Thoughts on searching

One of the rules which almost always tempted me to fudge dice rolls was the roll for finding secret doors.

Moldvay states: The DM should only check for finding a secret door if a player says that the character is searching for one and is searching for one in the correct area. (emphasis in original)

What's wrong with that? Choosing when and where to search for secret doors is something of a skill and an art. Searching every ten-foot section of wall in the dungeon is wildly impractical at best; players must be discerning in deciding where and when to search. I don't know about you, but it's always a huge disappointment to me when my players, through some turn of cleverness or deductive reasoning, suspect a secret door, and search the very spot, and the dice dictate they remain oblivious. And if you roll only when there's a secret door there in the first place, you immediately provide the player with that knowledge, while the character is forbidden to act upon it. Although each character is explicitly stated to have only one chance to find a given secret door, the dice roll is practically an invitation for everyone in the party to try until someone succeeds or everyone has failed, which could become a rather tedious exercise.

This is an instance in which I think player skill should absolutely trump random chance, and if player skill is to be rewarded, then there is no point at all to rolling. Instead, if you pick the right spot and spend a turn scrutinizing it, and you'll find whatever's there to be found. That doesn't necessarily mean that you must announce, "You find a secret door!" There just has to be something for the players and characters to interact with, whether it's some feature of the door itself or the hidden trigger that opens it. "You find a seam in the wall," or "One block is of a slightly different shade than the rest of the wall" will do nicely to prompt further investigation or action.

The same principle serves well for most dungeon searches, not just secret doors. (Searching for something in the wilderness or other large area is a whole other can of worms.) Though perception checks and the like aren't a formal part of classic D&D, I know many DMs use them for all manner of searches and observations, and I think that's also a mistake, and an unnecessary complication to boot.

According to Moldvay Basic, searching a 10'x10' area takes one character one turn (under TIME, page B19,) a rule of thumb that works equally well whether the area in question is vertical or horizontal. (For a secret door search, the wall should NOT be considered part of the adjacent 10'x10' section of floor, and vice versa!) Presumably, since no dice mechanics are given, under most circumstances the task should succeed automatically, and the character finds whatever is there to be found. No silly perception checks or search rolls needed; you just automatically reward the player's action with information. As above, it's often more interesting to name interesting features the character may further interact with rather than immediately drill down to the bedrock. A small wooden box may be found without immediately disclosing its contents, for instance, or a rack of many stoppered glass bottles may be noted without listing what's in each one. The further investigation implied may or may not take another turn beyond the initial search (if the player chooses to pursue it, of course.)

Of course, it is just a rule of thumb, and may be tweaked when necessary, though this should be the exception and not the rule. For instance, if the party discovers a very cluttered 20'x20' storeroom, you might decide it takes a character two turns to complete a reasonably thorough search of each 10'x10' area. The party might decide to assign two characters to a particular 10'-square area, and thus complete the search in a single turn. (I personally wouldn't allow extra manpower to ever reduce search time below one turn, for ease of timekeeping, and because of the "too many cooks in the kitchen" principle.)

Is a dice roll ever appropriate? In fact, I'd argue that sometimes it is. Sometimes the players may wish to conduct a very hasty search, and the chance of success could be reduced proportionately with the time spent. If they want to spend only a turn rifling through a 200-square foot room, perhaps they'll have a 50% chance to find an important feature or item. Again, for the sake of timekeeping, I wouldn't allow even a hasty search to take less than one turn; the party could just search a larger area in the same amount of time. It would be simple enough to add a modest bonus for high Intelligence or Wisdom (logical or intuitive sense for where items might be hidden) or for characters like thieves, making them a little more effective at hurried ransacking.

Reaction table on 2d10

Charisma was the only ability score in classic D&D that didn't follow the standard progression of bonuses and penalties. Instead, the scores that normally gave a 2-point adjustment were held to 1 point, with 2 points coming only at the extremes of 3 and 18. That's because adjustments have an outsized impact on a 2d6 roll compared to their effects on the d20 rolls to which most of them are applied.

If that anomaly in an otherwise flawless symmetry ever bugged you, here's a solution: a 2d10 reaction table to accommodate the full range of ability adjustments. The odds of each reaction level are within a few tenths of a percentage point from the originals.

Roll (2d10 + modifiers)	Reaction
2-3	Immediate attack
4-8	Hostile; -2 to next roll
9-13	Neutral
14-18	Agreeable; +2 to next roll
19-20	Friendly

Encumbrance simplified

Encumbrance is important if you really want to play up the physical resource management aspects of the game. A journey through trackless wilderness or being lost in the bowels of a haunted catacomb loses some of its suspense if a party can carry as many rations and torches as they can be bothered to write on their equipment lists.

It's also labeled as "Optional" for good reason. As written, it's one of the most tedious things to track at the game table, and a total momentum-killer.

Let's see if we can't minimize the drag and make encumbrance a practical rule to use.

To start out, forget that nonsense about calculating every coin of encumbrance. We'll use an increment of roughly ten pounds instead. Call it a carrying unit or a hundredweight (100 coins) or a stone (yeah, I know that's actually 14 pounds in the "real" world) or whatever you like.

Every character gets an allowance of 4 carrying units. If you like, modify it by the character's Strength adjustment. Up to this amount, the character is considered unencumbered.

Now, only tally up the really important stuff, and ignore miscellaneous gear, unless someone's carrying a really absurd amount of torches or holy water or something. Armor equals 1 carrying unit per point of AC (6 for plate, 4 for mail, 2 for leather, 1 for shield.) One large weapon, two medium weapons, or five small weapons are also 1 carrying unit. Two weeks of iron rations or one week of standard rations is 1 CU. A hundred coins, or anything roughly approaching it, is 1 CU. (If you prefer your coins a little less chunky, just set this to 200 or 500 coins to the CU, or whatever.)

Now here's the clever bit. Take the character's exploration movement rate, 120' per turn for standard human and demihuman characters. For every CU over the character's basic allowance, subtract 10 from this number. That's the character's encumbered movement per turn. When you need to convert to encounter movement, just round up, so e.g. a rate of 120, 110, or 100 is still 40' per round.

Every time a character picks up or drops some significant item, just add or subtract 10 from the base movement rate. Ignore the piddly stuff until it seems that someone's really accumulating a hoard of it, and then just tack on another CU. No tedious mucking about with a calculator; just add or subtract a factor of 10 from movement and get on with the game.

Assuming no Strength adjustments, an average character will hit 0' per turn at 16 carrying units. At a glance that's a little less forgiving than the classic D&D standard, which has movement at 30'(10') when carrying 1601 or more coins of encumbrance, and 0' at 2401 coins, but given the generous fudge factor built in to this scheme, it's pretty damn close.

Goblins & Greatswords: A few basics of magic

Magic in G&G will be divided into four lists: Mind, Matter, Divine, and Nature.

Magic of mind includes all spells that enhance, manipulate, or control the mind, including illusions, charm, telepathy, telekinesis, and sleep spells.

Magic of matter includes spells that create, destroy, or alter living and non-living matter, including polymorph, transmutation, size changing, and elemental magic.

Divine magic encompasses effects considered holy or unholy, such as detecting and protecting from evil or good, blessings and curses, and spells that directly affect life and death, such as healing spells.

Nature magic includes spells that affect plants, animals, and weather, plus healing magic.

Obviously there is some overlap between lists.

Mage characters normally have access to Mind and Matter, though they may opt to give up one of those lists in exchange for learning Divine or Nature spells.  Clerics have access to either Divine or Nature magic, but not both.

Spell lists use the terminology "order" or "order of magnitude" rather than "level" for spells of differing power, to avoid confusion with other uses of the word "level."  Lists run from cantrips and orisons (Zero Order, usuable at will) to 6th Order.

You won't find many direct damage spells in these lists, though some will have that potential.  You won't find, say, the old standby fireball spell.  Instead, there are some spells to manipulate fire, and maybe one that will allow the caster to make an existing fire explode outward, extinguishing itself in the process.  Damage and area of effect will depend on the size of the fire rather than the caster's level.  Getting the target creatures near the fire, or the fire near them, is left to the player's ingenuity.

Casting Spells

Spell-casting is similar to the B/X standard, but a character can memorize one spell per day per level of experience, modified by Intelligence (mage) or Wisdom (cleric) adjustments.  In the case of penalties, a minimum of one spell may always be memorized.  This spell allotment may be divided among the orders of spells usable however desired.  For instance, a fifth-level mage with an Intelligence adjustment of +1 may memorize any six spells, dividing them between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order as the player wishes.  The spell table determines the number of spells of each order which the character may cast per day, but any memorized spell may be cast as often as desired within those limits.

Learning Spells

Whenever a caster gains access to spells of a new order of magnitude, the first such spell is free.  Additional spells may be learned through research.

Learning additional spells is done between adventures, and requires time and money.  The base cost is 1,000 sp and five days of time per order of magnitude of the spell.  For spells of Mind and Matter the cost is spent on books, reagents, and laboratory time.  For Divine spells, the cost is spent on prayer and activities beneficial to the deity or church, such as donations of money, texts, holy items, and so on.  For Nature spells, the cost may be expended on books, rare materials, and time spent observing and communing with the natural world.

