Random tables

I've been terrible at blogging this year. Oh well.

I'm currently in the final stages of prepping to run a 5e conversion of the 2nd edition Ravenloft module The Evil Eye (a conceptual sequel to last year's Curse of Strahd). To do this, I've been adding in some random tables that I feel are missing in the original. In part because I feel like I need to flesh it out a little more to avoid a possible sense of railroading (there's only one way to escape Invidia) and in part because I find the random tables to be really helpful in my Al-Qadim Church 2nd Edition game I'm running.

Here's the secret: I tend to use random tables for inspiration. I also tend to stick with the random rolls, the trick is how to fit it into the story (i.e. improvisation) and when to know when to re-roll. Random encounters (and I call them random encounters, not wandering monsters) can be used to move the story along (i.e. tell the players to stop dilly-dallying), they can be used to instill a sense of danger into the game (i.e. dilly-dallying in a dungeon can be dangerous, traveling in the wilderness can be dangerous), and they can be used to hand additional clues into the players' hands (i.e. they randomly encounter a corpse with helpful information). From a GM's perspective, they can also be used to slow down the pace of a game and/or liven things up with a bit of roleplaying or combat as well.

Examples of some great random encounters:
The horse. Early on, the PCs randomly encountered a horse. I wasn't super sure what to do with this, but obviously, when the players wondered if it belonged to a missing hero, it surely became that horse. The random encounter fleshed out some of the story that was otherwise going to be missing.
Elf tribe. I don't really recall what I did with these, but I randomly rolled an entire group of over 100 elves. I hope I did something like using them to foreshadow the gnoll horde because otherwise large group of elves in the middle of the jungle made no sense.
Banderlogs. After rolling baboons a number of times, I noticed the Monstrous Manual had another entry on the same page. These baboon-like creatures were intelligent, numerous enough to be negotiated with, and able to provide some totally unplanned clues as the party flubbed their comprehend languages spell and did it all with gestures and pictograms.
Mystery. Not wanting to spoil a potentially ongoing plot, I had rolled a particular creature twice on the party's journey recently, and given the ecology section of the monster's description, it clearly ought to have been a mother and daughter combo. With an impromptu fleshing out of their backstory using some obvious recent events (a tribe of jungle giants had been slain), these things being in the area suddenly made sense to me.
The turtle. In one of the early adventures, the party was traveling upriver to the site of some ruins to plunder. I totally role a giant snapping turtle which the low-level party had absolutely no business dealing with. I made it easy to avoid, but it served as a neat reminder that in the game I'm running, they would encounter things well beyond their capacity to deal with. Later on, when I rolled another horrible river encounter, the sea hag was looking for the turtle and only extorted the party for a bit of loot then let them go.

So, what does this look like in The Evil Eye? Well, it's the land of Invidia in Ravenloft, so I'm using the Tarokka deck for randomization when possible.

First off, I've got a random attribute table: eye color. Given that the evil eye plays a role in its titular adventure, I'm going to try to use eye color for some subtle narrative effects. So it's important that people pick an eye color that I want them to, meaning I'm going to deal out a card and let them choose.

Eye color and descriptions
Suit Color
Glyphs ❧ Green
Stars ✭ Blue
Swords ⚔ Brown
Coins ◎ Amber

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. 

Psychological Stats

As I've been looking through a couple games lately and playing some 5e, I've noticed that the psychological stats are a bit lackluster or hard to use. I think the GUMSHOE system gets stuff pretty close to right, however.

What are these "psychological stats"? In traditional D&D, you have alignment. In the World of Darkness games, you select a nature and demeanor (mostly). 5th Edition D&D has Ideals, Flaws, Bonds, and Personality traits. DungeonWorld has bonds and alignment. Fading Suns actually has opposed traits (ego/faith, passion/calm, etc.) which kinda do some of this. But these are all basically little descriptions of how your character is supposed to act. The problem I see, is they don't always accomplish much.

Older edition D&D alignment basically let the DM punish characters who acted out of character. World of Darkness games let you regain willpower by acting in accordance with your nature, which is a bit nice, though demeanor generally did nothing. 5th Edition D&D has the inspiration system which gives you a tiny bonus if the DM agrees you're acting in accordance with your psych stats, but my current GM hasn't overtly used it since the first or second game. 13th Age doesn't even really have a psych stat at all.

What I really like, however, are the drives of GUMSHOE (e.g. Trail of Cthulhu) and passions of ORE (e.g. Reign). With ORE, you have three passions but you only have one thing that drives you to investigate in GUMSHOE. You could easily adapt this to your drive to adventure in a more traditional fantasy game. With ORE, when you act in accordance with one (or more) of your three passions, you can claim a 1 die bonus per passion, or the GM can levy a similar penalty if you're acting against them. Your drive in GUMSHOE can similarly affect your stability whether you're acting in accordance with it or not. GUMSHOE also suggests drives be used to edge characters into the adventure.

