10th level.)

Armor/Shield Permitted: Any.

Weapons Permitted: Any.

Dwarven Warrior Class Abilities

Shield Bonus (1st): Dwarven Warriors gain an additional +1 to AC when using a shield. This bonus increases to +2 at 7th level.

Racial Enmity (1st): Dwarven Warriors gain a +1/level to damage when fighting Orcs and Goblinoids.

Establish Stronghold (9th): At ninth level, a Dwarven Warrior character may establish a stronghold and attract a body of loyal Dwarves-at-arms who will swear fealty to him.

XP, Saves: As Fighting-man

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Even more intriguing though is: what happens when you introduce the Thief? I think a human rogue would be different than a Halfling, Elven or Dwarven one. What sort of differences would you introduce?

Character Stats: A limit or an aptitude?

2009-11-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHR

You have seen these before. But do you know what they are?

What are a character's stats? What do they say about the character? Are they some sort of absolute limit on ability, or an aptitude for acquiring a certain sort of skill?

OD&D (and S&W) does not associate a maximum weight a person can lift due to their Strength, but AD&D does. S&W's stats do impose a maximum number of languages a person can learn; a maximum number of henchmen you can lead; a maximum spell level you can cast. These "revealed truths" suggest that stats are some absolute limit on a character's ability. Rules developed in AD&D (particularly Str related rules, such as Bend Bars/Lift Gates and Max Encumbrance) cement this view.

On the other hand, although a low/high Dexterity or Strength may impose a penalty/bonus on your attack rolls, they don't place a ceiling on your attack rolls. Your to-hits keep on going as long as you keep on leveling. Same for Int and Wis placing no limit on spellcaster level, or Con not placing a ceiling on the number of hit points you can acquire. All "Prime Stats" can give you a boost to XP. These "revealed truths" suggest that stats are merely an aptitude for one sort of activity or another, but as long as you continue to apply yourself and work hard (aka, level up in your class), you can still meet any challenge.

I think there's no clear answer on this because EGG & Co. weren't clear themselves; there's a bit of both to it.

I think the game would benefit for clarity on this issue. Many arguments I've witnessed since the 80s could be more easily resolved, players would have a better understanding of what their character is and can do, and GMs can make more intuitive rulings during play. In the D&D spirit of "abstract is good" and "It's your class that matters", I am going build on the assumption that Stats are better conceived as Aptitudes, not static limits on what you can accomplish, and propose some ideas for how you can make sure they behave in this manner.

The first problem I see is that some of the Stats are named after static attributes - particularly Strength, Constitution and Intelligence. I propose renaming these "Athletics". "Endurance" and "Reasoning", respectively. An aptitude for Athletics does not guarantee you are fit or good at any particular sport (including swordsmanship), but the more "Athletic" you are the faster you pick these up (hence the XP bonus for Fighting-men). Similarly Enduring and Reasoning are things you do, not something you are.

Wisdom, Dexterity and Charisma can remain named as they are, unless someone has a better suggestion. "Eloquence" has a nice ring to it, but it doesn't seem obviously better than Charisma. "Fine Motor Control" is just boring.

The next thing to do is to remove any static limits imposed by the Stats and associate instead modifiers that are relevant to the game system. "Reasoning" will no longer place an absolute limit on maximum spell level or number of languages and Charisma will not limit the number of hirelings you can lead (spell level should solely be a function of class level anyway). For languages and hirelings I would impose a static limit applicable to all characters - perhaps 5 languages (that's fluently, mind you; if they want to learn a few pidgin tongues I'd allow a couple more) and, rather than impose a ceiling on the number of hirelings a PC can handle, impose a cumulative -1 penalty to morale for every two hirelings beyond the first two (4, 6, 8, ...). A high Charisma (13-18) can offset that by one.

ATH FORT DEX REA WIS CHR

Stat Checks
Basic and 0e D&D (and their clones) are (in)famous for their lack of general resolution mechanisms. Quite often when asks "Can my player do X?", the GM may reply "Make a stat check." It's the universal mechanic in a game that pretends not to have one. How does the "Stat as aptitude" philosophy effect the use of Stat checks?

I would start with the rule that "class and level matter." I would roll your stat check as you normally do (generally either d20 or 3d6, roll under your stat), but grant a +2 to rolls associated with the class' Prime Stat and a +1 to all rolls for every three class levels.

Absolute Strength
If you really want to know how much a PC can lift over their head for some reason, to the pound I mean, I would multiply their bodyweight by a either 1.3, 1.0 or 0.7, depending if they're a Fighting-man, Cleric or Magic-User. That's your "life over head" number (assuming a male PC; some may wish to adjust it down if the PC is female). You can multiply that by reasonable fractions to get carrying capacity, or drag weight, if you wanted to. Body size and the type of exercise you get are the prime determinants of your "expressed" strength. This seems a better method than using Str, since it's tough to explain how a 3 Str Fighter even manages to walk around in armor. Now a 3 Str fighter can be seen as completely lacking in natural talent for swordsmanship, not physically weak.

Weapons vs. AC

2009-10-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

The Weapon v. Armor Class table in AD&D is one of those "makes the game more accurate" rules that no one ever seemed to use. Even E. Gary Gygax copped to not using it, and (typically) blamed a "bad rule"'s inclusion in the game on other people.

But nonetheless I do like the rule. I think it adds tactical depth to the game, and it is more accurate. I think the Weapons v. AC table suffered from poor usability, not a poor concept. So here's my solution: Each weapon in the game has a to-hit bonus that more or less matches up with its historical ability to do damage through armor. Swords would have a low to-hit bonus, and maces and axes would have a higher bonus. This bonus applies whenever the foe is wearing armor. Some weapons (such as swords) might have a compensating factor, such as higher damage.

