Wardrobe malfunction

9 Replies

At the tail end of this encumbrance system, Logan Knight included this bonus optional rule, called wardrobe malfunction:

If you are hit in combat you can choose to sacrifice a Significant Item or other piece of equipment before damage is rolled. If you can explain how the attack removed or destroyed that item instead of injuring you, it happened.

As he writes, it’s like shields will be splintered, but for everyone. Personally, I don’t care for shields will be splintered (for a number of reasons that are not relevant to the purpose of this post), but this did give me an idea for a variant wardrobe malfunction rule.

In my game, there are no negative HP. Rather, when reduced to zero HP, a saving throw is required, with failure indicating death and success indicating unconsciousness. Rather than make unconsciousness always the cost of success, there could be a chance of an item taking the brunt of the almost fatal blow, allowing the character to remain conscious at 1 HP. This chance could be 50/50 (potentially requiring another die roll) or maybe occur on a natural saving throw roll of something like 19 or 20 (10% chance seems about right for this).

This does add a little bit of complication to a rule that I value primarily for its lethal simplicity. And such complications pave the way to death and dismemberment charts (which, to be clear, I also enjoy using sometimes). That said, the variation added by this additional potential outcome (lose a randomly determined item but stay conscious) might be worth a slight increase in complexity.

Another stunt system

11 Replies

Jeremy D. recently posted this simple and elegant stunt system based on the DCC deed die but intended for use with traditional rules. The basic idea is that attack rolls are made with d16 + class hit die (assuming B/X style variable hit dice), and a pre-declared stunt is successful if the hit die comes up 4 or greater and the attack roll is high enough to hit. This gives fighters (d8 hit die) roughly a 62% (4 or higher on a d8) chance of pulling off a stunt, given a high enough modified attack roll. Magic-users (d4 hit die) have a 25% chance (4 or higher on a d4). What’s the trade-off? If the stunt fails, the attack misses, even if the number would have been high enough to hit had a stunt not been attempted.

The system is clean, but does require Zocchi dice, which is a downside. However, thinking about the trade-off gave me an idea for another system based on a similar principle. The basic idea is to gamble on two independent dice both coming up high. So why not make stunts require success on two attack roles rather than one? This would still represent a single action, but would be similar to roll twice, take the lowest (since both need to hit). The essential dynamic of fighters being most able to benefit from stunts would be preserved, because (assuming the same level) fighters will have the best chance of hitting. This also seems like it would be easy to communicate to players: just make two attack rolls; no new mechanics would need to be introduced.

S Series Handouts

Session Record Sheet

Marching order and roles

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Chaos party with marching order roles

Establishing a marching order in a videoconference game is a hassle. It always seems to take longer than it should, and then PCs in the middle or back are doing things which should often disturb the previous marching order, but practically speaking it’s just difficult to keep everything in mind along with everything else going on, such as describing the area, mapping on Twiddla, or checking off the passage of time.

Dungeon World has a formalized system for wilderness exploration which requires characters to take on different roles, the Undertake a Perilous Journey move. Specifically, characters can take on the trailblazer, scout, and quartermaster roles, which, respectively, improve speed, decrease the chance of being surprised, and decrease the number of rations consumed during the journey. Each PC that takes on one of those jobs makes the equivalent of a wisdom check (roll +WIS in DW parlance), and the result of that roll contributes to their given job.

A similar system could perhaps be used for abstracting marching order. Rather than worrying about exact order, just assign the key positions. Roles that I can think of are:

Scout: Assumed to travel beyond the light source, and report back periodically. Using a scout guarantees that the party will not be surprised from the front by visible dangers, though the scout risks being surprised.
Vanguard: protects the center of the group from melee. Up to two may take the vanguard role given 10′ hallways.
Second rank: may attack with reach weapons if the vanguard is in melee.
Torchbearer: you might want to double up on this role, as the light source is an obvious target for the minions of darkness.
Rearguard: function like the vanguard if the group is approached from behind.

So, rather than “give me a marching order,” instead: “who is scouting? who is vanguard?” And so forth. The actual order is not so important as long as the roles are filled. These roles can also carry some weight in more open spaces. For example, the vanguard could be assumed to intercept incoming melee combatants first, followed by the second rank, etc. PCs could of course override these default positions at any point, but I think a shared understanding about these roles might make abstract combat flow more smoothly, especially in games played over Google hangouts or similar technology.

I am also planning on including fields for these roles on my session record sheet. Such spaces could also double as session attendance (useful for things like handling treasure awards later).