Why do these seem like better systems? For one, its a relatively small bonus and easy to track. I think GUMSHOE does a little better than ORE for simplicity, but they're fairly similar. The great thing is you can keep applying this minor bonus constantly, unlike inspiration in D&D 5th. Advantage is a small bonus when applied sparingly, but its rather huge if it were constantly in effect. So a drive or passion bonus in a d20 type game would need to be something smaller, like just a +1. An issue there is these little bonuses nickel and dime the game towards a big mathfest. I'm curious if a "lesser advantage" system of rolling d20+d12 choose the highest would actually be any advantage or not. Mathing it out looks like its about a +1 since your average result is higher with this than just a d20. However, given that a roll of 10-12 is still going to be a failure, I'm not sure if it'd really be enough of a small, constant bonus. You could do something similar with a d4 in Dungeonworld: instead of 2d6 for your roll, it'd be 2d6+1d4 keep the two highest. You'd be a little less likely to fail, though not much more likely to get that grand high roll. Dunno if that really maths out well, but people like rolling extra dice. Another option with DungeonWorld is changing the system to 2d8 (9+ is ok, 13+ is exceptional) then a reliable +1 isn't quite as big as it is in the normal system. 

Advantage in D&D 5th basically puts you at the mercy of your DM as to your good roleplaying. Passions or drives, on the other hand, are easier to sum up and you can remind your GM that you might merit the bonus: that seems crass in D&D 5th and possibly in some other systems. So the size of the bonus matters (gotta be small so it can be more common) but also the method of bringing your psych stat into play.

An alternate bonus would be awarding XP. That doesn't work in modern D&D when characters just end up leveling at the whim of the DM. In 13th Age you could at least hand out an incremental advance, I suppose. In a game like WoD or Fading Suns where XP works differently, you can easily give XP for adhering to your nature or suffering from your flaws. TSR era D&D could certainly get a small XP bonus (+5%?) for adhering to your alignment each session which might be enough for motivation and to inspire some roleplaying. 

I'm not sure that psych stats would necessarily fix everything, but if they were better implemented in some systems they just might help a bit. Adding a Drive to DungeonWorld or D&D (old or new) wouldn't be too difficult if it had almost no mechanical effects, but it seems that the real benefit of these psych stats is to help people play their character and give them a benefit for doing so.

There's an ancillary issue here too, which is constraining choices to fit a group. I honestly liked the constraint from the Temple of Elemental Evil vidya game, which was you picked a party alignment and then created characters. Back when alignment at least constrained some classes, it meant Paladins could only be in a LG, NG, or LN party. Barbarians couldn't be in a Lawful party, while Monks couldn't be in a chaotic party. Binning drives into similar themes might not be necessary, but its worth thinking about building the party as well as the characters.

Sometimes, the rules make all the difference.

Now that the Vampire Dark Ages kickstarter is over, I'm getting back to thinking of my own not-yet-implemented vampire game and vampire stuff in general. I'm struck by the differences in the different editions. I must really be a rules lawyer, because sometimes the differences in the system make me not want to play a certain character concept.

First off, I've always been intrigued by some of the minor bloodlines, particularly the Baali and Salubri. Call me a special snowflake, but I see nothing wrong with being something uncommon in my fantasy games. How the rules implement these guys, however, makes a huge difference.

I'm going to pick on the new larp rules for vampire as an example here, but that shouldn't be to say that they're bad or have the same goals as tabletop rules. But let's say I wanted to play a Baali or Salubri in a local vampire larp and the ST allowed it. I would be quickly discovered and killed, because the medicine skill allows you to determine a vampire's clan. What tyrannical prince wouldn't test the veracity of someone's claims to clan given the ability? I was super impressed that the Auspex telepathy power didn't let you just rip this info from someone's mind, or that even the Tremere blood magic didn't quite just give this info away, but then I found it in the medicine skill?!? Ugh.

Yeah, you can house-rule that, but it basically says that impersonating a vampire of another clan is unfeasible given the larp rules, so you just couldn't do those characters in a Camarilla setting (Sabbat would be awkward, Anarch might be fine). But already I'm adjusting the character I want to play to the particular game, or choosing a character mostly based on the rules since its just too easy to be found out. In the same vein, the Baali are explicitly demonic in the rules. Daimoinon explicitly requires a demonic pact. Not only does that go against some of the story the Baali have, but it makes them much harder to play.

Now, the larp rules are obviously trying to keep rare things rare and overpowered things to a minimum since a game with 30-60+ PCs is very different than a game with 3-6 PCs.  But their system of merits is really odd too. Even if I purchase a Salubri character (a 6-pt merit for the healer type in most settings), I can't also purchase the Golconda Seeker merit (a 5-pt merit) because of the merit limit. No exceptions. It seems like a little oversight there, because you can never have more than 7 points of merits.  And merits are what allow everyone to be a special snowflake in the larp rules. I guess Salubri is so special you can't also go the golconda route.