Immediately you can see the tradeoffs a character needs to make. A nice sword might have a nice, high damage die (such as d10), but against an opponent in armor the odds of doing that damage are low. A mace on the other hand might only do d6, but a +4 to-hit bonus means quite a bit in Swords & Wizardry (my preferred D&D clone at this time).

I realize that the likely result of this rule would be that many PCs would just resort to carrying two weapons rather than one. One would be the "beasts and rabble" sword or spear, and the other would be the "armored foes" mace or ax. I'm cool with that. Like I said, it adds some tactical depth and historical accuracy to the game without any loss of fun, and I'm a fan of both of those concepts.

The Swashbuckler

2009-10-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

At least once a year I see someone on one of the D&D message boards say "How can we model the lightly armored fighter?". This annoys me. Have you tried "roll around on the ground bleeding to death and crying for your Mommy"? I think that would be an accurate model.

There's a reason no one goes to battle in a puffy white shirt and feathered cap - it's suicide. For fighting, armor is better. Period. In a duel on open ground between Inigo Montoya and Lancelot, Inigo's dead every time. And not because Inigo is some wanker or drunk at the time (though he might be), or because Lancelot is so badass (though he is), it's because that kite shield, hauberk and great helm aren't fashion statements; they work. No matter how DEX you are, the other guy can move the tip of his sword faster than you can dodge. It's a 3lb piece of well balanced steel, and you're a 160 lb meat puppet; simple physics tells you which can change its vector more quickly given a limited source of power. But a fully decked out knight in 2mm suit of plate is invulnerable to your pissy little rapier.

You might consider allowing for Dex-based stunts that are limited by heavy armor, but I wouldn't over do it. Thieves and Magic-Users go armorless for professional reasons, but no one pretends that this is a sound tactical decision when it comes to melee. There's always "being Errol Flynn" - escaping your enemies not by slugging it out but by swinging to freedom on a chandelier - but any player who wants to go this route should be warned that they are betting their lives on a chandelier always being there. That likely won't be the case, and eventually they're going to find themselves in a "duke it out" situation versus a guy with a helm, a round shield, and a big frickin' ax.

Rules weight & player rewards

2009-10-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Over at the Swords & Wizardry forums, tacojohn4547 writes:

I game with a large group (7 players plus me (the DM), most of whom are very consistent in their attendence at our twice-monthly sessions) of veteran AD&D players (most of us played AD&D together in high school together, and some of us have played AD&D together ever since high school). For the past year and a half of our current three-year campaign, I've been running the campaign along the lines of what Matt is describing above - largely letting PC decisions drive the direction (and destination) of the campaign. Some of the players 'get' that kind of character freedom and self-defining destiny, and one or two of the players just don't 'get it'.

Those that seem to 'get it' have really started immersing themselves into the campaign, outlining short- and long-term goals for their characters' development. Their contributions to the group decision making process are deeply in-character. Conversely, those that seem least comfortable with such a wide open campaign and ultimately a significant degree of PC latitude are often more driven by player goals and desires.

The difference in this mindset is what lead to the explosion of "rule options" in the later editions of D&D, starting with AD&D 2E's "Players' Options" books and of course just exploding in 3E.

In a game where the player's goals are paramount, and his goals are "character focused", the only thing you can collect is "Power Ups", be they called Feats, Skill Points, Prestige Classes, or whatever. But where the player subsumes himself into the player-character the goals become "world focused" (outside the player-character); they must then consist of in-world elements like the accumulation of wealth, the founding of a demesne, the overthrowing of an evil king, or what-have-you.

The key difference between "character focused, rulebook rewards" and "world focused, campaign rewards" is that only the latter requires the willing cooperation of the DM. The former can be played at home by yourself, more or less, with character builds and PC v. PC death matches. On the other hand, for the player who is playing "deeply in character" and is focused on "campaign rewards" the rules become a distraction. They both break the player out of character and are completely irrelevant to achieving the in-world goals (because any Feat that gives you Vorbal Attack or +5 Fire Breath will just force the DM to up the ante on his side similarly, leaving you where you started).

Thus it is that "rules light" gaming systems and a preference for in-world rewards are inherently linked; and vice versa - "rules heavy" gaming systems and player-level rewards are inherantly linked. The type of rewards you are seeking strongly infers the game system you ought to be using.

Note however that while playing for player-level rewards with a "rules light" game is impossible (because there are too few rewards to achieve, and no personalization), the use of in-world rewards in a "rules heavy" game is not technically impossible, but it is very distracting for the reasons give above -- the "Power Up" elements are just hurdles to "the fun part."

Looking back now I can see why I was always frustrated with 3E/Iron Heroes/4E and eventually migrated to S&W. I was always trying to play for in-game rewards, and slowly over time found my way to the game system that let's me do that and then "gets out of the way."

But what am I supposed to do?

2009-08-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

One of the shortcomings in classic D&D is what some call the "Take Turns Having Fun" problem. More accurately, it's taking turns at doing well at something in one of D&D's two primary sub-games. Fighters and Rangers really kick-ass in combat, while Thieves really kick-ass at dungeon crawling. Clerics are more evenly divided between the sub-games depending on what spells them have prepared and Magic-Users either suck at both or dominate both depending on what level they are. Result: players spend 20 minutes watching other players being awesome while they have nothing to add.

Please note that I have no problem in inexact equality. That's the stuff of life and makes the game more authentic. But everyone wants to feel like they can help out, even if only in a small way. Helping each class find ways to help out is the topic of this post.