Spell research succeeds on a 1d20 roll of 10 or greater.  Add the character's Intelligence (Mind or Matter spells) or Wisdom (Divine or Nature) to the roll, and subtract 2 for each order of magnitude of the new spell.  A natural roll of 1 always fails, and a natural 20 always succeeds.  An adjusted roll of 0 or less means that the character cannot attempt to research that spell again without assistance (see below); otherwise, each unsuccessful effort adds a cumulative +1 adjustment to each further attempt to learn the spell.

Learning a spell is easier if it is similar to one the character already knows.  "Similar" is left to the discretion of the player and GM.  Use the highest order of similar spell known:  Subtract 500 sp and 2 days from the cost for each order of magnitude of the known spell, to a minimum of 500 sp and 1 day.  Add +1 to the research roll for each order of magnitude of the known spell.

Having a scroll or spell book containing the desired spell increases chances of success by +2, regardless of the order of magnitude.

Assistants improve the chances of success.  An assistant must be able to cast spells from the same list, but need not be able to cast spells of the order being researched.  A full-time assistant who is not capable of casting the order of spell being researched adds +1.  Consulting once per day with someone capable of casting at least that order of magic also adds +1, while studying full-time with such a caster adds +3.  Apprentices and masters will generally perform this function for no additional charge.  Otherwise, the other caster must be paid 100 sp per level per day for full-time service and 10 sp per level per day for consultation.

So, if a mage with Intelligence 15 wants to research a 3rd order spell, and knows a 2nd order spell that the GM agrees is similar, the cost is:

3,000 sp and 15 days for a 3rd order spell, -1,000 sp and 4 days for knowing the 2nd order spell already = 2,000 sp and 11 days.

The 1d20 roll is modified by -6 for the desired 3rd order spell, +2 for the known 2nd order spell, +1 for Int bonus = -3.  The research will thus succeed on a roll of 13 or better.  On a roll of 3 or less, the caster won't be able to research the spell again without the aid of another caster.

If the caster had captured a spell book with the desired spell, and was working with an apprentice, she would gain an additional +3 to the roll.

Of course, in a sense time is money, and to an extent the two are interchangeable in spell research.  One may be reduced by a factor of 2, 3, or 4 by increasing the other a corresponding amount.  (Always apply these adjustments after adjustments for knowing similar spells.)  A character researching a spell with a base cost of 1,000 sp and 5 days may take 20 days and pay only 250 sp, or may speed the process up, paying 4,000 sp and finishing in 1 1/4 days, for instance.

The aim of these rules is to encourage a degree of specialization without a load of rules for specialist mages.  Of course, a character may choose a scattershot approach to learning new spells, but the reduced cost and improved odds of success for learning spells similar to what one already knows provide an incentive to pursue the path of least resistance.

Goblins & Greatswords: Combat sequence

Initiative: I can take it or leave it.  I'm not sure it really adds much to the game, other than another die roll.  How would I run things if I left it out?  That's exactly the kind of thing to include in a fantasy heartbreaker, right?

One of the things I don't like about traditional initiative is that it often produces weird results when each side (or even each individual) is able to complete its actions for the round before the other even starts.  It also often disrupts what should be the logical sequence of things.  It seems ridiculous to me if, for instance, a swordsman can make a full round's worth of movement to attack an archer before the archer gets a shot off, just because the swordsman won an initiative roll.  Moldvay, though, explicitly allows missile fire to occur out of normal initiative sequence in the example of combat in the Basic Rules.  In other words, go in order of the die roll unless logic dictates otherwise.  But with that in mind, why not dispense with the die roll and simply have action occurring simultaneously unless logic dictates otherwise?

Here's what I've come up with as the basic sequence of actions in G&G.  Each combatant is allowed movement plus one other action per round.  The other action can be melee or missile combat, using an item, drinking a potion, picking something up, or anything else a player can think of to do.  In each phase, all characters and creatures who are taking an appropriate action will be able to act, regardless of which side they're on, and regardless of whether the events of that phase result in their being killed or incapacitated.  Combatants slain or incapacitated in one phase may not act in subsequent phases, however.  For example, two archers both get their shots off in the ranged combat phase, even if they kill each other, but if a swordsman moving to engage a foe is killed by arrows during the ranged attack phase, he is dead before the close combat phase, and thus may not complete his declared action. 

1. Morale is checked, and attempts to surrender or parley are initiated.
2. Declarations of intent. GM describes what the opponents are doing.  Players state their characters' intended movement and actions in general terms.  If an action is not declared, the character or creature acts at the end of the round, after the close combat phase.
3. Ranged attacks. Any combatant using a ready missile device or a thrown weapon acts in this phase. Ranged spells and those cast on self or nearby allies take effect now. Magic items which are activated by a word or thought may also be used in this phase.
4. Movement. Combatants who are not engaged in melee combat move now, up to their full encounter movement. Those who are engaged in melee are more limited. (5' per round, which may be dictated by an opponent's combat roll; see the previous post.) Combatants moving toward one another will meet somewhere in the middle.  Where enemy combatants meet, one or both may choose to engage the other in melee, which halts further movement.  If neither does, they simply move past each other.  Miscellaneous actions, such as opening a door, picking up an object within reach, or drinking a potion, are also resolved during this phase.
5. Close combat. All actions involving melee combat or disengaging from it occur now. Spells that require close proximity to the target are also resolved in this phase.
6. Held or changed actions.  A combatant who has not yet taken an action, and has not been killed or incapacitated, may abort a planned action and take some other action at the end of the round.  Using this rule, a character could, for example, hold a ranged attack action, move during the normal movement phase, and shoot at the end of the round from the new position.  If  movement itself is held, the combatant may move only up to half its normal rate at the end of the round, the other half being "wasted" during the moments of inaction.  If multiple combatants hold actions, they are resolved in the same order as the original combat sequence, i.e. ranged, movement, melee.  No further holding his possible.
   
   
   
   
   Example of Combat (refer to my previous post for the basic rules of combat)
   

A party of five characters consisting of Culhern and Saedrith, fighers; Telos, a cleric; Sorrel, a halfling burglar, and Kierdran, a mage, meets a band of a dozen orcs.  After attempting to negotiate from across a wide chamber, the encounter turns hostile.  Combat begins, with the groups 60' apart.

Round 1

Phase 1: Since combat has just begun, and the orcs outnumber the party, no morale checks need to be made yet, and negotiations have already broken down. 

Phase 2: The GM states that ten orcs draw their axes and charge, while two hang back and prepare to throw spears.  Culhern and Saedrith's players state that their characters draw weapons and rush to meet the advancing orcs.  Telos's player decides that his character will follow them, while Sorrel loads a bullet in her sling and Kierdran begins a sleep spell.

Phase 3: The two orcs throwing spears, Sorrel with her sling, and Kierdran's spell all act at once.  One orc throws its spear at Culhern, and its combat roll of 18 against his AC of 15 scores 3 points of damage.  The other comes up short on its roll against Sorrel, and its spear hits the wall behind her.  Sorrel fires at one of the oncoming orcs.  Her combat roll totals 21 after all adjustments, which deals maximum damage of 4 points against the orc's AC of 13.  The orc had only 3 hp, so it goes down, and will not be able to complete its action for the round.  Meanwhile, Kierdran finishes her sleep spell and sends four of the advancing orcs off to dreamland.

Phase 4: Orcs and humans move at about the same rate, so the moving combatants meet roughly halfway between their starting points.  There are five orcs left of the ten who began the charge, against three heroes. 

Phase 5: Culhern, Saedrith, and Telos all choose to engage in melee with the orcs, with the two fighters using the sweep option to engage two orcs apiece.  Telos fails his combat roll and does no damage.  Saedrith makes two combat rolls, each at -2, and gets results of 7 and 15.  The first orc is unharmed, but the second takes 2 points of damage.  Her orcs both wish to withdraw so they can go slay the unarmored mage and burglar.  They make their combat rolls and get a 5 and a 16.  Neither is enough to pierce Saedrith's sturdy plate and mail armor, but the second orc menaces her with its axe and manages to back away, disengaging from the melee.  Culhern rolls 12 and 19; the latter roll is enough to deal a mortal wound, but since actions happen simultaneously, the orc gets to make its roll against him.  It succeeds, and with its dying breath slashes at him for 5 points of damage!  Its cohort fails, though it lives to fight another round.

Since no actions were changed or held, no actions occur in Phase 6.

Round 2

Phase 1: At the start of the second round, the GM checks the orcs' morale, and determines that they will fight on. 

Phase 2: The orc who withdrew from melee with Saedrith charges at the mage and burglar, while Culhern, badly hurt, decides to defend, and also uses his greatsword like a spear to interpose between himself and the remaining orcs.  Saedrith takes on two orcs again, while Telos begins casting a spell to revitalize Culhern.  Sorrel readies her sling again, while Kierdran draws a dagger and prepares to throw it at the approaching orc.  The two orc spear-throwers draw axes and advance on the fighters and cleric.

Phase 3: Sorrel uses her combat roll to attack one of the fresh orcs threatening the fighters, and rolls a 14, dealing a paltry 1 point of damage.  Kierdran hurls her dagger and also scores 1 point of damage.  Since Telos is within easy reach of Culhern, the GM rules that he may touch his ally and the revitalize spell takes effect during this phase, restoring 5 hp to Culhern.