I'm picking on the MET rules, but I think there are similar issues with how a particular discipline or clan weakness is instantiated by the rules. Also, merit/flaws. I always want to play a Malkavian oracle, but the oracle merit and auspex/dementation don't often seem to add up to a real prophet (note: the MET oracle merit is actually good, while the V20  and new Dark Ages stuff is wishy-washy and lame). In a table-top game the ST can really make or break the Oracular Ability merit though you could almost just as easily play an oracle character without buying that merit by making a deal with the ST.

Anyway, in my brainpan, this sort of stuff fits in the broader discussion of what rules are good and what aren't. Ideally what I'd like to see for some of these things is a discussion in the books about how to interpret powers and abilities. If you allow telepathy to rip anything from a character's mind and the power is common (either repeatable regularly by the PCs or a broader slate of NPCs) then keeping secrets will be impossible. If the Medicine ability let you recognize if two individuals were of the same clan (require two samples) instead of just identifying the clan, that's a world of difference. Should caitiff register as 'no clan' or 'caitiff' or 'unknown clan'? Could you choose one clan (or two?) per dot of medicine that you can identify easily and then have to do the comparison for the others? It makes for a different game if you can't tell the difference between Tremere and Salubri than if they're easily distinguishable with a ritual, path of thaumaturgy, or medicine skill use.

Ultimately it makes me yearn a little for the Gumshoe rules, or perhaps gumshoe-inspired rules where magic (along with other special abilities) has some limits. But the problem is broader: one rule impacts another until there's a whole system. I think a few more games should follow ones like 13th Age or Reign -- which explicitly call out some of their assumptions and intentions. Knowing why the designers of the MET rules decided Medicine should let you determine clan would help me decide how to implement or change that rule.

Or, I'll just not play my Salubri or Baali character in a larp. Not that I'll get much of a chance to play one anyway in the near future.

What if I do like Pathfinder..?

I did a bad thing. When I was looking into Temple of Elemental Evil (the 80s module) I was annoyed that it was a video game and it made it difficult to search for fan-made (i.e. better) maps and notes on how people adapted the module. Then I saw the game was $6. Then I started playing.

Is a relatively faithful adaptation of the third edition rules, making the game run something like those old gold-box games from the TSR era. Its also a relatively faithful adaptation of the module, especially given that the module was designed (as they all kinda were) for DMs to customize them. So I stopped reading the module and focused on the playing the game first. Its pretty good.

Maybe its just because I've avoided video games for much of the past decade (If I got into WoW or something, I'd be a complete recluse), but I got to thinking: these 3.5 rules aren't so bad. And then I wondered what if I like Pathfinder?

As I'm playing with this 5th edition group, I've been realizing that some of what I dislike is play style and some of it is rules. Perception and stealth be damned, but you can use those as you like. Its the style of play that has emerged since third edition though that seems reliant on those skills. Now I'm curious to go back in time and see how some of the World of Darkness games I've played went. Are people constantly rolling perception skills there? Are they more concerned with what's on their sheet than the game they're playing?

I guess the point is that we should probably take each game on its merits, but also that groups and play style can be huge. There are some things that just break the system in 3.5 (wand of cure light wounds..?), but it isn't necessarily an awful system. There's a whole lot of overpowered options for 3.5 (and presumably Pathfinder, just like 4e and such), but overpowered options come as more and more options are added.

Now the trick: how do I get players used to the way I'd like to do things, or train a GM to think the way I want the game to be run?  Obviously the DM has the most sway in how things are done at the table. But if I could get players to players but into the notion of only rolling them when its vital to the story, that'll be a game I'm more interested in playing on either side of the screen. I've just been baffled that the guy running this 5th edition game I'm playing keeps having us roll perception checks for just about everything, and sometimes just has us re-roll skills checks when we should have passed them. Its a lot of rolling for what could be easily narrated and then we'd move on to the more fun bits.

I've had this notion that sometimes players operate with sheet blinders: they don't think beyond what's on their sheet. And that probably motivates a lot of "Can I roll Perception?" questions. But playing the video game and comparing it to this new 5th edition group just seems to have reminded me that the rules don't necessarily tell you how best to use them. A lot of games have house-rules sheets, but maybe we need something like game-style sheets as well.

The Gaming Technology of 13th Age

I've played one session of 5th Edition, but when I sat down to create the character, I found all of my options a little lackluster. 5th Edition starts you off with almost no special powers so you can grow into your character. Now, that's great for newer players. But I wouldn't be surprised if many 5th edition games pull an old school Darksun and start off at 3rd level where you've already picked the path your character will follow.

But what it really meant was I've been looking a lot harder at 13th Age. And man, is there some great stuff in there.