D&D 4E "solved" this problem by basically making every character exactly the same - they all have at-will, encounter and daily combat powers and a Skill Challenge System for dungeon crawling and wilderness/urban encounters. No one has to take turns because everyone can do anything anyone else can do using the same mechanics. That's one solution I suppose, but it's not a solution I am in favor of. One of the key strengths of classic D&D is that playing one class doesn't feel even remotely like playing any of the other classes. I like that magic works by different rules than swordplay, as you would expect magic to.

The "take turns having fun" problem is why I proposed in my previous post that some classes ought to have sub-sets of the traditional Thief skills. All classes have the same 1-in-6 chance of finding traps, but now Magic-Users can also Read Languages and Read Magic Scrolls, and Fighters and Elves can improve their climbing as they level up. An OD&D DM operating without supplements would of course be free to provide these skills at his pleasure, but since they have been provided to the Thief I have provided them to others as well to avoid the suggestion of deliberate omission. In this way more players have defined roles they can jump into in helping the dungeon crawl sub-game. All of the roleplaying and free-form opportunities, such as using iron spikes to keep a trap door from opening, of course remain.

I have a few other suggestions for improving sub-game participation. Some of them may seem radical, and I do not suggest they all be adopted en masse without careful thought, but here they are for your consideration:

1) Allow Thieves to set up attacks by others. A thief has little to offer in combat once his backstab chance has been lost. Allow him to attack a melee opponent vs. AC 10 in order to disrupt that opponent's defenses. Success grants another PC a +2 to-hit that round.

2) Improve the AC of Thieves and Monks while armed with appropriate weapons. They need it.

3) Remove the weapon restrictions from magic-users. This goes against the grain for many classic D&D players, but there are many fantasy examples of wizards using swords and other weapons (Glamdring, anyone? Even Jack Vance's Dying Earth wizards had swords. And don't forget Stormbringer). Frankly magic-users have such poor ACs and to-hit that they won't be getting mixed up in combat often anyway, but at least this way they can have a crossbow to help out with and (if cornered) can draw that sword and not be completely helpless against a couple orcs. As they level up their to-hit will fall further behind as their spells become more potent, allowing them to transition smoothly from "poor man's fighter-m/u" to arch-mage.

4) Establish some non-spell magic for Clerics and Magic-User to interrogate the magical traps and oddities found in the world's dungeons. Just as Clerics and Magic and scribe scrolls and brew potions independently of spell casting, you could have Rituals (from 4E; great idea) to perform minor divinations given time and proper components.

5) Give Clerics light-sabers and rename them "Jedi." ... just kidding. :-)

6) Most importantly, and this is more a guideline on good Dungeon Mastering than a rule, remember to not roll any Thief Skill checks or similar rules until all roleplaying and free-form problem solving options have been exhausted. This ought to be sufficient reminder to the players that D&D is first and foremost of game of player skill rather than character skill, and that good ideas sufficient to overcome any challenge faced can come from anyone.

Making items magical

2009-08-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

There are few things as potentially destabilizing to a D&D campaign as introducing a poorly considered magical item (or, god forbid, artifact). Which is of course exactly why players want to make them - they need all the advantages they can get!

Rules for making magical items can be difficult to draft but they are somewhat necessary for a Gygaxian Naturalist DM who wants to explain where all the magic swords and rings in the campaign world came from. The most open route is to go where 3E went and have Feats, costs and markets clearly defined in the DMG. This sort of sucks the mystery out of what's supposed to be magical though. The more mysterious and magical but very restrictive answer is to say "They were made by Arch-Wizards of the Old Empire, in the days before the Art was lost. No one living today can recreate them." That's certainly very Vancian and post-apocalyptic, but it also sort of sucks the wind out of the sails of the player's enthusiasm. It also doesn't explain the abundance of consumable potions and scrolls, which you would have thought would have been all used up since the days of the Old Empire.

Just recently though I came across the fantastic idea of "Sword Spirits."

Interactions between magic, Nature, Chaos, and the gods (at least some of which owe their own existence to a process similar to the way the universe formed) has given rise to a variety of elemental beings, not all of which are as insensate and uncaring as Nature itself. I'm currently toying with the notion that the process of metalworking, which involves (to some degree) the interaction of all four elements inadvertently gave rise to a "fifth elemental" -- spirits that are sometimes drawn into crafted objects, endowing them with magical powers and, in many cases, allow the spirit to exercise its own intelligence and will.

The hows and whys of the process I prefer to keep strange and mysterious, including why it is that these metal spirits seem to manifest most fully only when drawn into swords -- thus giving rise to their more common name: "sword spirits." But I very much like the idea that the fashioning of magic weapons isn't simply a matter of a magic-user deciding to do so by following some hoary formula that always results in a sword +1, +2 vs. lycanthropes. I want magic weapons to be, on some level, accidental in their origins, something beyond the ken of men, elves, and even dwarves (who were probably the first to notice the phenomenon). It makes magic swords special and a little bit dangerous and that's a good thing.

A very good thing indeed! Bloody brilliant.

I would riff off this idea to say that very, very few of the permanent magical items in existence (other than maybe some older artifacts created by the Old Empire of course) were created completely on purpose. At most the caster can influence type of spirit summoned into the item, but the final abilities would be somewhat random. Naturally we would have random charts to determine the results!

Quickly categorizing items

Scrolls, potions, dusts and creams - anything of the "Use once" variety - should be producible without too much difficulty. A good start might be one week and 100 gp/level for making scrolls. Potions and reagents would take a similar amount of time but require a stocked Alchemistry lab and cost more. The DM can of course also limit the ability to make these items by restricting access to the necessary materials. "Yes, you have the money - but no one has a roc feather quill to sell you! And aren't you out of weresquid ink?"

