Problems, Annoyances, and Misconceptions

I watched this YouTube video titled "5 Things in D&D that Make No Sense" [Of course referring to 5E specifically], and I found it interesting that she found these specific things to be annoying: 

1. Falling damage in 5E caps at 20d6 (200' fall). She rightly points out that most mid-level 5E PCs will survive that. 

Of course, they are also going to survive around six or seven sword stabs or axe slashes at that level, and be fully healed after a good night's rest. So I don't know why this particular break from real world physics bothers her so much. I do wonder if the 20 dice cap is related to the 20 dice cap for high level magic users in BECMI/RC D&D? It is a fairly arbitrary number to place the cap upon. 

2. Shields. 5E treats all shields the same. Buckler or kite, round or tower, they all give a +2 bonus. 

Growing up playing BECMI, this was just a given (although only a -1 bonus to AC), and the reasoning was addressed in the rulebook. Smaller, lighter shields are easier to maneuver into place to block an attack, while large shields provide more cover. Again, it's an artificial simplification that aids gameplay, even if that leads to a loss of realism. 

And you could always go the AD&D route, where all shields give that -1 bonus, but only to specific attacks from specific directions, or a specific number of attacks in the round. 

3. Religion in D&D. Pantheistic religions don't work the way they do in D&D, where everyone is devoted to a singular deity within the pantheon. Also, how can there be atheists in a word where the gods actually sometimes walk the Earth?

Again, starting playing with BECMI, and even in AD&D, this isn't really a thing. Maybe it started to develop in the 2E days, but it wasn't until 3E hit the shelves that I noticed this about how gods/religions work in D&D. And yes, it is odd, and shows the likely monotheistic cultural bias of the setting designers. But this isn't really something that's hard-coded into the rules, really. It's more of how things are presented, and how many players role-play the situations. So long answer short: don't like it, change it for your table.

4. The Find Traps spell. This is the one that really made me want to write a post about this video. Apparently, in 5E, this spell doesn't actually find the traps for you, it just lets you know that there are traps in the area that you can roll skill checks to locate. 

OK, that is pretty lame. 

But once more, coming from an older edition background (particularly editions where the find traps spell actually DOES find the traps for you), this is one of my big beefs with 5E magic. Everyone thinks that 5E magic is much more powerful than old school spellcasting classes because of at-will cantrips, more spells per day (at low levels anyway), and all the special abilities involved. 

BUT... So many 5E spells are completely nerfed compared to how they worked in older editions. I can see why this spell in particular bugged the YouTuber, because it doesn't do what the name says it does, and it's fairly useless to cast this version of the spell. 

So why is it named this? Continuity of spell names across editions of the game. As mentioned, the spell used to do exactly what the name promises. It's not a problem with the spell name, it's a problem with lazy game designers who think that they need to reword the spells in every edition to take away their usefulness, and in particular with 5E, to make everything into something that requires a d20 roll against some arbitrary difficulty number. 

It's interesting to me that the YouTuber is mystified by this. And she probably doesn't even realize just how crappy so many 5E spells actually are. Anything that used to be an encounter winner spell in older editions has been depowered so that players won't get The Feels when NPCs or monsters use it against them. Or there are so many caveats on the use of the spell that interesting utility functions that creative players thought up over the years are now explicitly prohibited by the spell text. The only spells worth taking are just the boring "deal more damage" spells. Yawn. 

5. Advantage and Disadvantage. Her problem is not with the mechanic itself (which is handy), but with how different situations that grant advantage and disadvantage always just cancel out to zero. You could be trying to make a ranged attack while prone, tied up, blind, in a wind storm, and cursed (all giving disadvantage), but your buddy using the Help action grants advantage, so all those negatives are cancelled. Roll normally. 

Yeah, that is dumb. But if a DM really wanted to total up all the positive and negative factors in a situation, and make a rule that, say, 2 more advantage factors than disadvantage factors grants net advantage (and the reverse), who's stopping her? I don't think WotC can send Pinkertons to her door for that. Not yet, anyway. 

It's not something I need to worry about anymore, so whatever on this last one. 

_________________

Next week, I'm flying back to the U.S. with Flynn, so unless I get the itch to blog over the coming weekend, I probably won't have any content up here for a couple of weeks. As Arnold says, though, "Ahl be bahk."

The 3E Nostalgia is Upon Us

I've been seeing all sorts of blog posts, YouTube videos, and memes re-examining Third Edition D&D, and especially 3.0 as compared to 3.5. Having played some d20 Modern with my son over the past year or so, and having dived into an aborted attempt at a d20 Star Wars game on RPOL (and currently into a Saga Edition Star Wars game on RPOL), I'm not really feeling the 3E nostalgia. Those games have reminded me of just how needlessly cumbersome the skill/feat system is in d20 games, and the limits of a "roll d20" for any task resolution is still with us in 5E today. 

But there seem to be a lot of gamers who started on 3E, or started on 2E but found their jam with 3E who are feeling that nostalgia. It does make sense. It's been almost 24 years since the game was released, 21 since the 3.5 revision. 

I've even had some people tell me that 3E is old school D&D. 

Personally, I think "old school" is more about play style than age, but I may be biased. 

Is it time to lump 3E, and the resulting d20 system boom games, in with the "old school" banner? Make it part of the OSR? Or is it "old school but not OSR"? 

Peanut gallery, sound off in the comments!

Why you're doing high level adventures wrong

 I just watched this video on high level 5E play from The DM's Lair. 

Now, as you all know, I do play 5E as a player, but will not run it as a DM. But if I were to run it as a DM, I think a lot of the "problems" mentioned in this video wouldn't actually be a problem, because they often are not problems in high level old school D&D. This doesn't mean these things don't happen, it means that these things happening doesn't become a problem. 

 And yes, I will probably be referencing my recent thoughts on high level play from other recent posts like this and this.  Maybe this one too.

Luke's video linked above can really be summed up with one comment. Why is high level 5E hard to run/play? Because you're still trying to run/play high level D&D the same as a low level game. 

But that's not much of a blog post. So let's go through Luke's 10 points and I'll address them one by one.

1. It's hard to create balanced encounters/adventures.

I agree with this statement, and I never even actually got to run high level 5E (I quit while I was ahead and switched to TS&R). I could see where the rules were headed. 

Partly, this has to do with the structure of 5E. The easy short rest/long rest recovery rules make it so that it's hard to wear down PCs over time. It's pretty easy to be at or near top level form for most encounters if the DM allows for frequent resting. Now, sometimes this could also be the case in old school D&D. Wilderness adventures take place over game days, and there might not be encounters every single day. This allows spellcasters, at least, to nearly always have a full compliment of spells when they have an encounter. Even non-spellcasters will likely be able to rely on a fair amount of hit point recovery between encounters, if the party's clerics are using excess spells at the end of the day to heal, or the group decides to take a rest day, prepare only healing spells, and use them up before moving on. 

But running through a group of balanced encounters during a short dungeon shouldn't be the primary type of adventure that high level PCs take on. You don't often see Superman taking on the sorts of street level thugs that Daredevil fights in the comics. And you rarely see Daredevil going up against weird cosmic threats the way Superman often does. 

High level games, whether old or new school, shouldn't be focused on the dungeon delve or the monster combat as the primary challenge of the game. Different sorts of challenges need to be involved. That way, it doesn't really matter if the monsters in the PCs' way are too easy, or too tough. If they're too easy, then focus on the other problems that can't be solved by swinging a sword or casting fireball. If they're too tough, then players need to get ingenious with their spells/abilities/items, and come up with a way around the encounter besides a hit point slog combat (I'll be mentioning hit point slogs a lot in this post, so I'll abbreviate it HPS from now on). 