First, the three most widely known aspects of 13th Age are probably the Icons and icon relationships, the escalation die, and One Unique Thing. The icons provide a neat way to bring big NPCs or their factions into play, even if they themselves aren't necessarily seen. The escalation die alters combat so you've got some advantages towards the end. This has two effects. First, combats shouldn't last forever (the 4e grind). Second, defense is a reasonable strategy (wait till your attacks are more potent towards the end of combat). Obviously you can use your big guns right away (a dead enemy can deal no damage) but in some most other games playing defensively is mostly just going to make combats last a lot longer. Since its a mechanic, you can then hang other mechanics off it so an attack might be better or worse if you use it early or late in the battle.

But there's a lot more than that. These aren't all unique to 13th Age (which explicitly calls out the origins of some of these features) but really all add up to make the game more than a simple d20 variant. The best thing is, some of them are more philosophical and easy to port into D&D or another game. Others you could do with minor mechanical tweaks. In general, its easier to export these ideas from 13th Age to your own game than remove the rulesy bits from 13th Age. Removing the Icons would have minimal effects on most classes, but removing the escalation die might be quite a bit broader, for example. Removing One Unique Thing just makes 13th Age less custom, while the backgrounds could be replaced with Gumshoe style skills (perhaps based on Lorefinder?).

Middle of or lower of 2-3 stats. In 13th Age, you use the middle or lower of ability scores to determine your defenses (or attacks for multiclass characters, it seems). This means taking one 18 and dumping the other stats isn't such a great plan. A simple and elegant solution which min-maxers can still try to make use of, but not to the extent as most versions of D&D or Pathfinder. 4th Edition did the reverse of this: higher of dex or int for reflex. This meant you could dump one easily. Median of three or lowest of two means you've got a couple scores that still matter. This might mean, however, that having one or two really low scores (if you apply it even more broadly) might make a character significantly less playable.

Fail Forward. This isn't unique to 13th Age, its more of a philosophy. Missed attacks might still deal some damage (hit points are not equal to meat or specific wounds anyway). A failed climbing check might simply result in damage instead of an insurmountable obstacle (though maybe the cliff does prove insurmountable and you have to go the long or dangerous way around). Ever since one game where I played where my character had virtually no chance of making the required check and the DM wouldn't let us advance without it... This has been my philosophy.

Incremental Advance. Levels are big deals. But you can give out a portion of a level early as a bonus for good RP or just regular attendance. This means you might your next feat or class feature early, which are nice and concrete benefits, and playing 4 sessions between levels should still be rewarding.

Weapon Damage and AC by Class. This seems very DungeonWorld to me, but I kinda like it. A barbarian might always do more damage with a longsword than a bard. Ain't nothing wrong with that. Likewise a paladin wearing full plate might have a better AC than the barbarian. Because that's how the class works.

Class complexity ranking. I'm not necessarily of the opinion that each class needs its own set of special powers to make it play different than another, and I certainly think that (by and large) a set of spells does enough for the wizard without needing fiddly once-per-day non-spell powers or whatnot. But in a game where each class does play quite differently and (in general) has its own unique schtick, the ranking of which classes are great for beginners is precious. Barbarians, paladins, and rangers are easier because most of their stuff is basic attacks. Fighters and clerics are more complex because they have more options in play. Sorcerers and rogues are even more complex, because they've got a lot of different options. Wizards can be the most (or closer to sorcerers and rogues) depending on their choices. The additional classes in 13 True Ways (Chaos mage, Commander, Druid, Monk, Necromancer, Occultist) aren't ranked because they're all at least at the Sorcerer/Rogue level of complexity. They call out that the Chaos Mage and Necromancer might be easy enough for beginning players, but its nice to be able to show a list to people too. 13th Age is a little more "do as thou will" though for that.

Backgrounds as Skills. This is one of the the skill systems I actually like. I think I like the Gumshoe system too, but this one I do like. In 13th Age, you use nifty backgrounds as your skills. So if I'm a 'Shaman for a tribe of ancestor worshippers who were wiped out in gnoll attack', I might use that background for tribal etiquette, knowledge of rival tribes, shamanic practices, or gnoll tactics. Min-maxers might be stumped with these and try for a "jack of all trades +5" background, but a crafty GM will just hook them into the plot more. Plus, your class stuff doesn't really interfere or modify backgrounds much, so there's nothing for min-maxers to do but create an intricate background for their character.

Fight in Spirit. This apparently comes from Fate, or so the interwebs claimed. When you're out of a fight, you pull a Final Fantasy where your character might be praying for their allies, or otherwise inspire people and grant a minor bonus. Helps keep people involved even if they've just been irrevocable slain.

Technology of the d20. Critical hits and fumbles have been around for a long time on 20s and 1s, and at least by late second edition we started seeing what resembles today's expanded crit range (On a hit of 18-20...). But 13th Age really brings this all out by having some powers (flexible attacks, lots with the bard, fighter, and sorcerer but also some on the druid and monk iirc plus monsters galore!) activate on a natural even or odd, on a natural high-ish number (16+), on a lower number (two-weapon fighting lets you reroll on a 2), a bad miss (1-5), etc.