Permanent items would need a master craftsman (probably not the wizard), the finest materials, and the right invocations. Costs would be high. At the end of the crafting and casting a Sword Spirit is summoned and hopefully decides to reside in the item (insert chance of failure here). If it does reside in the item the DM should roll for the puissance (+1 to +5), alignment and Intelligence (if any) and abilities of the spirit in the item.

As an example of influence might be, say you wanted to create an enchantment/charm item - try including a branch from a Dryad's tree freely given, or if you wanted to make an item good vs. lyncanthropes you might toss in the tears of a werewolf's victim and a sacrifice to the Moon goddess. The DM would value the worth of the "influence" and you get the result you want if you roll within +/- X% on the chart.

As for charged items, I am not a big fan. A Wand of Fireballs should, in my opinion, increase the damage, range or area of effect of the Fireballs you cast, not have Fireballs within it. But if you wanted charged items by the book I would make them halfway between scrolls and permanent items.

Just one of the gang now

2009-08-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

In my previous posts I have argued that the Thief was the first made-for-D&D class because it included rules for D&D's second sub-game, the dungeon crawl, whereas "the Chainmail classes" just had rules for combat. I also pointed out that this variance-at-rules was precisely what made the Thief a "problem" to many old school gamers. What should have been part of the rule system was introduced as a class ability by accident, setting the stage for Thief Skills and (eventually) the Skill System in 3e/4e. For anyone committed to D&D's class-based advancement system (as I am) this was obviously all an unthinking mistake, and so this post is my first draft proposal of a D&D alt.history where the Thief was created in concordance with its fellow classes.

Note that the proposals in this post will reflect the specifics of the Labyrinth Lord rules, as its free PDF is what I have available both at home and office. Adapting it to your preferred flavor of D&D should not be a difficult project.

* * *

This post will be organized in three sections: Thieves, New Rule Systems and Further Suggested Changes. The Thieves section will present a Thief class with abilities and probabilities much the same as a standard Thief, but in a manner integrated with the D&D rule set. The new rule systems presented will provide rules modifying or adding generic mechanics to the Movement & Exploration rules all classes may try their hand at. The last section, Further Suggested Changes, will suggest a few changes to the other classes in the game so they may take advantage of the New Rule Systems with class-specific degrees of competency.

Thieves
Prime Requisite: Dex
HD: 1d4
Maximum Level: None

Backstab: A Thief who attacks his target while the target is Surprised (relative to the Thief; the target may be aware of third parties) receives a +4 bonus to-hit and multiplies damage by x2.

Sneaky: Thieves walk quietly and keep to the shadows out of habit as much as anything. While wearing armor no heavier than leather and no shield, and otherwise dressed and shod appropriately at the DM's discretion, the Thief surprises an opponent on 1-3. This increases to 1-4 at 7th level, 1-5 at 11th level and 1-6 at 14th level. At 14th level and above 2d6 is rolled; if both are 6 the attempt still fails. This chance may always be improved or reduced by circumstances or the senses of the Thief's adversary.

Adept Climber: While wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Thieves subtract +1/2 per Level from their DEX Check when Climbing.

Adroit Technician: A Thief's ability to find hidden door and traps, disable traps and pick locks improves to 1-2 at 3rd level, 1-3 at 6th level, 1-4 at 8th, 1-5 at 10th and 1-6 at 13th. At 13th level and above 2d6 is rolled; if both are 6 the attempt still fails.

Hear Noise: Laying in wait, a Thief's keen ears picks up what others cannot. A Thief begins at 1st level with a 1-2/6 chance of detecting faint noise, the same as an elf. This improves to 1-3 at 3rd level, 1-4 at 6th and 1-5 at 10th.

Sneaky v. Hear Noise: Lower successful roll wins.

Read Languages: Thieves have double the normal chance to Read Languages.

Pick Pockets: The "other" signature ability of the Thief, Thieves can attempt relieve targets of finger rings, pocket contents or purse with the slightest bump. They can also use this skill to palm small items or perform other minor feats of legerdemain, such as swapping a fair dice for a weighted one before rolling on the craps table. Success is rolling a 1-2 on 6, improving to 1-3 at 6th level, 1-4 at 8th level, 1-5 at 10th and 1-6 at 12th. Targets of 10th level or higher reduce the odds of success by 1. If the Thief fails or rolls a 6, roll again for each target or observer. A 6 on any of the secondary rolls results in being noticed!

Build Thief Den: Per LL.

New Rule Systems (or Modifications)

Surprise

Chance to Gain Surprise

Unarmored or Leather Armor: 1-2/6

Armored in Lamellar, Mail or Plate: 1/6

Ambush: The Surprise rules assume that each side is behaving "normally", either walking or talking at normal volumes. If one side remains still and is particularly quiet however, due to deliberate attempts to hide their presence, then their chance of being surprised is reduced by 1 and their chance of gaining surprise is increase by 2.

Once you've been seen ...: No adventurer can regain Surprise once the target is aware of you, but you may be able to Surprise a target who is aware of third parties. By example, a Thief lying in wait behind a rain barrel may gain Surprise against a passing guardsman whose attention is focused on the Thief's accomplices further down the way.

It's Always the Dwarf's Fault: A group of characters moving together uses the worst Surprise roll of any member of its group.

Spells:

Invisible grants +1 to Surprise.

Silence grants +1 to Surprise.

Faerie Fire and More Cowbell makes Surprise impossible.

Ascending & Climbing (replaced Climbing rules on p. 48)

Ascending means ascending any slope or stair more than 25 degrees above level, but less than the steepness where you can reach your hand straight out and touch the surface you are ascending. You move both Forward and Upwards at 3/4 your normal movement rate. No check is necessary to succeed.