2. High level spells and abilities ruin the fun.

This is assuming, as I've often mentioned in the past, that WotC seems to think the fun part of D&D is the HPS. The claim (this was also part of Luke's discussion of point 1) is that high level spells can make encounters or even whole adventures a cake walk. Save or die spells (I don't think 5E has any of these anymore) in old school games often did this. And the same powerful spells like wish or time stop, disintegrate, teleport, etc. can render many challenges very easy. 

Have you even been in a situation where you cast a finger of death or some other save or die spell on a powerful monster like a dragon, and it works? Let me tell you from experience, it feels awesome! And not just the first time, either! Of course, in old school D&D, the monsters' saves get much better, so these spells didn't work all the time. But when they did, it was always something to cheer about. 

Luke argues that this sort of encounter hijacking ruins the fun, but just wait until we get to his point about length of combat/high hit points later on... 

If the focus of the game is not on continual missions to a dungeon of the week, scaled to your level, but instead on developing the campaign world, the characters' place in it, and how they want to affect that world, this won't be a problem. That monster was a roadblock. Did it slow them down? Great. Did it not? Doesn't matter, there are other challenges in the game besides monsters.

This isn't "allowing players to win without playing the game." It's playing the game smartly. And does it invalidate DM prep work? I guess it would if you've got some storyline you're planning to run like a readers' theater, or you've got what Justin Alexander calls My Precious Encounter syndrome. But if you're running a world, not a storyline, it's not breaking or invalidating anything. 

Finally, on this point, should the DM use these powerful spells (or powerful monster abilities) on the PCs? Sure, why not? It's part of the game. It retains the risk of the game at high levels. If the monsters/NPCs are just there to be knocked over by the PCs, how is that fun? I get the occasional power trip encounter that allows high level PCs to just tear through some monsters. It helps make you feel like you are a powerful character. But if that's every encounter (3-4 "balanced" encounters and a boss style play), that's gotta get old. There's no challenge. 

And again, even if the combats are threats, a game of endless "enter the dungeon, fight the monsters, take their stuff" should not be how high level games are run.

3. High level play is easy for players, hard for DMs.

When is the game ever not hard for the DM? And if you're throwing more than just combat encounters at the players, you will find plenty of ways to challenge them. And I'm not just talking about kaiju style monsters like the Tarrasque. Although those are great! The thing is, though, you shouldn't be beating the Tarrasque by the HPS method, or even the Save or Die spell method. Go read the Labors of Hercules or some Superman comics and come up with some ideas besides "beat the monster" for a challenge. 

4. Not enough published content for high levels.

If you've run a campaign from level 1 up to level whatever, and you still don't know how to make your own content, or run the world, and need WotC (or TSR, or Paizo, or some other company) to spoon feed you content, the problem is not with the game itself. You need to learn how to run a campaign world. 

Again, stop thinking of D&D as just "Hey, here's the dungeon for the next few sessions! Once you beat it, you'll go to a higher level dungeon!" and think of it as a world. There are politics, natural disasters, resource management, and all sorts of other challenges in the world besides monster slaying. And that's not even getting into the planar adventuring stuff. 

If you can't make your own content, maybe you should stick to the low level stuff until you feel confident enough to make the game your own. 

But don't blame that on a lack of high level adventures. There are plenty out there, if you convert older edition or 3rd party stuff, IF you still need that crutch after years of DMing. 

5. Low chances of death take the fun out of combat.

If the monsters don't have a chance of killing the PCs, yeah, that's gonna make combats less fun. But again, why are we focusing on the HPS? There are plenty of ways for PCs to die. And yes, there are lots of high level spells that reverse death. That doesn't remove the sting of dying from the game, though. Or at least, it didn't in older editions, where there were limits and drawbacks to raising the dead. But even in BX/BECMI, with lower penalties/drawbacks for raising the dead than AD&D had, it still sucks to lose a character, even if it's only temporarily.

But even if the high hit points and good saving throws and easy resurrection takes some of the risk out of combats, there are still risks. And again, if the only time we're engaging in risks is when fighting monsters, the game has more problems than PCs that are hard to kill. 

Also, it's been often noted -- and claimed by fans as one reason they prefer new school games -- that there is a reduced risk of death at ALL levels in 5E (and 4E before it). And yet, combat is supposed to be the only fun part of the game. Someone square that circle for me, please? 

6. Combats are a slog.

Ah, here we are. The HPS point. 

And if we want to get around the 4 hour long HPS? Let the PCs use save-or-die magic to end it quickly. That's not a bad thing! 

7. Characters get more complex.

This is true in any edition, but 5E characters start out a good deal more complex than PCs in old school D&D. So yeah, it's gonna happen, and I can see why it's worse in 5E (one of the reasons I quit running that edition). 

I don't think there's any way to mitigate this aspect of high level play. High level PCs in any edition have more to keep track of. Abilities, spells, magic items, henchmen/hirelings/followers, domains, etc. 

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts linked above, it's OK to slow down the pace of the high level game. It doesn't need to be constant cliffhangers and races against time. It's not an episode of 24. 

Also, again, if combats are not all HPS, then we don't need to worry so much about players taking their time to plan out their actions. If those actions will lead to swift resolution of the encounter rather than the HPS, you're saving time in the long run.

8. Math gets too complex.

Um, too complex? I understand that you don't need to be a math nerd to have fun playing D&D, but he's complaining that you need to add up too many d6s for high level spell damage or backstabs. 

I have sympathy for people for whom math is not a strong suit, but Luke claims sometimes it takes 2 minutes to total up all the damage dice. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. Here's some advice. If it takes you that long to total the dice, don't add them one by one. Group them into pairs or sets of three that total 10 each set. Makes the math much easier, and faster. There, no more 2 minutes wasted on basic 3rd grade level math problems. 

Now if you're playing Pathfinder 2E (from what I've heard), or Rolemaster or Palladium or something, the math does sometimes get a bit complicated. But D&D 5E doesn't have hard math, really. 

9. Players get bored with their characters. 

I can understand this. Ever since 3E came out, and even before that with games like various Palladium offerings with tons of options and customization for characters, or skill defined systems like CoC, all the options available can make you curious about how they work in play. Or if you could craft a character in this way, or model a PC off of a favorite fictional character, and so on. Character building in these games can and often is fun (though time consuming). 

As a DM, you get to scratch that itch by running lots of NPC. But not so much as a player, especially if you're in a game like 5E in which character death is hard to come by (see point 5 above). 

At the same time, if your player is getting bored with the character they are currently playing, it's probably because you're only giving them one type of challenge (another monster fight), and they've already figured out how to best manage that challenge with that character. They want a new character to have some variety in the game. They're tired of being the front-line warrior and want to try the skirmisher. Or the heavy damage dealer. Or the spell-slinger. They crave variety in their PCs because there's no variety in the challenges set forth in the game. 

Play high level games properly, with more immersion in the game world, problems besides the dungeon/monster of the week, and multiple threads going at the same time, and suddenly they don't want to just switch characters. If they have ties to the game world (not necessarily domain play, but that helps), there is an incentive to stick with this established character, rather than keep switching PCs every month or two. 

10. The story arch is completed. 

Hmm, not much to say about this one. If you've set your game up as a limited campaign, with a "story" to follow -- even if it's an open-ended one with no railroad -- and now it's complete, I completely understand not wanting to continue it. 

The trick for continued high level play, as I've mentioned above, is to have a living campaign world that revolves around more than just one quest or BBEG. There should be a plethora of potential BBEGs and artifacts to quest for, lands to conquer, far away lands/continents/planets/planes of existence to explore, human drama, political rivalries, and so on in the game if you want to keep it going. 

