The marriage of rules and setting (Featuring V20: The Masquerade and Dark Ages)

I was recently seduced into looking at a lot of the new V20 material because I foolishly looked at (and backed) Beckett's Jyhad Diary, which looks 100% awesome. Vampire was one of the big turning points in RPGs in the 90s (and Vampire and Changeling finally got me to abandon D&D, so they're important for me personally) and Vampire still has a special place in my heart whenever I go back and look at it. But what really struck me looking through some of this stuff is how different versions do or do not actually let you make a character you want to play. 4e was all about reflavoring: I used a hybrid swordmage/artificer as an ersatz abjurer once to reasonable effect. But its a thing of beauty when the rules seem just right to express a character concept.

Now V20 isn't perfect; there are a few lingering legacy oddities. For example, all the elder disciplines (level 6+) are basically unattainable by player characters by the book, and the books just keep detailing them, pages and pages of these things players can't use. V20 Masquerade itself is largely a compilation and (relatively concise) redaction of much of the core material, while V20 Dark Ages aims to do that but also present a few new points of view, otherwise bother getting the new book at all (unless you're like me and sold all that old crap for a pittance and more shelf space a decade ago). So in between a few new merits or bloodlines we get some interesting new interpretations of things like a level 5 Serpentis power that isn't about removing hearts. It gives Setites a whole different angle on things, as its one of the 15 disciplines (i.e. magic powers) that the clan gets. Assamite Viziers in Dark Ages get their own version of Quietus which focuses on more, let's say, visierly matters rather than assassinish ones. This is exactly the type of thing I wish had happened earlier in the game.

Take another problem issue: Malkavians. Sure, they're a clan of madmen, but they were also said to be a clan of oracles and visionaries. Now, neither Masquerade nor Dark Ages quite fixes this: Dementation only has one oracular power—eyes of chaos—so neither of the two core books really provide much for being an oracle. There's an oracular ability merit that any clan can take, but its still a bit shit. I don't remember any of the old material that really made me want to play a Malkavian oracle, or worse, able to play one well (if there was a level 6 discipline that did, I don't know about it and don't count it). Finally V20 Lore of the Clans comes along with one good merit that might be worth stealing for other systems: cold read. This merit lets you risk willpower to ask questions about an NPC when you first meet them. I'm not quite sure if it'll play as well as I think it might, but its exactly the sort of reasonable mechanic that we need to play an oracle-type character. I might have to revise my Hakima. This merit isn't a perfect fix, but it can be combined with the slightly improved oracular ability merit and new prophetic dreams merit for some good play that is based on die rolls, not the whim of the storyteller or dungeon master.

Another issue: Baali. I freakin' love these guys, but they never supported the idea of the less-than-fully-evil Baali, despite teasing it in many places. The MET rules even go so far as to state that anyone with Daimonion are infernalists. Depending on which version of the rules you're using, Baali can't even actually make infernal pacts because that's a level 6 discipline. How are you supposed to make even an evil infernalist Baali by the rules for NPCs without ridiculous fiat involved? Well, along comes the new Black Hand book and Kraina of the Well. This is literally what I've been waiting for since I first learned of the Baali. Actual rules to let me do what the Baali do. Its still not perfect, as its never been clear how you learn out-of-clan disciplines (does it require a teacher or not?), but I can work with that.

Leaving Vampire for a moment, I had a similar feeling reading through Adventurer Conqueror King again. I like the simplicity of basic D&D with the complexity of some additional classes and options that give you some latitude in creating a character you want to play. But I liked the specialty mages and priests and kits such from second edition. Well, some of that is hidden in their feat system, like black lore of Zahar which is one proficiency (basically a feat) that gives your normal wizard a nice boost for necromantic powers. With a couple little alterations like that plus their nice rules for creating your own class, I might strongly consider that instead of 2nd edition if I run another old school game. Its kind of a shame because I had dismissed ACKs a bit because I wanted something like 2e specialty wizards and instead what they offer is something a little more like 5e wizard specialties.

The rules can also help constrain things. Back to vampire, the new larp rules do just that. Perhaps because of tons of bitching and complaining about blood magic and out of clan disciplines from the old rules (which gave out way too much XP too fast, particularly compared to the tabletop game) there were huge restrictions put on blood magic and they really emphasized the merits and flaws system. I think they went too far, honestly. Merits can be really powerful and you only get 7 points of them, maximum. Unusual or rare clans take up additional merits (2, 4, or 6 points) which is actually a nice way of saying that its a privilege to play a Samedi or Follower of Set. But some of the clan-specific merits are very powerful or stupidly required. I don't mind too much you need to pay more points to have Setite or koldunic sorcery, but Tremere and Giovanni need to buy a one point merit for each extra path they want to be able to master, which limits a dabbler Tremere who knows lots of paths but has mastered few. If you wanted to play a real loremaster, you need to play a Tzimisce because their clan-specific merit literally gives them access to the most potential lore in the game (+2 to max lore and an extra +3 to lore checks in your haven, plus its compatible with the 1 pt loremaster merit). You can never, by the book, play a Salubri healer with the 5pt golconda seeker merit though unless your DM makes Salubri healers a common clan in your game, just like the Tremere need to really plan ahead if they're focusing on their blood magic or not because there's also a limit to the number of rituals you can take based on your path mastery. Now, this feels too constraining to me, but I can see the desire to put out carrots to let each clan do what it was born to do and somewhat balance the clans against one another in a larp game. To be fair, I also found the nature of larp games to be quite constraining because they want stereotypical characters of each clan and the large shared nature of the game means you can't just come in with wacky concepts and your own factions or interpretation of the genre.