Phase 4: The former spear-throwers rush into the fracas in the middle of the chamber.  Everyone else is either engaged in melee already or chose not to move.

Phase 5: Culhern, restored, decides to drop his defensive stance and go on offense against the orc in melee with him.  Since this is a changed action, he'll have to wait until the end of the round to do it.  The enraged and slightly injured orc moving against Kierdran reaches her and attacks, rolling a 14 vs. her AC of 10, dealing 4 points of damage and seriously hurting her.  Saedrith manages to hold her own against two orcs, neither taking nor dealing any damage.  Two orcs attack Telos, wounding him for 3 points, and the last fails to hurt Culhern.

Phase 6: Culhern now takes his changed action, and rolls an adjusted total of 23!  Against AC 13, that's 10 points of damage, neatly liberating an orc's head from its body. 

So we leave our brave heroes, on the brink of victory or defeat as Round 3 looms...

Goblins & Greatswords: Combat

Combat may be a "failure state" in fantasy RPGs, but it's also a central element of a rule set, and as it's one of the things most fundamentally altered from standard D&D-style combat in my fantasy heartbreaker, it seems fitting to examine it first.

Stats relevant to combat in G&G are:

• Armor Class, which is ascending from a base of 10
• Hit points, which are pretty much what they've always been.
• Combat Rating (aka Attack Bonus or some such) which is determined by character class and level or monster Hit Dice. 
• Damage: How much harm a weapon or natural attack routine can inflict.  May be expressed simply as a maximum (e.g. "4") or as a dice range (e.g. "1d4," if you use an optional critical hit rule.)

The core combat mechanic is a d20 roll, which has been referred to as the "to hit roll" or "attack roll" in most games, but which I'm calling a "combat roll" to call attention to the fact that it does not necessarily represent a single attempt to hit an opponent.  Likewise, I prefer to think of successful or unsuccessful combat rolls rather than "hits and misses."

In the most basic form of combat, a combatant makes a d20 combat roll against its opponent's armor class to determine if it successfully inflicts damage.  Combat Rating and adjustments from ability scores and magic, if applicable, are added to the roll.  If the total exceeds the opponent's AC, damage caused is equal to the difference between the adjusted combat roll and AC.  So, if a fighter engages a creature with AC14 and scores a total of 17 on her combat roll, she does 3 points of damage to the opponent.

The Damage stat is a cap on the maximum damage possible, so if our hypothetical fighter is using a Damage 4 weapon and beats her opponent's AC by 6 on the combat roll, she still does 4 points of damage.

This means that

• There's no longer any dissonance between attack and damage rolls.  Who hasn't felt the thrill of a great attack roll and then chumped out with a 1 on the damage die?  No more. 
• Weapons with higher damage ratings reward higher combat skill.  You can still use a Damage 8 weapon even if you're inept in battle, but it's less effective when you don't have a mathematical possibility of exceeding your target's AC by at least 8 points.
• You can have low-damage weapons that are easier to wield, or that are effective at punching through armor, receive a bonus to combat rolls, and high-damage weapons that receive no bonuses but are more deadly in the hands of a combat expert. 
• You avoid the double-dip of Strength bonuses (and the double whammy of penalties) on attack and damage rolls, while still making Strength very relevant to melee effectiveness. 

A combat roll may also be applied as a contested roll.  Sometimes a character wants to do something that relies on combat skill, but which doesn't require actually penetrating an opponent's armor to score damage.  In that case, the action may succeed if the combat roll beats the opponent's roll, regardless of whether either one is good enough to score damage.  (This is the basis of the G&G grappling system, which will get its own post later on.)  A few more examples of using a combat roll in this way may be found in the combat options below.

Combat options in this system include:

• Defend: Combat Rating is applied to AC instead of combat rolls for that round.  Combat rolls may still be attempted, but without the bonus.  Good for when you're overwhelmed and waiting for the cavalry to come to the rescue, or you want to toy with weaker opponents.  (Advanced option: Combat Rating may be split between offense and defense.)
• Sweep:  Attack more than one opponent in a round.  Maximum number which can be fought is equal to half the weapon's Damage - you can threaten more opponents at a time with a battle axe than with a dagger.  All targets must be within reach, i.e. no movement is allowed to reach others.  Make a separate combat roll against each opponent, but all rolls are at -2 per opponent over one, i.e. -2 for two opponents, -4 for three, -6 for four, and so on.  Obviously a tactic best used against weak opponents, or by a very skilled combatant.
• Beleaguer: Opposite of sweep, several combatants concentrate their efforts against one opponent.  Each receives +1 to its combat roll for every member of the attacking group above one.  Makes being outnumbered very dangerous.
• Interpose: Hold your position and fend off attackers with a weapon with long reach, like a spear.  If your combat roll exceeds the opponent's, it can't get to you, and thus can't damage you, even if its roll would normally succeed.  
• Disengage: If your combat roll is higher than your opponent's, whether or not either one scores damage, you may disengage from melee and back away 5'.
• Retreat: Turn tail and run!  An opponent that chooses to attack you in melee gets +2 to its combat roll and ignores your shield.  If you survive and you're faster, or the opponent chooses not to follow, you're no longer in melee.  Avoid the attack from behind if you disengage first.
• Force movement: Whichever combatant scores the highest combat roll, regardless of damage, may force the opponent to move 5' in a direction of the winner's choosing. 

Any of these may be used by any character class and by monsters, though of course some will be better at them than others.  No feats or any of that funny stuff necessary.  They're also, I think, pretty intuitive, so the GM and players should be able to learn and apply them with minimal difficulty.  Many combinations are possible; for example, one could use sweep and interpose to keep multiple opponents at bay, or defend and disengage to withdraw cautiously, or beleaguer and interpose to keep a single opponent behind a bristling wall of weapons, or sweep and disengage to back out of a melee in which you're outnumbered.

Some of these tactics could be adapted to house-rule a more traditional D&D-like combat system, but I think they're particularly elegant with the G&G model.

Critical success and failure (optional): When a combatant rolls a natural 20, it strikes a particularly vulnerable point on the opponent.  Roll its damage die and add the result to the normal damage caused.  Optionally, the critical damage die explodes - roll again each time the maximum possible result is rolled, and add the result to the previous damage.  If desired, a player may choose an alternate critical success result before the combat roll is made, such as disarming, snatching an item, pulling the opponent's helmet over its eyes, etc.  If the roll is a critical success, the desired effect occurs, but no extra damage is done.

A critical failure causes something unfortunate to happen to the combatant who rolled it.  Exact results are up to the GM and player.  The target of a critical failure may be allowed to narrate a result.  Game mechanical effects are at the GM's discretion; losing the next round of actions is typical, but others are possible.

Just about any action in combat should be able to be modeled by one of these applications of the combat roll - either vs. opponent's AC, vs. opponent's roll, or special result on a critical success.

Most of the foundations of this system are not of my own devising.  The concept of an attack bonus rather than an attack matrix or THAC0 is used in quite a few games.  Likewise, the idea of attack roll directly determining damage is something I read about elsewhere, though I can't recall where.  My contribution is mainly to bring these elements together, and tie those mechanics into the various combat options above.

That's it for the basics.  Next up, the iniative-less combat sequence.

My very own fantasy heartbreaker

For a while now I've been pondering, thought-experimenting, writing, deleting, and rewriting some ideas for house rules and tweaks to B/X D&D.  It's becoming apparent that the project has mutated into something more than just a collection of house rules, and has taken on full-blown fantasy heartbreaker status.

Does the OSR really need yet another clone-ish rule set?  Probably not, but it's in my head, and it needs to get out.  The worst that could happen is that the RPG community collectively shrugs and goes on about its business, right?  And of course some of the new mechanics should work perfectly well as house rules dropped into B/X or Labyrinth Lord or some other D&D-like game, so there is that potential value to it.

So, I've given the project a name:  Goblins and Greatswords.  Alliterative names are sort of traditional for this kind of thing, aren't they?  Plus, I can use the term GM, simultaneously the generic "Game Master" and the specific "Goblin Master," so as not to confuse anyone with a new abbreviation.

What's G&G all about, then?  Well, it's a lot like B/X D&D in spirit.  It's a lot like B/X D&D in many ways, actually, but with some refinements, tweaks, and substitutions.  I won't call them "improvements" because B/X is already an outstanding game.  Let's say they're changes that may facilitate certain experiences and styles of play.  Ease of understanding, ease of use in play, and ease of character creation - hallmarks of B/X - are major design goals with G&G too.  The rules should make intuitive sense, be easy to pick up, and readily stick in your brain once you've used them in play a few times.  It should be possible to have all the relevant information easily accessible on character sheets and a GM screen or other brief reference sheet.  

So...G&G has a class and level system, but with a little more flexibility to make the character you want to play.  It shouldn't overwhelm you with options, though, or require ridiculous long-term planning, and the more it avoids the necessity or the opportunity for obsessive min-maxing, the better. 

Want to play a stealthy fighter, or a cleric with a background as a street thief, or a thief who dabbles in magic, or a pious wizard?  No problem.  Every character gets a secondary talent, in addition to standard class abilities.  The list is pretty short, including some watered-down skills of other classes and a few others that aren't tied to any class.  It's a single choice, made at character creation, and after that all you have to do is update it when you level up, like you would thief abilities, spells per day, or attack rolls.