This is one of the reasons I dropped my West Marches campaign. It was a one-trick pony of a game, and as the PCs started to get up into the lower mid-level range (4 to 7), I was seeing that there just wasn't a lot of opportunity for growth and expansion in the game, without completely abandoning the West Marches premise. I could have done that, but started a new game instead, with a setting rich in potential for dungeon delving, getting involved in political rivalries, growth, and eventual settlement/conquest by the PCs, if that's what they choose. I think it will be a much longer lasting campaign. 

So if you don't want your campaign to end, don't hinge the entire premise on one story line.

The 5E to OSR Pipeline

It may just be that my perception is biased due to the algorithmic nature of YouTube recommendations, but it does appear as if a lot of 5E players have become more interested in the OSR as of late. 

Again, I know it may just be that having watched one video about turning from 5E to the OSR, the algorithm is recommending more similar content to me. But all of the videos that have been recommended are fairly recent. Most have been made within the past few months, and none more than a year old. 

So, why is this happening? 

Well, for one, it may just be a YouTuber fad. One streamer or vlogger tries out an OSR game, and others feel curious to try it as well. People see one person's idea, and they will copy it. Expect more of these videos to be produced if this is true, but don't expect a huge increase in new OSR converts.

Another possibility is that 5E fatigue has set in. There's a reason WotC recently announced their "One D&D" revision/new edition/whatever it will be. People have explored the possibilities of 5E, and one more splat book of new options is not gonna hold their attention much longer. Part of this is baked into the design of 5E, which like 3E and 4E, was designed as a game of system mechanics exploration more than imaginary exploration within the game world. That gives it a limited (intentionally so?) lifespan with the players. 

Final possibility? It's not a trend at all. There are a handful of people who have done this, and YT is just showing me all of the small number of videos like this. In a week, I won't be seeing any more because I'll have sampled all there is to sample.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that there is actually a trend.

Not every one of the videos I've watched has been positive towards the OSR games they've tried, but the majority have been. And these videos have spanned the gammut from playing the actual old editions from TSR to all the various retroclones (well, OSRIC, LL, OSE, S&W anyway), and OSR adjacent games like Black Hack and Dungeon World. 

Despite the bad reputation of THAC0, or Vancian casting, or high lethality, the fact that most of the older editions and their retro-clones encourage exploration of the game space more than exploration of the system mechanics is, I think, the reason why people are engaging with these rules again. That's what happened with me and a lot of other people 15 years or so ago. 

And then there are the folks that have been playing the old editions all along, and still are having fun with them. And new folks are joining these games, and finding out that you don't need a bunch of fiddly numbers on your character sheet, or kewl nu powrz! at ever level to have fun. 

I'm not gonna make a prediction that One D&D will flop. I'm sure there are vastly more people willing to take whatever WotC will give them. And it looks like WotC is gonna try for more of a subscription model rather than a purchase model of sales, at least for their online tools, this time. So they'll probably secure a decent revenue stream with their new version of the game. 

But I will say that the OSR is far from dead. I'd expect a lot of these 5E converts to be coming up with their own retro clones and modifications to the game and releasing them in the next few years! Even if it is just a handful of people splitting off from the 5E community (or straddling both), there's new blood in the OSR. And they will run (and create) games that attract even more people.

Not all that glitters is golden

So yesterday, I had a bit of free time between administering final tests so watched a few YouTube videos. First two were political/philosophical in nature. Then one of the suggested videos was about D&D, titled "The Problem with D&D Rangers" by someone called Pointy Hat. Obviously, it's 5E centric (that's what gets the views), but it did discuss how the class has evolved over the years and came up with an answer to the title question that I think is prescient for the 5E Ranger and why people say it sucks: 

Too many gamers have too many disparate ideas about what the ranger is and what its role in the game should be. 

Is the ranger a ranged combat specialist? 

Is the ranger a wilderness expert and guide? 

Is the ranger a guy who tames animals? 

Is the ranger a two-weapon fighting specialist?

Is the ranger some sort of half-fighter/half-druid?

Is the ranger a guy with a magic energy bow?

Is the ranger a specialist at combating one type of monster? 

Is the ranger an attempt to make one specific fictional character into a playable class?

Is the ranger some sort of elite guerilla fighter? 

Is the ranger something else?

OK, jokes aside, there are too many ideas about what a ranger is supposed to be, and the video rightly pointed out that the class sucks because it's trying to be all of them at once. 

In 1E, the class was heavily inspired by Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. 

In 2E, it got heavily influenced by Drizzt and that set the tone for many players in the 90s.

In 3E, it tried to be both Aragorn and Drizzt at the same time. It wasn't great. 

Not sure about 4E. Never got that into that edition, and never tried to play a ranger. I think they were all about sniper DPS though...

Anyway, 5E has tried to make a class that covers pretty much everything above (except the pickup...unless that's covered in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or one of the other splat books?). As the video pointed out, there are several versions of the ranger for 5E, and multiple alternate abilities that can be taken to cover most of the archetypes above. But since the designers can't pick one lane, the class sorta sucks. And players coming to the class expecting one (or maybe two) of the above archetypes end up disappointed. 

Anyway, it's a long way around to pointing to MY latest update to my ranger class for TS&R Ruby [Classic (BX/BECMI style) D&D]. 

My revised version hews somewhat closely to the 1E class in inspiration, but may be a bit more like the 3E or 5E classes in mechanics. 

But what it has that other previous ranger classes lack are some bonuses to the actual game rules related to wilderness exploration. 

Classic D&D has wilderness rules for moving through different types of terrain (speed reductions), rules for getting lost, rules for hunting/foraging, and rules for evading encounters. These are actual rules systems, not just "roll a survival check" or some bullshit like that. 

My ranger starts out based on the Fighter (attacks increase every 3 levels, Fighter saving throws, d10 hit die). They start out with Dwarf class XP requirements (2200xp to level 2) but that diverges a bit at higher levels. They can use any weapon, and armor up to chain mail/lamellar, plus shields. 

Among their special abilities, they can Sweep (1 attack per HD against 1HD or lower opponents) and gain extra attacks at higher level like Fighters. At 8th level, it's 2 attacks per round when not using Sweep. At 12th level, they gain a 3rd attack but only if using ranged weapons (Fighters get a 3rd attack with any weapon at this level).

They can cast a limited number of Druid spells, starting at 2nd level, and getting up to 4th level spells. They can select from the entire Druid spell list. They just don't get as many spells and never get 5th or higher level spells.

Finally, the abilities that are unique to the ranger: 

Rangers are only surprised on a 1/d6. If the party is surprised on a higher roll, rangers get to act when everyone else is surprised. 

Rangers add +10% to the chance to evade encounters in the wilderness (max 90%). 

Parties with a Ranger become lost only on a 1/d6 regardless of terrain type. [A nice combat bonus available any time, and two abilities that interact with the wilderness exploration rules! Useful, but not overpowered.]

Rangers gain a +2 bonus to hit, and add their level to damage, when fighting goblinoids or giants [I considered 2E style "select your favored enemy" but really, that's one of the things that makes rangers suck if that type of monster rarely appears. Most games will have kobolds, orcs, goblins at low levels, more of these at mid levels plus ogres, bugbears, trolls, and at medium-high to high levels lots and lots of the below plus plenty of giants and giant-kin. So the ability is very likely to remain relevant in the typical campaign. DMs can switch this up if they have a special campaign world without lots of goblinoids or giants.]

