Throwing off the Shackles of Challenge Rating and Encounter Level – How it’s not always the best idea

December 15th, 2011

The One Ring RPG: A game without a safety net!

I’ve been running The One Ring with my weekly gaming group lately. It is a fun new roleplaying game set in Middle Earth. Like basically every RPG that uses a more organic skill and ability advancement system (rather than a leveling system), it doesn’t provide guidelines for setting appropriate challenges for fights and encounters. Rather, the GM is left to craft encounters as appropriate to the story rather than trying to make each fight level appropriate.

In some ways this is liberating. For example, in my latest adventure, my foe was an Orc Chieftain with a small army of 50 Orcs at his command, with plans to expand his numbers through alliances and browbeating other Orc tribes. It felt right that an up and coming Orc leader would have a pretty sizable force. I figured he had a good number of his forces out doing things: attacking travelers, staging raids on settlements, and proposing alliances with other orc tribes. Of course, he would still keep 15-20 Orcs behind to protect his camp, work a mine right next to the camp, and respond to any additional threats.

So that’s what the PCs had to deal with. During their travels to the camp, they encountered one of the small group of Orcs sent out to harass travelers and easily dealt with them. When they arrived at the camp, they devised a plan to distract the main group of Orcs so they could attack the Orcs working in the mines. Then they collapsed the entrance of the mine so the other Orcs couldn’t get to them right away.

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christmas shipping for wandering monster posters, and new project preview

December 14th, 2011

Last chance to get a wandering monster poster as a Christmas present! I’ll be shipping the last orders at around 5PM on Thursday. After that, I’ll be leaving the country and won’t be able to ship till next year.

Also, here’s an unfinished piece of art from the poster I’m working on for next year. The random dungeon generator from the end of the 1e Dungeon Master’s guide, represented as a dungeon:

The original table:

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99 rites of fairy creatures

December 12th, 2011

All fey creatures have a secret weakness rite – roll d100 on this table – and a secret strength rite – roll d100 on this table. If you accidentally perform a fairy’s secret weakness rite, you gain power over it – it is “beholden to you”, as they say. If it tricks you into performing its secret strength rite, you are beholden to it. Any fey creature’s rites can be learned with very hard arcana checks.

Fey creatures will expect one service or truth from creatures under their power. Fey in such a relationship will never attack each other.

Mortal beings tend not to understand these relationships, and may not honor the rules of service. Even mortals, though, feel the power of fey rites. A mortal beholden to a fairy creature, or a fairy creature beholden to a mortal, has a -4 to all skill checks and attack rolls against the master.

Even eladrin and elves have a weakness rite and strength rite, although most do not know it. Any mortal who drinks the emerald wine of the archfey gains a weakness and strength rite.

99 RITES OF FAIRY CREATURES
1 threaten to pick its one secret flower in all the world
2 surround it with water
3 weave a circle round it thrice
4 taunt it until it swells up to three times its size
5 carry it across a river in a bag over your shoulder
6 catch it bathing
7 wash its clothes in midnight’s blood
8 jump over it on deerback
9 act bored by everything exciting it says or does
10 find a bribe for its beetle butler
11 find its true feet
12 open the smallest door in its house
13 bring either a message or meal from its wife or husband
14 strike it with mistletoe
15 find the nest containing its babies
16 prick it with a thorn
17 make it taste honey
18 give it a clump of earth
19 draw its portrait
20 catch its reflection in a mirror
21 weave it a cloak
22 drink its tears
23 capture its mother
24 catch it in a lie
25 force it to admit it doesn’t know
26 heal its injury
27 boil it in a cauldron
28 step on a clover
29 listen to the birds’ advice about it
30 start every sentence with last word it said
31 call it by the wrong name
32 find a bat with its name
33 answer its riddle
34 beat it in a wrestling match
35 carry its heavy bundle of firewood
36 plant a seed ahead of and behind it
37 get its signature
38 drink dew from its footprint
39 sing a song it thinks no one can repeat
40 say a sentence it cannot rhyme (not orange, the fey made up the word “forange” to foil that tactic)
41 figure out its other form
42 owe it a debt of silver
43 pay its debt to someone else
44 tell it three different accurate names for yourself
45 control a fire it lit
46 dance to its tune
47 kiss it
48 sleep with it
49 walk behind it for a league of its choosing
50 walk widdershins around it
51 refuse a request thrice
52 get it to refuse 3 small favors
53 accept water from it
54 eat food it offers
55 steal its belt
56 throw a daisy chain over it
57 touch it with cold iron
58 behead it, then let it behead you
59 give it your hat
60 give it a silver coin
61 sip water from its cupped hands
62 draw a drop of its blood
63 pluck a rose from its house or hair
64 kneel before it while it stands
65 share an apple with it
66 walk on 9 of its footsteps in a row
67 dance with it in a circle
68 meet its eyes in a reflection
69 catch its breath in a box
70 swim after it
71 keep up in a race, neither winning nor losing
72 fall asleep while it wakes
73 wear a silver necklace
74 stand as godfather to its children
75 be blessed by a god
76 follow it dawn to dusk
77 repeat 3 phrases in a row
78 follow it home
79 find something it wants
80 call it king/queen
81 have it at weapon’s point
82 find its missing button
83 dance on its heart
84 convince it that it is ugly
85 give it a haircut
86 show it another creature that looks like it
87 sleep inside its mouth
88 herd its sheep for a day
89 name a real name it has never heard
90 step on its hand or catch its foot
91 let it dance around a hill under which is buried your name
92 point to its location on a map
93 lure it into your mouth with sugar cubes
94 touch it with an eggshell
95 ruin its hat
96 wash it clean
97 get it to believe you are a rooster
98 carry its head in a cedar box
99 beat it at a game 99 times in a row
00 roll again