I think the point is, the rules can make a huge difference. I generally like a set of rules that's complex enough to let me do what I want to do (or, conversely, open enough to give me the freedom to do it). But I find it a bit unsettling when I look at the vampire larp rules and think of a cool character concept that I can't do. And alternately, when I look at the tabletop Vampire rules where I spot something that makes me think: yes! I can finally play the character that I've always wanted! Sometimes rules are flexible in a house game, and sometimes they're so complex its hard to say what one or two house rules might do. I even understand the need to constrain a game with some stricter rules, particularly for larps or player-vs-player type games. But I'm still struck how the rules can really open up come concepts as viable, or close off creativity.

Homebrewing: Then and Now

Obviously, one thing I love about RPGs is the ability for the players to add to them. You can't just take a computer RPG and add new classes or spells or even new levels readily. Since time immemorial I've been finding cool things from Dragon Magazine to add to a game, or crafting new white necromancy for that old Giovanni larp. The rules need interpretations at times, and often minor fixes though it is easy to go overboard. Now we've got a glorious new SRD that lets anyone play with (most of) the 5e rules, and the Dungeon Master's Guild which lets you use all the rules and (for now) Forgotten Realms intellectual property to publish your own nonsense. So yesterday started a new golden era...

But new D&D is distinctly harder to homebrew than old D&D. And some of that is design philosophy.

When someone on the internet asks how to bring specialty priests back into Swords and Wizardry, my answer is simple: if you're not taking someone else's specialty priest options, just modify the spell list slightly. Remove 1-2 spells per spell level from the generic cleric list to get rid of all the non-generic miracles, then add a spell or two per level back to the list to make specialty priests unique. Steal the domain from 3rd edition and now your fire priest can cast burning hands and flame blade, no real need for special powers beyond that. But you could remove/alter turn undead if you really felt it was needed to make the class unique.

Making specialty priests for third edition was actually similarly simple: just a new domain as needed (similarly not 100% satisfying, but meh). But domains now are much more difficult. 4e required you to concoct two dozen powers to make a full class build, which is untenable. 13th Age is—lamentably—a bit similar in its complexity. I imagine the complexity of classes in 13th age is why the 13th Age in Glorantha has been delayed.  5e scales that back a little, but its still not necessarily easy to modify classes (races aren't as bad because they don't affect your character as much).

So the new homebrew takes a lot of work, unfortunately. Clerics don't just get a few bonus spells, but first, sixth, and 17th level granted powers and I've never played the game that high in level to really have a good idea what a 17th level granted power ought to do.

There's another aspect of homebrew that's weird with modern D&D, which is that we're finally homebrewing non-casters. I guess you can make a swashbuckler class for Swords & Wizardry, but the breadth of classes like fighter and thief/rogue make that a bit odd, whereas one can always dream up another wizard or priest option. This is why I really think that wizards and priests need a bit more work, as their rules really impact the game world. Until third edition, almost all spell casters in D&D cast their spells in exactly the same way. Sure, we can replace old school spell mechanics with something a bit different, like the Sha'ir method, Runecasters, or something from Spells & Magic, and that's great. Unfortunately, in 5e we cant easily change how spells work, and each class needs new abilities at each and every level (excepting when spellcasters gain a new spell level, that apparently counts as a noticeable power bump).

So what's this really mean?

Because I like rules to reflect the setting, particularly with magic, D&D needs a bit of houserules and homebrew to really make it shine. Things like channel divinity make it hard(er?) to use the cleric class to represent priests who don't serve deities, and spells on bards, paladins, and rangers make it harder to use those classes in a low-magic setting.

Old D&D is still the easiest to homebrew, meaning I like it a bit better. I think my ideal D&D would take some of the simplifications of basic D&D and 5e, mixing them with some of the dice technology of 13th Age and the audacity of 2nd Edition. Basically an AD&D 3rd edition. With the new SRD someone could, perhaps, make much of that happen. But I'm still excited for the new 5e stuff, which could help fix a few of my issues with the game and (hopefully) produce a lot of good content.

Fixing D&D 5th Editon

Things I want to fix in 5e – A minor rant / thought catalogue:

1) Barbarians. The class should be called berserker, because that's what it is. It also opens up a bit more space to make a religious dervish berserker option as well as fixing a few lackluster elements.

2) Clerics. This class works well for good deities, but I wish domain were separate from vocation, so we could have a crusader of Moradin, a theurge of Moradin, a prophet of Moradin, and an evangelist of Moradin.

3) Rogues. They need a feature that rewards dagger use or else we need to differentiate weapons better. A general +1 to hit with daggers might suffice, but every rogue wants a rapier and hand crossbow just because anything else is stupid. Alternately, daggers and short swords just need some crazy bonus properties and the like.

4) Sorcerer and Warlock. There should be a mechanism to reward these classes for sticking to thematic spells. I'm not sure what it would be, but if you're consciously restricting yourself to a very thematic list a bonus spell known might be a nice reward. I had considered: remove 50% of the spells from your class list at each level for one bonus first level spell, but I'm not quite sure that would be the best way to do it.

5) Useful ability scores. Intelligence is a shit score in this edition. The same can be said of strength, mostly. Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma are almost always a dump stat. Dexterity is still stupidly potent, wisdom and constitution are just generically useful for most characters, and constitution, at least, will seldom be dumped because no one wants a penalty to their HP.

6) Useless ribbons. The elf and dwarf racial weapon ribbons are almost useless. They don't help the warrior types at all (who already have the weapons) and any class that dumps strength (wizard, sorcerer) will find them next to useless as they'll go to great lengths to avoid using them. The only real exception are classes that fight with simple weapons, like the cleric or druid because they might possibly have the stats to use them in melee. Allowing the trained weapons to count as finesse weapons might help, as dexterity-based characters might use them, as well as opening up a few more options for rogues.