Rangers gain animal companions at 4th level. They get a number of normal or giant animals equal to their level. So you could have one hefty animal like a bear or ape as your combat buddy, a growing pack of wolves, or a variety of creatures like those of Dar the Beastmaster, each with its own purpose (scout, mount, thief, guardian). If slain, they can be replaced after one game month.

Finally, at Name level, if they build a stronghold, they attract some mercenaries like a fighter, and some lower level ranger apprentices, and may also, at the DM's discretion, attract monster retainers of similar alignment. 

I've play-tested all of the features of the class except the animal companion rules (new) and the higher level monster retainer rules (no one's gotten that high level yet). Everything else seems to work. The ranger is different from the Fighter. They don't overshadow them. And since I no longer have a Barbarian/Berserker class, Rangers get to shine in the wilds. In dungeons, they still have enough useful features to make them valuable.  

Oh, and my recent TS&R revisions use BX/BECMI level caps for demi-humans of 8, 10, or 12 (I previously had limits more like 1E, with some as low as 5th or 6th level, but decided those are too low). Humans have no limit (although my rules only go to 15th). Elves and half-orcs can go to level 8 as Rangers. Halflings can go to level 10. Other races don't get to be rangers.  

So, my Ranger class is still a bit of a mixed bag. Fighter abilities. Druid spells. Wilderness bonuses. Favored enemy. Animal companions. But I think, at least, it's a bit more consistent than the 5E Ranger class. At the core, it's the wilderness survival guy. Everything else flows from that. No need for special dual-wielding rules, or spells for magic arrows, or selecting one favored terrain or favored enemy type that may be super useful occasionally and worthless the rest of the time.

I like this guy's thinking

 After struggling for a year or so to make my West Marches game feel like an old school exploration game using 5E, I gave up and switched to Classic D&D. Don't regret the change at all. But yesterday, I clicked on this "suggested video" on YouTube and liked what the guy had to say. He's making videos for 5E, but at least this one from yesterday and one more I watched today make me think that he understands old school play and what makes it fun and interesting. 

In this one, he talks about how you don't need a lot of game mechanical resolution for a lot of exploration-based play in the game. Thinking of Johnathan Tweet's "Drama-Fortune-Karma" breakdown of how to resolve actions, exploration is mostly a mix of drama and karma, and the rules tell you when you need to involve fortune. Old school play tends to have a different idea of when fortune should come into it (newer school play being very character skill check based, while old school tends to be more about DM systems of management or set abilities with set probabilities), but in both new and old, drama and karma (and some common sense) can manage a lot of it. 

The second video, which I just watched shortly before posting, deals with Simulationism (of the dreaded GNS theory). He's got an interesting take on what simulationism means, and his discussion of having a stable and unbalanced world to game in again seems very old school. 

I think I'll be watching more from Zipperon Disney.

One of those "Get off my lawn!" posts

Oh, YouTube algorithm, why do you mock me? As suggested to me, I watched a video on agency vs railroading by the DM Lair, and it was nothing too special. Agency good, railroad bad. The next title had me intrigued, though, Milestone vs XP Leveling in D&D.

So I watched it. Obviously this guy has an opinion that he's expressing, and that's fine. He's welcome to do that. But I find it funny that he looks like he's maybe 5 to 10 years younger than me, so while he brags about being a DM since his high school days, I can brag about being a DM since his kindergarten days. Maybe even his diaper days. :D

Dick-measuring aside, he says he played some 2E in high school but mainly played 3E and 5E in his bio. I'm guessing so, from the way he talks of XP accumulation as only something that happened for combat or story awards, and "keeping players all at the same level" to make play easier. He has the BECMI boxes on his shelf behind him, but from the way he discusses XP, it seems pretty obvious that if he ever played them, he never DMed them.

Anyway, he mentions that there is one single benefit of calculating and accumulating XP, that being that it works as a metric for players to gauge their success each session, and that it gives players a feeling of satisfaction. [Arguably that's two benefits.]

For drawbacks, he mentions a tendency to encourage murderhobo style play, the tedious nature of calculations for non-combat XP from "appropriate roleplay," awarding XP for "good play" is the same as milestone XP anyway, and that awarding XP for "good play" favors players who are better at role play which is unfair.

So his criticisms of calculating and awarding XP so far are really only valid for versions of the game that only award XP for combat plus recommend "story" awards. So WotC versions of the game/Pathfinder. Any system that suggests awarding XP for treasure bypasses all of these complaints except maybe that doing the calculations can be tedious.

He has a few more complaints. One, if you don't "budget" XP, players won't be at the right level for the next adventure. Um, that's only a problem if you're running a railroad (something he said was bad in the other video I'd watched from him).

The last problem is that sometimes players forget to add the XP to their sheet. Um, again, if you're running old school D&D, that's the player's problem, not a DM problem. And not every character needs to be the same level. Oh, but if you're playing WotC D&D, I guess you need to match CRs with party levels and design adventures for a party of 4 PCs of level X, not a party of X to Y players of levels A to B. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, aren't I?

OK, so moving on to his discussion of milestone leveling.

The only disadvantage he mentions is that some players don't find it fun.

Advantages? Prevents murderhobo play. Awarding progress in the campaign (AKA the same as story awards just without the math). By telegraphing the action that will gain them their next level, players know what their goal is and can measure progress towards it. [Yes, action is highlighted to show that it's in singular not plural form...again coming right off his 'railroading is bad' video, this was interesting to say the least.] Players will not "goof around" exploring the world, they'll just head on their mission to complete the milestone.

Finally, he claims that it's just easier. And yes, he admits that he is basically running a railroad campaign and doesn't care.

Well, basically, with treasure as XP, it's the measure of success. We've all been talking about this for years, but there are a few other blog posts by others I've read the past week or so talking about it, then I saw this video. Gotta jump on the bandwagon, right?

Treasure for XP discourages murderhobo play. Why fight (and possibly die) if you can get the treasure another way?

Treasure shows progress in the campaign, and PCs always know what the objective is -- get more treasure! Sure, there are other objectives too, but loot accumulation is always part of it. And players can easily measure their progress by the amount of loot they're collecting.

Finally, I'll suggest that treasure for XP is easier than his super simple milestone system for the fact that you don't need to jump through hoops figuring out what the series of milestones are that will take the players up through the levels, or how many adventures they should have at each level, or any of that. Let the players pick their battles, and level up when they earn enough XP.

So he spent a lot of time in his video talking about it. I've spent plenty of time writing about it (and watched the video twice). And his argument really boils down to one thing:

He thinks it's easier to use milestones than to calculate XP. I'm sure he's right about that, but really, all the problems he lists aren't problems with an XP accumulation system, they're problems with the systems this guy has played.

YouTuber Commentary: Five Simple Houserules for Better Combat in 5E

I watched this video this morning as I was eating breakfast. I'm not running 5E, but I was curious about the houserules they were presenting, and wanted to consider if any of them would be useful additions to my Classic D&D game, since I'm more than happy to steal good ideas from newer editions for my Classic game.

This is the first video I've seen from The Dungeon Dudes, but I'm guessing I'll watch more. I enjoyed the simple, direct discussion of the rules without a lot of needless pontificating, and the way the hosts were cool with disagreeing about all of the rules they were presenting.

I'm not really going to comment on how their suggestions would affect 5E though. Instead I'll consider here how they might work in Classic, AD&D, or other OSR type games.

1. Better Criticals: Use 4E style criticals, where you roll normal damage plus add the maximum potential damage from your weapon to the roll as a bonus, rather than rolling twice (or doubling the number rolled).

