Infravision and Mapping

I lied, the nomad post is still in the works (it's like 80% done but I need to recheck my math and I had to reinstall my OS because I realized my kernel hadn't been updated since October 2018 and it's been an exciting two years for kernel exploits; I haven't copied my sourcebooks back over yet because my cat spilled water on the wallwart for my external hard drive enclosure.  It's been a fun week) but I had a quick thought while taking the trash out.

ACKS goes hard on removing infravision from PC races, because it leads to the party getting split into the infra-haves and the infra-have-nots.  I observed something like this once when I ran OSRIC - the assassins with infravision went out ahead and had all the adventure while the rest of the party hung back and occasionally came running to the rescue.  It wasn't great.  So I tend to agree with this move on ACKS' part.

I've been thinking about trying to run some OSE, which gives dwarves and elves 60' infravision.  I've been considering removing it from them but then I'd have to compensate them or rejigger their XP progression and it would get annoying.

Another issue I've run into while contemplating this is that I like having players maintain their own map of the dungeon (particularly - having one or more players each maintain their own maps representing items in the world that are being maintained by a character with two hands free), and that's annoying to do with VTTs.

Holding both of these in my head, they got to seeming sort of related.  Maybe mapping is one of the secret balance-points for infravision.  Maybe the rule "It is not possible to read in the dark with infravision, because fine detail cannot be perceived", the detail that it's heat vision instead of just light amplification, is important, because it means that if you have scouts with infravision out ahead of the party, they can't be mapping.  If you have a full-infravision party, they still need a light source to map.  So then you either need to have amazing spatial memory, or infravision becomes a fallback for when the light has been extinguished.

It's still not perfect; you could still get into a situation where you have the room-clearing commando group of dwarves and elves and then the baggage train of mapping humans and hobbits.  But it's a thought I hadn't had or heard explicitly before.  Maybe part of the cause when I ran into this problem in OSRIC is that I didn't know what I was doing and didn't make the party make their own map (also didn't throw random encounters at the back half of the party).

Mailbag 4: Trailblazer and OSRIC

Big six magic items: The 'big six' items in 3.x D&D are items which provide a constant effect bonus to one of your core statistics - ability scores, AC, to-hit, and saving throws.  They're called the big six because there are six of them:

• Magic weapon
• Magic armor / shield
• Ring of Protection
• Amulet of Natural Armor
• Cloak of Resistance
• Ability score booster for your primary stat (or stats)
• Gloves of Dexterity or Gauntlets of Ogre Power / Belt of Giant's Strength for physical classes
• Headband of Intellect, Circlet of Charisma, or Periapt of Wisdom for casters

They're considered the big six because they're arguably the best magic items in the game; they're always on, so you don't have to burn actions to use them.  They never run out of charges.  And they provide bonuses to things that you will use in the vast majority of combats. Even better, for everyone but Wisdom and Constitution based classes, you can use all six of them at the same time because their magic item slots don't overlap; divine casters and monks have to choose between natural armor and a bonus to Wis.  Constitution is a similar case; anyone can benefit from the Amulet of Health's Con bonus, but natural armor is generally the preferred choice.

There's a lot of complaining about the Big Six because they're optimal, but boring - you never have to activate them, they don't do neat things, and generally they go one your character sheet, you add the bonus in to your stuff, and then you forget about them.  I've addressed this previously and at more length here.

3.5 reserve feat source: Reserve feats first appeared in Complete Mage, but there were also several in Complete Champion, I believe (including one that provided free healing up to half of the recipient's maximum HP, which was quite nice for taking a really torn-up party and bringing them back up to some semblance of fighting shape).  They were a neat idea, but some of them were not particularly well thought out.  Since it looks like a similar mechanism will be core in 5e, I'm hoping they'll do a better job there.