7) Spell leveling. A lot of spells need to level more, with simple duration increases, or possibly eliminating the need for concentration eventually (even if its just a slot of 6th level or higher). This is a great idea, just not quite universally applied (you find it always on combat spells, occasionally on utilities). I suspect its easier to have the formula for combat spells, and leaving it off of utilities makes things simpler and requires less space in the book.

8) Spell versatility. There's a good number of spells which can and will have creative uses, and I think a number of them are obvious. What if I ready create water for when an enemy casts a fire spell? Can calm emotions affect a barbarian's rage? Can I use featherfall on an boulder about to hit me? Some of these are relatively obvious, and once a DM makes a ruling there's a new use for that spell for the entire campaign. A few guidelines or basic rules might help make those rulings.

9) Working modular dials. Many of the DMG options for hacking the system seem half-baked (group initiative, removing skills, etc.). It would be nice to have at least one well-thought-out option for these, though reasonably speaking there's probably 2-3 ways to implement a lot of those things. Altering the rests/healing seems to be the best of the options, but there's not really things for lowering the level of magic or fantastic in the game.

10) Updates for previous settings. Sure, I can run old modules with 5th edition rules, but each of the old settings could use a few things to help out. Obviously each setting could have its own book, but a simple 16-32 page book of a few crunchy updates would really help. I'd pay for the print-on-demand softcover, probably multiple times.

Old School Al-Qadim

Its no secret that I love Al-Qadim (evidence) and think Al-Qadim did a reasonable job of getting the Arabian Adventure for D&D right. I think I might try to run an actual game of it in the fall: possibly in-person or possibly on roll20. So I wanted to catalogue some of my thoughts on how to fix it up.

1) If I ran it 5e style, there's some changes that need to be made. I've posted quite a few thoughts on this before.

2) If I run it with AD&D 2nd, I still want to consider a few changes. This is what I'll focus on.

Why change things if I want to run original Al-Qadim? Simply put, I want a few more options and to really utilize some of more modern ideas to bring it up to speed. Plus, it's actually fairly easy to mod second edition because of that old Core Rules CD-Rom which included all the books in .rtf format. So a cut-and-paste player's handbook will actually be quite easy to compile.

Races. The original Al-Qadim book came out before Complete Book of Humanoids. City of Delights makes it clear that some of the monstrous races are totally appropriate for Al-Qadim, and I'd like to take them up on it. Its totally fitting that Ogres and Goblins are PC races as the racial enmities are eliminated in the setting. I think I'll focus on Goblins and Ogres just to shy away from the more "common" orcs and also keep things a bit more limited. I'm tempted to add in Githzerai because I've fallen in love with them, but they might not be needed. I also might use Skills & Powers to re-create Dwarves and Gnomes basically by giving them something to replace the racial enmity. That said, this all might be useless if I have some mechanism to encourage playing humans: i.e. everyone rolls ability scores in order, if you're human you can re-arrange the scores as you like. Nonetheless, I like the idea of having some options.

Classes. I finally found a forum post on Dragon's Foot which touches on people's experience with some less-standard classes. Basically confirming my intuition that the Spells & Magic classes (Crusader, Monk, Shaman) along with Vikings (Berserker, Runecaster) and Scarlet Brotherhood (Assassin, Monk) classes are reasonably balanced with the core classes. Meaning I'll consider adding in the Crusader and Shaman as options, and possibly a couple others if I can work out the details. Well, crusader might be a bit stronger than the cleric, so maybe a tiny bit of toning it down. I'm also considering the magic of Spells & Magic for Al-Qadim, which might let wizards use channeling (Elemental Mage, Sorcerer & Sha'ir). Channeling basically ends up giving a boost to low-level mages who recover spell points over the course of the day, while limiting higher level mages by exhausting them when they cast their highest level spells. I might ditch Channeling for Sha'irs because they already have their own crazy system of magic. Temple priests would use ritual prayer (Presumably crusaders & clerics and Shamans) and free priests (presumably de-martial-art-ed Monks and Hakimas) would use conditional magic. These two systems seem like they limit clerics by requiring more time to cast their highest level spells (ritual prayer) or enforcing a code of conduct on mystics, visionaries, and prophets (conditional magic), they're otherwise your standard vancian casters. This does mean I'm considering converting the Priest/Wizard kits to classes, which brings me to kits. I'd also consider adding in the Skills & Powers rogue skills to the rogue classes, because why not? Rogues are a bit weak as it is and more skills ain't going to really hurt them. Because I'm thinking of having the game be human centric, I'm also considering letting normal humans multiclass. Though perhaps only the only options are Fighter/Whatever or Thief/Whatever, and maybe they'd be more like 2/3 one class and 1/3 the other. Not sure how stupid/wacky that would end up being.

Kits. Because I think the wizard kits are really classes, I'd need to borrow a few kits for these classes to use. There are some fairly reasonable options, such as something for temple priests, religious judge, scholars, viziers, and secret hidden mages. Maybe throw in some sort of ascetic and its pretty much good to go. I'm basically tossing out all the Complete Sha'ir's Handbook kits at this point, but I might be willing to re-consider something like the Mystic of Nog, because I love the Ruined Kingdoms. Maybe it can basically take that Monk from Spells & Magic but give them one elemental province of wizard spells plus unarmed fighting...

Proficiencies. I'm leery about these, but I might use them. Basically as long as they're based on a character's background, they're probably reasonable. So maybe what should happen is both the player and I should select proficiencies for their character and then we could see how much we agree. Also, I could just eliminate the cheesy ones like blind-fighting or require weapon proficiencies be spent on those guys.