I don't use critical hits in my game. Classic works just fine without them. Mostly because hit point totals just aren't that high. And a few bonuses to damage from high Strength scores and a magic bonus give a weapon really good damage in this edition. An ogre (4HD) in Classic has an average of 18 hit points. A Fighter with 16 Strength and a +1 sword would deal 1d8+3+8 on a crit with this rule, dealing 12 to 20 damage. A normal hit is 1d8+3, or 4 to 11 damage. Yes, the crit will make a big impact, but not as big as in 5E where an ogre has around 80 hit points on average while damage per hit (at low level) is fairly similar. This makes sense for crits in 5E, not so much for crits in Classic.

If I were to use critical hits in Classic, I'd probably just make the attack deal automatic maximum damage, with no bonuses or doubling. If you score a crit, don't bother rolling for damage, just do your maximum. Because like they say, it's pretty anti-climactic when you roll a natural 20 to hit, then roll a 1 (if doubled damage) or snake eyes (if rolling multiple dice). Dean has been using this type of critical house rule in his 5E Eberron game, and it's working well there.

On the other hand, though (and this will be mentioned in #2 as well), the swinginess of the random die results is, IMO, a feature of the game, not a bug. So something that removes randomness from that game like this may also take something away. In the normal house ruled Classic/AD&D critical rule, where you double the damage rolled on a natural 20, the natural 20 is a "potential critical" in effect, and the damage roll determines if it actually is a critical or not.

3E actually had a sort of double jeopardy of criticals, where you had to roll a natural 20, then roll another hit roll to confirm the critical, then roll double dice for damage. THAT can lead to some disappointment, as you need to get lucky once, then twice, and three times in a row to get that massive critical damage.

My Opinion: Classic works just fine without critical hits, but if you do want them, simply maximizing the normal damage works better than rolling extra dice or doubling the amount rolled.

2. Better Healing Potions: This one is simple. Don't roll for healing potions, they just automatically heal the maximum amount of hit points.

Their rationale is that players feel cheated if they roll low for the amount healed, and it might not be enough to protect them from dropping to 0 on the next hit.

In Classic, though, as noted above, hit point totals and damage amounts are generally lower. So a Classic potion of healing's 1d6+1 points (2 to 7) is enough in most cases. Yes, rolling a 1 or 2 sucks, but again, there's tension riding on that die roll. You drink your potion and pray for a 5 or 6 to come up on the dice. That's exciting! Having an automatic 7 points healed is boring.

Now, in the PbP AD&D game I'm in, the DM has two house rules about healing. For potions, instead of 1d8 points healed (the rule in AD&D), it's 1d4+4. So you're guaranteed at least 5 hit points back, but there's still some swinginess to the result. For cure wounds spells, the minimum amount healed is equal to the Cleric or Druid's level, up to the maximum allowed by the spell. So a 3rd level Cleric casting cure light wounds will always heal at least 3 points, even if they roll a 1 or 2. At 8th level, your cure light wounds spells automatically heal the maximum 8 points.

I've started using this house rule for spells in my game, but potions I'm keeping by the book.

My Opinion: With the low hit point totals of Classic compared to 5E, there's really not much need for this house rule in Classic, but it will sure make the players happy if it's implemented.

3. Flanking: Already an optional rule in 5E, they use it but with a tweak. Instead of flanking granting advantage on a hit roll, they give a +2 bonus to the attack, similar to how cover grants a +2 or +5 to AC.

Now this is a house rule that I would consider using for my Classic game. I'm not sure it's quite necessary, but it might be useful. I'll have to think about it.

Of course, in AD&D, there are facing rules, so the character the opponent is facing gets no bonus but the character attacking from behind or the side gets some bonuses to hit. If I were running AD&D, I'd just use what's in the book. In Classic, though, and since I use theater of the mind instead of minis/battle mats, a simple rule like this would be easier to remember and implement. Flanking an opponent grants a 10% increased likelihood of scoring a hit? Sounds about right. And of course, monsters can flank the characters, too...

My Opinion: This one is worth considering for Classic D&D. It's simple, and can add some excitement to the battle by trying to maneuver into flanking positions or maneuver to prevent enemies from getting into flanking positions. And yes, a flanking backstabbing Thief should get a total +6 to their backstab attempt.

4. Bloodied Condition: This is of course a 4E thing. And as they say, it's most useful as a means of signalling progress to the players. Once a creature has reached 1/2 or lower hit points, they are "bloodied."

Now, in and of itself, there's nothing special about this condition. There aren't any penalties attached to it. But 4E had lots of character and monster abilities keyed to the bloodied condition.

I wouldn't want to add in a lot of special abilities for monsters based on this. It's just more book-keeping for Classic, where there aren't lots of special "exploit" type abilities (bonus actions, lair actions, legendary actions, recharging actions) like in 5E.

And just as a description of how badly the monster is beat up? I do that anyway. So without any actual mechanics connected to it like 4E had, it's not really worth adding to a Classic game.

My Opinion: As a descriptive quality, I already signal to the players how badly the monsters are damaged. It doesn't need a specific codified rule to be useful in this sense.

5. The Minion Rule: Another 4E rule that they're importing. Minions are monsters with only 1 hit point and deal average damage on a hit. They accompany a "boss" monster in packs and are designed to be distractions from that boss. Or they're designed to be thrown at high level characters in large numbers so they can wade through the army of orcs cutting them down like they're harvesting grain.

Now, this can make the game much more cinematic. Think of the scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are slicing their way through Saruman's and Sauron's armies. Or a jidai-geki like Abarenbo Shogun where at the end of almost every episode, the shogun faces down a group of 30 to 40 samurai retainers of the villain of the week who rush at him one to three at a time and he dispatches easily.

I think, though, that in OSR games -- again, because of the lower hit point totals in general -- you already get this. Most of the humanoid opponents that make good minions, like bandits, orcs, kobolds, etc. already have low hit points. Sometimes they'll survive a hit if they got lucky for hit points and the player got unlucky for damage, but for the most part they're already mostly dropping from one hit anyway.

And again, making them do average damage may save a little bit of die rolling, but it again takes out the swinginess that I like.

And at high levels, do we really want minion ogres or minotaurs as goons for a lich or beholder, for example? Why not just keep using orcs? A high level Classic character will likely have good magical items that allow them to pretty much wipe out a goblin or orc in one hit anyway. While there's nothing wrong with it, the system default is fairly close to that idea anyway.

My Opinion: It won't hurt to use this in a Classic or AD&D game, but I'd still want to have the monsters roll for damage.

Overall Opinion: Taking some of these house rules into your Classic D&D or AD&D game probably won't hurt anything, but they will remove a lot of the randomness that I feel makes the game interesting. The Flanking rule is the only one that I'd consider adding to my game at this point. The others, in relation to the Classic game system, are either redundant or move the game away from its natural power curve.

Another Defense of the Dungeon in D&D

Another video I watched from Shadiversity on Youtube is discussing why the standard, labyrinthine dungeon of gaming is unrealistic and impractical. Go ahead and watch it if you like.

Now, I don't disagree with any of the reasoning Shad puts forth for why a typical dungeon in RPGs and video games is unrealistic. Not necessarily in the order presented in the video, just the order I remembered them:

1. It's poor architectural design. Good design should make it easy to get from place to place. Dungeons are designed to force you to go through choke-points.
2. There's often a secret passage for the "boss" that you won't find until you've reached the inner sanctum, but if you could find it early would save you a lot of trouble.
3. It's poor defensive strategy to split your defenses among a lot of separate areas when the goal is to protect a centralized treasure vault.
4. Carving out an underground tunnel system is a lot of work, making it larger than necessary is wasted effort.