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Striker bonuses for every class!

December 7th, 2011

A D&D party hard at work deciding where to try out their new striker bonuses to damage.

I recently wrote about how monsters take more hits to kill at higher levels and offered some solutions. Instead of (or in addition to) lowering monster hit points, you could use the following system to boost the damage output of every class. This essentially gives every class a bonus striker role, while increasing the damage output of strikers even more.

PC Damage: PCs now get damage bonuses based on their role.:

  • Grit (Defenders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a defender hits  a creature that is marked by them or in their defender’s aura with an attack power, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
  • Precision (Controllers): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a controller targets a creature with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage against the targeted creature. The damage is applied whether they hit or miss. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d6. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d6.
  • Empathy (Leaders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a leader heals or grants temporary hit points to themselves or an ally on their turn, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to a creature they hit with an attack power. Alternatively, once per turn when a leader hits with an attack power, they may grant an ally they can see a +1d8 bonus to their next damage roll until the end of that ally’s next turn. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
  • Expertise (Strikers): Starting at level 6, once per turn strikers may add +1 die to the extra damage dice they do as part of their class abilities, such as the rogue’s sneak attack (so at level 6 a rogue would do +3d6 sneak attack damage instead of +2d6). If the striker has no extra damage dice as part of their class abilities, once per turn when they hit with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2 dice of damage. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3 dice of damage.

This change increases everyone’s damage to keep up with disproportionately rising monster hit points. It also rounds out striker damage a bit so that proportionately they are doing a bit less damage versus other PCs. With this change, a striker might go from doing twice the damage of a PC to merely 50% more damage or so.

With this increase in damage, it might make sense to give certain class abilities a damage bonus to keep up with the increase in damage overall, such as the automatic damage a paladin does when a marked enemy attacks someone else.

Note: The striker damage bonus will often be lower than the damage bonus of other classes. Partly I did this because I think strikers are already the most powerful role (certainly they tend to be the most played in my games) so they don’t need as much of a boost. Partly, it made sense to attach their damage mechanic to existing striker mechanics used by their classes, which will both make things easier for the player and make it easier for them to do the extra damage (i.e. the rogue already wants to get combat advantage for their sneak attack, so this just rewards them further).

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bunny wights

December 5th, 2011

My wife “misremembered” some Eddie Money song lyrics:

Take me home tonight!
I don’t want to be a bunny wight

A bunny wight certainly doesn’t seem like the scariest kind of wight imaginable. Is there any way it could be given enough gravitas that it wouldn’t seem like something out of an April Fools edition of Dragon Magazine?

I think things from under the sea can be scary, so let’s say the bunny wights in question emerge, dripping and slimy, choked with weeds, from an angry ocean. They’re tall and anthropomorphic: pooka sized, taller than humans, with huge webbed bunny feet. They’re scaly instead of furry, as befits fishy creatures, and maybe with those rows of hundreds of sharp teeth possessed by predatory fish.

Bunnies are not predatory animals, though, so I don’t see bunny wights having the same hunger for human blood possessed by most undead. Rabbits are sort of tragic animals – the bottom of the food chain. Bunny wights come out of the water sad, leaden-footed, at the command of the creatures who once preyed on them. They walk in from the surf, one or two at first, with more behind, until an army of them is trudging on the shore, heads bowed, slimy ears dangling behind them like seaweed.