It will use a race-as-class paradigm, but each race will have two or three racial classes, each of which is an interpretation of a human class through lens of the race's unique physical and mental perspective.  A dwarf whose primary job is to fight doesn't necessarily approach it in the same way that human warriors do, for instance.

Combat is still D&D-ish, but with the d20 attack roll determining damage too. It turns out that this little tweak of combining the attack roll and damage roll also allows some pretty cool things with weapon properties and special combat maneuvers, without getting too fussy or fiddly or overpowered.

Any class can use any weapon, though only skilled fighters will get the most out of big heavy damage-dealing weapons.  Armor is also usable by everyone, but imposes limitations on things like stealth and spell-casting that not-so-subtly direct thieves and mages toward more archetypal armor (or lack thereof) without expressly forbidding anything.

I have the beginnings of grappling rules that do what you need grappling rules to do without a lot of complicated math and modifiers or tedious bookkeeping in the middle of battle.

Spell casting rules are still a little hazy, but I have the rudiments of some spell acquisition rules that gently encourage an informal sort of specialization - it's cheaper and easier to learn new spells that are related to spells you already know.  Spell lists will be overhauled to emphasize mystery, mysticism, and subtle power rather than big flashy explosions and lots of damage.

Default economy is silver standard, and characters start poor.  No plate and shield at level 1 here!  XP progression will be in smaller numbers, on the order of a tenth of traditional D&D-alikes, but treasure hoards are also much smaller. XP will also be granted for discovery - finding new places, facing new creatures, and so on, and for defeating (not necessarily killing, or even in combat) enemies and monsters. 

Magic item lists will need an overhaul to fit the subtle-magic theme, and the way magic weapons and armor work will need to be tweaked so as not to overwhelm the combat system with bonus inflation while still being important and useful. 

  Expect a series of posts, interspersed around various other ramblings (more Dark Fey, anyone?) in the coming months. 

Comfort and healing

I can't claim any credit for the idea behind this post, which came from another blog that I can't recall.  If it's yours, or you know where it originated, please do come forth so I can bestow credit where credit is due.

(Edit: The core idea came from Telecanter's Receding Rules.  A lot more is covered there than merely healing rates, so go check it out if you haven't already.)

Anyway, the basic idea is that the comfort of characters affects their rate of healing, and comfort includes such things as entertainment as well as food and drink, lodgings, etc.  My contribution to the cause is to codify these factors into a very simple system, utilizing a slight modification of the standard B/X ability score modifier table.

First, the "comfort score" is determined, starting with a base of 11.  This assumes reasonable shelter from the elements (could be a house, an inn, or a sturdy pavilion or yurt), a basic bed such as a cot or straw pallet, adequate warmth, and basic food and drink (bread and cheese, porridge, or similar, plus water or other beverage of ordinary quality.)

Add 1 point for each of the following that applies:

• Comfortable bed (soft mattress, clean linens, etc.)
• Good food and/or drink (Hearty fare, i.e. not simple gruel or bread and cheese, nor preserved rations.  Roast fowl or a chunky meat stew are enough to qualify.)
• Abundant food and drink (Everyone can eat their fill, and then some.)
• Heartening entertainment (Music or storytelling or whatever else seems appropriate.)
• Care of a healer (No more than four patients per healer.)
• Full rest (No other significant activity for 24 hours.)
• Hygiene: Opportunity for bathing, washing, and grooming.
• Creature comforts (Robe and slippers, tea, incense, or whatever else makes a character feel really comfortable.)
• Pleasing environment (Neat and tidy indoor area with appealing decor, or an outdoor place of great natural beauty.)

Subtract one point for each of the following that applies:

• Inhospitable climate (Hot or cold, rainy.) (Negated by rudimentary shelter and/or campfire, if appropriate.)
• Very inhospitable climate (Bitter cold, sweltering heat. heavy rain, hail.) (Cumulative with the above.  Negated by full shelter and/or fire, if appropriate.)
• Sleeping on ground 
• Sleeping on hard, rough surface (A dungeon floor, for example. Cumulative with the above.)
• Iron rations (Unappealing preserved food, e.g. hardtack and salt pork.)
• Short rations (Stretching rations farther than they're intended, or living on foraged food.)
• Interrupted sleep (Guard rotation, or actually being attacked or otherwise disturbed.)
• Frightening/unsettling environment (Haunted, cursed, inhabited by monsters, etc.)
• Unsanitary conditions (Muck, slime, corpses, horrible smells, etc.)

Base rate of healing is 1d4 points per day, modified by the "comfort score" as if it were an ability score:

 Less than 3            -4*

           3                          -3**      

      4-5                        -2***

                                     6-8                        -1                                     

9-12  No adjustment

13-15                   +1

16-17                   +2

18                         +3

19 or more           +4

* No spell memorization/restoring spell slots possible

** May not memorize or restore slots for highest two spell levels known

*** May not memorize or restore slots for highest level of spells known

Penalties may reduce a roll to zero or less, in which case no healing takes place and the character's condition may actually deteriorate.

Let's say our intrepid adventurers have had a rough go of things in an underground crypt, and barricade themselves in a dead-end chamber.  The place is pervaded by a deathly chill (-1), they're sleeping on the ground (-1), on a hard surface (-1), on iron rations (-1), interrupting their sleep to keep a constant watch (-1), and in a very unnerving place (-1), for a total penalty of -6.  That comes out to a Comfort score of 5, which is a -2 penalty to heal.  To bolster their flagging spirits, they break out the bottle of fine vintage brandy they found in one of the crypts, which adds +1, making their overall score a 6.  Their healing penalty is only -1, and their spell casters can recover all their spell levels normally.  (If they hadn't had the brandy, they could have risked the noise of singing a few heroic ballads to achieve the same effect.)

Once they make it back to town, they spend a week recovering in the luxurious villa they prudently purchased with some of their previous loot.  They have plush feather beds (+1), excellent food prepared by the villa staff (+1) in plenty (+1), they have nothing to do but rest and relax (+1), take hot baths (+1), enjoy all the luxuries of the well-to-do (+1), and in a very pleasing environment (+1) for a total Comfort score of 18.  

If desired, the Comfort score can be adjusted individually for each character's Constitution modifier; thus, hearty souls can recover quickly even in less than ideal circumstances, while the more delicate require greater ease and comfort to restore themselves.

Critical hits

I don't think that any of the "old school" editions of D&D ever formally enshrined the wildly popular "critical hit" rule.  It's certainly not in B/X or BECMI. My experience with AD&D (both 1st and 2nd edition) is fairly limited, but I don't recall seeing critical hits in those rulebooks, either.  I can't even imagine such a thing being included in OD&D.

Actually, I should say that none of these editions had a universal critical hit rule.  Old school D&D does, however feature quite a few special cases that specify a special effect which occurs on a high enough attack roll.  Such ad hoc applications don't constitute true critical hit rules, but they do conform to the general concept.

Peruse the monster chapter in the Expert Rules (Cook or Mentzer) and you'll notice at the beginning a list of special attacks.  Two stand out: Swallow and Swoop.  A swallow attack occurs on a natural 20, and for larger creatures may occur on lower numbers as well.  The most iconic example of a Swallow attack is that of the purple worm, which succeeds on an attack roll which exceeds the minimum roll needed by 4 or more.  Swoop attacks are used by flying creatures; on a roll of 18 or better, the creature grasps the target and flies away with it if it can lift the target's weight.  Some other special moves, such as a bear's "hug" attack which is activated by two successful paw strikes, have some shades of critical hit to them as well.

Player characters aren't entirely left out.  The Companion Set (the C in BECMI) has the sword of slicing, a magical weapon which reduces the target instantly to 0 hp on an attack roll of 19 or 20 if a save vs. death ray is failed, and inflicts triple damage even if the save is made.  AD&D has the vorpal sword and sword of sharpness, which inflict their severing effects on a high enough attack roll.  There are also the optional Weapon Mastery rules of the Mentzer edition Master Set and the Rules Cyclopedia, which grant a few weapons the ability to inflict double damage or other special effects on a high attack roll at high levels of mastery.

So, the basis for critical hits, at least in narrow applications, really is all right there in the manual.  How much these narrowly focused cases inspired or influenced the broader application of critical hit rules I have no idea.  It does seem rather strange that, with all the wildly unbalancing stuff the official rules poured into the game, a relatively mild tweak like the critical hit has remained exclusively the province of house-ruling, never even meriting an Optional Rules mention from the folks at TSR.

There's no single right way to implement a critical hit rule.  Different variations have different mechanical effects in play.