All very good points. If your goal is to make your game more "realistic" to improve suspension of disbelief, and these sorts of things are things that you can't suspend your disbelief of, then yes, super logically laid out fortresses with easy ways to get straight to the end, and concentrated defenses where they will do the most good are the way to go.

And Shad does mention several times that he understands that dungeons are this way in order to facilitate game play. Good for him. And his idea towards the end of designing a rational, realistic fortress and letting players design their own plan of attack like a heist or caper movie plot can be fun, but I wouldn't want this all the time.

I've already given a pretty good reason why an underground labyrinth might logically exist a few years ago, so I'll let that post stand as a rebuttal to #4. If you don't want to click the link, I compare a map of the Mark Twain Cave, created by nature, to a typical dungeon layout.

For the idea that it's a poor defensive strategy to spread out your defenders, well, yes, maybe. But in most fantasy worlds, there will be wizards casting fireballs and ice storms and whatnot. Put ALL the monsters in one big room, and that handful of area affect spells the wizard has are suddenly a LOT more powerful. It's much better to get the twenty orcs, three ogres, two owlbears AND the blue dragon in one fireball than to have to decide to use it on only one of these groups of monsters.

If you were a BBEG, would you really want to put all your monsters/soldiers in one area where more than half could be wiped out by one fireball? In the real world, would you station all of your soldiers where they could be targeted by one artillery shell or guided missile? Of course not. Grouping your forces may be a strong defense against a conventional attack with swords, bows and spears, but not against area-effect firepower.

When it comes to the secret passage that allows quick access to the end, I think it's actually a good thing. If players grumble because they didn't find it early on, well, that's either because they didn't look for it, looked in the wrong place, or the dice just weren't on their side this time. Finding and taking advantage of that secret passage is good game play. And he mentions computer games like Skyrim don't allow you to find it at all. That's on the game designers, not a fault of the dungeon itself.

Finally, we come to the first point on architectural design. Now, the occasional dungeon with a logical architectural design can be a good thing. A nice change of pace. I was thinking about making a dragon's lair dungeon with a long wide corridor from the entrance straight to the dragon's den for the foolhardy adventurers to rush to their doom. Side passages would be for servants, food storage, etc. I wouldn't want every dungeon to be this way, though.

I think Shad is missing out on a few key concepts besides just game-play factors. And yes, that is probably the main reason for the multi-room, labyrinthine dungeon layout. Finding the treasure is supposed to be the challenge of the game. But there are a few concepts that Shad seems to believe are important that may not be, or at least aren't always important. And I think he hints at one of the biggest reasons for a dungeon to be the way it usually is, but doesn't quite make the leap to realize its importance.

First of all, Shad puts a premium on realism. Understandable, as that's the whole point of his YouTube channel. Do research on historical arms and armor, then point out how fiction/film/games get it wrong. For me, anyway, I think that too much realism is just as shattering to the fiction of the RPG session as too little. Making everything realistic is impossible. We need game mechanics to elide features of reality that are just too difficult or unwieldy to use in a game.

I remember getting turned off of the PS2 game Metal Gear Solid 3 because of its attempts at "realism" that made things LESS realistic. In that game, when you were wounded, instead of the elegant but ridiculously unrealistic method of eating food to cure your wounds (tried and true in many games), you had to go into your equipment management screens and treat the wound the way a field medic would. Clean it, anesthetize the immediate area, use antiseptic, stitch the wound closed, more antiseptic, and bandaging. Realistic, right? But you could be in the middle of the boss fight, pause the action, perform minor field surgery on yourself, and then restart time and the boss is right where you left him. That threw me enough to ruin my suspension of disbelief, and then the hassle of needing to complete five or six steps when in previous games I had only one to solve the same problem made the game unfun and I never finished it. (Pretty sure I've posted about this before here on the blog, sorry for the repeat.)

The point is, trying to become more realistic in one area made the game even less realistic in another area.So there needs to be a proper balance between realism and elegance of mechanics.

Secondly, Shad seems to be around 30-ish, so I'd guess he probably started RPGs in the 3E era, or maybe 2E AD&D/White Wolf era. He seems to take a lot of things that were popular back then as a given for game design. He mentions several times that to him, a "dungeon" should be a villain's base and why would a villain want to have to go through the ogre's chamber and around the flaming flying dagger trap every time he wants to nip out for a coffee or a pizza?

My question for Shad is, why do you assume that every dungeon is some master villain's lair? Some dungeons are, yes. And they would be better off to at least conform somewhat to Shad's cries for realism in dungeon layout. But not every dungeon is a lair. Some are just caverns. Some are tombs. Some are treasure vaults. And some...well, we'll get to that in a moment. Not every dungeon should have a BBEG lurking at the end. Not every dungeon needs to be a livable space. That's not written anywhere in any D&D book I've ever read. In fact, several of them are explicit that most dungeons are NOT.

Finally, here's the part where Shad almost gets it, but not quite. He mentions, around the 12:15 mark, that illogical dungeons are almost set up as if it were designed as a challenge. That someone wants the adventurers to get the treasure, but only if they prove their worth. But why would someone do that? It's illogical! [Setting aside the fact that in the real world, that's exactly what DMs are doing!]

Enter the realm of the dungeon as mythic underground. Modern fantasy obviously had its roots in mythology. Tolkien, Anderson, Howard, Moorecock, Dunsany, Morris... Lots of early fantasy writers drew on mythology and transformed it. There are plenty of blogs out there about using the dungeon as a sort of otherworldly zone where mortals can challenge themselves and prove their heroic worth. And yes, it can be seen as a handwave to explain away things like why there are no orc babies or what do the dragons eat when there are no adventurers to snack on. But it also gives the game a sort of resonance and weight that can be very impressive and immersive for players.

If the dungeon is a mythical underworld, rather than part of the normal, real, rational world, then Shad's idea is exactly right. The dungeons exist, put there by the gods or the Cosmic Forces of Law and Chaos, or whatever explicitly as a challenge to would be heroes. Are you strong enough to overcome these monsters? Clever enough to avoid falling victim to the traps? Wise enough to navigate the maze of passages without depleting your resources? If so, then congratulations! You win the treasure!

As Shad mentions, any sane evil overlord would want to protect their wealth, not offer it up as a challenge for the worthy. But we've already established that Shad's preconception of a dungeon as primarily a BBEG lair is already clouding his judgment on this issue, and that's why he fails to make the cognitive leap to the mythic underworld concept.

If the dungeon is the setting for a Campbellian hero-journey, then of course it should be set out this way. Every choice of pathways is a lady-or-tiger dilemma. Every encounter is there to challenge one or more aspects of your character. And yes, it is purposefully created to be difficult but not impossible to succeed.

If, like Shad posits, all of your dungeons follow the strictures of good architecture, all are bases for some BBEG or another, and all are defended in the most logical way, you can never achieve this sort of mythic resonance in your sessions.

A Response to Esper the Bard's 5E Class Rankings

I mentioned a few posts ago that this YouTube video rating the 5E classes was worthy of a response. While I've moved away from 5E as a DM, I still enjoy it as a player, so I think it's worth my time to consider what Esper thinks, why he thinks it, and point out where I agree or disagree with him.

First of all, here's the link to his video. Feel free to watch it now and come back here, or read this first and then watch his video (or alternate between the two!) as you like.

My first impression of his video was one of mild annoyance. First off, he has his tiers of ranking based on Guns n Roses songs which is fair enough. But his decision of where each class goes on that tier system is vague. He has a rating system with five criteria for evaluation. But he NEVER explains what these are. The first sign of a weak taxonomy system or ranking system is a failure to explain HOW you're classifying or rating whatever it is.