Spells. I'll probably cull a few options from the spell lists to keep them manageable, but secretly add in whatever sort of crazy I want from the Spell Compendium. As one should.

Plot. I've got a few ideas linking some of the published modules and adventures for the Ruined Kingdoms. I'll have to bill it as an exploration game, because it will be. I'd love to have it start out with seeking out ruins further afield in the Ruined Kingdoms while a noble PC or patron NPC plots to start a whole new city. Depending on whether the players want to be part of the Enlightened Faith or the Old Faith will steer them towards certain enemies, but I'd imagine that eventually the game would involved actually founding a colony and dealing with some of the affairs of ruling a city. Cue Birthright rules as needed. There's a few obvious factions to involve: Enlightened Faith, the Old Faiths of Shajar and Ragarra, four+ rulers of local city-states (Dehliz, Kadarasto, Rog'osto, Afyal), the Brotherhood of True Flame, one or more Holyslayer groups, one or more Mamluk orders, plus whatever independant NPCs I have in mind. Running a city would, potentially, necessitate a few different characters: 1) a noble to rule, 2) a wizard for the magics, 3) a priest to play pontiff, 4) possibly a guild-rogue for the underworld, 5) a merchant-rogue for trade, 6) a holy slayer for all the jazz, and 7) a sha'ir for genie dealings. Maybe we can ditch one for simplicity and have an NPC or two as needed.

Vision and Light in Basic and Advanced D&D

After thinking about light in 5th edition, I went back a bit to see how earlier editions handled light. The results are a bit more varied than I expected. I'm primarily referencing the first and second edition AD&D books and Rules Cyclopedia for basic D&D here. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that things were different in other versions.

Organization
First off, what's immediately apparent is how much second edition really did organize things fairly well. First edition scatters things about and the Rules Cyclopedia was the worst for trying to find these things. Thank god for the digital version where I can actually search for all the terms you need (light, darnkess, blindness, infravision...). But second edition both the PHB and DMG have short chapters on vision and light, though you do need to reference both books to get the whole story.

Light Spell
The second noticeable thing is how the light spell itself differs. Clerics and wizards had different light spells. In AD&D, the cleric spell lasted 60 minutes + 10/level, while the wizard version only lasts 10min/level. That's a huge difference at low levels when torches really matter. In the Rules Cyclopedia, the cleric version just lasts a flat two hours while the wizard version is 60 minutes + 10min/level. So the wizard is eventually better at light than the cleric when the spell no longer matters much.  Interestingly, both the Rules Cyclopedia and second edition explicitly call out the ability to cast light on a creature's eyes to blind it, which is just implied in first edition AD&D.

Infravision (and Ultravision)
Most important are infravision and ultravision. These would later become darkvision and low-light vision in third edition and beyond, but back in the old days these were somewhat scientific. Infravision is sight in the infrared spectrum and largely heat-based. Ultravision (I'm not sure which creatures had it) was ultraviolet vision but apparently since only stars tend to give off this sort of light, it just means you can see outside at night fairly well. Apparently it didn't occur to Gary Gygax that Elves or Dwarves could have low-light vision just like dogs and cats. The first edition DMG makes it clear that there are, in fact, two types of infravision: 60' range and 90'+ range. The 90'+ range infravision is simply better. Generally restricted to underdark-only creatures, these creatures see their surroundings as though it were a bright, moon-lit night. With only 60' range, you see as though it were a dark night (with presumably some very dim light so you can make out rough shapes of your surroundings but few specifics).  The second edition AD&D books call out the meaning of infravision as option: you can do it as actual heat-vision or it just means you can see in the dark. Obviously this is where third edition ran with things. The Rules Cyclopedia mentions infravision as specifically heat-vision and explicitly calls out that it is hard to recognize individuals and also that reading is impossible. So fighting a bunch of goblins using only infravision is easy because you can tell what's a goblin and what isn't. Dwarves fighting Derro or Deurgar however... an interesting option.

So infravision is pretty clearly useful, it even penetrates normal darkness spells (i.e. reversed light, available only to clerics), but infravision has some clear limits. Not even mentioning that fire can spoil the use of infravision. It is obvious that, as originally written, infravision alone (at least the PC version of infravision for the basic races in the books) is not a primary method of dungeon exploration. Its a neat trick, but unless you're a party of Drow you still want other sources of light. And even creatures like enemy drow using infravision will be messed up by your torch. As far as I can tell, the drow archers 120' away should be able to target whoever is holding a light source but take a -4 attack penalty because they can't actually see the character. It isn't spelled out very clearly in the rules though.

It is also relatively interesting how some aspects of the game are written to be real-world accurate and others aren't. In a few descriptions of infravision, for example, you may be able to track some creatures by their warm footprints. Presumably only warm-blooded creatures (or otherwise warm creatures?) and I'd imagine that wearing shoes of any kind would largely make humanoids immune to this. Also, the light spell is described as emitting light, whereas the reverse, darkness, must somehow magically dampen light in the radius? You can imagine a more magic version of light where no shadows are cast. But if the light spell does cast shadows, that gives us leeway to interpret the rules like Torchbearer where a light source on the ground only casts dim light (dim light not really being a concept in these older rule sets).

Another aspect that's come up about darkness is when you can't see, you can't move very fast. Blinded characters or characters in darkness can only move at one-third their normal rate. I haven't seen this in later editions of the game, but I like it.