OSRCon 2013

Simple corruption

10 Replies

All magic-user spells are considered black magic. A magic-user has corruption equal to the highest level of magic-user spell that has been cast. Cast a second level spell, congratulations: you are now corruption-2. Make up some interesting (non-mechanical) external manifestation to represent each point of corruption (solid black eyes, snake tongue, whatever). Bonus points if this has some relation to the magic-user’s modus operandi (such as signature spells).

Corruption is:

Subtracted from all magical healing
A bonus to saving throws against chaos effects
Chance in 6 that the magic-user registers as “chaotic” for magical effects or turning
A bonus to armor class
Chance in 6 that the magic-user ignores non-magical damage
HD of terror released into the world upon the magic-user’s death

A point of corruption may be removed using remove curse (the magic-user gets a saving throw if this is not consensual).

Magic-users are “turned” as undead of equivalent hit dice and are prevented from casting while turned. Turned magic-users are not forced to flee (but they probably will if they are smart). Turned magic-users get a saving throw each round to end the turn. Magic-users subject to the D (“destroyed”) effect are not destroyed, but get no saving throws.

I touched on this idea previously, but I think this current approach is much better.

Some other variations, courtesy of fine folks on Google Plus:

“D” results are as hold person
“You could make corruption juice explode out of the magic user’s orifices for damage” (Justin W.)
[Editor: perhaps 1d6 damage per point of extra success on the turn roll?]
Successful turning drains prepared spells (Duncan Y., James S.)
[Editor: perhaps one spell per point of extra success on the turn roll?]
As above, magic-user loses 2d6 spell levels worth of prepared spells, lower level spells affected first (Brock C.)

You need to be in my RPG circle to access the above conversation.

Thief Roll

11 Replies

Jack from TOTGAD has an attractive house rule whereby he uses the “hear noise” d6 chance as the system for resolving all thief skills. This seems pretty reasonable to me, especially assuming that the alternative is the fixed percentile progression given in OD&D or B/X. All of the percentile skills start off rather low and slowly increase as levels are gained, with arbitrary differences between the various skills and no option to specialize in one skill over another (unlike the point buy systems of, for example, LotFP or Second Edition AD&D).

Looking at the OD&D thief (in Supplement I: Greyhawk), why does open locks start at 15% and move silently start at 20%? Do we really care about this distinction, given that all the skills start out at roughly the same level and increase at approximately the same rate? The one exception is climb walls, which starts out at 87%. But “always use hear noise” with perhaps one special case for climb walls is still far simpler than the official multiple stat percentile system, with functionally similar outcomes.

The schedule of thief hear noise improvement (from Greyhawk, page 11) is as follows. (Thanks to ODD74 for discussion about interpreting hear noise in the OD&D context.)

OD&D Thief Hear Noise
Level	1–2	3–6	7–10	11–12	13–14
Hear Noise	1-2	1-3	1-4	1-5	1-6
Effective d6 bonus	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5

However, just when I was about to throw in my lot with this method, I realized that it does not allow for the variable degrees of success that I use with the old percentile system. That is, using d6, and without another roll, how do I distinguish between “no progress” and catastrophe? 16% (1 in 6) is too high of a chance for critical failure. In my current approach to thief skills, this is pretty important. Basically, if you fail your thief skill roll, but don’t roll 96 or higher, you don’t obtain your objective, but you can try again. The top 5% is the equivalent of rolling a natural 1 on an attack roll.

According to Greyhawk (page 11), pickpocket or move silently is the most favorable thief skill column, so one could just use that as a general thievery skill similarly to how Jack uses hear noise and preserve the 5% fumble chance.

Reactions

7 Replies

Recently, I wrote about an interception system which allows characters to defend allies by blocking incoming attacks. Interception belongs to a broader category of actions that can be taken out of turn. Each broad class group has it’s own type of reaction. Magic-users may try to disrupt enemy casters with counter-spells and thieves may take opportunistic actions.

Counter-spell. There are many different ways of resolving counter-spells, but the important point here for magic-users is that they don’t need to hold an action to be able to attempt a counter. They get one for free. Whether a counter-spell should require some sort of resource cost (maybe burning a spell?) depends primarily on the magic system. A simple “attack roll” system would work well for trad D&D if you want to decrease the opportunity cost of using a counter-spell (1d20 + half-level + int bonus >= 10 + enemy spell level, for example).

Opportunism. This kind of action may be used for something like an attempt to grab a pouch from the belt of a passing enemy. Perhaps a dexterity check is required for success depending on the action in question. Remember that this is a reaction, not a free action.