• Critical hit on a natural 20 has the virtue of making them fairly infrequent, but also has the effect of making criticals against heavily armored targets as likely as against unarmored ones.  Also, if you have a target that a character can only hit with a 20, every time he does manage to penetrate its defenses he does critical damage, which seems a bit wonky.
• Critical hit when the roll exceeds the number needed by a certain amount tends to give fighters (and monsters!) an advantage over other classes, and makes heavily armored targets less susceptible than lightly armored ones, but also drastically ramps up the damage potential, and thus the lethality, of combat.  If a critical happens on an attack that succeeds by 5 or more, then a 1st level fighter with no bonuses fighting an AC 6 monster - pretty typical for a low-level opponent - is going to crit on an 18-20.  With a +2 bonus from Strength, that widens to 16-20, or 25% of all attacks, and fully half of those that hit will be criticals.  You can set the "buffer" number higher than 5, of course, but as the characters advance in level, criticals will become more common.  Not that that's automatically a bad thing, because they're probably going up against opponents with a lot more hp, as well as having more themselves.
• The most common result of a critical hit is double damage.  Rolling twice the number of dice gives a solid average, and minimizes the chances that your glorious crit does chump damage, but also decreases the odds of max damage.  Rolling the usual dice and doubling the result gives a higher chance of max damage, but also a higher chance of minimum - the spread is exactly the same as for a non-critical. 
• Or, just do the attack's max damage without rolling, which makes every critical hit a solid blow without inflating total damage potential.
• Or, roll on a Death and Dismemberment table, which typically has results ranging from minor but flavorful to actual death and dismemberment.
• Another option is for a critical hit to provide an opportunity for another attack roll, perhaps repeated if the second roll also qualifies for a critical.  If used with the standard Natural 20 crit rule, it provides some of the advantages of both methods of determining whether a critical hit has occurred.  It's a relatively uncommon occurrence, and you've got to succeed at a second attack roll in order to capitalize on it, so characters with good attack probabilities do better, and targets with poorer ACs fare worse.  This one is the front-runner for my personal favorite.
• Yet another option is for stunts and special attacks called by a player to occur on a critical, as in the Simple Combat Maneuvers from Telecanter's house rules.  No extra damage, just extra possibilities.  Could be used in conjunction with one of the other options - if you don't call for the attack to do something cool, a natural 20 just defaults to the other critical hit option.
• Finally, exploding damage dice are also a critical hit mechanic of a sort, which operates independently from the attack roll, and instead is activated by rolling the maximum on the damage dice.  Each time the maximum is rolled, the dice are rolled again and the result is added to the total.  This increases the average damage by a fairly trivial amount, but with a small chance to inflict a lot more damage than the weapon's usual range.

Using reaction rolls

I used to have a lot of difficulties with reaction rolls, to the point that for the most part I simply decided what encountered creatures would do without rolling at all.  There's nothing wrong with that per se, but sometimes it's fun to follow where the dice lead rather than tell the whole story yourself.  There's also the fact that forgoing reaction rolls short-changes characters with high Charisma and contributes to its reputation as a dump stat. 

In fact, the B/X reaction roll system doesn't produce absurd results so much as it lacks guidance on how to interpret the results.  I have just one minor house rule that clarifies things a bit, and from there it's all about interpretation.

The house rule:  Whenever a reaction roll returns a result of "attack," immediately roll a morale check.  If the check is failed, the creatures encountered do not physically assault the party, though they are still hostile and wish to do the characters harm.  This prevents, say, a pack of cowardly kobolds from being as overtly belligerent as a mighty red dragon.  The kobolds, with a morale score of 6, will openly attack less than 42% of the time the reaction dice alone say they will.  The red dragon, with a morale of 10, is almost 92% likely to attack once the reaction dice return an "attack" result. (Probabilities from anydice.com.)

Of course this morale check may be adjusted if the odds heavily favor (or appear to heavily favor) one side or the other.  A +1 or -1 adjustment should be sufficient in all but the most extreme cases.

Interpretation:  So, what happens when the reaction dice say "Attack!" but the morale check says the monsters hold back?  The answer is that they will still do their best to cause grief, or at least inconvenience, to the PCs, even though they don't like their chances in open battle.  Some possible non-combat "attacks" include:

• Give the party faulty information with the intent of leading them into danger.  For instance, the kobolds might plead for their lives with information about a valuable treasure, while actually giving the party directions to the lair of an owlbear.
• Flee, but lead the party into danger, such as a trapped corridor, where the monsters know how to avoid the hazard.
• Retreat to gather reinforcements.  Just because the monsters don't feel confident enough to attack at the initial encounter doesn't mean they won't with a few dozen buddies at their side.
• Bribe the party with worthless, cursed, or dangerous items.
• Steal from the party, either by stealth or openly grabbing whatever they can and hightailing it.
• Destroy important resources, such as rations and light sources.
• Set traps or ambushes in the party's path.
• Bluff to scare the party away.
• Challenge the party to a contest of skill or chance, such as a dice or riddle game, for high but non-lethal stakes.

Another scenario that always troubled me, and for which some suggestions would have greatly clarified things, was the evil or Chaotic monster rolling a "friendly" reaction to good or Lawful PCs, or the good or Lawful monster rolling an "attack" reaction against good or Lawful PCs.  I don't know if anyone else had difficulty with this, but it was quite incongruous in my mind that orcs or kobolds should want to be best buds with a gang of heroes. 

The obvious answer to me now, in the case of opposite alignment "friendlies" is that this is more often than not merely an alliance of convenience, not a genuine friendship.  The monsters will act friendly, because it suits their purposes at the moment.  They may offer aid and information.  The difference between this and the "non-attack attack" above is that the creatures are making the offer sincerely - they're really giving the PCs something they believe the PCs will actually value.  The kobolds, for instance, might helpfully point out that the orcs in the cave across the ravine are much wealthier than they are, and that the chieftain's chamber is down a corridor to the left from the entrance.  Friendliness might also indicate simply a desire not to risk their necks in a fight - the kobolds might offer food or directions in order to buy some good will and save their own necks.  In either case, kobolds being Chaotic, the PCs can't necessarily count on such friendship the next time they meet...

When the dice say that good creatures attack good PCs, it's a case of paranoia, over-zealousness, or mistaken identity.  You can't always tell who's evil or intends harm just by looking, after all, and in the dangerous realm of the dungeon, even good creatures may take a shoot first, ask questions later attitude.  Of course, being good, they'll likely be open to parley should the PCs proclaim their innocence or lack of malice toward them. 

What's missing from Moldvay?

In my quest to get back to the basics of good old B/X (aka Moldvay/Cook) D&D, I've been perusing the Moldvay Basic set, and realized that there are a few things missing.  These are not simply things that I would like to add for fun or realism or some other reason of arbitrary preference.  These are things that it is strongly implied SHOULD be found somewhere in the official rules.  Specifically, they are implied by a couple spells in the list of 1st level cleric spells.

Resist Cold:  Without some basic rules for environmental hazards, this spell has only one use, which is to provide some rather trivial defense against cold-based attacks - and the only creature that uses such attacks in the Basic Set is the white dragon.  The Expert Set adds the wall of ice magic-user spell and the frost salamander.  Talk about your niche spells! 

Yet there are all sorts of situations, both in the dungeon and later in the wilderness, in which characters might be exposed to the effects of extreme cold.  If this spell didn't exist, it would be safe to say that the game designers were not concerned with any in-game effects of hypothermia, frostbite, and such.  But it does exist, so what's supposed to happen to a character who goes climbing on a glacier in a toga and sandals, or who plunges into a cold underground pool to see what's at the bottom and then spends the next several hours wandering around the chilly cave in sopping wet clothes rather than stopping to light a fire and dry out?  The rule book doesn't offer DMs even the faintest suggestion of what should happen.  If the rules include no consequences for exposing a character to cold (other than the three aforementioned examples, which in most campaigns would be rare at best), then why would anyone choose to memorize that spell?  I personally can't recall a single game, either as a DM or player, in which anyone did.

Purify Food and Water:  If resist cold is an extremely limited niche spell in the rules as written, then this one is just out-and-out useless.  So far as I can tell, there are no rules at all for the effects of thirst, starvation, or consuming contaminated food or water.  Rations usually weren't a big issue in my campaigns, since few if any adventures ever went beyond a week of game time.  Everybody just bought a week's worth of rations, and that was that.  As far as I can recall, the only hint of a rule for food spoilage came in the Mentzer edition, with a note that standard rations spoil after one day in the dungeon.  That's pretty much the extent of the thought given to rations by the authors and editors of classic D&D, but the mere presence of rations and the purify food and water spell in the rulebooks imply that there ought to be consequences for running out.  What happens if you don't eat for a day, or three days, or a week?  What happens if you give in to hunger and eat those moldy rations?  The rules don't say. 

Likewise, what happens if a character goes without water?  Sure, in a lot of situations this could be hand-waved.  Most temperate regions have rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds, and even dungeons have the subterranean equivalents, plus fountains and such, but what if the adventure takes place in a location that lacks these, or in which they're dangerous to drink?  Since the rules were silent on the subject, it was easier just to assume that carrying a water skin meant you had enough water for the duration of the adventure, and never mind that a quart of water is a pretty meager amount even for a single day's adventuring.  Lugging all that gear and treasure around a hazardous area, not to mention the occasional strenuous combat, is thirsty work, after all. 

What should the rules have been?  Since we're talking B/X, they should be fairly simple, without a lot of dice-rolling, if-then loops, repetitious checks to see if effects are avoided or reduced, and fiddling with half a dozen different stats in a quixotic attempt to model the effects with medical precision.  As it happens, there's a pretty good model already in the rules which can be extrapolated for the effects of cold, hunger, and thirst.  That model is the -1 penalty to all actions when characters fail to rest 1 turn in 6 during a dungeon crawl.