Third edition reclassified vision into a lot of little categories, but its actually delightfully clear on many things. Low light vision still requires some form of light, and you can read using it. Darkvision is black and white and requires no light source at all, but you don't get color. Its not clear if you can read while using darkvision, but I'd assume you can't given that low-light vision specifically calls out that you can. Though in the race description, dwarves are said to be able to function just fine with no light at all. Then there's blindsight (sonic and non-sonic) and blindsense and tremorsense, which are cool but its not clear how useful these are as in older editions I don't think anyone would have automatically assigned oozes or slimes attack penalties for being blind. Though up until now it never occurred to me to target an ooze with a blindness spell or "cast light at its eyes".

How do the retro clones do it? Swords & Wizardry, an original edition clone, just defines darkvision as the ability to see in darkness, so that's either what was originally there or the S&W simplification. Basic Fantasy likewise lists darkvision as the ability to see in the dark without color but also notes you can't use it when there is other light around. Lamentations of the Flame Princess seems to just ignore infravision alltogether. OSRIC, a first edition AD&D clone, lists it as the ability to see in the dark but that it is not a help with making detailed investigations, so even orcs will often carry torches in the darkness.

What can we take out of this all? 
Light spells are a bit kooky, and the priest was the best source of light early on. Infravision is a bit mixed, and it seems that the interpretation of this rule would have huge consequences for how light sources were tracked. At least in later D&D, infravision wasn't intended to eliminate the need for light sources, except possibly for underdark dwelling creatures. It seems like it was a neat bonus that dwarves and elves got which would let them function a little bit when the lights went out, primarily in combat. A nice magic trick, but not a primary sense. But this gets lost in 3rd edition and later when we shift to darkvision, probably because that's how people were beginning to play it in 2nd edition. Infravision as heat vision was just kinda weird and maybe hard for people to describe. So you either just pretend it means you can see in the dark in the rare cases you assume the PCs actually need to because who was really counting torches back in the day? Well, its possible your interpretation of infravision leads to one play style or another. The grittier play style (more resource management at least) is the one in which infravision or darkvision are that little trick, not a primary sense.

I think infravision made for a more nuanced game. There's certainly more tricks you could use against the PCs, like having them fight skeletons (difficult to see until they start moving) or enemies of similar shape and girth (human bandits rather than orcs or goblins). You could use fire to distract the drow archers and ruin their sight temporarily, and maybe track a few foes by their heat signatures or discover a couple clues because of the temperature. Its maybe not quite worth it all though.

But in 5e, we can bring that back by altering Darkvision a bit maybe:

Option A: Say it isn't that you don't see the world in black and white, but you see no color at all. Its hard to make out differences in people other than gross body shape differences, you just have a sense of where walls and objects are. Fine detail is lost, so maybe you can make out large carved letters but the texture of walls are lost and you clearly can't read anything.

Option B: consider "darkvision" to be more like low-light vision, and it doesn't function in absolute darkness. A single candle or a bit of glowing moss would allow all the dwarves to use their darkvision though.

Option C: By the book. You have disadvantage on perception checks while you're in dim light, and with infravision darkness is dim light for you. You could still force perception checks to have people discern allies from enemies in darkness, and there's plenty of traps or missed secret doors (or just missed writing on the wall) that can be used to teach a party not to rely on darkvision. Heck, you could take another line from Torchbearer and force wisdom saves to avoid being scared for being in a dimly lit dungeon for too long, or just have the natural hazards causing people to trip in dim light.

I could see either option A or B, but option A is a bit more in-line with the rules and doesn't require a dramatic change. Though interpreting dim light as in option C might be just as good. What's really lacking with these is the protection that torches provided from infravision: that torch was super noticeable, but so overwhelmingly bright to infravision that its the only thing that could be seen, and firey spells could possibly blind infravision users for a round. A few underdark races are susceptible to bright light though, so you could make those rulings just for those cases.

I also really like the idea of penalties for moving too fast while blinded, so I'd imagine a DC 12 dexterity save or dexterity (acrobatics) check to remain on your feet might be the way to go. 

Possible 5e House Rules to Consider

This is just an ongoing list where I can keep track of a few house-rules I've seen online and want to consider further.

Exhausting Injuries. The lingering injury rules from the DMG are interesting, but fairly harsh at low levels. But a level of exhaustion each time a PC is reduced to 0 or fewer HP seems reasonable and easy. Maybe allow Barbarians or anyone else who has class features that can grant exhaustion a difficult Con save (DC 15?) to resist this exhaustion from being knocked out.

Shorter short rests. From the DMG, basically make short rests about 10 minutes to coincide with rituals. Nicely gives the PCs a time constraint on rituals: you rest or do a ritual, but maybe not both.

Hidden death saves. The results of a death saving throw aren't public, so they party won't necessarily know if they have another round to save their friend.

Firing into melee. I generally dislike fumble rules, but firing into melee sort of demands a chance to hit your allies. Doing it on a natural 1 seems reasonable, though halflings will be strangely immune to it because of their lucky trait.

Group initiative. From the DMG. It can be super quick/easy to just sit people in initiative order and roll once for the group, then everyone adds their individual modifiers. A little complex because a barbarian, for example, might get his own die roll and jump ahead but that's probably not a big deal. Would let the players coordinate things better.

Individual initiative with weapon speeds. From the DMG. Alternately, to make combats a bit less clear, characters declare their actions first and roll each round. It could be fairly easily done with cards that say "attack" "spell", or little white boards. But you declare first and when it gets to you all you can do is your action or maybe abort for a dodge? Rolling each round would keep it a huge mystery.

Crits = max damage. Doubling the dice is effectively max damage anyway, this would just speed things up.

The Influence of Combat & Tactics

I burnt my hand cooking breakfast today, so in a fit of childishness I opted to do nothing this afternoon and ended up reading Combat & Tactics a bit. I'm still a little shocked at how it really does pre-figure third edition quite a bit. Armor is classified into light, medium, and heavy (or Leather, Mail, and Plate). There are proficiency options that are basically feats by another name. And the whole 5 foot square gridded combat system.