Player Pics. An easy to miss section, but it just says let your players (or one of them each session or after a big milestone) pick one element that's been in the game to highlight. A villain, a cult which was sorta forgotten about 2 sessions ago, etc. Then you try to work it in.

Mooks. Obviously we saw these in 4e, but these rules are nice.

Nastier specials. Many monsters have additional optional attacks which can be used to spice things up or if the encounter is significantly weaker than you expected. It also easily lets you make a stronger leader figure for the group of enemies.

Death Attacks and the last gasp save. Death attacks done pretty well. The medusa in the basic rule book is a really nice example of how these save-or-die mechanics can be threatening but not overwhelming (and based one one or two bad rolls).

Conditional spell lists. This is a strange one from 13 True Ways, but the Chaos Mage and the Druids with the terrain magic talent have a set of spells which changed from encounter to encounter. The Chaos Mage (predictably) randomly has a small set of options on any given turn in combat, while the terrain magic talent of the druid gives you different spells depending on what type of terrain you're in (broadly construed). I love this idea so much that the druid can have a nice geomancer feel. (Druids are a super versatile class and can really take a major and minor talent --like terrain magic, an animal companion, healing, or shapeshifting--or go for breadth with three different minor talents for versatility.)

I might have missed one or two, by the way.

Its not really fair to compare this directly to D&D. Obviously 5th edition has some of its own new tech (the double roll for advantage all over the place, one proficiency bonus for lots of things) and other implementations of similar tech (bounded accuracy or a lower range of bonuses over the game). Some of these are also in 13th Age: bounded accuracy because the game only goes up to level 10 (so a +1 per level has a hard cap), some classes like the Barbarian's rage gets the double rolls (and crits if you hit and both dice are 11+), etc. Also, 13th Age had all of previous D&D to draw from, in addition to more indie and opinionated games. I'm not sure how the timeline of 13th Age and DungeonWorld match up, one or both of them could have drawn from the other if they were in progress around summer 2012, but I think its fair to say that 13th Age makes D&D much more like an indie game in the vein of DungeonWorld but quite a bit crunchier in terms of mechanics and rolling.

Now I just gotta herd some nerds into my living room to give this baby the testing it deserves.

5th Edition: W(h)ither Creativity?

While I haven't gotten a chance to play some 5th Edition yet, one aspect of it that bothers me a bit is the the lack of explicit creative thinking instructions that we see in the game. I call this "sheet blinders".

This is something that I've noticed when running 4th edition. Your powers list some very specific things you can do. Much to my shame, when running a one-shot 4e game years ago, a friend of mine was still thinking in older D&D mode (or non-D&D mode?) and asked to push an enemy through a window. My response was something along the lines of: "Use one of the powers on your sheet. Do you have one that pushes?"

I think it's the same thing when I play some games with folk back home and people instinctively reach for the d20 and roll perception before the DM has a chance to describe the situation. The book or your sheet explicitly says its an option, so you better do it. And you don't always think beyond the options listed on your sheet.

While I've ragged on cantrips before, I really feel this in cantrips and some of the cantrip-like powers. Look at druidcraft, prestidigitation, and thaumaturgy. They give you a relatively fixed set of options that you can do, with a bit of leeway in "harmless sensory effects". But the tinker rock gnome has the same problem. They can craft one of three little mechanical devices. Can they instead create small clockwork traps? Can ray of frost freeze things? Can I light a candle with flame bolt? Even 13th Age, which has some options of giving the wizard an array of cantrips that do things based on your spells prepared has them only do harmless effects, but what about useful ones?

Maybe other editions didn't call out as many imaginative possibilities like this either: I'll have to do some comparisons. But I think the designers missed an opportunity when the Dragonborn and Tiefling descriptions (or the uncommon races sidebar) didn't suggest variants: If you don't like the concept of Dragonborn or Tieflings as major races in your game, you could still let players play them as unique characters. Maybe half-dragons or half-fiends could have a place in your story (Inu Yasha style?) as rare or unique individuals when the description of the race as a whole doesn't fit? That's one little side-bar from the 4th edition Dark Sun setting that I think would have been well placed in the new PH.

I hope the new DMG has some of this advice stuck in it, but I suppose I can see listing very specific minor effects as a way of keeping things saner in organized play. I just hate that it might lead someone to say "no, your cantrip can't do that" rather than "yeah, but its not quite powerful enough to do all of that." Which is sad, because last summer with the playtest rules, I loved the creativity of players trying to tip bookcases over on enemies when they went Against the Cult of the Reptile God. All the talk of OSR games and such, that's one of the key elements that I want to get back into D&D. Somehow I didn't feel like that level of creativity was absent in Fading Suns or Vampire or other storytelling/indie games, but maybe the lack of creativity is one of the elements that made 4e feel a bit more like a videogame than a tabletop RPG.