Base magic bonus: In Trailblazer, base magic bonus is a measure of a character's total magical prowess, much like base attack bonus is a measure of their fighting ability.  BmB serves as your caster level for all spells that you cast.  It's also how TB managed their elegant solution to multiclass casters; BmB from multiple classes stacks, but the maximum level of spell you can get from a particular class' spell list is limited by your total BmB from the class.  Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians have 1/3 BmB (so +1 for every 3 complete levels), while Monks, Rangers, and Paladins have 1/2 and full casters have 1/1.  Bards have 2/3 with an odd caster-level hack.  As an example in usage, a Fighter 6 / Ranger 4 would have +4 BmB total; +2 from his six fighter levels, and +2 from his four ranger levels.  Since he has +2 from ranger and an effective caster level of 4 total, he can prepare and cast 2nd level spells from the ranger list (though TB actually has them using the Druid spell list).

Similarly, a Sorcerer 3 / Cleric 3 has BmB +6, and 3 from each class, so he can prep and cast 3rd level spells from both lists.  When he levels, though, and becomes a Sorc 4 / Clr 3, he can now cast 4th level spells, since he has BmB 7 and hence 7 caster level...  but only from the Sorcerer list, since he doesn't have 4 points of BmB from Cleric.  I refer you to Trailblazer itself for further information, and my 3/4 BmB full-caster hack, should you decide against using action points.

fun magic items for first level characters: Not something I've ever investigated thoroughly - at first level, every magic item is fun (well, unless it's cursed).  Al wrote up a few a while back, though; while they're nominally for old-school usage, they'd work OK in 3.x except for the thieves' tools, which you could easily swap out for masterwork thieves' tools per the SRD.

OSRIC random dungeon:  I may not be the most qualified to speak on this, since I only ran one session in it, but I did generate a random dungeon under OSRIC's rules.  My roommate has also done so (and more extensively than I), and I believe wrote a program to help with it by generating room contents...  Overall, I'd say that the random map generation is fairly weak (but it always is), while the random room contents are pretty good.  If I were to populate a 'random' dungeon, I'd probably pop on over to Dyson Logos', borrow one of his many many excellent maps, and then stock it with the OSRIC room contents tables.  Wizards' old map of the week archive might also have some good ones; I haven't been through there thoroughly in a looong time.

OSRIC introductory adventure: Sadly, I can't say I've found one yet.  Free intro module support in the OSR seems to be fairly weak, as Al of Beyond the Black Gate discussed way back in '09.  In other news, maybe I should write one for ACKS...  OSRIC as a system, while interesting, is more complex and less to my tastes (and, I suspect, those of my players) than ACKS.

Reviewsday: And My ACKS...

Picked up a copy of ACKS in pdf this last week and have been slowly working my way through it when time permits.  So far I'm very impressed.  It feels like a compromise position between 3e and OSRIC, almost, with the underlying structure closer to OSRIC, but with player options and a number of simplifications reminiscent of 3.x.  Ability scores, for example, are on a flat modifier system like 3e's.  Given that we wasted probably an hour of chargen for OSRIC explaining (and re-explaining) the ability score charts, this is a Good Thing for me.  But, the modifier categories are variable-width, with a narrower ranges of bonuses and penalties, much like Traveller.  Also nice; a high score is now good, but less overwhelmingly important than it was in 3.x.

Proficiencies are also very much along the 3e vein; they're kind of a combination of feats and skills, and you slowly get more as you level.  Since the core classes don't really have class features that increase with level (mostly), being able to differentiate yourself from other members of your class via proficiencies is quite nice.  I also really like ACKS' handling of races.  Their core only includes three - human, dwarf, and elf.  Humans have access to a wide range of classes: fighter, cleric, mage, thief, assassin (kind of a fighter-thief blend; no more instant-death attack), bladedancer (dervishy cleric variant), explorer (wilderness fighter / old-school ranger), and bard (actually not terrible).  Dwarf and elf have access to two specialized classes each; Dwarven Vaultguard (dwarf fighter), Dwarven Craftpriest (dwarf cleric), Elven Spellsword (elf mage/fighter), and Elven Nightblade (elf mage/thief).  These classes roll the racial bonuses into the class itself, and increase the XP required to level accordingly.  Demihuman level limits are back, but humans also cap at 14th in all classes, with dwarves and elves capping between 10 and 13 depending on the class.  Also interesting is the vast reduction of minimum ability score requirements; dwarves require a minimum Con of 9, and elves require a minimum Int of 9.  That's it.  No more "Arg, I can't play a gnome because my Dex is 1 point too low" dilemmas during character generation.  Each class also has one or more prime requisites, which also require a 9 or more, but these can be raised by sacrificing points from other scores, and you get bonus XP for having high prime reqs, just as in OSRIC, though there are tiers of XP bonus (+5% and +10%), and they're more standardized across classes.