Obviously all of it didn't make it into later editions, but there's one aspect that I'm wondering if we left behind. Third edition codified a lot of bonuses to individual weapons into weapon properties, but left some things behind a bit. And now Fifth feels a bit like an exercise in filling a grid of weapon damage types and properties. Its not quite that bad, but a couple more weapon properties might be helpful.

I think some of this is the tactics that have been left behind with the transition to more story-focused games. Don't get me wrong, I love 13th Age and Vampire and other story-focused games. But I have a hankering for some old school simulation too, and I like the idea of two soldiers opting to use shields and short swords because they're optimal in a cave where both can be in the front ranks where a longsword or battle axe would be ineffective. Maybe I yearn for the days of putting the dwarf and gnome up front too where others can use reach weapons or ranged weapons over their heads. And Henchmen. But henchmen might be for a different post.

Anyway, I've picked a dozen and one (ish) additional properties here inspired by Combat & Tactics. The designers probably considered something like these and opted not to use them, so there may be reasons not to. Chief among them is probably the part where many of these properties only apply to fighting armed humanoids, not beasts. It also makes the game more complex, obviously. A well-trained fighter might be encouraged to switch weapons based on his opponents (a feature, in my mind, rather than a bug). Some of these properties have a "critical" effect. This could be re-worded to happen in addition to extra damage, but it seems possibly excessive. These properties are also written for 5e. As such they are mostly limited to +1 bonuses: advantage seems too good and would synergize with things like a rogue's sneak attack. A small (+1) bonus shouldn't really muck with the math; besides rogues/bards can already get stupid good at disarming or tripping because of expertise. If I were writing these for AD&D, they'd be more like Defensive +1 or Armor Piercing (Mail) +2. Because AD&D could work that way. I also listed some weapons these properties might apply to (though not all exist in 5e): this might be motivation for adding in a few other polearms or whatnot as well.

Defensive - +1 to AC while wielding the weapon (even in your off hand). We lost the defensive property from earlier editions, but I'm not sure why a parrying dagger or gunsen couldn't have it. There may be a good reason this went away.
Added to: Parrying Dagger/Main Gauche, Gunsen, Jitte, Ranseur/Spetum/Partisan, sai, three-piece-rod

Wrap Around - This property would give chain weapons a +1 bonus to hit opponents with shields or behind cover.
Added to: Chain, Flail, Whip, Kusari-Gama

Armor Piercing (Heavy, Medium, Light). These properties would give a +1 bonus to hit opponents wearing the appropriate plate, mail, or leather armor. A weapon might only pierce one type of armor or all three. The idea is plate might not be as good at defending from a weapon designed to pierce it.
Added to: Crossbow (Heavy), Dire Flail (Heavy), Mace (Medium), Morningstar (Heavy), Pick (Heavy), Halbeard (Heavy or Medium), Greatsword (Heavy or Medium), Estoc (heavy or Medium), 

Disarming - A +1 bonus to disarm an opponent. On a critical hit, you can instead deal normal damage and automatically disarm your opponent.
Added to: Chain, Flail, Whip, Scourge, sai, three-piece-rod

Tripping - A +1 bonus to "shove an opponent" and instead you may opt to pull them closer or knock them prone. Or/Also, a critical hit you can opt to deal normal damage and also knock your target prone. A tripping weapon cannot trip an opponent with more than two legs.
Added to: Chain, Flail, Whip, Bill/guisarme

Charger - Double damage when mounted and you've moved at least half your speed.
Added to: Lance

Set-For-Charge - Double damage if you set the weapon to receive a charge. (This needs set-for-charge rules and possibly better charging rules. Probably readying your weapon is like readying an action and then you get the attack if your opponent "charges" or moves 15' and then attacks you.)
Added to: Spear, Pike, Halbeard, Glaive and other pole-arms

Shield-Sundering - +1 bonus to sunder a shield. On a critical hit, you can instead deal normal damage and automatically sunder your opponent's shield. [This would need a rule for sundering a shield probably, though the crit property could live on its own.]
Added to: Battleaxe, Greataxe

Close-Quarters - No penalty for attacking in close quarters or while squeezing. [This would be different than just giving this to piercing weapons, which I had considered. Then I remembered picks.]
Added to: javelin, Spear, Shortsword, Rapier, Trident, Pike

Quick - You can use your reaction to make an attack of opportunity when an opponent attempts to grapple you.  [If it weren't such a pain, I'd consider saying that after making an attack with a quick weapon, your initiative increases by +2. So after a couple rounds you'd end up passing people in the initiative order. Its not a bonus attack, but could be interesting.]
Added to: Dagger

Subduing - This weapon only attacks to subdue. If the opponent is reduced to a number of hit points equal to your level + the damage bonus from your ability score, they are instead reduced to 0 hit points.
Added to: Sap

Ineffective (Heavy, Medium, Light). These weapons are less effective against particular armours, and receive a -1 penalty to the attack.
Added to: Blowgun (Heavy), Bo (Heavy)

Surprise - When you initiate combat and your opponent isn't expecting you to be armed, you gain advantage on the surprise role and a +1 bonus to the initiative roll.
Added to: Brandistock, Ninja-to

In 5e, many properties correspond with damage dice alternations. For example, a two-handed or heavy weapon will do more damage than its one-handed counterpart. Likewise light weapons tend to do one die-size less damage than an otherwise similar weapon. Here, I think the quick and defensive properties should likewise be associated with smaller damage dice. The others don't seem like they're quite sexy enough to merit a change in damage dice as long as they're associated with thematically appropriate weapons (i.e. chain weapons tend to do wrap-around, disarm, and trip).