Characters may not take more than one reaction per turn, and only primary PCs (not retainers) may use reactions. This rule is to decrease potential complexity and to mitigate any game slow-down caused by extra actions. It is not expected that reactions will be relevant during every combat round.

Clerics, being a species of fighter/mage, could (at character creation time) choose either the intercept or counter-spell reaction type. Intercept would be more appropriate for crusader style clerics, whereas counter-spell might be useful to a witch hunter.

Monstrosities

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Monstrosities

As part of the recent Swords & Wizardry Complete reissue Kickstarter, the S&W Monster Book was also replaced by the new Monstrosities. The basic format is one page per monster, each with a picture, somewhat reminiscent of the second edition Monstrous Manual. It is a relatively large book (slightly over 550 pages), though not so large that it is unpleasant to use. The interior is all black and white.

First, the positives. The cover image is evocative and unique. The rich color is gorgeous, and it avoids the looking like a cliche fantasy picture. It actually looks like a painting. I could see how the cover might not be to all tastes, but I like it. The binding is sturdy (and signature sewn). Overall, the physical artifact feels like a well-made book, and is up to the (high) bookbinding standards of Frog God Games. Each monster also includes an encounter sketch, which is a great idea.

Monstrosities further shines as an OGL reference work for module writers that want to reference classic monsters. The entire text (not the images) is OGL, and each monster has stats in single line form (convenient for copying & pasting) in addition to the AD&D multi-line key/value standard. This is actually a useful form of redundancy. The Tome of Horrors Complete included a short tutorial about how to reuse OGL monsters legally too, which would have been a nice sort of thing to include in Monstrosities.

There are plenty of good monsters contained within. Malizsewski’s HP-draining “redcap” version of the goblin has creepy fairytale atmosphere and uncommon, interesting mechanics. Sean Wills contributed an adventurer-trapping worm that lures explorers into its stomach creatively. Or Random’s parasitic spectre (it does more or less what you would expect, but it’s still a good idea, and well implemented). Just for three examples.

Can you tell what this smear is supposed to be?

That said, there are also quite a few negatives. First, the interior art is mostly uninspired. It ranges from okay to downright bad (with obvious computer shading). There are a few good pieces by Jason Sholtis, though even those are often reused from other products. In the age of plentiful, inspired talent on sites like DeviantArt, this seems to be a huge shortcoming, especially in a bestiary. More samples are provided at the bottom of this post.

Page space use

Second, and most glaring, is that many of the pages are between 25 and 50 percent blank. Some are more than half blank. While the encounter sketches are welcome, the total absence any maps was also a lost opportunity. Consider how good a book like this could have been if filled with Dyson-style lair maps? That is an as yet unfilled market niche.

Third, many pages are spent on classic monsters such as goblins. Pretty much all trad rule sets (including all three versions of Swords & Wizardry) include a good portion of these monsters. To be fair, some of these retreads are somewhat redeemed by the included encounter sketches, but I still wonder about the intended audience. There already exist good, free references of classic monsters for the original game (see every retro-clone with a free version), and of course the original Monster Manual is not hard to find. This also means that the creative, community-created monsters mentioned above are mixed in with old standbys like rocs, sahuagin, and shadows. While this is not a huge problem, it does dilute what could otherwise have been a unique bestiary with a very strong personality, like the Fiend Folio (which is now back in print!). Basically, same-old creatures feel a bit like padding (and probably inflate the price).

Some pages are almost a total wash. For example, the entirety of the useful information content on the zombie raven page are the words “zombie” and “raven.” Now, I like zombie ravens just as much as the next necromancer, but I don’t need a page of text to tell me that they can fly, that they have 1 HD, that they have undead immunities, and that an encounter with them might entail a flock. Does anybody? I can’t imagine that being useful to even a total newcomer.

Overall, there are some good ideas in the text part of the book, but the illustrations are hugely disappointing and the layout is a bad use of space. I don’t want to sound too negative–as Wayne R. writes, the encounters in Monstrosities could, strung together, make an reasonable hex crawl, and it would be interesting to see such an implied setting come into focus.

This is a “pyre” zombie, so I think that is supposed to be flame

Hey, this one is good! …

... but it is also an example of terrible layout.

…but it also is an example of terrible layout.

Really?

Sholtis' shroom is good, but also in Demonspore

Sholtis’ shroom has a goofy majesty, but it’s also in Demonspore

Too much smudge tool

Necropraxis

Classic fantasy roleplaying games and loosely associated thoughts

Wardrobe malfunction

Another stunt system

S Series Handouts

Session Record Sheet

Marching order and roles

OSRCon 2013

Simple corruption

Thief Roll

Reactions

Monstrosities