That said, even if the DMG doesn't tackle this, it seems like something that a little foresight and planning can help alleviate: just tell players to think outside the box (and the bullet points in power descriptions).

Hidden rules in D&D Next

I am largely happy with the current D&D next rules, despite criticizing and critiquing them. They need more spells and races and classes and such, and the math needs to be fixed a bit, and things interact in strange ways. But one other problem I'm seeing is a strange set of "hidden rules" that require some reading between the lines, when things could be explicitly pointed out. Here's the main examples that come to mind right now:

• Rogues sneak attack by giving up advantage, and each rogue scheme has a way to get advantage fairly easily. So the two features are really quite intertwined, but you need to read between the lines a bit to link them. This one is fairly obvious, but could be easily overlooked, especially when playing a pre-generated rogue.

• Monks get a hidden "flurry of blows" power because martial arts lets them "dual wield" their unarmed attacks. This isn't really any different from other characters, but its there. Monks don't necessarily need a multiattacking power, but people playing a monk sort of expect that they'll be making lots of attacks and it takes some reading of the Martial Arts feat and weapon properties and such to put this together.

• All rogues can open locks and disarm traps. This is hidden away in one line that says: Tool proficiency: thieves' tools. I can hardly believe it took me this long to figure out that proficiency in thieves' tools did this, and it made me much more likely to play a rogue since I didn't need to waste two feats to open locks and disarm traps.

• On a similar note, Open Locks and Disarm Traps are secretly skills. To get them, you need to take the feat though, and you can only use them if you're proficient with thieves' tools. This presents one from taking skill focus or mastery for these non-skills. It would be nice to list this in the skills part, essentially saying that they're skills that can only be obtained with proficiency in thieves' tools and that they're not eligible for the skill-boosting feats.

Jakandor: A Forgotten Setting

I have to admit that I really have a raging nerd boner for an old little setting called Jakandor. Well, half of it at least. This was a second edition setting (weren't they all?) that focuses on the class of two cultures: the magical Charonti and the stupidly named generic Vikings/Indians called the Knorr. It wouldn't be so bad if that weren't a soup product.

Anyway, the Knorr stuff is just ok. Warrior culture, animal totems. Meh. The magical Charonti is where its at.

Daily Resources in D&D Next

One thing that the new D&D is still struggling with are daily powers and the 5-minute work day. Except now, I think they're making it potentially worse because monks and paladins are joining the ranks of the blast-and-rest group.

I wrote before about one simple fix, which is simply that all of your "daily" resources don't refresh when you rest. But now besides wizards, clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins having a daily amount of spell slots, most classes have additional daily powers:

• channel divinity - clerics & paladins
• wild shape - druids
• ki - monks
• rage - barbarians

So these classes can all suffer from out-of-resources syndrome. Then there's hit dice too, so even fighters and rogues can run out of those.

There are some attempts at fixing this though. Barbarians get another attack-type that they can use all day (get advantage by giving advantage) and wizards as well as druids who focus on spellcasting recover some low-level spell slots after short rests. At-will cantrips also give some options when spending daily resources seem excessive. But this doesn't change the fact that one rest basically replenishes everyone.

The hit die recovery mechanic for long rests is one way to help kill the five-minute work day. Currently you recover all your HP but only half your hit dice. I'm not sure that's the implementation that sings to me, but I like it. You don't get all your resources back. Now if they can apply this to spells and other daily features, that'd be great. Of course, there's really no reason that all of these things need to be different resources, they're all basically "spell slots". I'm not sure why wild shape can't be a set of druid spells (with wild-shape focused druids getting more of them and fewer other spells), or even turn undead could be a simple cleric/paladin spell.

Second Edition (and before?) had some version of this where, by the book, you needed a lot more time to memorize powerful spells. So you might have to really choose what to regain when you're resting during an adventure.

One objection to worrying about this is that the DM's responsibility is to ensure that games move along and to enforce plot-based reasons to avoid this problem entirely. I'm somewhat sympathetic to this point. I've rarely encountered this in games that I've played in or ran. However, a well-crafted game should ensure that most DMs won't find this well-known problem to be a problem.

Basically, resting should still be a reasonable option: you're trading time for some resources. The problem is when all your resources return with too little time spent. A simple mechanic would just be regain half your spent resources (round up).

That might be too simplistic though for the current set of rules. For spells, maybe you regain slots top-down so you do regain most of your big guns, but maybe not all the little ones (or go bottom-up so that you really have to think before using those big guns). But then with wild-shape, channel divinity, rage, and ki... you've got so little that it seems like maybe you should just regain one less than your maximum (minimum 1, I guess), so if you're 100% spent you still get most of your mojo back.