**Disclaimer:  I'm a gamer, not a doctor!  If some of these proposed rules clash blatantly with the facts of human physiology and medical science (at least more so than hit points fail to model wounds and fatigue), feel free to let me know and I'll consider revising them.**

Cold:  Harm from cold depends on how severe the cold is, the character's clothing, and whether the character is wet or dry.  Adventurers may generally be assumed to be adequately clothed for cool and even freezing temperatures.  Bitter cold such as occurs in northern winters, high elevations, and ice caves should require special gear such as heavy woolen cloaks or fur parkas.  Inadequate gear results in penalties which increase the longer a character is exposed.  At such time as the accumulated penalties equal or exceed the character's Constitution score, the character dies.

Relatively mild cold weather, i.e. around freezing, results in a -1 penalty to all actions.  As long as the character keeps moving, this does not increase.  When resting or sleeping, the penalty increases by -1 per hour.  A winter's night outdoors in nothing but one's underclothes could be lethal to the frail of health.

Extreme cold causes the -1 penalty per hour as described above when moving.  At rest, this increases to -2 per hour.  A night exposed on a glacier without heat or appropriate clothing will prove fatal to all but the hardiest of people. 

Being soaked to the skin doubles the penalties.

Immersion in cold water can be deadly.  According to wikipedia, water at 50 degrees F (10 degrees C) can cause death within an hour, and at freezing temperatures is often fatal in 15 minutes or less.  For cold water substantially above freezing, penalties accrue at the rate of -1 per turn.  In frigid water, the rate is -1 per minute.  After leaving the water, the character may still suffer the effects of cold while soaked, as given above. 

Optionally, for each 5 points in penalties, the character loses 1/4 of his or her maximum hit points.  Bitter cold may cause permanent loss of digits or limbs to frostbite, at the DM's discretion.  Hit points lost through exposure to cold can be regained in the usual manner, either through rest or magic. 

Naturally, the resist cold spell renders its subject completely immune from all these effects.  The spell should also immediately remove all accrued penalties; the penalty counter is "reset" and starts again from zero if the conditions of cold persist after the spell expires.

Warmth removes penalties at the rate of 4 points per hour.

Food and drink:  For the sake of simplicity, a character must consume at least one day's ration of food and one skin of water per day to avoid the effects of starvation and thirst.  There are two degrees of starvation/thirst: insufficient and deprived.  For game purposes, insufficient is 1/2 of the usual daily requirement, and deprived is consuming a negligible amount.  Each week of insufficient feeding results in a penalty of -1 to all actions, but after two weeks, the character's metabolism adapts to the short rations and the penalty does not increase further.  Each week deprived of food inflicts a -2 penalty on all actions, and there is no cap. 

Each day of insufficient or no water inflicts penalties on the same scale, -1 or -2.  In extreme heat, double the penalties.

These penalties are cumulative, so a character who goes a week without food and three days without water suffers a total penalty of -8.  When the total penalty equals or exceeds the character's Constitution score, the character dies.  Penalties are negated at the rate of 4 points per week of proper feeding and 4 points per day of proper hydration.  Increasing consumption from "deprived" to "insufficient" halts further accumulation of penalties, but does not decrease them.

In the case that a character is suffering from both insufficient food and water and exposure to cold, apply only the greater of the penalties, i.e. either the hunger/thirst penalty or the cold penalty but not both.  In all likelihood a character will succumb to cold long before dying of starvation or thirst.

Impure food and water:  No information is given in B/X as to the shelf-life of rations.  The Mentzer edition rules state that standard rations spoil after one night in a dungeon, but are otherwise silent on the durability of either type of rations.  I would revise that to say that standard rations remain viable for one week, half that in the dungeon, and iron rations are good for 12 weeks.

Here we must abandon the simple model of accumulating penalties.  A debilitating illness of the digestive tract makes sense as a consequence for consuming spoiled or contaminated food and drink.  This can range from the unpleasant but fleeting effects of upset stomach and bowels to really nasty stuff like cholera and dysentery.  How sick a given spoiled consumable will make a character is left to the DM.  As a guideline, mildly disgusting stuff like moldy bread or rotten fruit might, or mildly tainted water, causes gastric distress on a failed save vs. poison, resulting in a -1 penalty to hit and damage rolls for a day.  Things that are notorious for causing food poisoning, like spoiled meat and eggs, might give a -2 penalty to all actions and halve movement rates for 1d6 days if the save is failed.  Really nasty stuff, like water contaminated with sewage or a rotting corpse, has effects similar to the venom of a giant centipede, i.e. half normal movement rate and no other actions possible for 10 days.  A new save is attempted at that time; if failed, the victim sickens and dies in another 1d10 days unless a cure disease spell or similar remedy is used.  

If this is all too much for your game, simply declare that spoiled rations and foodstuffs are inedible and will not satisfy hunger, and anyone foolish enough to partake of severely foul food or water must save vs. poison or die in 1d6 days.  Players will probably act as if this were the case anyway most of the time, so the above guidelines may be largely superfluous.

Poisoned food or drink, of course, inflicts the effects given for the poison, whether that be save-or-die or something else.

All of these effects are negated if the food or drink is purified prior to consumption. 

On unarmed combat

For all its many strengths, there are a few areas in which D&D fails in epic fashion.  Either there's a glaring hole in the rules where something that desperately needs to be addressed is not, or there's some bizarre kludge dropped into the hole which is either inconsistent with the rest of the game, absurdly complex to the point of being virtually unplayable, or both.  Among those epic fails are the game's attempts to model unarmed combat.

I've only briefly glanced at the 1st and 2nd edition AD&D unarmed combat rules, so I can't comment much on them but to say that even at a glance they seemed convoluted and bizarre.  What I've read in the OSR blogosphere from people much more familiar with them only reinforces that initial impression.  Classic D&D has kept it simpler, at least relative to AD&D, but it's still pretty weird.

Frank Mentzer's Companion Set contains the first attempt, so far as I'm aware, at an official unarmed combat system for Classic.  It includes such mechanics as rolling against Constitution to check for stuns, and saving throws to avoid being knocked out.  Of course, in real brawls and fist fights, people are sometimes stunned and knocked out.  Tacked on to an already existing system in which people beat on each other with clubs and hammers with no chance for stuns and knockouts, though, it looks pretty absurd.  You can knock out a guy with 50 hp, or leave him reeling and unable to defend himself for a few rounds, by striking him with a fist, but whack him over the head with a mace and he takes 1d6 damage and keeps fighting?  That's just silly.

There's really no reason that unarmed strikes need a different system at all.  A knockout is aptly modeled by reducing an opponent to 0 hp with unarmed strikes.  Just as the 50 hp fighter doesn't get run through every time he's successfully attacked with a sword, he doesn't take it square on the chin every time someone lands a haymaker on him, either.  All the damage leading up to the final blow, whether lethal or non-lethal, is about wearing him down, rattling his confidence, using up his luck, or whatever the fashionable explanation of hit points is these days.  It's the final blow that finally strikes true and lays him out.

How much damage an unarmed strike should do is open to debate, and varies from source to source.  Some prescribe a base damage of 0 or 1 point, modified by Strength bonuses.  Others say 1d2 points, or 1d2 for a punch and 1d3 for a kick, plus Strength bonuses.  Still others start at some base amount, like 1 point, and increase it by one die size per Strength bonus - 1d2 for a +1, 1d3 for a +2, and 1d4 for a +3, for example.

Personally, I like the punch 1d2+St/kick 1d3+St formula. I'd probably apply a -2 penalty to hit with a kick, unless the target is much lower to the ground or the attacker is standing on a higher level relative to the target, e.g. a brawler standing on top of a table kicking someone standing beside it.

Stuns are a little more problematic.  They could be hand-waved as just an expected part of the 10 second (or 6 second, or one minute, or whatever your edition uses) combat round, like feints and parries and jockeying for position.  Alternatively, on any critical hit with a weapon that the DM rules capable of stunning, the target must making a saving throw (vs. paralysis seems an appropriate old school save) or be stunned for 1 round per 2 points of damage inflicted by the attack.  It seems reasonable to limit stuns to creatures twice the mass of the attacker or less.

Wrestling or grappling attacks, which attempt to grasp and restrain an opponent rather than causing damage, are another problem.  You could handle it in the same way as unarmed strikes, wearing the opponent down and capturing it when its hp reach 0, but that produces some odd and counterintuitive results.  For one, what happens to the opponent's hp when the attacker releases it?  It seems weird to have it remain at 0 hp, but equally weird to suddenly regain all of its hit points.  It also runs counter to common sense that simply grabbing hold of someone should require completely wearing down his resistance.

Mentzer's wrestling rules from the Companion Set are serviceable, but add a new game mechanic (Wrestling Rating, which is used for nothing else, and sometimes breaks down in strange ways, especially when calculating it for monsters) and a lot of complexity to combat.  Below is my tentative attempt at integrating grappling into the usual combat mechanics.

A character attempting to grapple an opponent makes a normal attack roll vs. the opponent's AC sans armor.  Dexterity and magic still apply, but physical body armor does not.  Success indicates that the opponent has been grabbed.  If desired, the attacker may attempt to grab a specific body part (e.g. the opponent's sword arm) by accepting a -4 penalty to the attack.  An opponent using a conventional attack, either armed or unarmed, automatically wins initiative and may strike first against the would-be grappler.  If the attack hits, the grappling attempt is fended off for that round, and the grappling character may not take another action.  Note that if the opponent is attacking a different target entirely, and ignores the grappler, actions are resolved according to normal initiative procedures, and the opponent does not automatically win initiative over the grappler.