Each bunny wight has a thorn protruding from its chest: the claw that killed it. It’s a claw of the same terrible sea predator that now calls them to unwilling action. (Perhaps some spine-covered amenome from the far realms?)

I have a feeling that the bunny wights can fire their chest thorn as a weapon, and when they do, it tears out their heart and kills them.

I hope things work out for these bunny wights! They seem like they’ve had a tough time!

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sorcerers as wizards (and vice versa)

December 2nd, 2011

This will probably be my last post about Roger Zelazny’s “Dilvish the Damned” short stories, which turned out to be one of my favorite D&D-ideas-inspiring sourcebooks ever, joining the motley collection of African Civilizations and Theophile Gautier’s Captain Fracasse. A lot of Zelazny’s fiction seems to be directly translatable to RPG content. And I haven’t even started Amber yet!

3e+ D&D takes a bunch of words for spellcaster that all used to mean the same thing – wizard, sorcerer, warlock – and makes them all different classes. In OD&D, Gygax took all the synonyms for wizard he could find and made them level titles – to lock up IP from potential competition, he said. But you can’t really copyright these words, and other authors are going to redefine them in their own ways.

Here’s Roger Zelazny’s definitions of wizards and sorcerers from Dilvish the Damned:

“But if that isn’t sorcery, what is?”

“Sorcery,” she replied, “is an art. It requires considerable study and discipline. One must generally apply oneself for a fairly long period even to obtain the relatively modest status I have achieved. But there are some other routes to magical power. One might be born with a natural aptitude and be able to produce many of the effects without the training. This is mere wizardry, however, and sooner or later–unless one is very lucky or careful–such a one gets into trouble from lack of knowledge concerning the laws involved in the phenomena. I do not believe that this is the case with your lady, though. A wizard usually bears some identifying mark visible to others in the trade.”

This definition – with sorcerers as academic porers over tomes and wizards as natural talents – is hilariously opposite the descriptions of wizards and sorcerers from third edition. Even many of the same words are used in the (swapped) descriptions. In the 3.5 PHB, sorcerers have “inborn talent” and “cast spells through innate power rather than careful training and study“. They are even “marked as different by their power“, like Zelazny’s wizard. The PHB wizard, on the other hand, must spend “years in apprenticeship“. Magic is “not a talent but a difficult art.”

This kind of thing will happen a lot when you start ascribing different meanings to synonyms. For example, a different fantasy author could easily decide that hobgoblins were smaller than goblins. You’d also be perfectly justified in making goblins, hobgoblins, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and trolls all the same species.

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Faster and More Deadly Combat – New House Rules for D&D 4e

November 30th, 2011
Orcs

These orcs should be easier to kill and do more damage!

Premise: Monsters and PCs should take about 3-4 hits to reduce to 0 Hit Points with most attacks across all levels. Thus, critical hits, lucky damage rolls, or high damage powers have a decent chance of bloodying or even sometimes outright killing some opponents with one hit, and this should remain true from level 1 all the way up to level 30.

The way the system currently works is that monsters and PCs start out taking about 3-4 hits to bring down to 0 Hit Points at level 1. For example, a fighter at level 1 might do 1d8+5 damage, which will kill a level 1 soldier (with 32 hit points) in about 3-4 hits. However, by level 11, the same fighter with level appropriate gear and feats needs about 5 hits with a normal attack to kill a level 11 soldier.

To see the current math behind monster hit points and damage used for D&D monsters, check out the Monster Manual 3 on a business card!

As PCs level, monsters take more hits to kill, which means combats drag on and become more monotonous. Combats can go from taking 1-2 hours at lower levels to 3+  hours at higher levels!

These changes are designed so that most PCs and monsters (Skirmishers, Leaders, and Soldiers) take about 3-4 hits to kill with most attacks (typically at-wills) throughout all levels of play. Brutes and defenders take about 4-5 hits to take down. Lurkers, Artillery, and weaker PCs take about 2-3 hits.

Generally, this makes combat faster and more dangerous across all levels, while still maintaining the tactical choices that make 4th edition so interesting.

Monster Hit Points: Monsters’ hit points now use the following formulas:

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a team of iron horses

November 28th, 2011
Her companion wore black breeches and green jacket and boots. His cloak was black, lined with green, and he wore a sword and dagger at his waist. He sat astride a black, horse-shaped creature whose body appeared to be of metal.
-Dilvish the Damned by Roger Zelazny, 1965
Rod froze, hand on the pommel of his sword; then he dug his heels into Fess’s metal sides, and the great black horse sprang toward the ruckus.
-The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff, 1969

Meanwhile, in Aquilonia’s nighted capital, the chariot of thulandra thuu rumbles through the streets… drawn at high speed by a creature which, to a casual observer, might appear to be a large black stallion… but which a closer inspection would reveal to possess a strange, metallic sheen, as if it were carved of gleaming iron.
Conan comic based on Conan the Liberator by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, 1979.