Climbing means climbing any slope or stair so steep you can reach straight out with your hand and touch the surface you are climbing, or steeper. You move Upwards at 1/4 your normal movement rate and Forwards very little if at all (ask your DM if you must know). Roll a DEX check to climb safely 100' or less (longer climbs will require more rolls, possibly with penalties for exhaustion). Failure means a fall from 1/2 the maximum height.

Common Climbing Modifiers:

Ladder, Knotted Rope, Rope Descent Automatic Success

Rope Climb (Grappling Hook, Pitons) -3

Windows & Ledges, Steep Cliff +0

Sheer Cliff, Castle Wall, Pit +3

Strange Languages & Magical Scrolls

Over the course of many adventures, adventures pick up many bits of lore and are exposed to many strange dialects and tongues.

Reading Languages: If an adventurer finds a map or document whose writings are not wholly alien to him (meaning the writings are based on a language related to languages he has been exposed to before) he may attempt to puzzle out its meaning. The chance of success is equal to (5+Additional Langues * Level)%, to a maximum of 80%. Success indicates that he has translated a % of the work equal to his odds of success.

Magical Scrolls: Any adventurer over 3rd level may attempt to use a magical scroll (magic-user, elven or clerical), however the odds of success are only (5+Additional Langues * Level)%, to a maximum of 90%. Failure can result in the spell fizzling out, being cast horribly awry, exploding, or such other result as your DM may determine.

Locks, Traps & Trap Detection (replaces rules from Labyrinth Rules)

Characters of all classes can search for and attempt to disable non-magical traps. All characters except dwarves can succeed in spotting a trap on a roll of 1 on 1d6. Dwarves succeed on a roll of 1 or 2 on 1d6. Players must declare that their characters are actively looking for traps, and they must be looking in the right place. This roll may only be made once in a particular location, and it takes 1 turn per effort made. The Labyrinth Lord secretly rolls the dice for these checks, because the players will never know if they failed to find the trap or if there is not one present.

Traps have specific triggers, whether it is opening a door or walking over a particular area. Every time a character makes an action that could trigger a trap (including any attempt to disable it), the Labyrinth Lord rolls 1d6. A result of 1 or 2 indicates that the trap springs.

Characters with the proper tools may attempt to pick open a locked door or chest without breaking the lock. The odds of success are 1 in 6. Each character may only attempt to pick a particular lock once per character level. Picking a lock requires 1 round of effort.

Further Suggested Changes

Elf

Graceful Climber: While wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Elves subtract their DEX modifier and +1/4 per Level from their DEX Check when Climbing.

Fighter

Strong Climber: Fighters roll a STR check to climb. Further, if they are wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Fighters subtract +1/4 per Level from their STR Check when Climbing.

Halfling

Small: Halflings are easy to miss. In natural surface environments they Surprise on a 1-5. In cities or dungeons they improve their otherwise normal chance for surprising an opponent by 1.

Magic-User

Read Languages: A Magic-User has double the normal chance of Reading Languages, to a maximum of 90%. Further he not limited to languages "not wholly alien" for his arcane training has trained his mind to hold the underlying fundamental patterns of the universe, of which all languages are a mere subset.

Magical Scrolls: A magic-user or elven scroll the magic-user has scribed himself or cast Read Magic on has no chance of failure when read.

D&D's misplaced "dungeon crawl" rules

2009-08-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I argued that the Thief was the first true D&D class, as the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric were very much still Chainmail classes[1] playing in a D&D game. The Cliff Notes version of that contention was this:

Chainmail was a combat game, while D&D was a roleplaying game with both combat and dungeon exploration elements.
The Thief was the first class to have a significant chunk of rules dedicated to both of D&D's major sub-games. The others were combat only.

The focus of this post is how the Thief's skills were (poorly) integrated into the D&D game and how it could have been done in a different and better way.

It was a Class Skill; It should have been a Rule System

For reasons I am not aware of it was decided that certain skills (such as opening locks, finding traps, etc.) would be presented as a skill exclusive to members of the Thief class, and not as a generic ability to which D&D Thieves would have preferential access. Contrast that with the D&D combat system, where even the Magic-User is presented with a to-hit advancement table regardless of his suitability for engaging in melee combat. The Cleric and Thief can make fighting retreats. Could you imagine if the entire combat chapter had instead been presented as Fighter/Cleric class abilities which the Thief and Magic-User simply didn't have access to?

I think most D&D players view the stats, saving throw and combat systems of D&D in much the same way that surfers view water. It is the medium on which the activity is engaged in, and while it is oft discussed its centrality and importance to all participants is never deeply questioned. The Thief skill system sticks out like a sore thumb because it is central and important to only one of the classes and none of the others. This is particularly problematic because opening locks and removing traps are non-magical skills that every D&D character has a vested interest in learning to some degree, for survival reasons if no other. More specialized or arcane abilities, such as spellcasting or weapon specialization make better candidates for class abilities than the ability to "climb walls."

You can also contrast the Thief skills with the Open Doors rule under the Strength Table. Everyone can Open Doors, because really, how hard is it to put your shoulder into a stuck door and give it a shove? Yet apparently the ability to stick a piton into a trap mechanism is something that only Thieves are good enough to have a rule for. Everyone else has to roleplay it out and have the DM make an ad hoc judgment.

Lastly, take a moment to contrast the Thief Skills with Saving Throws. Everyone can try to save vs. Death or Breath Weapon. We don't expect all classes to be equally good at these things, but saving vs. perilous encounters is at the heart and soul of a good dungeon crawl and is essential to D&D. It only makes perfect sense (from a game design point of view) that an activity which all players would engage in from time to time would have mechanics that apply to all players. Saving Throws are generic mechanics, just like combat and stats.