A grabbed opponent may be limited in its movement (opposed Strength check to see who determines the direction of movement, but the winner is still encumbered as if carrying the other.)  It may attack with a small or medium weapon or natural attacks, unless the specific limb holding the weapon was the target of the initial grab.  Attacks against the grabbing character are +2 to hit, since the character cannot evade them effectively while maintaining his hold.  Alternately, the opponent may try to escape the hold by making a grappling attack of his own; if it succeeds he may choose between throwing off the grappler or establishing a grip of his own (both combatants are now holding onto each other.)

A second successful grappling attack results in the opponent's attack being neutralized completely, and the grappling character may inflict 1d6+Strength bonus of subdual damage for each round that he maintains this hold.  This is the equivalent of placing the opponent in a hammer lock, full nelson, choke hold, or similar.  A successful armed or unarmed strike by the opponent once again fends off the grappler's attack, although the initial grab is not broken unless the grappler chooses to break it; only the improved grip and subdual hold are prevented.  Note that two characters both grappling and trying for such a hold against each other cannot both succeed; in this case the attacker who hits the best AC gains the upper hand.  The held opponent may attack with his off hand, either unarmed or with a small weapon, at -4 to hit.  Anyone else may attack either combatant at +4 to hit, as neither can dodge while the hold is maintained.

In the case of multiple attackers trying to grapple a single opponent, each attacker rolls separately.  Unless the opponent has multiple attacks, only one grappling attack may be fended off by a successful hit.  Each attacker beyond the first that successfully grapples adds +2 to the Strength score of the strongest of the group for purposes of determining movement, and adds to the encumbrance of the load on the grappled opponent.  Conversely, the opponent's encumbrance is divided amongst the grapplers.  Up to four attackers can grapple an opponent of equal size, eight can grapple an opponent of twice their size, and twelve can grapple one of three times their size.  When a subdual hold is established, each additional grappler can completely neutralize one attack of the held creature.

A character or creature who is a part of such a "dog pile" may be pulled away by a new combatant making a successful grappling attack against it. 

A subdual hold, and the resulting damage, may not be inflicted on an opponent greater than twice the mass of the attacker.  In the case of multiple attackers, if a number of them whose combined mass is greater than half that of their opponent succeed in a second grappling attack in the same round, they may establish such a hold.

Whenever the Strength score or mass of a creature are not known, the DM may assign them according to his own judgment.  Large or huge creatures, like horses, giants, and dragons, should certainly have Strength scores far outstripping the human range; that and their great masses (an average horse weighs around 1,000 pounds) should serve to curtail the most absurd abuses of the grappling rules.  

And there you have it.  Hopefully it's less complicated and easier to apply than its length would indicate.  It may very well have some holes or be prone to breaking under certain circumstances, so please feel free to weigh in if you spot a problem.

Making magic magical, part deux: Spells

Spells are probably the trickiest facet of restoring some magic to the magic system.  You can't very well keep the game mechanics of spells secret from players running magic-users and clerics.  I think it's still possible at least to take the spotlight off of them, though, and re-center the focus on magic rather than numbers.  Here are my thoughts on applying yesterday's points to spell casting for PCs and NPCs.

Scarcity:  The most obvious first step is to make NPC spell casters, particularly high level ones, uncommon and difficult to access.  Powerful spell casters have their own interests and agendas to attend to, and that shouldn't include being a spell vending machine to every peasant or wandering hooligan with coin to spend.  Clerics may be subject to rigorous strictures regarding when and for whom they perform miracles, their magic reserved for uses that advance the goals of the faith.  High level wizards go to great lengths to avoid distractions from their arcane research.  In short, if the PCs aren't high enough level to cast a particular spell themselves, getting someone else to do it should require a lot of persuasion and a sizable favor, at minimum.

Another issue to address under the scarcity heading is player character access to spells.  PC magic-users will probably find spell scrolls among the treasure hoards, and have opportunities to capture the spell books of defeated enemy mages.  In the past I've simply allowed PCs to scribe spells found in books and scrolls into their own books, but this can quickly lead to every character knowing every spell, and whatever spells you give to magic-using opponents will wind up in the party's arsenal in short order.  Sure, you can handcuff yourself by strictly limiting spell casting enemies, or come up with endless excuses as to why the defeated wizard's spell book can't be found or self-destructs and have your players feel cheated, but neither of those are much fun.

So, from now on, having a scroll or spell only assists a caster in researching the spell.  Spells in a spell book are not a straightforward list of the words to be spoken in casting, but rather notes, scribbled equations, diagrams, bits of magical theory, mnemonic devices that help a particular wizard remember things, and so on.  In order to scribe the spell into his own book, a PC spell caster must really understand the nuts and bolts of it and build his own version of it.  A spell book containing the spell will count as the library requirement as explained in the Spell Research sections of the rules.  The formula from the Rules Cyclopedia is:  (Caster's level + casters Intelligence) x2 - spell level x3 = Percentage chance of success; cost 1,000 gp per spell level, requires one week plus one day per spell level.

Having a book with the actual spell, rather than just tomes of general magic theory, might grant a bonus, but the point is that the character will still have to spend the money, put in the time, and roll the dice to see if he succeeds in understanding the spell well enough to add it to his repertoire.

If a spell is a recipe, a spell scroll is a cake mix - one shot, ready to use.  It doesn't in and of itself convey anything about the recipe.  The caster must break it down and analyze it to learn that, which consumes the scroll in the process.  I might allow a bonus to the chance to learn the spell from a scroll, since if it fails, the source material is gone and there's no second chance.

PCs in the same party may trade spells among themselves with the same nonchalance that players borrow books from each other.  If you want to curtail that practice, apply the same rules, but add the teacher's level to the chance of success, and halve the money cost.  You still have to pay for reagents, after all.

Description:  Here's where magic can really come alive.  Emphasize how the spell looks, sounds, feels (smells, tastes?) to the characters, rather than the mechanical effect it has on them.  What does it feel like to be hit by a magic missile?  Is it painful like being burned, shocked, stabbed, bludgeoned?  Does it sting like a whip or cause a numbing sensation?  Does it lacerate, bruise, or leave no marks at all?

"A tiny, twirling ring of gold sparks shoots from the wizard's fingertips, striking you with a sharp, stinging CRACK! You take five points of damage, as a momentary wave of nausea sweeps through you," is probably going to unnerve a player more than, "He casts a magic missile at you.  Take five points of damage."

This could be especially fun with spells that have no obvious visual components.  ESP might give the target (or the caster!) a brief headache.  Dispel magic might sound like a bubble popping, Protection from Evil could give a little surge of euphoria.  Skin prickling, chills, a flush of heat, the scent of ozone or of hot metal or fresh-cut grass, an itch, a flash of emotion, whatever seems to go with the spell in your mind.  Secondary sensory effects don't have to be limited to caster and target.  Those nearby when the spell is cast might feel something as well. (This might be a fun way to warn/scare the party when a particularly dreaded spell is being cast, and really make that next initiative roll important to them!)

Keep game mechanics away from players:  Tell the players how the spells affecting them make them feel, and apply the mechanical effects behind the DM screen.  You don't have to tell the player that the Blight spell gives him -1 to hit, just tell him that he feels unnerved or weakened or whatever and mentally subtract it from his rolls.  It isn't possible with every spell, but a good many of them can be handled this way.  I'm going to do this even when it's a spell cast by an ally, who knows the pluses and minuses of it, simply to shift the focus as much as possible.

Secret notes are a great way to keep knowledge from the rest of the table while sharing it with the player who needs to know.  If the evil priest casts Hold Person on someone's character, slip her a note requesting a saving throw, and her compatriots won't know for sure why her fighter just toppled and lies motionless on the ground with a blank, frozen stare.  Is she dead, unconscious, poisoned, paralyzed, or something else?  Should they check on her now and try to help her, fight on and hope she recovers when the battle is over, or is she beyond help already?  What should they prepare their defenses against to keep from sharing her fate in the next round?  Keep as much of the unknown as you can, well...unknown.  Almost needless to say, secret notes really lend themselves well to charm spells!

Variation:  The obvious one here is to arm your NPCs with spells to which the player characters don't (yet) have access.  Other editions of the game are fertile sources.  The Dragonsfoot forums and the  Ancient Vaults and Eldritch Secrets blog have lots of cool stuff too. 

The less obvious (and potentially more fun!) way is to give NPCs custom re-fluffed variations of familiar spells.  Brilliant blue or pink fireballs, magic missiles that look like spinning saw blades of white light or nearly invisible distortions in the air like a ripple of heat?  Sure!  Does that wizard's Web spell come out as a random mass of sticky strands, or like the orderly web of an orb spider?  Does his Shield make an invisible barrier, or does it conjure a floating knight's shield that parries attacks?  A cleric's Hold Person might have a visual component, perhaps a crackle of electricity that zaps the target like a taser, or a silvery ethereal rope that wraps it from head to toe.  Remember how many different Water Breathing effects the Tri-Wizard Tournament contestants used in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?  When you don't call the spell by its rulebook name, "re-skinning" the same mechanical effect with a different description can make it seem completely unfamiliar and mysterious. 