If I ran the show, I'd make all the daily points (spells, monk/psionic ki points, berserker rage, etc.) one system and then have a simple way for daily stuff to be recovered to around 75% capacity. Or, well, at least I'd heavily consider this, easier to apply an optional get-all-your-shit-back rule or grittier recover-slower rule and have the five-minute work day addressed in the base.

D&D Next: Putting it all together

Now that I've made a few characters with D&D Next, I'm struck by how the rules don't yet mesh well together. There are a few different systems in place that really need to be ironed out, and I'm a bit shocked because they've been playtesting this stuff for a while now. Examples:

A Forest Gnome (ok, I know its a new race, but still) Illusionist wizard has features that just plain overlap. Forest gnomes get the illusion cantrip and so do illusionists. This could be fixed if there's 2 cantrips from each school, but I'm not sure they want to give at-will invisibility as a cantrip and veiling/disguise is the other illusion option after creating illusions. Not only that, but Gnomes gain advantage on saves against magic (in general) which overlaps with Illusionists getting advantage on saves against illusion spells.

The Assassin scheme for the rogue gains the sneak skill, but also the hide in shadows feat, which grants the sneak skill (and 10' of dark vision). Though the Assassin seems tacked on in other ways, because they're the only scheme who doesn't get mostly specific expert feats. They need a poisoner feat which lets them brew and identify poisons.

Races grant weapon/armor proficiency, but it is incredibly hard to find a place to use these proficiencies. Elves are reasonable, because the long sword and longbow are solid weapons, but most weapon using classes will have them already. Its a little better for Mountain dwarves who gain proficiency with light and medium armor, but also a +1 bonus to AC when wearing medium or heavy armor. So something like elves being able to use long swords as finesse weapons might help a little. I liked the earlier version where these iconic weapons (or at least the simple versions of them) gained a damage die bump (i.e. Halflings with slings and such). Alternately, it might be nice to have that as a "cultural" option, so Elven Culture gives you proficiency with long and short swords (and ability to use them as finesse weapons) and long/short bows, or recall lore Magic or History or Natural.

Light/small weapons are overshadowed by other weapons. Daggers, for example, in earlier editions don't do much damage but they have an advantage in number of attacks or weapon speed. So these could be made more iconic with some additional properties (daggers and other small weapons, maybe could get a power where you get to make an attack of opportunity whenever someone tries to grapple you).

There is also a lot of ambiguity in how things stack (or don't). Mage Armor, for example, is worded such that it isn't clear if an Elven Monk could take Mage Armor and still gain his wisdom bonus. Or, frankly, if a Dwarven Wizard could use Mage Armor at the same time as other armor which he's proficient in. Third edition named every type of bonus, which wasn't an elegant system but you knew what could stack and what couldn't.

Anyway, none of this is entirely unexpected, except we're quite a ways out from the original playtests and these seem like some major issues to deal with. I expect there'll be a new packet in a month for GenCon and I hope it shows they're working on what types of bonuses races and classes should get and how to ensure they don't overlap to the point of uselessness.

Lingering Innovations: Magic Systems

Looking at this recent Legends & Lore column, it seems like we might get Spells & Magic style magic systems again in D&D Next.

This is a little disappointing to me. Primarily because the article seems to trumpet this as some major innovation: the DM gets to control the magic system. Magic systems are not really something new in D&D. We even see some similar ideas in the third edition Unearthed Arcana and SRD: both recharge magic and spell points.

The marriage of rules and setting

Reading some of the recent D&D Next articles, I'm struck with the endeavor to (re)define classic parts of the game without admitting they're creating a new setting. Take the recent article on Minotaurs, for example.

Minotaurism is now a curse (or at least dark pact?) relating to Baphomet. Or it could be, depending on who wins the concept battle. But what does this buy us for the game?

Without a setting, they're designing for nothing. A nice take on the Minotaur, possibly, but where does it fit in the grant scheme of things? Well, there's not a grand scheme for it to fit.

How many systems does a game like D&D need?

I've written before about unique class systems in D&D, but how many should there be? Clearly older editions, like Second Edition, had a bloat of independent systems. Third edition did wonders to try to unify many of these with the d20 mechanic (pick up a d20, roll high). Fourth edition rolled back some of these systems, or at least rolled them higher into the game's math. The early classes from the first two players' handbooks (and some from the third) followed the same template of at-will, encounter, and daily powers. But each class had its own unique (and often lengthy) list. Also, systems like feats and action points had every class participate, though feats might be restricted.

I think spells are one great system where powers can be shared. Even if there is a distinction between Arcane and Divine (And Primal? And Psionic?) magic, allowing classes like the sorcerer, warlock, and wizard to share spells means that no one class will get all the support (I'm looking at you, 4e Wizard/Mage/Witch/Sha`ir/Bladesinger especially compared to the artificer, swordmage, runepriest, and seeker). I think 4e discovered this in the essentials run, but it would have been great if there were more power-source based powers that all martial or arcane classes could share.

