A Little Spitballing

So, I've been thinking. I like to stick as much with free RPGs as possible. It's not even a monetary thing because I usually print them or have them printed. It's just a preference. As we all know, the basic rules for 5E are freely available. I printed the player and DM pdfs this weekend and did some home binding. I've been thinking about using just these as the basis for a hypothetical campaign. Stick with the classic classes and races, as presented. Clean and simple, and in only one book (not including house rules and such, see below).

Even though the core books aren't free, I would cull from them certain things, kind of like incorporating articles from Dragon. I would include Feats. I think that between Backgrounds and Feats, it really is possible to take the "Core Four" and create most, if not all, the additional classes, to some degree. I would likely include Colleges for wizards and Domains for clerics, as much for campaign flavor as anything else.

Over at the City of Iron there is an excellent series of posts on race-as-class. Mr Norman takes the dwarf, elf, and halfing from 5E and gives them a very nice B/X twist.

A short post, I know, but it is a brief idea in the description. I may while away some time this afternoon knocking together some class/background/feat combos to represent some of the other classes. If I'm happy with how it is working, I'll post them.

Circular Logic

The draw and appeal of LBB D&D is undeniable to me. Every single time I read a post from Delta's D&D Hotspot or any of the other old schoolers I read regularly I want to put everything else on the bookshelf and never look back. In fact, I seriously considered doing that this past week.

I was reading the new rules booklet in the Starter Set. It occurred to me that I really don't enjoy reading rules that much anymore. I think the problem is with patience. A lot of rules these days are written to be very friendly. I get this. Our hobby needs new blood, plus it is not populated merely by people that get off on reading rules. I prefer rules that are written in a conversational, yet very straight-forward manner. Delving Deeper and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are two examples, though they have quite dissimilar "voices". One of the reasons I never really make the leap with Alternity is the excessively nurturing writing.

But, I digress. So, I had decided to just pass on 5E, even though I really like its direction, because I just want to stick with something I've been intimately familiar with for almost 40 years. No muss, no worries. No rules that are almost like they used to be, but you need to read them again like you've never read them before, lest you miss a significant detail. OK, good, so that's what I'll do. I think, though, I'll incorporate some house rules I've been knocking around a while now. Such as:

• This one which makes each of the four main classes the "starting point" for what your character will ultimately become
• All my many ideas for making fighters Fighters
• My ideas for bringing some variety to magic-users, including such things as increasing spell efficacy based on ability, forcing mages to be more focused, and making them more combat-survivable

Plus, I do like the way 5E handles Feats (at least in the playtest) and I like the idea of Advantage/Disadvantage.

It then became evident to me that all my house rules have been implemented into 5E to some degree or another. That, along with the things I would drop into any old school house tules I cook up, brought me full circle. Honestly, I don't like house rule documents all that much. I love cooking them up, but at the table, I think it can be a pain to get everyone on the same page (pardon the pun). Plus, for me, I have an easier time trusting a DM (and claiming DM authority) when working as closely as possible with the RAW. Personal limitation, I suppose, but there it is.

The final solution here, which is probably obvious, is for me to stop reading the Starter Set rules document. It is specifically targeted at people that need their hands held by a friendly presentation. Moving forward, I'll be sticking to the Basic pdf for my rules needs. At least until the Big Three drop. After that, all bets are off.

5E Basic: Rambling About Fighters

I've read up through the Classes chapter. I don't really want to discuss races (sorry) except to say that for some reason the 5E dwarf speaks to me more than any dwarf ever has. In fact, the elf is appealing to me as well. I've been human-centric for a long time, mainly because I felt like the other races had become nothing more than optimization options (and this feeling goes back to 2nd Edition). With viable bonuses for all races, plus the old-school vibe (and please don't hate me for wanting an old-school vibe; I am old), I want to play dwarves and elves again.

One of the things I always look for, no matter the system, is to see if I can make a fighter to be feared. This shouldn't be news by now. Well, I believe the answer is yes, but can I make a fighter that is more fearful than one of the other classes? That's always the lurking question, isn't it? So, I'm going to jump the order and look at the fighter first.