What’s up with swords and sorcery being so hung up on black robot horses? I ran into these three just in books I read this year. Two of these sources predate D&D’s Obsidian Steed.

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the give and take of D&D and fiction

November 25th, 2011

Here’s an example of cross-pollination between D&D and pulp fantasy:

Roger Zelazny began his series of “Dilvish the Damned” fantasy short stories in 1964. Zelazny was influential on D&D: Gygax says that Zelazny’s Shadow Jack inspired the thief class, and Dilvish’s Elf Boots inspired the Boots of Elvenkind.

In Zelazny’s 1981 Dilvish the Damned story “Tower of Ice”, the influence seems to be going the other way:

Black completed the spell. They remained motionless for a brief while after that. Then: “That’s it?” Dilvish asked.
“It is. You are now protected through the second level.”
“I don’t feel any different.”
“That’s how you should feel.”
“Is there anything special that I should do to invoke its defense, should the need arise?”
“No, it is entirely automatic. But do not let that dissuade you from exercising normal caution about things magical. Any system has its weak points. But that was the best I could do in the time that we had.”

Maybe Zelazny re-invented the concept of second-level spells, but there’s no reason to think he did. And there’s no reason to think he should. An environment where authors are free to borrow from each other is one where they can build on each others’ work. A lot of D&D-influenced fantasy and fantasy-influenced D&D from the 80’s is kind of like the Chthulu Mythos in this way: written by multiple authors, but sharing so many genre assumptions and pieces of lore that they’re practically set in the same universe.

Now here’s something that Zelazny’s “Tower of Ice” can give back to D&D:

He had escaped from Hell itself, after two centuries’ torment. Most of the humans he had known were long dead and the world somewhat changed. Yet the one who had banished him, damning him as he did, remained–the ancient sorcerer Jelerak. In the months since his return, he had sought that one, once the call of an ancient duty had been discharged before the walls of Portaroy. Now, he told himself, he lived but for vengeance. And this, this tower of ice, one of the seven strongholds of Jelerak, was the closest he had yet come to his enemy. From Hell he had brought a collection of Awful Sayings–spells of such deadly potency as to place the speaker in as great a jeopardy as the victim should their rendering be even slightly less than flawless. He had only used one since his return and had been successful in leveling an entire small city with it. His shudder was for the memory of that day on that hilltop, rather than for the icy blasts that now assailed him.

Use Awful Sayings as a form of treasure for wizards. More powerful than spells, they can have campaign-level impications. Once memorized, an Awful Saying stays memorized until you use it – then it is gone forever.

Casting an Awful Saying requires a saving throw. Failure results in some terrible, random, Deck of Many Things-style misfortune happening to the caster and his friends.

Because these spells can only be used once, and they might backfire, they might provide a tantalizing form of temptation/resource management for the wizard.

Example Awful Sayings:
Raze City A city, or an area the size of a city, is completely blasted and destroyed.
Damn A single being is killed and sent to be tortured at the bottom of the Abyss for all eternity.

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one monster per dungeon

November 21st, 2011

I’ve read a lot of the same sword and sorcery/sword and planet fantasy that inspired D&D, and so I’ve read about adventurers exploring a lot of proto-dungeons: ancient tunnels and sewers, labyrinths left by wise alien races, and buried cities. One difference that strikes me between these literary dungeons and a standard D&D adventure is that, however sprawling they are – however many twists and turns the heroes take in the Cimmerian darkness – most literary dungeons contains approximately one monster. This rule goes back to the ur-D&D dungeon, Theseus’s labyrinth.

In this way, pulp-fiction spelunking is more like the classic D&D wilderness adventure than dungeon adventure. While a few D&D groups explicitly engaged in hex crawls, many overland D&D trips last for exactly one wilderness encounter.

Could a book be more D&D-y, or D&D be more literary? Well, a dungeon crawl of eight or ten encounters would play hell with the fast, location-heavy pace of your standard pulp novel, and most of the wandering monsters would be excised by an editor wielding Occam’s razor or Chekhov’s gun.

On the other hand, how would it feel to play a D&D game where you were exploring a big, dusty dungeon where you might, or might not, run into the dungeon’s singular supermonster? Would it lead to a) tension or b) boredom?

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