Second Wind + Rampage = a Heroic Moment? or Action Points revised.

D&D 4e introduced a lot of interesting elements to the game. Despite its focus on math and balance, I think some of these features are really good, because the add to the narration as well as being viable in combat. Some of these disparate features could be linked, however, and I've got an inkling of how to do it.

Second wind allows PCs to spend one of their own healing surges in combat, so its basically a self heal. The concept doesn't quite match the mechanic though, because one doesn't necessarily control a second wind in real life. It does, however, capture that heroic moment when the protagonist manages to shake off their pain, stand up again, and whump whump whump. So over all, I think its a good mechanic, though it might be better with a little tweaking. Depending on how HP works, it may be divorced from surges. I'd also be interested in seeing how it might work as slightly random. It also might be a good candidate for an actual daily power, as it makes some sense that you might not be able to catch a second wind multiple times a day.

This brings me to a random class feature: the Barbarian's Rampage. When he scores a critical hit, the barbarian can make a free charge attack. This is a neat feature, but I don't know that I really saw it come into play. Its also not really modifiable, except by what boosts critical hits. So barbarians with Rampage get an extra benefit from their critical hits, meaning they ought to get things to boost those.

As I was thinking about this, these two mechanics seem like they do the same sort of thing. They represent that heroic moment when someone pushes through the pain and tries to pull off a minor hail mary.

Spellcasters, Spellslots, and Quadratic Wizards

Archmages don't bother with puny magic missiles.

One of the thing that irks me about D&D Next is the bizarre spell slot system. Not that it exists, because it seemed to function just fine in earlier editions of D&D. No, what grinds my gears is the idea of applying the Heightened Spell feat (in some way) to every caster class.

See, in the beforetimes, a wizard could memorize a number of magic missile spells, a number of fireballs, and so forth. Even with Spells and Magic, a wizard had a sort of finite spell memory.

The idea of Heightened Spell is using spell slots of higher level to cast more potent lower level spells. But what's missing is the theory for why a wizard can memorize Magic Missile as a third level spell for greater effect.

Spells by Level Table

In thinking about the imbalance between classes, the casters are rightly considered as overshadowing the warriors as they advance in level. The scales tip somewhere around 6th or 7th level. Certainly by 9th or 10th level casters with their 5th level spells can begin to overcome all sorts of mundane obstacles that fighters and thieves can't be compared.

This is even why some people play a variant where level advancement stops at 6th level in the 3.5 system: you keep playing and gaining feats and such, but your raw power tops out around the point where a fighter can still overpower a wizard with a bit of luck and planning (or vice versa).

There's even a new phrase that's been bandied about recently: linear fighter, quadradic wizard. This comes about because of two factors: wizards gain more spells at each level, and those spells also gain power as the wizard gains levels. Fighters, on the other hand, have a relatively linear progression of feats and extra attacks which don't scale to the same degree.

So this seems relatively fixeable by taking a closer look at the spell tables for wizards, and capping spell power at each level. I'll focus on the spell advancement here, rather than limiting fireball to 5d6 damage (at least as a third level spell, 4th level fireball might do 7d6 damage).

So what if we found an advancement chart that looked more like this one:

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1	1
2	2
3	2	1
4	2	2
5	2	2	1
6	2	2	2
7	2	2	2	1
8	2	2	2	2
9	2	2	2	2	1
10	2	2	2	2	2
11	2	2	2	2	2	1
12	2	2	2	2	2	2
13	2	2	2	2	2	2	1
14	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
15	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	1
16	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
17	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	1
18	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
19	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	3
20	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	4

Clearly the idea here--gaining one new spell of the highest level--lose a bit of elegance at 19th level when you need a number higher than two in the chart. Each new character level brings the wizard a new spell, so a system like this still lets a spellcaster advance in power. Its just not to the same extent as other editions where the caster has 5+ spells of each of the first five spell levels. A 20th level magic user in first edition AD&D has 32 spells, an illusionist has 30 and a cleric has a whopping 49 (though only the magic user can use spells past 7th level). And this is in the era before clerics had spells that would let them fight as well as a fighter. Third edition wizards have 36 spells at 20th level which are evenly spread out.  Of course, the table would have to be modified for Sorcerers and Bards who are stronger and weaker casters respectively.

If this was the only change you made to a D&D game before 4th edition, I think it would stall that tipping point to some extent. Wizards would still be playing the resource management game at higher levels, where the thieve's ability to detect traps, open locks, and climb walls might make wizards think twice about wasting spell slots on low-level spells like find traps, knock, and spider climb.

Of course, earlier editions had other restrictions to help reign in wizards, including spell components, lengthy spell memorization times, and slow casting times which could result in wizards losing their spells before they were able to get them off. In 3rd editions, without reigning in scroll creation, a system like this wouldn't help as much there. Its not perfect, but something to consider for a reimagined or re-designed older edition of the game.