Now, granted, anything like this sort of video will, 99% of the time, boil down to post hoc justifications for the presenter's subjective opinions. But a carefully defined rubric of evaluation gives justifications for the subjective judgments and helps the audience with their own evaluations of the material.

I had to go looking at some of Esper's other videos to find his criteria spelled out in his ranking undead video. I didn't watch the whole video, just long enough to get his criteria.

So before I dive into the meat of the Character Class ranking video, I want to discuss this rubric a bit.

Mechanics apparently means a variety of combat options. Note that the description gives the highly subjective descriptors "interesting" and "fun." The undead video gives a picture of a camel vs a beholder as examples of low and high mechanics. Ignoring the fact that camels, as real world animals, are a low level threat at best while beholders are among the most powerful creatures in the game, I get what he's saying here. He thinks a simple attack roll/damage roll is boring, while having a dozen options to choose from each round is interesting.

Style is completely subjective. There's no way around this. Appearance and tone? His example pictures are a giff (I think that's the name - a Napoleonic monocle wearing hippo man from Starjammer) as low style and a roaring balor demon as high style. So goofy and unusual is lame, "metal" is cool. Got it.

Roleplaying is one that makes sense for rating monsters -- how high is the potential that you could have social interaction with the monster? His pictures are an ochre jelly and a lammasu. Obviously, you're going to fail to convince the ochre jelly that 'you're actually the telephone man come to fix the line so please let us into the treasure vault' with a Persuasion check or any amount of role play at the table. As a rating for character classes, though, I'm still mystified about what this is actually supposed to measure.

Lore seems to be a rating of not just how much total description of the monster there is, but its precedents in real world myth and legend. His example pictures are a carrion crawler (low lore) and a medusa (high lore). Since 2E went all out on monster lore for just about everything, it's hard for me to figure out if he's comparing in-game lore or real-world lore for monsters, or if again it's just a smokescreen for "I like how this monster is described, but not that one." And again, for character classes, I'm not sure how it translates exactly or how it's different from Style or Roleplaying.

Flexibility would seem to be a mechanical evaluation of the monster/class and how different you can make them within the rules. He gives pictures of a poisonous snake as low flexibility, and two elves (one a mage, one a warrior) as high flexibility. But I'm still a bit baffled when it comes to character classes. How is this different from Mechanics? Personally, I think flexibility has a lot to do with player creativity and ingenuity. I've seen plenty of "flexible" spellcasters who just spam fireballs and magic missiles all day long. And we've all had to deal with the player who thinks a cleric should be a walking cure wounds dispenser. Anyway, Esper seems to equate "lots of options to choose from on the character sheet" with flexibility...which is pretty much the same as his Mechanics category above.

So, we really have two categories for rating the classes, according to Esper:

• Do the game rules give this class lots of options to choose from? (Mechanics/Flexibility) 
• Do I think it's cool to play this class? (Style, Roleplaying, Lore)

So, on to his ranking.

The only bottom tier (E) option according to Esper, is the Fighter/Champion. And basically it's there because he sees this class option as a "long, long road filled with basic attacks" and nothing else. Well, if as a player of a Fighter/Champion you don't get creative, sure, that's possible. But a creative player will be looking at the rules (there are more things to do in combat in 5E, I mentioned the whole long list of allowed actions in my post the other day), not to mention equipment that could be used to make encounters more interesting. Sure, any other class could do those things, too, but since they have all these built in options to choose from, how often will they take advantage of them? When it comes to style, Esper sees this class as a blank slate...which is bad somehow. I guess being able to style the class any way you want is too much work for a 5E player these days? I shouldn't be snide. But really, he says there's no lore attached. I'm looking at just about all of human mythology/legendry/history and seeing all sorts of inspirations. I guess if it didn't come from Gygax as filtered through 3E and then 5E, it doesn't count.

Now, granted, the Champion is fairly plain and simple. It's not "sexy" but that's kind of the point. The Fighter throughout D&D history has not been a "sexy" class. But it's still one of the most common because it's effective and fun.

The next tier up (D) again has one subclass, the Barbarian/Berserker. His evaluation is that mechanically it has a few more options than the Fighter/Champion, but will still just be looking to make lots of normal attacks each round. He gives it high points for style (because bulging muscles are cool, I guess?) but says there's no lore or built in RP hooks for the class. So again, apparently we have our difference of Style with Roleplay/Lore. Style means "I think the art looks cool" while RP/Lore means WotC gave me my character concept for me (and I like what they gave me, but this part is in parenthesis because it only becomes obvious later).

Moving up to the next tier (C) we get a few: Fighter/Battlemaster, Barbarian/Totem Warrior, Fighter/Eldritch Knight, and Ranger/Hunter

The Battlemaster is as lame as the Champion, but gets more mechanical tricks. It apparently is visually more appealing (one step higher than Champion on Style) I guess because the art is more dynamic than the motionless 3E Fighter pictures used with the Champion section? And having the ability to define your character with mechanics to back it up is apparently what Roleplay/Lore is about in this case, instead of just role playing to define your character.

The Totem Warrior is better than the Berserker because...the rules for the totems are better than the rules for berserking? And apparently having these semi-magical abilities gives you more to base your RP on than being a warrior who goes crazy in battle.

The Eldritch Knight, he says, could have been in B tier because 1/3 wizard, but being 2/3 fighter is lame. Because all it does is fight. (Um, if that's the case, why are 2 of 5 criteria based solely on your ability to fight?)

To be clear, he's talking about the "revised Ranger" variant which he praises, so by the book Rangers are probably down with the Berserker in D tier. He gives the Hunter good points for combat and exploration mechanics, but says the RP/Lore is limited. How? I'm still not sure.

Anyway, Esper says that all of the above classes/subclasses lack for mechanical flexibility and/or RP hooks hard coded into the class.

Moving up to B tier, we get the Monk (all subclasses), Ranger/Beastmaster, Paladin (all subclasses), Rogue (Assassin & Thief).

Monks have lots of unique mechanics that he likes. Loves, even. But unfortunately, they are low on RP potential. Because he's never seen anyone create a more interesting Monk background than the default given by the book. So here's one of my biggest criticisms of this video. Monks are apparently sucky roleplay options because of how the book suggests they are played. But moving forward, classes like the Paladin or Bard get high marks for being played the way the books says you should play them.

Beastmasters are sucky Rangers, but having an animal is cool and metal. So bonus points.

Paladins are cool because they have a hard-coded RP story in the class (which is why Monks suck).

Rogue, at least the Assassin and Thief subclasses, get high ranks for style (cool dark edgy art), and real world lore is cool (from Han Solo to Jack Sparrow)...although real world lore for lower ranked classes was ignored. Apparently not having spells is enough to limit these edgy scoundrels to B tier because...

Tier A, the top, the best of the best! Here we have the Rogue/Arcane Trickster, Warlock, Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, and at the top the BARD!

This is getting long, and you can basically boil this down to A tier (aside from Rogue/Arcane Trickster who are at the bottom of the tier) are full spellcaster classes. That's it, folks. According to this video, spellcasters are where it's at! Even though he seems to again waffle on the "real world lore/game lore" thing. And is inconsistent about what constitutes good hard-coded RP hooks and what doesn't.

Probably no surprise that a guy who calls himself Esper the Bard puts the Bard class at the top of the chart.

So what can we learn from this? If you want to actually rate classes, come up with some sort of well-defined criteria for the ratings and explain your ranking system in detail. Offer up arguments to defend your rating with specific examples or some sort of data, rather than "I just like this."