With the Proficiency bonus anyone proficient with a given weapon has the same "to hit" bonus as a fighter of equal level. That's a bit unsettling, if considered in a vacuum. In truth, it is just a part of Bounded Accuracy, which basically means that a character's ability to emerge from a fight victorious isn't tied primarily to his ability to lay steel on an opponent once. Fighters get truly nasty starting at 5th level (unless I'm reading something wrong, chime in if I am). See, at 2nd level fighters get Action Surge, which they can use once per rest (until 17th level). This allows them to take an extra action on their turn. Then, at 5th level, they get an extra attack, when they take the Attack action. So, one action (Attack) and they get two attacks. I guess you see where I'm going with this. Use the Action Surge for an Attack action and make four attack rolls. Now, if we couple all this with the Champion Archetype, it gets even more nasty. See, at 3rd level a Champion scores a critical hit on a 19 or 20. Suppose a Champion with Great Weapon Fighting is involved. In a nutshell, he can roll 4 attacks in one round, with a 10% of doing a critical with each, rolling 4d6 if he does crit AND re-rolling any of those that come up a 1 or 2.

Ok, so that could seem a bit contrived, maybe borderline min-maxing, but I don't think so. It isn't twisting up some weird combination that has zero roleplaying verisimilitude. It's pretty much a natural progression along a path set upon during character generation.

Here's my take on the new fighter.

• He is proficient with all weapons, which is something of an advantage, but no class is really screwed concerning weapon choice, so it isn't a great big deal.
• He is the only class proficient with heavy armor (the mountain dwarf has such proficiency)
• Fighting Styles will make him marginally better than any other class in a narrowly-defined area
• The Action Surge/Extra Attack dynamic will be what really sets them apart as death-dealers
• Martial Archetypes will further distance them as Not-to-be-Trifled-With

One other thing: the cleric and wizard gain five Ability Score Improvements at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19. The rogue gains six, at 4, 8, 10, 12, 16, and 19. The fighter gains a whopping seven, at 4, 6, 8, 12,14, 16, and 19. So, when the other classes are getting their second, the fighter will be getting his third. This essentially means that any fighter can easily have his primary combat ability maxed out by 6th level, if his starting score is decent and the player concentrated the improvements there.

I think the new fighter should rightly be feared as he advances. I'm looking forward to seeing the other archetypes on offer in the upcoming PHB. It seems like it would be a simple matter to homebrew some as well.

By the way, the cover I posted earlier is not the one I went with. Here is the cover I ultimately made and went with:

So, This Is the New Basic

I haven't printed it yet. I needed to whip up a cover first. I've skimmed over it, and I dig what I see. There is a printer-friendly version, too. As far as I can tell, though, the "friendly" comes from doing away with a (very light) marbling texture background.There's still a light green background to the sidebars and alternating lines on tables. There is a tan-ish accent at the bottom edge, incorporating the page numbers. I'm not entirely sure how much of a toner issue the marble effect will cause, but I plan to print mine in glorious color.

A note for you OCDers out there: The way the pdf is set up, the page numbers will end up close to the spine. I personally prefer my page numbers in the outer corners. I simply inserted a blank page following the title page (or leave the "back" of the title page blank).

Anyway, here's my cover:

Hopefully I'll have it printed by this time tomorrow. If I have time, I'll post some thoughts.

D-36 (or D-25 Depending on Your Reckoning)

So, here we are at 36 days and counting. And yet it isn't really 36 days. As it turns out, there are certain outlets that will be going live with the Starter Set on July 3rd. That isn't really an issue for me, here in the beautiful Tennessee Valley, as there are none of the uber-special stores convenient to me (at least that I know about). Of real interest to me, though, are the Basic Rules. I'm sure you all know by now that the basic core of the rules will be available free (more on that in a moment). What I learned only today is that the free Basic pdf will be released also on July 3rd, coinciding with the Starter Set pre-release. Hence, he D-25.

Free Basic

I'm ridiculously happy that they are doing this. There are two aspects of my gaming nature that suffer serious compatibility issues:

• I'm an open-source kind of guy and I like my games to embrace that philosophy
• I'm a D&D whore. Period. No matter what other games I look at, post about, or fawn over, D&D is my THING. With the exception of Moldvay/Cook B/X, I have snapped up every edition as soon as availability and finances allowed. It's who I am, it's what I do.

So, releasing the Basic rules free (at least as in beer, not much word about an OGL at this point) is a bold stride toward being able to resolve these opposing forces in my gaming psyche.

By the way, I also pre-ordered the PHB. Unfortunately, I am at my math limit for the weekend, so a countdown to that release is currently unavailable.