So why do these three generic mechancis, the combat system, the saving throw system and the stat tables, apply to all classes when Thief skills are a class ability? Why should the "Dungeon Exploration System" (as I think of Thief skills) be any different when "dungeon exploration" is something that everyone engages in? I can't think of any reason, and I think presenting it as such in Supplement I set D&D off in a poor direction that would take until 4E to really rectify.

Oh, let's just get rid of the Thief after all...

You're entitled to that opinion, but I think there's a very good argument for having rule to mediate activities which (1) come up a lot during typical D&D adventures and (2) have meaningful consequences as to success and failure. We don't need rules for running a Ye Olde Dry Goods Shoppe because that doesn't come up often (typically). If it's ever necessary DM hand-waiving or rolling a d100 to reflect how well business is doing is good enough.

We also don't need rules for cooking meals and doing the necessaries. We sort of assume those things happen at regular intervals during D&D, but you really shouldn't have to worry about losing HP or Saving v. Paralysis during these activities (we hope).

Moving Silently, Detecting Traps and Opening Locks however (1) come up a lot during typical D&D adventures and (2) can kill you if you do it wrong. Just like combat and Save v. Poison. We could benefit from rules for that.

A "TSR D&D" Dungeon Crawl System (DCS)

The purpose of this section is to propose a collection of rules (grandiosely referred to as "the DCS" because it makes me feel virile) which all classes can participate in, just as all classes have rules for combat mechanics and saving throws. It should be compatible with any pre-d20 version of D&D.

The simplest method would be to present the DCS an advancing table of static numbers from 1 to 100 that the player would seek to roll under on a d100. Essentially you draft a Thief skills table for each of the classes. Include racial modifiers if playing AD&D. The Thief would still be the best in most, but a Wizard might start with a better pick pockets (street magic practice) and Read Languages. Fighters could start with a good climb walls. Some skills, such as Open Locks might be considered specialized enough that only the Thief would have a score above 1% (everyone would have at least a 1% shot) at 1st level. We nix Move Silently and just note that Thieves get a +1 to Surprise when travelling alone or solely with halflings, elves, and other thieves none of them in metal armor. It's the mirror image of the Ranger ability, and they cancel each other out (until 5th level, when it becomes +2, then +3 at 10th, etc.).

The other method (and my preferred one, because it's easier for the DM to modify for task-specific difficulty) is to present a "to hit" table for each of the skills (we still nix Move Silently though) according to each of the classes' abilities. Thieves might start with +5 CW, +2 Open Locks, etc. Modify with the appropriate Dex or Str modifiers only. The system would work like this:

DM: Describes what the PCs can perceive. "There's a trap."
PCs: Describes what they want to achieve and their plan for doing it. "We disable it by sticking this iron helmet in the gears."
DM: Determines whether the PC's actions warrant a roll. "OK. Roll for Traps. Beat a 10."
PCs: {Rolls 2d6+modifiers} "Crap!"
DM: {Maniacal Laughter} The gears suck the helmet through and crush it like an empty Miller Lite under a Frost Giant's boots. With a groan of ancient lumber and a shriek of rusty iron wheels the ceiling begins to descend and the port cullis slams shut behind you. What now, hot shots? {Evil Chuckling}

The part in italics is critical. If the player cannot describe what his character is doing there's no way to earn a roll. The bold & italics bit is the core mechanic of this rule. Each thief skill category would have a defined failure mode (e.g., Traps that aren't disarmed "go off" on 1-3/6. Or 1-5/6 if you hate players.).

I don't have it all worked out, but I think Move Silently and Hide in Shadows should be eliminated. They would be replaced by a Thief class ability (Sneaky) to improve Surprise (+1 at 1st, +2 at 4th, +3 at 8th, etc.). They are the opposite of the Ranger's ability Wary. All of the other class abilities should be available to everyone at some point, except possibly Read Magic Scrolls (and that depends on your campaign world preferences).

From an organizational point of view I think these rules should go near the movement, vision and encumbrance rules.

Preserving the OD&D Trap-Solution Methods

I do want to emphasize that this system would not replace role playing with roll playing. First, as I mentioned above, sufficient role play interaction with the environment to state a plan and goal is necessary to even get a roll.

Secondly, I recognize that exercising one's wits to be essential to playing D&D. D&D has a long history of presenting players with challenges (rather than their characters) and I wish no hard to that tradition.My second point regarding the preservation of old school riddles however cannot be found in any rule, and must be found at the dungeon design stage of gaming (which is the individual DM's responsibility, not the game designer's). Any adventure should contain a mix of "Locked door. Do you have Thieves picks?" rolls and player-directed (rather than character-directed) challenges. And player-directed challenges should often be fully resolvable without the need for a roll.
By example, imagine two trap rooms. One can only be disabled by carefully manipulating the gears of the trap. This would call for a roll of some dice. The other room can be escaped by breaking one of four magic mirrors (but the other three will release poison gas into the room). It would be up to the players to determine which mirror to break, but once the decision is made no roll would be necessary. The DES will not help you with this puzzle, or ones related to random teleportation. Only good brain work can help a player in this regard.

It's not a Generic "Skill System", nor a Universal Mechanic

As a last point, please note that this would be a limited set of adventuring related skills - not an open ended skill system (like 3E, with its Perform, Craft and Profession) or any kind of stupid universal mechanic. Secondary avocations are not what the system is trying to model, and I suggest C&C's Secondary Skills or AD&D's Non-Weapon Proficiencies if that's what you want. I speak only of those activities which D&D adventurers actually engage in as part of their "primary job" of adventuring. It largely overlaps with Thief skills and might also include basic first aid, map-making and parlay rules.

[1] Yes, I am aware that there was no Cleric class in Chainmail and that the Cleric was developed by Dave Arneson as part of his proto-D&D Blackmoor campaign. Nevertheless, the Cleric is primarily a Fighter with some abilities tuned to protective magic and combatting the undead. His rules are still primarily related to combat and he would make a decent Chainmail class.

Regarding the first D&D class, the Thief

2009-07-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

Before Dungeons & Dragons (1974) there was Chainmail, Gary Gygax's miniatures wargame released by TSR in 1971. As a wargame it had various types of fighter units, and its fantasy supplement included many spells that would make a reappearance in D&D three years later. It was on this foundation that Dave Arneson built his world changing Blackmoor campaign.

The Blackmoor campaign would be world changing, but in 1974 that was hardly a foregone conclusion. What was already established though in 1974 was that Arneson's house rules fundamentally changed a Chainmail player's viewpoint from "omniscient general" to a limited first-person viewpoint in the form a single player character, while simultaneously expanding the possibilities of the game's milieu from fixed set battles to everything imaginably achievable by a fantasy hero within a fantasy world. Combat between player characters and their fantastic foes then became a sub-game within a much larger game.

Combat would not be the only sub-game in D&D however. Dave Arneson's other great contribution to the game was the idea of the dungeon delve itself. Exploring the dungeon became "the other subgame", and rules such as movement rates (which were in Chainmail, but adapted to dungeon environments), range of vision, equipment and encumbrance, surprise and wandering monster tables, etc. etc. were developed to faciliate a rules-based interraction between the players and their environment.

What is so interesting (to me) about the dungeon delve experience however is what rules were missing. In fact most interractions between the players and their environment was not mediated by rules but solely through the DM by means of open ended questions, answers and player actions.

PC: "What do I see?"
DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."
PC: "Can I poke it with my 10' pole?"

And so on. It is free form, open ended, and subjective. If the players prodded locked doors or booby-trapped idols it resided solely with the DM's discretion as to whether or not the task was performed with the level of skill and care necessary to avoid nasty blowback. Many a PC died due to their player not having demonstrated sufficient attention to whether the floor the PC was walking on contained a pit trap.

But then came Supplement I: Greyhawk, and a class not existing in the Chainmail rules but made specifically for D&D - the Thief. In fact, I would say that the Thief was the first D&D class, as the others were really Chainmail classes ported over to D&D but only half "converted" to the D&D game. Unlike the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric the Thief not only had HD, to-hit advancement saving throws compatible with the combat rules (even if he sucked at combat), but he also had codified non-combat skills directly applicable to a game of dungeon exploration. Unlike the 10' pole users the Thief's player interrfaced with the dungeon through rules:

Thief: "What do I see?"
DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."
PC: "Ok, I'm going to roll for Find Traps."

And I think this is why many old school gamers have a problem with the Thief. The Chainmail classes were designed for wargaming, and so the only D&D sub-game where their players could interface with the world using codified, more or less complete rules was combat. When it came to D&D's dungeon exploration sub-game they were required to interract with the world solely through role playing, but the Thief wasn't. The Thief class was interracting with the dungeon exploration sub-game in a new way, and, more importantly, in a manner that the other class's players could not match or meanigfully participate in.

Was this a good change? Obviously the answer to that is subjective, but I think the enduring popularity of the Thief class as one of "the Big Four" classes through all editions of D&D rules after Supplement I is strong evidence that the majority of players want to interface with the dungeon exploration sub-game (particularly its sundry traps, deep pits and locked doors) through a ruleset that's at least semi-objective and condified. So from a "wisdom of crowds" point of view I feel confident saying it was a good change.

But it could have been better. In my next post I will argue that Supplement I should have presented not just the Thief, but also a unified Skill System and rules for "converting" the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric to being fully integrated D&D classes.

D&D's Various Skill Systems

2009-07-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

A perennial conversation within the D&D community is on the necessity and worth of various Skill Systems (apart from the PC's skills at melee combat and spellcasting). I think this quote from Dragonsfoot (third post down) is mandatory reading for anyone who has an opinion on the matter:

I am firmly in the camp that D&D does not need a skill system. As mentioned before, the DM can adjudicate a fair outcome for any action the PC takes even if it is not specifically covered under the class skills. The tools are already there, (attribute checks, saving throws, "to hit" rolls, common sense, etc...) and because there are infinite possibilities for players to try different things under a variety of circumstances, you will need to use those tools in many cases regardless of the presence of a skill system. Any class/skill system only gets you so far. They simplify the common mechanics, acting as a baseline for resolving many of the actions that are likely to take place in the game. They are are not designed to be an all encompassing umbrella for every single possible action a player takes, nor should they be. The game will often step outside the box of class or skills and there the DM is free to use creativity to resolve the action in a fair and fun manner. What skill should there be for kicking a table on its side for cover in a barroom brawl? or swinging down from the balcony on a tapestry into a knotted melee below? or rigging some pans on a wire to a door as an alarm against entry? or snatching a pack from a rushing river before it is swept away over a waterfall?

Emphasis added.

Anyone who wants to design a Skill System for D&D must first ask themselves: what in-game world-vs.-PC interractions am I trying to describe? What sub-game is this rule designed for? Is it supposed to function at the role play level? Within the combat engine? Am I introducing a new sub-game? Will everyone be able to participate in this game as fully as they do in role playing and combat? Etc.

D&D is a free form game where the player characters can go anywhere and do anything, to the limits of their resources and abilities. There is no possible way you can develop a simple, short and easy to implement skill system that can address all possible scenarios (which is why univeral mechanics are stupid). Or did you think saving vs. paralysis is really that similar to managing a banana plantation? The best system I have seen for addressing "everything else" is AD&D 2E's Non-Weapon Proficiency system (a.k.a., Secondary Skills in rule sets written by E. Gary Gygax), but precisely because it's really just a soft gloss on "other stuff PCs know" that is heavily dependent on DM adjudication. It's no combat engine.