There's a few other bits of "tactics" that would be interesting to add (I'm thinking forming a shield wall), but these might do a bit to help add in a few tactics to the game and make various weapons a bit more unique. I'm still a little unclear on the bonus part. For some, proficiency bonus might be an appropriate thing rather than just +1. But, by and large, +1 is easy to add in and not going to be overpowered. I'll have to take a closer look to decide if any of these properties are redundant or could otherwise be combined, but it just might make a slightly more interesting set of weapons available.

OSR and TSR Options

Since I've got a bug up my butt about running Temple of Elemental Evil (For better for for worse), I'm looking through some of the OSR material I have as well as the TSR options. I've seen a few things I really like or are at least notable. A lot of this comes from the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) with a eye on Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea (ASSH). But some of it might be doable in a 5th edition game or 13th Age, not just TSR D&D or an OSR retroclone or whatnot, but some are really tied to those older d20 rolling fantasy games.

1) Warrior damage bonus and cleaving. ACKS just flat-out gives warriors a scaling damage bonus from +1 at first level to +5 at 12th Level. It reminds me of weapon specialization in AD&D. At some point, fighters just need to be doing a little more damage. I'm just not quite sure what the correct amount is, but something simple like +1 at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20 surely can't be overpowered. Weapon Mastery (double specialization) and beyond show up in Combat & Tactics as single-classed fighter only options which is nice, but guarantees that fighters become very kensei-like and overspecialized in a single weapon. I like the option, but I'm unsure what the implementation ought to be. ASSH gives fighters a couple weapons that they get +1 hit/damage with over their careers and the option to double specialize in one. I like the kensei class option in greater specialization, but maybe its not for all warriors.

2) Warrior cleaving. First edition had a somewhat hidden/obscure rule (well, lots really) that allowed a fighter to make a number of attacks equal to his level against creatures less than 1/2 hit die. It gets repeated in a number of OSR books, and adapted a little by Combat and Tactics. But I like the ACKS implementation mostly though it might need a slight tweak. When a warrior kills an enemy, they get to make a bonus attack with the same weapon against an enemy within 5' (though if they have movement they can still move 5' and make the attack). They can do this a number of times equal to their level. Clerics and Thieves can do it up to half their level. That's powerful! Removing the hit die cap (which is what ACKS appears to do) makes it much easier to use. Combat & Tactics specifies you must be outnumbered to use the rule, and it might still have a hit die limit. I like the idea of a scaling Hit die limit still. Though a "kill in one blow" wording might de-facto do an appropriate hit die limit. Combat & Tactics limits the number of bonus attacks, giving double your normal attack rate as the limit, which I kinda like. But some version of this really gives a nice bonus to warriors. Note that, depending on the wording, this warrior cleave or heroic fray might work for missile attacks as well, not just melee.

3) Encumbrance in Stone. Its around the internet in a few places, but ACKS uses is too. Basically, you use a much larger weight unit so encumbrance has a better level of granularity. ACKS defines a stone as 10 pounds, but the 14-pound stone is still used in the UK as a unit of human body weight. However you define it, you're dealing with numbers in the range of 20 or less usually, so that's a bit easier to math out.

4) Rations. DungeonWorld and ACKS use a nicer ration system, though its there in all forms of TSR D&D too. It could just be a little simplified. TSR D&D never gave lots of healing overnight though, which is where rations might be more important for a game like 5th edition or 13th Age where you fully heal (or more fully heal) overnight. I actually did something like this in the 4th edition Dark Sun game I ran, which was letting the PCs cast defiling magic to regain all their healing surges while they were travelling. It made wilderness encounters actually worthwhile since you might actually lose resources on the way to the dungeon. Normal AD&D makes regaining HP difficult enough unless the cleric totally blasts the party with cure light wounds.

5) Dual Wielding. In ACKS, dual wielding just gives you an offensive bonus, not extra attacks. Extra attacks should, I feel, be limited to special situations and certain classes (warriors in general, the monk specifically). I also like the 13th Age take on dual wielding, but extra attacks can get pretty powerful (especially when you have magic bonuses to hit and damage in addition to ability score bonuses) and they can be a pain to deal with consistently. Saying that though, some missile weapons in TSR D&D more readily get multiple attacks, particularly with weapon specialization.

4) XP for gold and Carousing (i.e. gold for XP). I can see how gaining XP based on the loot you get makes the game a bit more Sword-and-Sorcery than high fantasy. So I like it. I also agree that its maybe best if you get the XP for magic items you sell (but don't use): so its really for gold you're bringing back to town. ACKS has a carousing rule which says you can piss away that gold and start an XP bank for your next character. I kinda like that idea too. Again, not sure the best implementation, but I like the idea. However, this doesn't look like it'd work well in a game like 5th edition or 13th Age: something about those distinct XP charts for classes and AD&D multiclassing makes this feel like it works best in those games. When you either don't really pay attention to XP (or gold, for that matter) and just give out level-ups for milestones or whatnot, it doesn't seem to matter.

5) Simplified weapons. ACKS does a 5th edition on weapons a bit, taking the broad number of weapons down from AD&D's massive set. I like the idea, but I also like the notion of weapon properties. A few more properties might play up some more differences between weapons, like flails and chains ignoring shields (wrap around) and entangling enemies (easier to disarm or trip). You could even capture some of the weapon vs armor stuff of AD&D with properties like plate-penetration or whatnot. Certainly they must have considered this in 3rd edition and decided against it for some reason, but I'm not privy to what that reason was so it still seems worthwhile to simplify the weapons slightly but keep some of the crazier properties and oddities of the system. Maybe the properties could be steamlined a bit to generic +2/-2 so its easier to keep track of though.