Conditions:  Alright, this one is a bit tough to apply to spells, but it can be done occasionally.  Magic zones in the dungeon or wilderness where spells don't function quite as they should are one possibility.  Modifying spell descriptions to include conditions is another, though it requires some thought and work.  Making spells have unusual effects under very specific conditions that the players might discover by accident or rumor are still another.  Maybe rust monsters are vulnerable to Heat Metal, or large masses of metal within 50 feet will draw off a Lightning Bolt just like a lightning rod and zap anyone within 5 feet of it, rather than the intended targets.  Perhaps there's a certain type of mold that causes magic missiles cast nearby to splinter into tiny missiles that do 1 point of damage each.  There could be some magical ore that makes detection spells go haywire.  What if you CAN charm an undead creature, but only when a full moon occurs on the anniversary of its death?  Is there a danger of reflection when casting spells from air at a target under water or vice versa?

This is getting overly long, so I'll wrap it up here.  Next up, Magical Magic III, Arms and Armor.

Making magic magical

Back in January, I came across this post on B/X Blackrazor, in which JB rants about the lack of magic in D&D.  He's pretty hard on this game we love, but he's absolutely right.  Magic in D&D is reduced to a predictable bundle of statistical abstractions, with all the mystique and wonder distilled out of them.  Damage, saving throws, bonuses, penalties.  Yawn.

To some extent, this is just the nature of the beast.  You have to have a framework of rules to work with, or you're left with magic being purely arbitrary, and I think that violates a lot of the fundamental assumptions about what D&D is and why people enjoy playing it.  But while statistics for spells, magic items, and magical abilities may be inescapable within the framework of the game, that doesn't mean that those things need to be front and center in the players' minds.  I have in mind a few ideas to try out in my own game to remove the rules-mongering from center stage, and thus hopefully restore a bit of the wonder, or at least prevent my newer players from becoming jaded.  I plan on elaborating these points with regards to spells, arms and armor, magic items, and magical monsters in a series of upcoming posts, but here they are in brief and generic form: 

Scarcity.  If you want magic to be special, it can't be readily available.  Campaigns in which magic is everywhere usually end up feeling like it's an analog for technology, and succeed in making it as mundane as cell phones and airplanes and CAT scans to players.  "We have to travel 500 miles to the Mountain of Shadows?  Let's rent a magic carpet!"  "Bob's dead?  No problem; I have 5,000 gold pieces to go get him raised."  "Another +1 sword?  I go pawn it." 

Description, not labels:  Nothing strips away the mystique of a magical item or effect quite like referring to it by a generic name.  Oh, look, a suit of plate mail +2!  And that enemy wizard just cast magic missile at us. 
From now on, I'm never going to refer to magic by its rulebook name if I can help it.  Instead, I'm going to provide descriptions only.  I hope this induces my players to react to and interact with the described effect of the magic, rather than its statistical effect.

Keep game mechanics away from the players:  Accordingly, I'm only going to refer to mechanical effects when absolutely necessary, such as telling players how much damage their characters take and when to roll a saving throw.  Bonuses and penalties to attacks and other actions will be applied behind the scenes, while giving them only a verbal, rather than mathematical description of the effect.  Instead of, "You're under a Blight spell, -1 penalty to hit!" it'll be something along the lines of, "You suddenly feel shaky and uncertain, your sword arm wavering as you draw it back to deliver a blow."  Let the players draw their own conclusions.

Variation:  Magic shouldn't appear in predictable forms with cookie-cutter effects.  Make every magic item unique in some way.  Devise a few non-standard spells for NPC casters to use.  Tweak the powers of monsters to foil player expectations.

Conditions:  Most basic D&D magic items and spells always work and have few or no costs to their use.  That makes them predictable.  Add some conditions to their use.  Does it only work for females, or during a new moon, or underground?  Add some costs or adverse effects to give would-be users pause.  Make the conditions and limitations logical.  Have in-world reasons why they work when and how they do.  Besides keeping the players guessing, it can add some excellent flavor to the campaign.

That's all for now.  Up next, Part Deux: Spells

Picking the lock

DM:  The guard patrol disappears around the corner, leaving you alone with the massive iron-bound door behind which the princess is securely locked.


First level thief:  I quickly get out my tools and try to spring the lock! 


DM:  Roll your Open Locks skill.


Thief:  24. 


DM:  You're unable to open the lock.


Thief:  Ugh!  I SUCK!

It's no secret that until he lies, cheats, and steals his way to name level or so, a thief by the book is pretty lousy at his chosen profession.  It's so obvious that people have even remarked on how miraculous it would be for the average non-adventurer thief to ever eke out a living picking pockets or burglarizing shops and homes.  A first level thief is going to fail at his bread-and-butter abilities at least three times in four.  It's hard to imagine any in-game rationale for why anyone would choose such a life of larceny, when even mucking out stables is likely to be more lucrative over the long haul, not to mention much less likely to lead to the lockup or the gallows. 

In the dungeon, the thief's theoretically useful skills are long shots at best.  At low levels of play, they fail far more often than not, and when you fail, you fail.  There are no shades of success, no second chances.  If you roll poorly, that lock stays locked.  Period.

There are lots of proposed solutions out there, the most obvious being simply to augment the thief's percentages somehow, whether by granting bonuses for high dexterity, introducing "master lockpicks" and similar items, allowing a thief to specialize in an ability or two, or starting player characters above first level.  This strikes me as an a crude patch that mitigates a broken mechanic somewhat, but really doesn't address its underlying problems.         

Others suggest applying situational bonuses or penalties.  For example, at low levels, the thief encounters a lot of poor quality locks that give a bonus to the skill roll.  Besides failing to address the underlying problem, it seems to me that this renders the improvements that come with level advancement meaningless.  If a thief at low level is going to be picking shoddy locks, at mid-level average locks, and at high level masterwork locks, such that his adjusted chance is pretty much the same, what's the point?  You might as well just assign him a percentage somewhere in the mid-level range regardless of his level, and dispense with all the lock quality tomfoolery.

JB, of the excellent B/X Blackrazor blog, takes the radical route, and allows thieves to succeed at their abilities automatically  (with some exceptions and caveats.)  I'm not entirely enamored with this, but it's at least an intriguing alternative.  It certainly would make the player of the thief feel that his character is contributing to the party's success, and in the unique way the class was intended to contribute, rather than as a lightly armored third rate combatant.  What I don't like about it is that it takes away much of the point of leveling up.  The thief improves as a combatant, but not as a thief.  For the most part, he's already as good as he's going to get in that department.

Nonetheless, I like the basic idea that given enough time, a thief is almost certain to succeed - the key phrase being, "given enough time."  I want to play up the time management angle suggested by JB a little bit more.  Instead of a flat one turn to pick a lock, how about rolling against the thief's Open Locks percentage, with the level of success or failure determining how long it takes him to do the job?  Here's a tentative idea of how that might work:

Roll succeeds, half of listed percentage or less:  1d6 rounds.
Roll succeeds, more than half of listed percentage:  1d6 minutes
Roll fails by 10 points or fewer:  1 turn
Roll fails by 11-40 points:  1d4 turns
Roll fails by 41-80 points:  2d4 turns
Roll fails by 81+ points: 1d4 hours
Roll plus penalties exceeds 100%:  Character is unable to open the lock, but may try again after gaining a level

Time taken beyond a few rounds is assumed to involve finding the right pick for the job, probing and studying the mechanism of the lock, false starts and failed attempts, and similar fiddling about.

Now the thief's skill level, and the roll against it, actually mean something, without there having to be a large chance of total failure.  A more skilled thief has a better chance of picking the lock quickly and cleanly, but even a novice can succeed if he has time to devote to the task.  In adventures with a time-sensitive goal, or where the DM uses wandering monster checks, this can have some serious consequences that add a lot more drama to the adventure than a simple pass/fail check.  The player of the thief and his party have choices to make.  Is whatever's in that chest worth staying in one place for an hour while the plans of the evil cult proceed apace?  How can they buy the thief some more time to get that door open so they can escape?  Failure becomes a choice, a reaction by the players to the situation at hand, not an inescapable result forced upon them by an unlucky roll of the dice, but the dice and the character's skill are still relevant.

I'm not sure yet how, or if, a similar approach can be applied to the other thief skills, but lock picking is one of the most important roles of thieves in my game, and I really like the potential of this system of qualified success instead of total success or total failure.  I'll definitely be giving it some more thought, but in the mean time... 

DM:  The guard patrol disappears around the corner, leaving you alone with the massive iron-bound door behind which the princess is securely locked.


First level thief:  I quickly get out my tools and try to spring the lock! 


DM:  Roll your Open Locks skill.


Thief:  24.


DM:  You start probing the lock mechanism, but it's a bit tricky, and the pressure of the situation isn't doing anything for the steadiness of your hand.  You almost have it, but your probe slips and the tumbler falls back into place!  You feel so close to figuring out the trick of it, but you hear faint footsteps from the western corridor...What do you want to do?

Thief:  Ugh!  I keep trying!  Just how close are those footsteps, anyway?