Speaking of ability scores, ACKS advocates 3d6 in-order, which is harsh.  To counterbalance it, though, they also suggest that each player generate five (5) characters, choosing one to be their main PC, and two as backup PCs for when the main dies.  The final two are to be given to the DM (er, Judge in their parlance; I like the Judges' Guild homage) for use as NPCs, potential henchmen, rival adventurers, and similar.  I quite like this, for a number of reasons.  It can generate dilemma situations and interesting choices for the players without totally screwing them, but also generates free content for the DM.  Five is a lot, though, especially if it's their first time building ACKS chars.  Three might work too, with one main PC, one backup, and one NPC.

Speaking of backup PCs, they have a highly entertaining rule for generating XP for your next PC if you don't want to switch command to one of your henchmen, if you have any.  And you probably should have henchmen; porters are less important than they were in OSRIC, since you can carry more, but Charisma is useful again, since it lets you have many and loyal helpers (and backup PCs for when you die).  And you will probably die; save-or-die poisons are the norm, as in OSRIC (though some are save vs poison or be paralyzed, I believe).  The Death and Dismemberment table is also quite good; reminds me strongly of d20 Warheart's.  There's no level loss for resurrection, but you need a 7th level cleric, and you also have to make a roll on the Tampering with Mortality table, which can generate many and unpleasant side effects of going beyond the mortal coil.

For those adventurers who do make it to high level, though, awesome stuff awaits.  There's a whole chapter (and a long chapter, at that) on fun stuff like spell research, magic item creation, building castles and cities, running thieves' guilds, ritual spells (stuff like wish), raising undead armies...  pretty much everything I mentioned here as "stuff you should be able to do in high-level D&D", and then some (magical crossbreeding to make owlbears, for example).  It's...  pretty amazing.  I've seen whole sourcebooks on some of these topics that did poorer jobs of it.  Granted, those books were written for much more complex systems, but still...  ACKS has done a very concise, but functional job.

The trouble is that these ventures take a lot of money.  Fortunately, ACKS awards XP per gold piece extracted from the dungeon, and even suggests a standard ratio of XP from monsters to XP from gold that should be awarded.  Thus, since you know how much XP a PC of nth level will have, you can use that ratio to determine about how much gold they should have earned over their careers.  This makes starting out of levels higher than first pretty easy.  ACKS also provides mercantile ventures / speculative trading rules reminiscent of Traveller's, but simpler and more accessible.  You know those caravans that low-level PCs get stuck guarding all-too-often?  Well, turns out they're owned by mid-level PCs trying to move silk at a profit.

Which brings us to the worldbuilding angle.  ACKS has some very interesting things to say about fantasy worldbuilding on giant hexmaps, but most interesting to me is their advice on building a 'borderlands' region as a setting.  It's like they went "Hey, you.  We heard you wanted to run Western Marches, but are a little too lazy.  Well, we were in the same position once, and here are all the things we think you should know."  It's good stuff.

In short, I feel like ACKS accomplishes several of my goals for Fantasy Traveller (relative simplicity, old-schoolishness with some degree of differentiation between characters of the same class, hexmaps, lower power curve), while also nailing high-level play.  I have a bunch of career tables queued up, though, so they're still going to come out of the pipe, despite the fact that they will likely not see use any time soon.  ACKS is definitely on the to-run list, hopefully for this summer, and quite possibly into next fall semester as well.

Belated OSRIC Playtest Report

So, I ran OSRIC about a week and a half ago now.  It went...  interestingly.  We had 6 players, all from a mostly 3.x background as far as D&D goes, with one having played AD&D at some point, one with Baldur's Gate experience, and one with Nethack experience.  Character generation took a looong time - about two hours.  The issue there was primarily a focus on all the effects of every choice made; "what makes a fighter different from a ranger?", "Can I assign my scores in a way that will let me play a gnome illusionist?", and "What do all of these table entries for ability scores mean?"  We ended up with a half-orc cleric, a human ranger, a half-orc assassin / fighter multiclass, an elf assassin, an elf fighter, and a half-elf MU, I believe.  In retrospect, I really see where the "roll-in-order" rules would've been really practical - such a rule would have greatly narrowed the decision space for the players (by a factor of at least 6 factorial, plus limitations due to racial and class ability score requirements).  Gear went pretty swiftly, thanks in large part to BtBG's adventuring kits, which left the PCs to choose weapons, armor, and hirelings (and chalk.  Lots of chalk).

Having gathered their many porters, the PCs set out for the Deephalls north of Ironbridge.  They arrived, and tracked a party of berserkers who had been out hunting into the dungeon.  The berserkers engaged them, but were slain to a man.  The two assassins scouted ahead, finding first bats, then a pair of rust monsters.  Having never deployed rust monsters before (but having rolled them on the inhabitants table), the looks of sheer horror on the faces of the players were...  pretty priceless, actually.  They managed to block off that part of the dungeon, and turned their exploration in other directions, where they found giant spiders and beetles.  Highlights of this part: the half-orc assassin was poisoned, then told that poison was save-or-die.  He made his save, and his response was "Oh!  That was exciting!"  There's just something about mortal peril that makes life a little sweeter when it continues...  They found their first real treasure webbed up by the spiders, in a trapped stone chest containing a mix of gold and copper pieces.  The assassins went scouting again, with the (still-injured) half-orc failing at his Hide in Shadows and being gored by a pair of giant fire beetles, putting him at -7, but not before he assassinated one of them.  The rest of the party came to his aid, however, and he survived, but had to be carried out of the dungeon.  They found their second treasure in a pile of beetle dung, consisting of a mixture of electrum and silver pieces, but that was where we ended the session - the half-orc's going to be out of action for a week or so, and the rest of the party considered pushing forward without him, but decided against it.  This decision was complicated by the elf fighter, who had rolled lower ability scores than the rest of the party and is out to get them due to envy.

So, mechanically, the game went pretty OK, mostly...  it was very assassin-and-fighter focused, with the cleric and the MU doing very little.  That this changes at higher levels was no consolation to the caster players, who were greatly disappointed with the system.  The assassin players both seemed up to play again, as did the ranger.  The elf fighter was initially offput by his low scores and remained as a 'rearguard' for most of the combats, but later mentioned that he was interested in playing again, if only for the party conflict RP angle.  He also mentioned hirelings as greatly appealing.  So, I'm calling it a reasonable success; 66% of participants responded positively.  As a result, I'm keeping the dungeon around and will restock the parts they cleared out.  I should probably also design level 2 at some point, but they seem unlikely to find a way down any time soon.

Unfortunately, I've become distracted by Victory by Any Means.  It looks like to scratch my Master of Orion and Fields of Blood itches, if I can find time and players...  Maybe I'll get to test it out over winterbreak.

That is not dead, which can eternal lie...

And in stranger weekends, even PCs may die.  I'm planning an OSRIC dungeon exploration game for next weekend; I've been rolling random dungeon bits in my scraps of spare time for the last week or so.  The first level is built, with monsters, treasure, and room contents rolled, so now I just need to assign that content to rooms (stocking, if you will).  Also been working up a pile of rumors in town regarding the dungeon, but I still need a name for the hellhole...

So, content!  I guess I'll go through some interesting rules differences between OSRIC and the 3.x that I and most of the people are know are used to playing.  Not going to hit all the rules differences, obviously, just some of the more curious ones.

Ability score bonuses are must more spread out; it seems to take a score of about 15+ to start getting any real bonuses, and a score of 6-7 or lower to start taking any penalties.  This is kind of interesting, and reminds me of Traveller's wider ability score bonuses brackets (3-point increments, rather than 2-point increments as in 3.x).  This also means that a significant range around 'average' still pretty much functions as average, and that ability scores play a much less important role than they do in 3.x.  I rolled up a couple of sample characters and about the only thing ability scores influences were race and class selection (yeah, classes have minimum ability score requirements to enter.  See here for why).

There's a lot of save-or-die.  All poisons for example.  Fail a save against poison?  Toast.  This actually makes some sense...  if you get bitten by a spider the size of a horse and it injects you with 100ccs of neurotoxin...  you're not just taking 2d4 int damage.  Falling damage is much increased; it still caps at 20d6, but only from a 50-foot fall rather than from a 200-foot fall as in 3.x.  If you're polymorphed, there's a chance based on your Con that you just die of system shock.  If someone tries to resurrect you, there's a chance based on your Con that you don't make it back.  Also, elves have no souls and cannot be resurrected.  I think this is actually a pretty neat rule; they live a long time, but can't come back if they screw up.  It also reinforces the 'fey' / otherworldly nature of the elves (reminds me of the Eldar soulstones, too...  maybe it's not that they don't have souls, but that Slaanesh eats them?)  Death and dying of damage are pretty normal; die at -10, lose 1 HP per round between -1 and -10.  However, a few interesting things:  No chance to stabilize yourself, but any other party member can automatically stabilize you; no skill check required (since the only classes with 'skills' are the Thief and the Assassin, and heal sure isn't one of them).  Also, any additional damage dealt to an unconscious character is lethal; no special coup-de-grace rules.  Finally, there are longer-term consequences for being beaten unconscious; it takes you 10-60 minutes to wake up even after being stabilized, and then a week of rest before you're able to resume 'strenuous physical activity'.

This ties in nicely with the dungeon exploration rules, which are one of the neater things in OSRIC (from a new-schooler's perspective).  The passage of time is much more of a thing here.  A turn is 10 minutes of game time, and can be used to move through the dungeon map, search rooms, try to break down locked doors, and similar.  Wandering monsters are checked for each turn, and one in every six turns must be used as a short rest / breather, or you start to take fatigue penalties.  A round is a minute, and is the unit of combat time, more-or-less equivalent to a round in 3.x in terms of what you can get done.  The round is subdivided into 10 segments of 6 seconds each, with different sides acting on different segments of the round depending on their initiative rolls.  The cool thing here is that spells have casting times measured in segments; you start casting on the segment where your side acts, and then the spells goes off n segments later, giving the opposition a chance to interrupt it while you're casting.  Similarly, if you get iterative attacks, they're spaced out by segments, so you might get to attack, then the enemy attacks, then you again, rather than the "Aha, we won initiative, eat a full attack before you get to act" kind of thing that happens a lot in 3.x.

Some other interesting notes on combat: in melee, your attacks target a random adjacent hostile target.  Firing into melee, your ranged attacks target a random combatant without regard to hostility.  And no, there is no such thing as precise shot (well, except magic missile).

XP: Different classes require different amounts of XP to level.  XP for slain monsters is a function of how many HP that particular monster had, as well as species, with the assumption that you're rolling random monster HP.  You also get 1 XP for every GP that you manage to get out of the dungeon.  Treasure is not important, but so is encumbrance, since there are 10 GP to a pound.  Fortunately, carrying capacity is 150 lbs for all characters, plus or minus a bonus based on strength.

Spells: A lot of them are pretty much the same, though I guess 'more random' would probably be a good descriptor.  Some are much stronger than in 3.x, some are much weaker; skimming the spells, there were several times where I went "That's a 4th-level spell?"  Fireballs expand to fill volume, lightning bolts bounce off of non-conductive surfaces, haste ages the users, and bull's strength grants a larger bonus to fighters, paladins, and rangers than to other targets.  Curious indeed.

Magic items: They don't have market prices.  No buy, no sell.  Use what you find.

That's all I've got for now.  Back to work.