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.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
N-Shots, With a Side of Minion Design
With my gaming time seriously curtailed, I've been thinking about short campaigns. I ran a one-shot and found the form rather dissatisfying; it was, essentially, a series of short wargame scenarios plus a few puzzles, with very little character development or exploration. Granted, part of the problem was that I made a few mistakes in terms of monster design; just because manufactured and natural armor stack does not mean that one should stack them. Likewise, I dropped a solo hydra on the PCs during the finale, and found two problems. First, Trailblazer's combat maneuver rules mean that hitting a hydra's neck is much, much harder than hitting its body. This should not be; in theory I could've altered it on the fly, but I missed my chance. Secondly, when you upgrade a critter to solo, you quadruple its HP, which in turn quadrupled the neck HP, making sundering the heads extra difficult. In the end, the PCs just ended up damaging the body to death.
Trailblazer's short rest rules allowed the PCs to absorb absolutely tremendous amounts of damage; I estimated that the party took in total about 300 points of damage during the course of a single adventuring day, with no character falling unconscious at any time, minimal expenditure of permanent healing resources (cure wands, for example), and, the kicker, without a cleric. These were 7th level PCs we're talking about... maybe 70 HP tops on any given character. It was just nuts. The action points really saved their butts a few times, though, so that was interesting... likewise, the party sorcerer built for ray usage and didn't cast a restricted spell the entire game. A change of pace from the usual fireball storm. We also had a glaive paladin / fighter specializing in sunder, a greatsword critical-hit fighter, and a bard / fighter archer. The greatsworder had very very swingy damage; when he really hit, he killed opponents outright, but he also missed a lot. The glaive paladin got pretty reasonable performance across the board, through sundering the hydra turned out to be a bad idea. The archer was less than perfectly useful... I attribute this largely to the high-AC monsters. Ranged combatants need to be using rapid shot and similar to do decent damage, and the high-AC critters really shut that down. Sorry, Tim.
This has led to some speculation on "mook design", if you will, where by mook I mean what 4e or True20 might classify as a minion. They're weakish monsters who are fairly easy to kill, but are still a threat to the PCs. I've employed mooks as such on two occasions; here in the mountain fastness of the lizard men, and in my TB Bloodsworn Vale game two summers ago. Here, they had high AC but low HP, and were not fun. In Bloodsworn, the zombie gnoll servants of Golgorroth had low AC, but took about two hits from the party monk or a good hit from a holy greatsword to take down. Effectively, I conclude that 'fun' mooks should be easy to hit, and should take about two hits to kill. This gives the satisfaction of hitting reliably and doing damage, and also makes clearing them out so you can get at their leader straightforward, but not trivial. Missing is frustrating, but hitting and doing damage, even if you don't drop anything, is satisfying. Ergo, even if the same number of expected hits are required to kill a mook, one with low AC and higher hit points is preferable as far as fun goes.
But back to one-shots. I had never DMed a one-shot before, and my only experience playing in one had accidentally turned into a medium-length campaign of about 9 sessions in a single world because it ran long and we did a few unexpected things. I recently, however, stumbled across a blog post by the Angry DM which effectively advocates picking up a new system with a new GM and playing a three-shot. I find this to be a really good idea... The human mind loves threes, and this allows a much less rushed storytelling structure along the traditional lines of beginning, middle, and end, with gaps in time and space in between the segments. It doesn't have to be combat-combat-combat, and player choices other than strict combat-resource allocation start to matter, but can still be kept reasonably simple; putting a decision point at the end of each of the first two sessions creates four possible outcomes, which is relatively easy to manage compared to a full "go anywhere do anything kill anyone"-style campaign.
I don't know that I'll have the time to run a three-shot... but it's something I'd like to keep in mind for the next time I get the itch, but maybe don't have time to run a full campaign. Hell, a three-shot would be the perfect length for gaming with my family over the holidays. Hmmm...
Trailblazer's short rest rules allowed the PCs to absorb absolutely tremendous amounts of damage; I estimated that the party took in total about 300 points of damage during the course of a single adventuring day, with no character falling unconscious at any time, minimal expenditure of permanent healing resources (cure wands, for example), and, the kicker, without a cleric. These were 7th level PCs we're talking about... maybe 70 HP tops on any given character. It was just nuts. The action points really saved their butts a few times, though, so that was interesting... likewise, the party sorcerer built for ray usage and didn't cast a restricted spell the entire game. A change of pace from the usual fireball storm. We also had a glaive paladin / fighter specializing in sunder, a greatsword critical-hit fighter, and a bard / fighter archer. The greatsworder had very very swingy damage; when he really hit, he killed opponents outright, but he also missed a lot. The glaive paladin got pretty reasonable performance across the board, through sundering the hydra turned out to be a bad idea. The archer was less than perfectly useful... I attribute this largely to the high-AC monsters. Ranged combatants need to be using rapid shot and similar to do decent damage, and the high-AC critters really shut that down. Sorry, Tim.