6) Shield sundering (and more). Though I can't seem to find it in ACKS, the internet claimed there was a shields-will-be-sundered rule. I'm not sure I like the option where you can just let your shield break anytime for half-damage, but I like weapons and shields breaking. Its part of the reason why I'm thinking one benefit of fighters is they should automatically get something like tight-group proficiency with weapons and be able to use more weapons, rather than funnel them into grand-mastery specialization with just one weapon. I wonder if this might be great as an alternative to some critical hit nonsense. Crits and fumbles might where your equipment has a chance to break (or enemies equipment does) rather than always just doing something like max damage. Actually, I really like the idea of crits doing things like breaking equipment in addition to or instead of just heaps of damage. Cause unless you have a max damage on crits rule, just rolling double dice can be a bummer when you roll 1s on the damage die for a crit.

7) Wisdom (and Charisma) for bonus XP. This comes out of Swords and Wizardry, where your prime requisite bonus is only 5%. A wisdom or charisma of 13+ gives you a 5% bonus to XP as well. I'm not so sure I like it for Charisma, but any class with a better wisdom seems like it should get that XP bonus. I might give the Cha bonus for classes who would otherwise be required to have a good wisdom like Clerics or a Necromancer rather than letting wisdom do double duty there. But Wisdom as a prime requisite for all classes might be nice.

8) Spell preparation. ASSH uses the TSR / vancian method of fire-and-forget. But ACKS uses the method that classes like the Spirit Shaman of 3rd edition or now 5th edition use. A wizard's spellbook lets him practice/prepare a set of spells, but the spell slots themselves are also magic points used to cast those spells. In this case, the wizard is a little more versatile. Clerics in ACKS, it seems, have their whole list prepared! I do like the 5th edition system a little, but is is odd if you have 2nd level slots left and need to cast a first level spell. I'm not sure about this, but see scrolls below.

9) Scrolls. ASSH gives mages the ability to scribe scrolls right away at first level. This is a case where I'm not sure I like it. Scribe Scroll seemed quite potent in third edition, so allowing wizards to explicitly scribe scrolls at low levels seems a lot. Mostly because at mid and higher levels, the wizard is only spending a pittance of XP or gold to have a good number of useful low-level scrolls scribed. Now, a game where you still use your own slots or magic points to power a scroll might make it more interesting and balanced: you're scribing the scrolls to expand your repertoire but not your number of spells cast per day. Depends on your rules, perhaps. Though that wouldn't fit with thieves being able to read a scroll on occasion, though maybe you could also rule you lose 1d4hp per level of the spell if you don't use a slot to cast that spell.

There's a whole lot of other options out there, but the Player's Option books and the OSR literature don't always make this stuff easy to find. Also, deciding on what to implement isn't easy. I'm guessing a lot of this stuff wasn't playtested as well as it could be, and what works well in one system or even gaming table might not translate at all to another. More reading to do, I suppose, but this was a first pass at some interesting options.

D&D Next: Disappointing Skills and Saving Throws

 One of the things I thought was odd about D&D Next is the ability score-based saving throws. I couldn't quite formulate how I was dissatisfied with it till now though. Ability-based saves feel like they overlap with skills.

Now, this should be a problem in 3.5 and 4e too, right? Somehow it didn't feel like it. And I think it was because things like the 3.5 grease spell called for a balance check rather than a dexterity saving throw. In 4e, someone attacked your reflex defense, so it also didn't seem like much of an overlap.

Conceptually it might not seem like much of an overlap. If you were trying to balance on a wall, you'd roll a dexterity check plus your balance skill. If an evil wizard cast a fireball spell, you'd make a dexterity save. But your tumble skill, useful for things like rolling down a steep incline or running between the giant's legs doesn't help you dodge that fireball.

Party Coherence

I've been reflecting a lot on D&D lately (I partly blame Antagonist Relations), specifically on the history and rules. But the game is really in the playing. A ruleset is a tool, better for some tasks than others. But any rule set will generally get the job done. What we don't really see rules for in RPGs, however, is party coherence.

I'm not sure why that is, but I suspect it stems from the general lack of social rules and cooperative attitude that games like D&D engender. What is party coherence though? My ideas on this are colored by my old LARP experience.

See, I used to play LARPs at conventions. These weren't long-term things, just one four-hour game. But the social interaction there required a skeleton of player knowledge. This was generally done by a lengthy list of the characters in the game and a short description of your relationship to each one. So-and-so was your brother in the Mafia family, or in your delegation at the peace conference. So-and-so was your rival, the person you wanted to take down. Without this basic background info, you were lost in this type of political intrigue game.

Some of the people who ran those games also ran D&D games at convention I used to frequent. And you see the same sort of thing in a convention game. My favorite one had my friend JG as my daughter, and I suspected that this other guy that I knew was playing my son that I put up for adoption. Instantly I had connection to the rest of the party. It was awesome.

Revising Rituals for Dark Sun 4e

One of my the benefits of playing a table-top RPG is the infinite customizability. Since a human is in charge of things, you're not bound by pre-determined rules, pre-planned adventures, or anything else some game designer dreamed up. House rules are king.

Over the last two editions of D&D, the rules have been more and more formalized, and the math more balanced. This leads, however, so some difficulties in customization. Admittedly, the major difficulty is remembering that the rules are malleable in the first place. The second is finding the right level of customization.

One of my proudest achievements in the last D&D game I ran was customizing the 4e ritual system for my dark sun game. Not any DS campaign, but specifically my game. Here's an example ritual I gave out: