combined weapons

December 10th, 2012

As a DM, I want to throw in cool magic weapons that people can actually use. On the other hand, I don’t want a formalized 4e-style wishlist. The big selection of D&D weapons actually makes my life difficult. If I want to include a magic sword, do I need to pay attention to who in the party uses a short sword, longsword, bastard sword, and greatsword?

As I was designing an adventure recently, I thought, “maybe I’ll describe this magic sword as an extra-long longsword, so it can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword, player’s choice.” (beat) “Hey, that’s what a bastard sword is supposed to be!”

The 1e bastard sword is kind of like that. It comes with a note: “Treat as a long sword if used one-handed.” Used two-handed, though, it’s its own thing. In later editions, the bastard sword is all over the map: for instance, in 3e, it has one set of stats one-handed or two-handed, but it requires a feat to use it one-handed.

As a DM, here’s how I wish the bastard sword worked: “The wielder can treat it either like a longsword or greatsword.”

What if this combination-weapon approach were expanded?

For one thing, the fifty polearms in D&D are basically different combinations and permutations of spears, axes, picks, hammers, and hooks. The very existence of the glaive, the glaive-guisarme, and the guisarme imply that there’s a use for a “combination-weapon” category.

Here are some weapons that could be turned into combination things:

Battleaxe: A battleaxe can be used either as a hand axe or a greataxe.
Bastard sword: A bastard sword can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword.
Glaive: A glaive can be used as either a greatsword or a spear.
Halberd: A halberd can be used as either a spear, battleaxe, or hook.
Morning Star: A morning star can be used either as a flail or a mace.
Rapier: A rapier can be used either as a shortsword or as a longsword.
Spiked Chain: A spiked chain can be used either as a whip or as bondage gear.

By reducing the number of unique weapons, you’re taking away the need to come up with a million slightly-different dice expressions to justify each weapon. You’re also replacing various solutions for “weapon groups”, where special rules are needed to give people proficiency with a large number of similar weapons. With my rule, a guy with longsword specialization can always use whatever rapier, longsword, or bastard sword he picks up (although only as a longsword).

Side note: You know what I’ve under-appreciated about 4e? How few weapons there are. 33 weapons in the 4e Players Handbook, as opposed to 50 in the 1e PHB, 63 in the 2e PHB, and 72 in the 3e PHB.

Posted in game design, RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

just try to do business with the elves

December 6th, 2012

If you don’t have any D&D-themed winter-holiday cards yet, time is running out! Get Laura’s card set, which includes these elven-holiday-celebrating elves.

On the subject of elven holidays, here’s a chart you can roll on when you need to get the elves to trade with you, or join your fellowship, or honor their promise to send you troops.

Roll d4:
1-2: The elves are celebrating an important elven holiday today. Come back tomorrow.
3: The elves are preparing for an important elven holiday tomorrow. Come back the day after tomorrow.
4: The elves are so ready for business right now. What’s this about? Let’s do this!

Posted in fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

combat, exploration, interaction, logistics

December 3rd, 2012

The D&D Next designers say that the “three pillars” of D&D are combat, exploration, and interaction.

In Playing At the World, Jon Peterson seems to have independently developed three very similar play modes: combat, exploration, and logistics. “Another key ingredient in Dungeons & Dragons is dramatic pacing, achieved by transitioning between three different game modes: a mode of exploration, a mode of combat and a mode of logistics. Time flows differently in each of these modes.”

Comparing the D&D Next developers’ and Jon Peterson’s analyses is comparing apples and oranges, so it’s strange that the fruit look so similar. The D&D next pillars are, I think, intended to remind the developers that each character should have something to do in different scenes of the game. Peterson is analyzing the flow of game time in a session, which varies between turns, rounds, and days.

Now that we know that it’s a bad idea, let’s try merging the two models.

In Peterson’s model, combat has a game speed that might be significantly slower than real time (depending on whether your rounds are a minute or six seconds long). Even if each round takes a minute of game time, you’re unlikely to get through all the PCs and monsters in that much real time. Exploration is faster than real time, but the scale varies: “we go north for 120 feet” and “we go north for 10 miles” might take the same amount of real time. Logistics is even more variable: shopping for new plate mail and spending a month healing up might both take, say, thirty seconds each.

Interaction (i. e. conversation, mostly with NPCs) is unique in D&D modes in that it takes roughly the same amount of time in real and game time. There might be variations: a player might consult his notes to remember his character’s wife’s name, and a DM might pause to roll reaction dice, but in general, during interaction, the player and the character are doing roughly the same thing. It doesn’t hurt to throw an interaction mode into a discussion of pacing: I’ve definitely run sessions where the pace suffered from too much or too little interaction.

Logistics is interesting because I’ve never heard it mentioned as a positive part of a game. If it’s mentioned, it’s as something to be gotten through as quickly as possible. Still, it’s always been a big part of D&D. Gaining levels, or researching spells, or replacing spent arrows, or collecting tax income takes up table (or between-session) time. Peterson convincingly argues that “by rationing the modes carefully a referee guides the players through satisfying cycles of tension, catharsis and banality that mimic the ebb and flow of powerful events.”

The logistics portion of D&D can be fun in itself. Sometimes you want to be fighting a monster, and sometimes you want to be updating your character sheet. The Adventurer Conqueror King fief-management rules are fun because they embrace logistics as something to be relished.

How would a “logistics pillar” inform D&D Next development? It seems a little strange to say that each class should have its fair share of bookkeeping, but maybe there’s some truth to that. The wizard class comes with plenty of bookkeeping, with its ever-increasing spell menu to be tweaked each day, along with the most complex spell- and item-creation rules in the game. In 1e, a fighter eventually gets a castle to manage. In 3e, a fighter gets a feat to choose every two levels. Maybe it needs a little more logistics in Next.

Posted in game design, news, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

confirming crits

November 30th, 2012

One of the first D&D houserules I encountered was the “crit to kill” rule: if you roll a natural 20 on an attack, roll another d20. On a second 20, the guy dies.

In Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World, I found a reference to a 1975 ancestor of that houserule, published in 1975 by Gary Switzer, the guy who wrote the first version of the Thief class. Peterson says, “On each melee swing, the attacker rolls an additional d20, which if it scores a ‘0’ (bearing in mind that early d20s had two 0’s), results in a critical. It is the main attack die which determines whether this is a critical hit or a trip—if the attack roll succeeds, then a hit has occurred, otherwise it is a trip.”

That extra die roll never made it into D&D canon, but 3e introduced the idea of “confirming crits:” rolling to see if your natural 20 was really a crit or not. (I think it introduced it. As I’ve mentioned before, my weakness is 2nd edition rules.)

I don’t like any of these rules very much in actual play, but not for game balance reasons. Sure, an insta-kill on 1 in 400 attacks adds wackiness and mitigates against PC survivability, and confirming crits only helps in bizarre corner cases where goblins crit on 100% of hits against dragons. The reason I don’t like them, though, is because they add anticlimax rolls.

In the “crit to kill” variant: You crit! Roll another d20. On a 1-19: Oh well, at least I got a crit. With the confirming a crit rule: I rolled a 20, but failed on the confirmation roll! Oh well, my crit didn’t happen.

4e’s solution was to have a crit always do max damage, and then throw some extra damage dice into the mix. That was not a bad solution: the extra dice always felt like bonus damage, even if you rolled poorly.

I COULD imagine bringing back the “crit to kill” rule in a modified form.

Recently, I’ve experimented with rolling d20s (and even d100s!) for special-effect damage. It’s fun! In my proposed variant, when you roll a crit, you don’t double or max your damage; you throw in a d20 along with all your other damage dice. If that die rolls a 20, you insta-kill. Otherwise, it just adds its damage to your hit (an average of 10 extra damage).

If the 1-in-400 chance of an insta-kill is too silly for you, you could instead make it an exploding d20 roll: on a crit-die roll of 20, you add 20 damage and roll again. Against all but high-level opponents, it will come to the same thing. However, this tweak gives 20th-level fighters some protection against 400 goblin archers.

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Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

d&d it up for christmas

November 28th, 2012

My Renaissance Man sister Laura is an artist, published author, D&D player, blog of holding commenter, gadabout, and the creator of the prancing elf for my kickstarter stickers. She’s making something you probably need this winter: D&D-themed Christmas cards, available in halfling, orc, dwarf, and elf. All the profits will be going to globalgiving.org, so the cards are like the bonus rewards you get for making a charitable donation.

Obviously you need at least one set, for your D&D group. The question is, is this the year you send D&D cards to everyone, even your grandma?

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5e skills suggestion

November 26th, 2012

In my Mearls D&D game in the sidebar, I’ve been ignoring skills: when someone calls for a Bluff check, I simply make a Charisma check. Since I started playtesting 5e, this has become my favorite way to run a D&D game: the +1 to +4 attribute bonus lends enough weight to a roll without an additional skill bonus.

However, if people want a skill system, you have to have skill bonuses.

4e gave you a +5 bonus for being trained in a skill. +5! If you gave first-level characters +5 swords, that would make a mockery of the combat system. Similarly, a +5 bonus to skills makes a mockery of the skill system.

5e’s skill bonus is +3, which is much more palatable. Still, I’d reduce it another step.

Here are the basic details about the current version of the 5e skill system:
1) +3 for being trained in a skill
2) If you get training in the same skill from two different sources, you choose a different skill. Thus, if a rogue gets Stealth from his class and his background, he gets Stealth and a random skill of his choice.
3) Every even level, you get +1 to a trained skill of your choice.

Here’s my proposed tweak:

1) +2 for being trained in a skill
2) If you get trained in a skill which you already possess, your bonus goes up one point. Thus, a rogue who gets Stealth from his class and background has a +3 Stealth bonus instead of +2.
3) Every even level, you can train a new skill of your choice. That means you can either train a new skill, at +2, or enjoy the fruits of point 2) and increase a skill’s bonus by one point.
4) What the heck, let’s say you can spend your skill point to learn a new language. (How does a language compare to +1 in your favorite skill? Not sure.)

It’s a tiny tweak, but it deflates runaway skill bonuses a tiny bit; allows a mechanism for learning new skills and languages; and provides for a synergy bonus for a focused class/background.

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when inches are inches

November 21st, 2012

OD&D follows the Chainmail convention of using “inches” as a measure meaning 10 feet (in a dungeon) or 10 yards (outside). This isn’t explained up front: in Book 1, Men and Magic, measurements are just given in inches and you have to deal with it. I like to imagine the sad sap who didn’t have Chainmail and was figuring things out as he read. “Lightly-armored troops can travel 12 inches every ten minutes? Huh. Seems a little slow, but OK.” “The Light spell casts light in a 3 inch diameter? Wow. If it was radius, that would at least be something.”

The actual inches-to-distance conversions are somewhere in book 3. Underground movement is on page 8, in the Move/Turn in the Underworld section: “In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given convert them to tens of feet.” Outside movement is defined (inside parentheses) on page 17, under “Sighting Monsters”: “Players will see monsters at from 40-240 yards (inches convert to tens of yards for the wilderness) unless the monster has surprised the characters involved.”

The poor first-time OD&D reader won’t be skipping around to find this information either, because the Introduction admonishes the reader that volume 3 is presented last “in order to allow the reader to gain the perspective necessary – the understanding of the previous two booklets. Read through the entire work in the order presented before you attempt to play.”

My absolute favorite measurement-related section is the descriptions of the Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron spells (in Book 1, long before the meanings of “inch” are given), where inches (meaning tens of feet) interacts with feet (meaning feet), and also with inches meaning inches:

Wall of Stone: The creation of a stone wall two feet thick with a maximum length and height equalling 10 square inches. The wall will last until dispelled, broken down or battered through as a regular stone wall. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6″.

Wall of Iron:: Like a Wall of Stone, but the thickness of the wall is three inches and its maximum area 5 square inches. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6″.

“Huh. Wall of Iron produces 15 cubic inches of iron? Well, since my light footman moves a foot every 10 minutes, I guess it’s useful. How high do you think he can jump?”

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Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

here’s a two weapon fighting implementation

November 19th, 2012

The easiest way to balance two-weapon fighting is to model it on shield use: in other words, give it an almost negligible effect. Still, it should call enough attention to itself that it doesn’t totally disappear on the character sheet.

Here’s an implementation I just thought of:

You can dual-wield if you have a light weapon in your off hand. You make one attack roll.

ADVANTAGES:

You get a +1 to attack.

DISADVANTAGES:

On a hit, you hit with your main-hand weapon if you rolled an even number, and with your offhand weapon if you rolled an odd number.

Analysis:

Let’s leave two-weapon fighting out of the analysis for a minute. Shield vs. two-handed weapon is an interesting trade-off: for (in most editions) +1 AC, you lose 2+ points of damage (going from a d12 to a d8 weapon; possible decrease in strength bonus). It’s really hard to analyze this balance, which changes from edition to edition and from low to high level. But let’s say that this is reasonably balanced, with maybe a slight advantage for the two-handed weapon.

Now let’s throw accuracy into the mix. How does +1 to-hit compare to +1 AC? They’re pretty symmetrical, but I’d say to-hit is a little better. A fighter makes an attack roll nearly every turn, but doesn’t use AC every turn: some enemies use attacks that target other defenses/saving throws.

With my two-weapon implementation, a character trades the +1 AC of a shield for +1 to hit, and pays a small cost in damage to balance it out. With a 50% chance of using your offhand weapon, you’re likely to do 4 damage (average of shortsword and longsword) instead of a shield-user’s 4.5 damage (with a longsword). That cost goes up if you have, say, a +2 longsword in one hand and an ordinary shortsword in the other.

With these three attack styles, you now have a pretty straight tradeoff between the three pieces of D&D combat: damage bonus (2H), AC bonus (shield use), and attack bonus (2WF).

Another fun application of this two-weapon-fighting system: it buffs unarmed fighting. Nearly all boxers fight with both fists, so they get +1 to hit. Based on the die roll, they’ll throw a left hook or a right cross, which, in most cases, won’t matter since both do the same amount of damage.

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Posted in 4e D&D, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

have you read Playing at the World yet?

November 16th, 2012

I thought I knew a reasonable amount of D&D history, but after reading Jon Peterson’s Playing At the World, I feel a sort of amused contempt for my past self, that poor ignorant yokel. I no more knew the ingredients of D&D than I did the secret recipe of Coca-Cola. You should read it so you can feel smug too.

Why should a book that’s concerned largely with D&D prehistory be interesting to D&D players? My new favorite author Jon Peterson puts it well: “For all its long-windedness, Dungeons & Dragons is hugely underspecified: many of the core principles of its system are tacit ones, so familiar to the authors that they were blind to the need to record them. Only by a very close reading of the earliest rules, and by placing elements in their proper context in the tradition of wargaming systems, can we even conjecture about the intention behind these ambiguities and omissions. As usual, our familiarity with later versions of the game hinders us rather than helps us; we must forget what the game became in order to discover how and why it got there.”

Here’s how good this book is. Peterson’s book is 720 pages, and while I was reading it, I was constantly wishing it was longer.

This book shed light on a lot of things that I’ve wondered about, sometimes on this blog.

In 2010, I wondered, “What is a midgard?” and wished I could get the rules for one. http://blogofholding.com/?p=265 Now I know a lot about the spread of midgard-style games, the play-by-mail milieu in which they existed, and the reasons that most of them petered out before they really began.

In 2012, I thought, “Look at all these dowels in the Chain Mail rules! That’s cool!” Now I know that the use of dowels to mark altitude comes from the Fletcher Pratt naval game, where “airplane models are attached to a notched pole, where each notch measures a level of elevation at which craft may fly.”

It’s also shocking to see the term “Saving Throw” in Tony Bath’s 1966 medieval combat rules (which inspired Chain Mail). “City militia may only attack heavy infantry if they can throw a 5 or 6. If attacked by them they must throw a 4, 5, 6 to stand, otherwise break and are diced for… If fighting takes place, one throw per 5 men, militia lose half total, no saving throw, cavalry lose one-quarter, saving throw of six.”

There’s lots more good stuff, including many details of Arneson’s original game rules. For instance, Arneson said that “players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress. Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This has a great equalizing influence.” Imagine a version of D&D where HP stays the same while AC goes up as characters gain levels.

In short: Grab a copy. If you’re a subway commuter reader, like me, get the kindle version: 720 is a lot of pages.

Posted in legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

here’s me for 35 years not knowing about snakewood

November 14th, 2012

Apparently there’s a real thing called a snake-wood tree. Its wood has a wavy grain and it has two or three trunks.

I’m sort of ashamed that I didn’t a) either know about this wood already or b) independently invent it for use in my D&D campaign. Now that I think about it, the existence of something called “snakewood” in a fantasy campaign should be axiomatic.

Here are some corollaries:

  • The Staff of the Serpent is made of snakewood.
  • If you case Sticks to Snakes on snakewood, the spell does not expire.
  • There’s a magic item called a Snakewood Bow. The arrows it fires turn into snakes in flight: on a hit, it lands on, and bites, its target, for 3d6 poison damage (save for no damage). On a miss, the snake lands adjacent to the target: it is alive and hostile, and is a level 1 (or 1 HD) monster. The snake vanishes once it has bitten a target or when it is killed. The Snakewood Bow can fire twenty snake-arrows a day; after that, it acts like a +1 bow.
  • Snakewood walking stick: This looks like a walking stick, not a weapon, but it looks like one that a jerk like Lucius Malfoy would use. It acts as a +1 club. At will, the owner can make it hiss or rattle. The walking stick has three charges, which are refreshed every day. On a melee hit, the owner can expend a charge to have it bite the target: the target must make a fortitude save vs. poison or take 2d6 damage and become Dazed on the next turn.

    Something that the owner of the snakewood walking stick will have to learn from experience: if it’s used to attack a yuan-ti, it will twist and attack its owner, using the attack roll that was intended for the yuan-ti.

    • Posted in RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

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