However, that being said, while the AD&D 3.x Skill System was a step down from Non-Weapon Proficiencies in design quality (it was a gory mess bleeding across multiple sub-games), the AD&D 4E system was an improvement from there (even if it was a huge change in direction from the OD&D through AD&D 2E era). The designers of 4E realized that dungeon, wilderness and urban adventuring could be rule-mediated sub-games apart from roleplaying. The Skills thus defined how players interacted with these scenarios, and most of the bases were covered. This was the logic of the Thief Skills and the Ranger's tracking ability generalized to all classes.

But even 4E does not have a single "skill system" which mediates all player interraction with the world. Fighters and Barbarians can "open locks" with their war hammer, and a Wizard with a Knock spell. Further there are skills quite outside the skill system, such as the Wizard's ability to scribe scrolls (a rule descended all the way from Holmes Basic D&D). And there are many more, in the sense that the characters have a "skill" that allows them to accomplish an in-game effect.

D&D doesn't, and never had, a skill system. It has many, and as long as D&D is a roleplaying game, where players can attempt any action within their resources and abilties, that will always be the case.

The stupidity of Universal Mechanics

2009-07-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

There has a movement among role playing games for the last decade to tout a "universal mechanic" to resolve all actions which cannot be adjudicated fairly through role play. The entire "d20 revolution" was based on this, as is Castles & Crusades' SIEGE Engine. This is a really dumb idea.

Good role playing games operate at many levels. The two most frequently encountered ones are in persona role playing (where you resolve issues through role play and group consensus) and combat. D&D 4E has introduced Skill Challenge Encounters, and there are many others of course. But each game-level must be its own game with rules well tailored to that game in order to perfect the "fit" between rules and player action. Could you imagine if my chess variant tried to use a universal mechanic to adjudicate both the chess moves and the Street Fighter matches? Neither chess nor Street Fighter would be improved thereby. So it is with any other games-within-a-game. The developers at Rockstar Games certainly understand the need for well designed sub-games.

The problem with the universal mechanic is that it places a serious limitation on the types of sub-games a given rpg can incorporate. Classic D&D could never have incorporated rules for small team combat, wrestling, mass combat, naval warfare, dominion management, multiverse wanderings, and spellcasting if it had insisted on a universal mechanic. And if D&D 4E shows us anything, it's that when you try really hard to make universal mechanics work, many things get lost while what remains ends a bland melange of actions that all feel exactly the same.

Do not fear bespoke mechanics. They're what makes each level of a game interesting.

UPDATE: Just thought of something:

Dear Old Schoolers,

Answering every "How should I resolve situation X?" question with "Roll an attribute check" or "Roll percentile dice" is a universal mechanic (see above for why that's bad). Sometimes, if situation X comes up often enough, it's advisable to develop a bespoke mechanic. Especially if the players can reasonably expect their characters to get better at situation X as they level up. That's not a betrayal of Gary Gygax's legacy, it's just good sense.

Thanks,

Of Games & Sub-Games

2009-07-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

Many games, such as chess, have just one level. But you could imagine a chess variant where each time a player moves a piece the two players resort to a Street Fighter bout to determine which chess piece takes control of the space. In this chess variant chess is "the game" and Street Fighter is the sub-game.

Most role playing games have a number of sub-games, but to know what the sub-games are you first have to identify the "highest level" of the game. In my chess variant the highest level of the game is the chessboard, and we know this because when Street Fighter concludes the player's attention returns there. So I propose that the highest level of a game is "the gameboard to where the player's attention returns when all temporary distractions are resolved." Using this definition I suggest that "the game" of Dungeons & Dragons is the in persona role playing of the life of an adventurer, from birth to death (even if childhood is either hand-waived or handled with a paragraph or two of back story). What is so fascinating about this is how few rules there are for D&D's primary gameboard. Almost all of the rules in D&D deal exclusively with sub-games, particularly combat. There are a number of rules which effect the primary level of D&D, such as rules for aging, but for the most part it is free form play mediated only by the participating group's ability to form a consensus as to cause and effect within the game world.

I think this is why D&D lends itself to so many worlds and settings (official and homebrew), and why it became as popular as it did. The core game has almost no rules at all holding it back, and what few there are (such as aging or equipment price lists) are so ancillary to the real action that they can be ignored or rewritten as needed.

This is probably also the reason so many people think D&D is about combat encounters the way Diablo is. Due to the "invisible" nature of D&D's core game (it is not written anywhere, but can only be experienced through play) many have mistake the D&D's most prominent sub-game for the game itself.

Pale Imitations

2009-07-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

There are no new ideas. A concern of mine I have had for some time was voiced by James Maliszewski at Grognardia almost a month ago:

in the old school movement, the shadow of Gygax (and, to a lesser extent, Arneson) looms every bit as large as does that of Lovecraft in the realm of cosmic horror fiction. The shadow of TSR itself is similarly impressive and rightly so. ... I see a danger in the way many old school products use past products as explicit models, right down to the trade dress, typeface, and layout. ... The same holds true not just for presentation but for content [and] the conflation of elements intended to support content with the content itself.

Indeed. OSRIC has provided a valuable service by producing an open content reference for publishers looking to explicitly develop for AD&D 1E, but games that claim to be new (I'm looking at you, Castles & Crusades) are anything but. They have passed up a perfectly good opportunity to bring a game with old-school feel to today's gamers by confusing the spirit of old school play with specific mechanics which have long been known to be sub-optimal.

The first post

2009-07-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hear ye! Hear ye! This is a test of my email-to-blog feature! Long shall it reign!