OR, from the beginning, just tell us straight up, these are the classes ranked by my personal preference of what/how to play and what seems cool to me, and give up the pretense of some sort of objective ranking system.

Trying to mush the two together leads to disappointment in your audience.

It's not your DM's job to provide you with a story

I've been in a bit of a lull this weekend, not really motivated to work on my research. So I've been wasting a lot of time on YouTube. This video popped up on my recommended list today. I've seen a few videos from this guy before, and while focused on 5E, he's given me a few things to think about with regards to the game.

I have a few issues with this video, though, and so, since this seems to be the way debate happens on the internet, I should actually be making my own YouTube video, sampling bits of this one, and then giving my rebuttal or interpretation, or explaining how my philosophy differs. But I'm just going to write up my thoughts here instead, since my web cam is busted. I guess I could use my phone camera to do it - it's better quality than my web cam anyway. But I'll just write my ideas here anyway.

His "simple dirty tricks" to run a successful RP session are:
0. Have a goal for the session (this is more of a general bit of advice he gives)
1. Introduce a backstory NPC (AKA a new NPC related to a PC's backstory)
2. Introduce a third party (to complicate the RP with a new agenda)
3. Set the PCs up for a fall (a bait and switch/manipulate their emotions gambit)
4. Create a moral dilemma for the PCs (orc babies, anyone?)
5. Introduce a new ally or enemy (how this is different from #1 is...the new NPC is not related to a PC's backstory, how it's different from #2 is...I'm not exactly sure, unless the "third party" in #2 is completely neutral in whatever conflicts are going on)


My first impression is that aside from one of the "dirty tricks" (#3), I wouldn't consider any of these to be dirty tricks. But with the nature of click-bait titles, I'll let that slide. He needed to jazz up the title to get people interested. And in my case, it did work.

So, first of all, his idea to "have a goal for the session" seems to imply that the DM knows and is planning for an RP session. My philosophy of GMing any more is to never have a goal for the session as GM. It's the players' responsibility to come up with goals for the session. If they decide to just hang out in town chatting up NPCs, THAT is apparently the goal they have come up with for the session.

That said, if the players do opt to RP the entire session instead of exploring or hacking & slashing, his five bits of advice of things to throw into the session to liven things up aren't all bad.

#1 seems to imply coming up with a "backstory NPC" off the cuff. While that's certainly possible, I've found through the years that throwing in an already established NPC works better. We've already got an idea of the NPC's character, and the players may familiar with the NPC's attitudes, goals, etc.

I did this intuitively as a kid. My best friend's main Fighter had a 3 Charisma, and tended to piss off otherwise friendly and helpful NPCs. If we were in a long RP session, I could usually find a way to work in one of the "Caric's Enemies Club" to the game and have some fun interactions with an established NPC.

#2 seems to again be premised on the idea that the DM is running the players through some sort of predetermined story. Having multiple factions that the players are free to oppose or try to ally with is great. And if there's a lull in the dungeon delving, it is in fact a good time to introduce new factions to the players. If you're trying to run the players through some kind of specific plot (whether it's predetermined or just heavily guided to try and steer things a certain way), this is actually a good way to derail that story! The players may find the new faction more engaging than the current allies/enemies, and want to totally switch gears. I'm actually all for that. But I don't think that's what the guy in the video intended.

#3 can be a real dick move, if not done right. And the guy making the video does warn you not to overuse this idea. The problem I see with it it, if you don't plan this ahead of time, it won't have the emotional payoff you're hoping for. And if you do plan it ahead of time, and are just waiting around for the players to disengage from the exploration and talk to the NPCs for a session, it will feel contrived when you trot it out. Now, if you're running them through some sort of story, and you know you'll have a break in the narrative, yeah, this would be a good time to use something like this. But if you are just providing a game world for the players to explore, this sort of thing should come up naturally as part of the in-game cause/effect of player actions/reactions. It's not the sort of thing that should be planned and "sprung" on the players just to try to manipulate them emotionally.

#4 shouldn't be something the DM forces on the players. The DM should always be giving them situations where they have choices to make of a moral or ethical nature. But I can't, as DM, force the players to engage in the choice as a dilemma. That depends on the player's mentality and how they envision their character.

In my experience, since RPGs are NOT the real world and the consequences aren't real to the players, they will happily take a situation that might actually be a dilemma in real life and easily choose to do one thing or the other. A writer can decide that Hamlet can't decide whether avenging his father or not betraying his king is the morally correct action. As a DM, all I can do is dangle the situation in front of the players. Whether they decide to ignore their father's ghost, run straight to the throne room and draw steel, or spend days moping around fretting about the decision is out of my hands. It's my job to take their decision and roll with it, and play it out.

And if there is a dilemma, it's usually not every character fretting over the possible courses of action. It's a debate between PCs that have made opposite decisions. And they will happily debate it out in character (and sometimes out of character too) while I just sit there and listen.

#5, as I noted above, isn't really any different than #1 or #2. They're all basically trying to spice up an RP session by throwing in more NPCs to interact with. And that's fine. If the players have decided to hang out in town and do research, pursue personal goals, or just have a laugh, the more and more varied types of NPCs they have to interact with, the better. This point just suggests a different type of NPC to throw at the players compared to the first two "dirty tricks."

So looking at the specific points offered, yes, these are usually good ways to spice up role play encounters. In fact, they would mostly work even if it's just an encounter, not an entire session. The problem I have with the video's premise is that it expects the DM to be providing some sort of coherent narrative for the players to move through. That's not the DM's job. The DM should set the stage. The DM should be reactive to the actions of the PCs more often than they should be actively trying to "move the plot" of the game.

If the DM plans for an RP session, and prepares one of these "dirty tricks" to use, but the players aren't in the mood for an RP session and would rather get on with the adventure, then it's going to be a dull or frustrating session for everyone.

So budding DMs, don't force it. If you find your players in the mood for some heavy RP instead of exploration/combat, remember these "tricks" as things you can do when things seem to slow down and you need to add a bit of spice. Just don't force them upon your players.

Inexperienced players, force it! If you're in the mood for role play, role play away! If you want to explore or get in a fight or whatever, let the DM know that's what you want to do.

The best RP sessions aren't pre-planned or forced. They just happen spontaneously.

Strength Bows

Thanks to the suggested videos algorthms of YouTube, I discovered this series of videos on Medieval weapons and armor called Shadiversity. I'm no expert on the subject, so I don't know if this guy is just another blabbering blogger or if he knows his stuff, but some of what he's talked about concerning misconceptions of ancient and medieval weapons and armor matches things I've read or seen elsewhere, so maybe he's alright.

In the video I linked, he talks about bows [starting around the 17:30 mark, if you want to skip ahead to the bow segment], and how in lots of RPGs and fantasy games, they get bows wrong. Bows, he claims, aren't weapons for weak but agile characters. Crossbows are better for those sorts. Bows, to be most effective, require strength. Having done some archery when I was younger (one of those things I keep telling myself I'd like to get back into but always put off for another day), he's right. The fiberglass recurve bow I had as a kid launched the arrows relatively slowly. Hunting bows or military bows would need to be a lot more powerful to be useful. For target shooting, my old bow is fine (still have it back in the States, my boys get it out now and then). If I actually wanted to kill a dragon or some such, I'd need a lot stronger bow. Which would mean I'd need to develop my upper body strength a lot more (or use the modern "cheat" of pulleys for mechanical advantage).

3E had compound bows that could be made to deal extra damage if you were a strong character. 2E had them as well. I think that might be something for me to work back into my house rules. Besides, I've always liked the idea of a Thief with a crossbow over a Thief with a short bow anyway.