This has led to some speculation on "mook design", if you will, where by mook I mean what 4e or True20 might classify as a minion. They're weakish monsters who are fairly easy to kill, but are still a threat to the PCs. I've employed mooks as such on two occasions; here in the mountain fastness of the lizard men, and in my TB Bloodsworn Vale game two summers ago. Here, they had high AC but low HP, and were not fun. In Bloodsworn, the zombie gnoll servants of Golgorroth had low AC, but took about two hits from the party monk or a good hit from a holy greatsword to take down. Effectively, I conclude that 'fun' mooks should be easy to hit, and should take about two hits to kill. This gives the satisfaction of hitting reliably and doing damage, and also makes clearing them out so you can get at their leader straightforward, but not trivial. Missing is frustrating, but hitting and doing damage, even if you don't drop anything, is satisfying. Ergo, even if the same number of expected hits are required to kill a mook, one with low AC and higher hit points is preferable as far as fun goes.
But back to one-shots. I had never DMed a one-shot before, and my only experience playing in one had accidentally turned into a medium-length campaign of about 9 sessions in a single world because it ran long and we did a few unexpected things. I recently, however, stumbled across a blog post by the Angry DM which effectively advocates picking up a new system with a new GM and playing a three-shot. I find this to be a really good idea... The human mind loves threes, and this allows a much less rushed storytelling structure along the traditional lines of beginning, middle, and end, with gaps in time and space in between the segments. It doesn't have to be combat-combat-combat, and player choices other than strict combat-resource allocation start to matter, but can still be kept reasonably simple; putting a decision point at the end of each of the first two sessions creates four possible outcomes, which is relatively easy to manage compared to a full "go anywhere do anything kill anyone"-style campaign.
I don't know that I'll have the time to run a three-shot... but it's something I'd like to keep in mind for the next time I get the itch, but maybe don't have time to run a full campaign. Hell, a three-shot would be the perfect length for gaming with my family over the holidays. Hmmm...
Friday, September 16, 2011
On Hiatus... again...
Greetings, gentle readers. I apologize for the lack of updates; the semester got me, and then I ran a one-shot, and it went OK but was quite savage actually due both to system changes, a few miscalculations on my part, and some player mistakes, and then I got owned by the semester, and both of my laptops died. So now I've got Ubuntu running on this one, but I really don't have much to say other than "Hopefully Alex will run a game sometime soon, because I sure won't be..." :\
Friday, September 9, 2011
Miscellanea: Traveller Trade, GM Screens, and Upcoming Game
Nothing groundshaking today, but a couple small things:
First, trade in Traveller has always bothered me because it's kind of a pain to actually do. Too much bookkeeping for not a whole lot of raw fun. I recently found this pdf full of commodity cards, though, which looks like it might improve play considerably, both by speeding up random cargo generation (draw a card, roll tonnage, roll type, go) and by kind of concretizing them (players buy cargo? Give them the card). These kind of seem like they'd make Traveller trade bearable, which is a Good Thing.
Along a similar line, I've been thinking about how convenient the Stargrunt reference card makes the game, and it's inspired me to build a Traveller GM screen covered in handy tables of things I often forget, like weapon range modifiers ("What's the mod for an assault weapon at 50 meters again... ?"), law levels, radiation effects, and things like that. Alternatively, I might build a series of reference sheets for different parts of gameplay; a combat card with actions types, cover, ranges, autofire, and similar, a "Crime and Punishment" card gathering the government, law level, sentencing, and starship loan default rules, and so forth. These would be damn handy, and also useful on the player end of things. So that might be worth the time to put together if I end up playing or running Trav...
But, this weekend, I'm running a Trailblazer one-shot of a stripped-down version of one of the Dungeon Crawl Classic modules that I played through once. The intent is to test TB's action points and short rest rules, as well as to game for the first time in a good while. So the rest of my afternoon is going to be prep for that, interspersed with homework.
First, trade in Traveller has always bothered me because it's kind of a pain to actually do. Too much bookkeeping for not a whole lot of raw fun. I recently found this pdf full of commodity cards, though, which looks like it might improve play considerably, both by speeding up random cargo generation (draw a card, roll tonnage, roll type, go) and by kind of concretizing them (players buy cargo? Give them the card). These kind of seem like they'd make Traveller trade bearable, which is a Good Thing.
Along a similar line, I've been thinking about how convenient the Stargrunt reference card makes the game, and it's inspired me to build a Traveller GM screen covered in handy tables of things I often forget, like weapon range modifiers ("What's the mod for an assault weapon at 50 meters again... ?"), law levels, radiation effects, and things like that. Alternatively, I might build a series of reference sheets for different parts of gameplay; a combat card with actions types, cover, ranges, autofire, and similar, a "Crime and Punishment" card gathering the government, law level, sentencing, and starship loan default rules, and so forth. These would be damn handy, and also useful on the player end of things. So that might be worth the time to put together if I end up playing or running Trav...
But, this weekend, I'm running a Trailblazer one-shot of a stripped-down version of one of the Dungeon Crawl Classic modules that I played through once. The intent is to test TB's action points and short rest rules, as well as to game for the first time in a good while. So the rest of my afternoon is going to be prep for that, interspersed with homework.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Traveller Ramblings: Of Guns, Gear, and Starships
The semester is well and truly upon us, and my weekends this month are pretty filled, preventing much in the way of gaming :(. My discussions with my roommate Alex have actually kind of increased my level of indecision in regard to what, if anything, to run this semester. We've been talking mostly about Traveller, and he's considering running a Stargate-inspired Traveller game as well. We've been discussing a number of things with Trav, and here's what we've come up with:
The lack of small automatic weapons irks me. There's the gauss pistol, but it's TL13 and does significantly more damage than other pistol weapons in addition to being autofire. Ergo, the following:
Machine Pistol: TL7, Range Class: Pistol. Damage 3d6-3, Auto 4, Recoil 0. Mass 1 kg, Magazine 24. Cost 300 Cr, Ammo cost 15 Cr.
Submachine Gun: TL7, Range Class: Assault Weapons. Damage 3d6-3, Auto 4, Recoil 0. Mass 3 kg or 3.5 kg with extended magazine, Magazine 36 or 50. Cost 500 Cr, Ammo cost 15 Cr or 25 Cr.
The first statblock represents modern fully-automatic pistols like the Skorpion or Beretta 93R, while the second represents larger weapons like the MP5 or P90 which have longer barrels and shoulder stocks for greater accuracy at range, but are still chambered in pistol calibers. The larger magazine flavor represents drum or helical-style magazines which are often available for such weapons. I'm also tempted to do a conversion of the Colt-Calico Mini-Gatling from CyD20, but that might be a Bad Idea.
Point the next is that armor-piercing weapons just don't exist. There are weapons that do a lot of damage, and they are good for taking out enemies in armor, but they are also good for insta-killing people not in armor. There is no equivalent to steel-core, high-velocity, or other specialized anti-armor rounds, which go through armor nicely but do less damage to the target's physiology than usual. The problem with implementing an 'armor penetration' mechanic is that it adds an extra lookup, subtraction, and ceiling operation to each attack that hits. One simple option is to halve armor against armor-piercing weapons, much as armor is doubled against buckshot, but that gets brutally effective against heavier armor types. More study of this problem is required.
Idea the third is that I realized that I really dislike the Scout Ship entry on the Scout mustering-out benefits table. It's not that I dislike the notion of the party having a ship; quite the contrary. A ship is freedom to jump the rails and go somewhere interesting, a place to hide smuggled goods and stowaways, and an extra target for me as a DM that the entire party has a vested interest in protecting. But a ship with no cost is a problem, because then when the PCs get money... the credits just pile up until they find a high-TL world to spend some of them on. The monthly payment on a starship is kind of the whole reason for wanting money in Traveller without a scout ship; it's a little bit of constant pressure on the players to take that extra-risky job because it pays more and will help pay the bills. I know last game with the scout ship, money was basically a non-object; the PCs had enough to buy grenades and ammo, spare parts and repairs when they needed them, and life support, and that was all that mattered. It was kind of unsatisfying. So if I run another one, I may need to replace the ship entry on the Scout table. Maybe it's a big pile of ship shares (like... 3d6. Something bigger than other classes get, and unrestricted). Maybe it's shares that are multiplied for getting a scout ship, as is normal for specific kinds of ships on the tables. Maybe it's an extra 'upgrade' for a ship, rather than shares; choose a component, and upgrade it, or install a laser turret or someaught. But no way is it going to be just 'a ship, with minimal organizational obligations attached.' Plus, having a scout ship makes everybody else's ship shares kind of useless, which is frustrating...
And so after all that Traveller talk, it seems I'm likely to run Trav. I've got a plot, I've got a subsector... now all I need is time, players, and characters. Or I could run TB/LL Kingmaker in the Great 3.5 Derivative Smackdown... it's hexcrawly enough that it might get the Wilderlands out of my blood.
The lack of small automatic weapons irks me. There's the gauss pistol, but it's TL13 and does significantly more damage than other pistol weapons in addition to being autofire. Ergo, the following:
Machine Pistol: TL7, Range Class: Pistol. Damage 3d6-3, Auto 4, Recoil 0. Mass 1 kg, Magazine 24. Cost 300 Cr, Ammo cost 15 Cr.
Submachine Gun: TL7, Range Class: Assault Weapons. Damage 3d6-3, Auto 4, Recoil 0. Mass 3 kg or 3.5 kg with extended magazine, Magazine 36 or 50. Cost 500 Cr, Ammo cost 15 Cr or 25 Cr.
The first statblock represents modern fully-automatic pistols like the Skorpion or Beretta 93R, while the second represents larger weapons like the MP5 or P90 which have longer barrels and shoulder stocks for greater accuracy at range, but are still chambered in pistol calibers. The larger magazine flavor represents drum or helical-style magazines which are often available for such weapons. I'm also tempted to do a conversion of the Colt-Calico Mini-Gatling from CyD20, but that might be a Bad Idea.
Point the next is that armor-piercing weapons just don't exist. There are weapons that do a lot of damage, and they are good for taking out enemies in armor, but they are also good for insta-killing people not in armor. There is no equivalent to steel-core, high-velocity, or other specialized anti-armor rounds, which go through armor nicely but do less damage to the target's physiology than usual. The problem with implementing an 'armor penetration' mechanic is that it adds an extra lookup, subtraction, and ceiling operation to each attack that hits. One simple option is to halve armor against armor-piercing weapons, much as armor is doubled against buckshot, but that gets brutally effective against heavier armor types. More study of this problem is required.
Idea the third is that I realized that I really dislike the Scout Ship entry on the Scout mustering-out benefits table. It's not that I dislike the notion of the party having a ship; quite the contrary. A ship is freedom to jump the rails and go somewhere interesting, a place to hide smuggled goods and stowaways, and an extra target for me as a DM that the entire party has a vested interest in protecting. But a ship with no cost is a problem, because then when the PCs get money... the credits just pile up until they find a high-TL world to spend some of them on. The monthly payment on a starship is kind of the whole reason for wanting money in Traveller without a scout ship; it's a little bit of constant pressure on the players to take that extra-risky job because it pays more and will help pay the bills. I know last game with the scout ship, money was basically a non-object; the PCs had enough to buy grenades and ammo, spare parts and repairs when they needed them, and life support, and that was all that mattered. It was kind of unsatisfying. So if I run another one, I may need to replace the ship entry on the Scout table. Maybe it's a big pile of ship shares (like... 3d6. Something bigger than other classes get, and unrestricted). Maybe it's shares that are multiplied for getting a scout ship, as is normal for specific kinds of ships on the tables. Maybe it's an extra 'upgrade' for a ship, rather than shares; choose a component, and upgrade it, or install a laser turret or someaught. But no way is it going to be just 'a ship, with minimal organizational obligations attached.' Plus, having a scout ship makes everybody else's ship shares kind of useless, which is frustrating...
And so after all that Traveller talk, it seems I'm likely to run Trav. I've got a plot, I've got a subsector... now all I need is time, players, and characters. Or I could run TB/LL Kingmaker in the Great 3.5 Derivative Smackdown... it's hexcrawly enough that it might get the Wilderlands out of my blood.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Games I Want to Run 3; also, Why Traveller Psionics Are Better Than d20 Magic
School starts up again tomorrow. This may or may not mean the death of this blog, since free time is about to get a lot scarcer. I do still intend to run Wilderlands or something along similar sandboxy hexmap lines, but at this point I'm looking primarily at systems. Here are the contenders:
All three of these have features and bugs. Here's the rundown:
Trailblazer is already known to the folks I've been playing with, and is well liked as 'fixing most of the problems with 3.5'. On the DM side, I'm still itching to try out their monster upgrade rules and possibly their simplified encounter budgeting as well. A previous post of mine proposes a magic item replacement that would work nicely for TB in the Wilderlands. The main issues here are that it's a heavy system, with kind of slow combat, complex monster statblocks, and NPCs that take a while to assemble. There's also my lingering trepidation over their action points and rest rules; on the one hand, APs are a balancing factor for casters, but on the other, they introduce per-level resources, which I really hate, and the rest mechanic is terribly suited for overland travel where random encounters are fairly frequent (in that those random encounters don't actually cost anything in terms of party resources due to rapid rest availability).
Justin Alexander released the L&L Beta a few days ago, and my copy came in this morning. I've given it a skim, and there are some good things and some bad things. The design goal here was a very stripped-down 3.5 derivative that remained backwards compatible. The monster design rules are a real standout; I am fairly confident I could put monsters together during play with it, and that they'd be about right in terms of CR. That's an awesome thing in a 3.x derivative, and while I'll still probably buy the TB Monster Book when it comes out (hopefully soon...) for what I imagine may be a better-researched monster design system along with a pile of 'Trailblazered' classic monsters, this one has the speed for use in play. The hazard design system is also very cool, providing a quick way to generate CRs for all manner of traps, perilous crossings, and environmental hazards. The stunt system provides a mechanism very similar to Traveller's task chains, as well as flexible combat options; I wasn't impressed on first read, but going back for a second, it actually looks pretty slick. The skill system is kind of nice and simple; you're considered at max ranks for all of your class skills. If you have a low Int, you choose a number of class skills equal to your penalty to not know. Very straightforward, and it means that you're good at the things your class is supposed to be good at; similar to Iron Heroes' skill groups in that regard, but a damn sight less complicated. Other highlights were some notes on wilderness adventures, good rules for hirelings and henchmen, and a number of unusual slimes and molds which didn't make into the 3.0/.5 DMGs (think along the lines of green slime, but different).
On the other hand... man, when he said he was going to strip down the classes, he really, really stripped down the classes. Only Barbarian, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Sorcerer made the cut, for one. Feats are gone, but at levels where you would get one, you get a pre-selected one based on class (for example, Barbarians get Power Attack at 6th). He seems to have dropped the first-level feats, though... likewise, humans kind of got the shaft and stepped on the half-elf's toes, since that bonus feat got converted into a racial bonus to Diplomacy and Sense Motive. I'd be happier with a +3 to any one skill. This solution would be on par with 3.5 Skill Focus, works with whatever class you might happen to be, and reinforces the 'versatile' nature of humans. Finally, he doesn't appear to have really touched the balance issues underlying 3.x; Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards will still dominate, since casting still works as normal, unless he nerfs the spell lists pretty hard (updated spells aren't in the beta). Granted, this move makes sense in the light of his stance on balance in general. Iterative attacks are still at the old -5, and rogues are still running at 3/4 BaB, so they're going to have a rough time hitting, especially since they never get Weapon Finesse (though they do get Vigilant Shot, which allows readied ranged sneak attacks under some circumstances, making ranged rogues much more viable). The feat selection on some of the classes is... questionable, with Rogue being probably the best example. No finesse, no TWF, just ranged feats. Barbarian also picks up Expertise, which is an unusual choice for Barbarians in my experience... I guess as long as one keeps in mind that those feat selections are really just suggestions, and could be swapped out for other 3.5 feats, things should work OK. Otherwise, I would foresee rioting. Likewise, while multiclassing is still around, the problem of base save multiclass stacking persists. At least this time there are fewer classes to multiclass between... It also doesn't address caster multiclassing like TB did. I guess the thing here is that if I decide to run L&L, I'd have to Trailblazer it (yep, it's a verb now). This would basically entail switching iteratives to -2/-2 with decreasing penalties later, chosen good saves at character creation, combat reactions rather than stock AoOs, Combat Tactics for the rogue, upgraded turning on the cleric, BMB for casting... I think those'd be the big ones. And allowing players to choose their feats, too... the classes with pre-chosen feats seem to be primarily a resource for new players and for DMs who need an NPC in a hurry. Used with that understanding, I think the system in general would work pretty nicely.
Finally, there's the black sheep, Adventurer, over at Crawdads and Dragons. Adventurer is basically the Classic Traveller rules converted to run OD&D. This has the advantage of being pretty rules-light; statblocks are small, simple, and easy to assemble. It also avoids the 'ever upward' problem of D&D in all its incarnations, where the numbers just keep growing, because skill training is still fairly slow (they do introduce some faster rules for it than Mongoose's version, though). Being essentially Traveller, it has a number of random tables for things like dungeons and areas of wilderness, which goes beautifully with the style of Wilderlands. But... on the minus side, it's a conversion of one old, quirky, non-standardized system to run another old, quirky, non-standardized system. There are tables of attack DMs based on your weapon type vs. your opponent's armor type. That kind of thing.
Likewise, there's a whole book devoted to spells. Part of what I liked about Traveller was that its psionics served an essentially different purpose from magic in D&D. In D&D, magic is the main and exclusive activity of many characters, and the system encourages this by making spell slots readily available at mid-to-high levels, and by providing mages with very little else to do. In Traveller, while it is possible to try to make psionics your sole activity, it is neither efficient nor necessary. First, the resource behind Traveller psionics is distinctly limited; the more you use, the lower your psi score drops, and the harder it is to use more of it. This is in contrast to d20's magic, where you know exactly how much magic you can put out per day, and running low on slots doesn't make any of your remaining slots less effective than they were at the beginning of the day. Thus, Traveller's psionics are categorically weaker than d20's magic in this 'declining ability' sense. Further, Traveller's psionic recovery mechanism is non-boolean; rather than resting for eight hours and then being fully recharged, psionic strength recovers gradually across hours as long as no further powers are used. This again encourages conservation. Finally, when you look at the things Traveller psionics can do, and the prices on them, it becomes apparent that they fill kind of a 'special projects' role; they can do things that you just can't do otherwise, but it's hard to pull off and expensive. Further, most of the Traveller psionic powers seem to be intended primarily for non-combat use; sure, you could teleport in combat, but it's really expensive and the benefit is probably minimal. They're not built with combat as the first consideration, whereas most d20 spells definitely are. d20 mages are multibarrel weapons platforms that carry loadouts specified at the beginning of the day, while a Traveller psion is more like a solar-powered multitool. However, the need for psions in Traveller to be able to rain hellfire and lightning down on their enemies is significantly less than that of their d20 counterparts for two reasons. First is that it's really hard to generate a Traveller character with no other combat-useful skills, both given the skills on the tables, the group skill package, and the connections rule. In d20, if your wizard is out of magic, he's stuck with a crossbow and an abominably low base attack bonus. In Trav, if you have Gun Combat 0 and a decent Dex, you're in reasonable stead for combat as far as offense goes, and then it's just a question of keeping your head down. Second, Traveller in general places a lower emphasis on combat than modern d20 does, meaning that combat prowess is less necessary, and therefore characters who aren't focused on combat are significantly more viable.
This all kind of leads up to the implicit fourth option: hack my own system together based on Mongoose Traveller, with a similarly 'fuzzy' magic system. The things necessary to achieve this task would be:
All three of these have features and bugs. Here's the rundown:
Trailblazer is already known to the folks I've been playing with, and is well liked as 'fixing most of the problems with 3.5'. On the DM side, I'm still itching to try out their monster upgrade rules and possibly their simplified encounter budgeting as well. A previous post of mine proposes a magic item replacement that would work nicely for TB in the Wilderlands. The main issues here are that it's a heavy system, with kind of slow combat, complex monster statblocks, and NPCs that take a while to assemble. There's also my lingering trepidation over their action points and rest rules; on the one hand, APs are a balancing factor for casters, but on the other, they introduce per-level resources, which I really hate, and the rest mechanic is terribly suited for overland travel where random encounters are fairly frequent (in that those random encounters don't actually cost anything in terms of party resources due to rapid rest availability).
Justin Alexander released the L&L Beta a few days ago, and my copy came in this morning. I've given it a skim, and there are some good things and some bad things. The design goal here was a very stripped-down 3.5 derivative that remained backwards compatible. The monster design rules are a real standout; I am fairly confident I could put monsters together during play with it, and that they'd be about right in terms of CR. That's an awesome thing in a 3.x derivative, and while I'll still probably buy the TB Monster Book when it comes out (hopefully soon...) for what I imagine may be a better-researched monster design system along with a pile of 'Trailblazered' classic monsters, this one has the speed for use in play. The hazard design system is also very cool, providing a quick way to generate CRs for all manner of traps, perilous crossings, and environmental hazards. The stunt system provides a mechanism very similar to Traveller's task chains, as well as flexible combat options; I wasn't impressed on first read, but going back for a second, it actually looks pretty slick. The skill system is kind of nice and simple; you're considered at max ranks for all of your class skills. If you have a low Int, you choose a number of class skills equal to your penalty to not know. Very straightforward, and it means that you're good at the things your class is supposed to be good at; similar to Iron Heroes' skill groups in that regard, but a damn sight less complicated. Other highlights were some notes on wilderness adventures, good rules for hirelings and henchmen, and a number of unusual slimes and molds which didn't make into the 3.0/.5 DMGs (think along the lines of green slime, but different).
On the other hand... man, when he said he was going to strip down the classes, he really, really stripped down the classes. Only Barbarian, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Sorcerer made the cut, for one. Feats are gone, but at levels where you would get one, you get a pre-selected one based on class (for example, Barbarians get Power Attack at 6th). He seems to have dropped the first-level feats, though... likewise, humans kind of got the shaft and stepped on the half-elf's toes, since that bonus feat got converted into a racial bonus to Diplomacy and Sense Motive. I'd be happier with a +3 to any one skill. This solution would be on par with 3.5 Skill Focus, works with whatever class you might happen to be, and reinforces the 'versatile' nature of humans. Finally, he doesn't appear to have really touched the balance issues underlying 3.x; Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards will still dominate, since casting still works as normal, unless he nerfs the spell lists pretty hard (updated spells aren't in the beta). Granted, this move makes sense in the light of his stance on balance in general. Iterative attacks are still at the old -5, and rogues are still running at 3/4 BaB, so they're going to have a rough time hitting, especially since they never get Weapon Finesse (though they do get Vigilant Shot, which allows readied ranged sneak attacks under some circumstances, making ranged rogues much more viable). The feat selection on some of the classes is... questionable, with Rogue being probably the best example. No finesse, no TWF, just ranged feats. Barbarian also picks up Expertise, which is an unusual choice for Barbarians in my experience... I guess as long as one keeps in mind that those feat selections are really just suggestions, and could be swapped out for other 3.5 feats, things should work OK. Otherwise, I would foresee rioting. Likewise, while multiclassing is still around, the problem of base save multiclass stacking persists. At least this time there are fewer classes to multiclass between... It also doesn't address caster multiclassing like TB did. I guess the thing here is that if I decide to run L&L, I'd have to Trailblazer it (yep, it's a verb now). This would basically entail switching iteratives to -2/-2 with decreasing penalties later, chosen good saves at character creation, combat reactions rather than stock AoOs, Combat Tactics for the rogue, upgraded turning on the cleric, BMB for casting... I think those'd be the big ones. And allowing players to choose their feats, too... the classes with pre-chosen feats seem to be primarily a resource for new players and for DMs who need an NPC in a hurry. Used with that understanding, I think the system in general would work pretty nicely.
Finally, there's the black sheep, Adventurer, over at Crawdads and Dragons. Adventurer is basically the Classic Traveller rules converted to run OD&D. This has the advantage of being pretty rules-light; statblocks are small, simple, and easy to assemble. It also avoids the 'ever upward' problem of D&D in all its incarnations, where the numbers just keep growing, because skill training is still fairly slow (they do introduce some faster rules for it than Mongoose's version, though). Being essentially Traveller, it has a number of random tables for things like dungeons and areas of wilderness, which goes beautifully with the style of Wilderlands. But... on the minus side, it's a conversion of one old, quirky, non-standardized system to run another old, quirky, non-standardized system. There are tables of attack DMs based on your weapon type vs. your opponent's armor type. That kind of thing.
Likewise, there's a whole book devoted to spells. Part of what I liked about Traveller was that its psionics served an essentially different purpose from magic in D&D. In D&D, magic is the main and exclusive activity of many characters, and the system encourages this by making spell slots readily available at mid-to-high levels, and by providing mages with very little else to do. In Traveller, while it is possible to try to make psionics your sole activity, it is neither efficient nor necessary. First, the resource behind Traveller psionics is distinctly limited; the more you use, the lower your psi score drops, and the harder it is to use more of it. This is in contrast to d20's magic, where you know exactly how much magic you can put out per day, and running low on slots doesn't make any of your remaining slots less effective than they were at the beginning of the day. Thus, Traveller's psionics are categorically weaker than d20's magic in this 'declining ability' sense. Further, Traveller's psionic recovery mechanism is non-boolean; rather than resting for eight hours and then being fully recharged, psionic strength recovers gradually across hours as long as no further powers are used. This again encourages conservation. Finally, when you look at the things Traveller psionics can do, and the prices on them, it becomes apparent that they fill kind of a 'special projects' role; they can do things that you just can't do otherwise, but it's hard to pull off and expensive. Further, most of the Traveller psionic powers seem to be intended primarily for non-combat use; sure, you could teleport in combat, but it's really expensive and the benefit is probably minimal. They're not built with combat as the first consideration, whereas most d20 spells definitely are. d20 mages are multibarrel weapons platforms that carry loadouts specified at the beginning of the day, while a Traveller psion is more like a solar-powered multitool. However, the need for psions in Traveller to be able to rain hellfire and lightning down on their enemies is significantly less than that of their d20 counterparts for two reasons. First is that it's really hard to generate a Traveller character with no other combat-useful skills, both given the skills on the tables, the group skill package, and the connections rule. In d20, if your wizard is out of magic, he's stuck with a crossbow and an abominably low base attack bonus. In Trav, if you have Gun Combat 0 and a decent Dex, you're in reasonable stead for combat as far as offense goes, and then it's just a question of keeping your head down. Second, Traveller in general places a lower emphasis on combat than modern d20 does, meaning that combat prowess is less necessary, and therefore characters who aren't focused on combat are significantly more viable.
This all kind of leads up to the implicit fourth option: hack my own system together based on Mongoose Traveller, with a similarly 'fuzzy' magic system. The things necessary to achieve this task would be:
- Updated (er, downdated) skill list. Remote operations and astrogation aren't really things in fantasy settings.
- New background term tables and careers. 3.5 has 11 core base classes, which would fit roughly into 4 careers of three branches each with one new one. The expanded education column might be used for a prestige class relevant to each branch. I think Warrior (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin?), Thief (Rogue, Bard, Ranger?), Priest (Cleric, Druid, Monk), and Mage (Sorcerer, Wizard) would be traditional ways to split things up. Alternatively, ditch D&D classes as specialties and make things more interesting.
- Races should be very straightforward.
- Medieval-era gear selection would need expanded significantly, as well as rules for magic items. To be honest, a lot of magic items could just be standard Trav gear - a potion of Cure Disease is not so different from a Medicinal Drug, for example. Likewise magic weapons could be modeled as weapons with expert computers. This may not be the best course, but it's an option. The other would just be to cook up magic gear, hand it out, and see what happens. Naturally, that sounds more fun.
- Magic proper is the hard part. I need maybe 3-5 'schools' / skills for each of arcane and divine, each of which has about 4 fuzzy, non-combat-centric effects of varying difficulty. Tricky. I'm actually tempted to go with the four classical elements, plus life and death, and nix the arcane / divine divide, but then things like summoning and teleportation get lost in the noise. Alternatively, the five colors of Magic the Gathering might work very nicely... They're familiar to a lot of gamers, sufficiently general that I only need the five of them to cover most any effect that could come up, and reasonably clear-cut in most cases. Heck, I was going to have four caster specialties already; it's trivial to map each to a color and its two allied colors, and to introduce a fifth specialty for that last one. Cleric gets white, druid is green, sorcerer is red, wizard is blue, and necromancer is black. Then it's just a question of intuiting difficulties and mana costs for each attempted effect, which is not significantly harder than assigning difficulties on the fly to tasks run by other skills. Boom magic system complete.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Starcraft Stargrunt Playtest Report Part 2: Stuff We Did Wrong, Reprise
So at the end of the playtest report for the Stargrunt game I ran last night, I mentioned that I was concerned on a number of fronts, in that close combat, artillery, and possibly anti-air fire all felt just a little bit 'off'. Went and re-read the rules this morning, and here's what I'm seeing:
First off, close assault. The biggest thing, looking back at the rules, is that initiating a close assault takes two actions; thus, we can't do that thing we were doing where we make a non-combat move six inches towards the target, then initiate close assault, guaranteeing that you'll get there in one combat move. This makes final defensive fire a lot more likely to happen, which is great for Terran. On the other hand, it really exacerbates the problem with Zerg being suppressed - if you have to spend an action to try to break suppression at the beginning of your activation, there is no way you can close assault. I really think a free suppression removal attempt at the beginning of Zerg activations at morale levels where they have to close is probably a good plan.
The other thing we did wrong with close assault was casualty resolution with regard for stunned troops. The way we were doing it, we were resolving the status of casualties at the end of each round of close combat. This in incorrect; the book states that a casualty is out for the rest of that "close combat resolution". We interpreted this to mean that round; however, the Ending Close Combat paragraph opens with "After the first round of close combat resolution..." Thus, a 'resolution' is the entire process from charging to one side breaking and abandoning an objective, while a round is the process of pairing off and making opposed rolls for each pair. Therefore, casualties aren't resolved until one side breaks, and stunned individuals on the losing side may 'come to' out of unit coherency and surrounded by the enemy. Thus, 'stun' isn't just "Oh hey, the squad leader's fine." It's roughly on-par with being an actual casualty.
Finally, there's an important line in the close assault modifiers table that states that if in cover, the defenders get a 1-die shift during the first round of that close combat. Oops.
As for artillery, I found a very important line in the artillery rules that the spotting unit must have line of sight to all three points nominated (the two dummies and the actual incoming). This makes overlords and other aerial units excellent spotters, and also gives hills some value (besides as places to sit at the bottom of and fire up at the enemy who are trying to take it...). However, we did do it wrong last time. Still couldn't find a mention of the Observe action, though, outside of the list of actions at the beginning of the book.
Finally, I screwed up the firing at the overlord, in Terran's favor, actually. We used the rules for firing on point targets with heavy weapons from page 39 and the guided missiles section on page 41, which seemed like the right thing at the time... but we should've been using the "On-Table Anti-Air Fire" rules from page 49. Under these rules, Terran would've needed a roll to acquire the overlord as a target. Then the overlord would've had a chance to take evasive action, allowing it another chance to avoid the fire, after which Terran gets a chance to actually fire the missile, and has a third chance to miss. It's kind of ridiculous really. Terran gains two things from this: first, if an aircraft takes a hit, the pilot has to take a confidence check at +2 TL or decide to purple and GTFO. This means you could potentially drive the overlord off the table, denying the Zerg their command squad, transport, EW, and artillery support. The other thing Terran gains is that when hovering in place, the overlord suffers a negative die shift on its ECM roll. But the Terrans now need more successful rolls in order to actually take a shot at it, so this is a really bad change for them. Considering that their AA fire was already horrifyingly ineffective, we might not want to change the way we played it to this rule.
First off, close assault. The biggest thing, looking back at the rules, is that initiating a close assault takes two actions; thus, we can't do that thing we were doing where we make a non-combat move six inches towards the target, then initiate close assault, guaranteeing that you'll get there in one combat move. This makes final defensive fire a lot more likely to happen, which is great for Terran. On the other hand, it really exacerbates the problem with Zerg being suppressed - if you have to spend an action to try to break suppression at the beginning of your activation, there is no way you can close assault. I really think a free suppression removal attempt at the beginning of Zerg activations at morale levels where they have to close is probably a good plan.
The other thing we did wrong with close assault was casualty resolution with regard for stunned troops. The way we were doing it, we were resolving the status of casualties at the end of each round of close combat. This in incorrect; the book states that a casualty is out for the rest of that "close combat resolution". We interpreted this to mean that round; however, the Ending Close Combat paragraph opens with "After the first round of close combat resolution..." Thus, a 'resolution' is the entire process from charging to one side breaking and abandoning an objective, while a round is the process of pairing off and making opposed rolls for each pair. Therefore, casualties aren't resolved until one side breaks, and stunned individuals on the losing side may 'come to' out of unit coherency and surrounded by the enemy. Thus, 'stun' isn't just "Oh hey, the squad leader's fine." It's roughly on-par with being an actual casualty.
Finally, there's an important line in the close assault modifiers table that states that if in cover, the defenders get a 1-die shift during the first round of that close combat. Oops.
As for artillery, I found a very important line in the artillery rules that the spotting unit must have line of sight to all three points nominated (the two dummies and the actual incoming). This makes overlords and other aerial units excellent spotters, and also gives hills some value (besides as places to sit at the bottom of and fire up at the enemy who are trying to take it...). However, we did do it wrong last time. Still couldn't find a mention of the Observe action, though, outside of the list of actions at the beginning of the book.
Finally, I screwed up the firing at the overlord, in Terran's favor, actually. We used the rules for firing on point targets with heavy weapons from page 39 and the guided missiles section on page 41, which seemed like the right thing at the time... but we should've been using the "On-Table Anti-Air Fire" rules from page 49. Under these rules, Terran would've needed a roll to acquire the overlord as a target. Then the overlord would've had a chance to take evasive action, allowing it another chance to avoid the fire, after which Terran gets a chance to actually fire the missile, and has a third chance to miss. It's kind of ridiculous really. Terran gains two things from this: first, if an aircraft takes a hit, the pilot has to take a confidence check at +2 TL or decide to purple and GTFO. This means you could potentially drive the overlord off the table, denying the Zerg their command squad, transport, EW, and artillery support. The other thing Terran gains is that when hovering in place, the overlord suffers a negative die shift on its ECM roll. But the Terrans now need more successful rolls in order to actually take a shot at it, so this is a really bad change for them. Considering that their AA fire was already horrifyingly ineffective, we might not want to change the way we played it to this rule.
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