More S&W Complete Fighters

On first blush I was pretty happy with the changes made to the Fighter class in Complete. Then I really gave it a good look.

This iteration of the Fighting Man has two new class features that are supposed to set him apart from the other classes. They are his ability to Parry and exclusive use of Strength bonuses on to-hit and damage rolls. He also has the ability to make one attack per level vs opponents of one HD or less.

One thing I find myself guilty of when designing something is considering the best-case as the baseline. I don't mean to, but it happens. Then, I start thinking some idea I've had is unbalancing or too powerful. That seems to be the case to me with this Fighter. A lot is made of being the only class able to take advantage of Strength bonuses, and those bonuses apply to missile fire, as well, making the Fighter a formidable and deadly archer. Such a Fighter can enjoy a bonus of +3 to-hit and damage with a missile weapon, if his stats are high enough.

That's a tall order, though, and for Fighters without such stats, there are essentially no class abilities. In order to enjoy the benefits of the Strength modifiers on to-hit and damage rolls, the character must have a Strength of at least 13. This would allow a +1 to-hit, no modifier to damage. When rolling straight 3d6 for stats there is a 26% chance the roll will be 13 or more. The damage bonus doesn't come in until the Strength score is at least 16, where the damage bonus is +1. A roll of 16 or better occurs only 5% of the time. The maximum benefit, +2 to-hit/+3 damage, comes with an 18 Strength, which happens less than .5% of the time. Those probabilities don't account for rolling in order. I'm no statistician, and I don't know if I have ever had to roll in order, so it isn't worth considering, really. Then, of course for the deadly archer mentioned, the Dexterity roll has to be 13+, as well. The Parry ability is dependent on a Dexterity of 14+, 16% of the time. I have no idea what the percentage is of getting a 13+ on Strength and 14+ on Dexterity with the same character, but I'm sure it's brutal.

Part of the attraction of the OSR, for me, is that I don't need to feel like characters with a highest stat of 13 and the rest between 9 and 11 are unplayable. Remember the quote from the AD&D? The one about characters needing at least 15s in at least 2 stats to be considered playable.

"Furthermore, it is usually essential to the character's survival to be exceptional (with a rating of 15 or above) in no fewer than two ability characteristics."

PHB, pg 9

I don't want that. Exceptional should, by definition, be the exception. If the entire party is sporting at least two stats of 15+, where's the "exceptional"? Oh, sure, compared to everyone else in the world, maybe. But only if they are NPCs, and NPCs that aren't retired adventurers, because they would have to possess such scores as well.

So, while those bonuses looked good on paper, they are too problematic for me. I believe that a Fighter's class abilities should be just that, class abilities, not stat abilities. They should scale with his level, just like all the other classes. Lastly, they should be exclusive to the class, not allowed to so-called "subclasses" like paladins and rangers. I think I'll be incorporating my personal Fighter class for my megadungeon. If I ever get a group to play it.

System of Choice

Now that I have my megadungeon direction, I have to firmly focus myself on a system. Naturally, it will be old-school D&D, but via which route? For me, it is all about the characters and the combat system. It is about the one that produces characters that I want to play (even though I'll be designing/refereeing). it also has to deliver characters I want to referee, so no abilities that get real sticky with math or exceptions. Combat has to pop, move right along, be exciting, terrifying, and quick. I refuse to track segments or arrow flight times or any of the other "realism" nonsense that people have tried to bolt onto the abstraction engine at the heart of D&D.

So, it really comes down to three options for me: Swords & Wizardry Complete, Labyrinth Lord, and Labyrinth Lord + Advanced Edition Companion.

Complete really is in the driver's seat. The LBBs plus supplements were proto-AD&D, and so is Complete. I think it would require minimal house ruling (mostly for the Fighter, Cleric, and changes to the Magic-User xp chart). Its rules are closest to the ones I started with, so the comfort factor is off the chart.

LL and LL+AEC are superb games. Very well presented and organized. As I've mentioned, I've never held an actual copy of B or X, so there is zero familiarity or nostalgia for me in LL. The AEC does conjure some memories, though, because it truly does capture the spirit of how we actually played "AD&D" back then. I just bolted it onto the LBBs instead of B/X. The biggest thing holding these two back, beyond the nostalgia factor, is size. I have a program that splits pdfs into their individual pages, then add or rearrange pages. I cobbled together an LL "complete", which is base LL minus sections 2 and 3, added in everything from the AEC, left out the known world stuff, and it is still 236 pages. Not bad compared to close to 500 for Pathfinder Core, which doesn't include monsters. But S&W Complete comes in over 100 pages shorter. I like that.

The other option I didn't include is my own S&W based house rules doc. I still have mixed feelings on it, so it will almost certainly remain on the shelf for now.

Megadungeon Monday: Backstory

The Dank Dungeons of Dannak

The Rûgari were the people of an empire that controlled the lands hereabouts for many hundreds of years. Sometimes ruled by benevolence, sometimes cruelty, they always saw themselves as superior to all others in their realm. Toward the end of their reign, true megalomania overtook the emperors. They became convinced they were gods, and that the Rugar in general were near-celestial beings.

Their great city sprawled across a lush valley, cradled between two arms of the Starspur Mountains. The city, originally walled, grew far beyond its modest beginnings. Eventually, all thoughts of walling the city were abandoned. Instead the valley mouth was walled, and the inhabitants of the great city had the length and breadth of the valley to call home. Watch towers were constructed along the spurs to guard those passes down into the valley. At the head of the valley the mighty fortress of Dannak was erected. It crouched over the headwaters of the Velspé River, carved from the very slopes of Mt. Kander.

Beneath the great fortress were built countless miles of tunnels, chambers, libraries, temples, and all manner of things. The emporers saw Dannak as their final bastion should calamity befall their empire, and provisioned it thus. Being haughty and wasteful, no emporer would demean himself by occupying a predecessor's lodgings in Dannak. Each emporer had his own domocile carved from the rock. Some ordered previous quarters sealed, either walled up or buried beneath controlled cave-ins. Eventually it became impossible to accurately determine the extent of the dungeons.

Then, in a night, the empire was gone. The cause remains unknown, and perhaps unknowable. All that is known comes down from citizens whose dwellings were near the wall at the mouth of the great valley. They reported seeing a rolling, boiling mist issuing from Dannak. It moved down the valley with unnatural speed and purpose. There were disembodied voices in the mist, laughing and cavorting. Every living person touched by the mist died, screaming and choking, within seconds. Crops and livestock, too, were killed, but not wild things still growing and making their lives in the valley.

Thus it was, that in the span of a single night, the mighty Rûgari Empire was brought low. Their great city became a graveyard, and their mighty fortress became a tomb, cursed and haunted.

Mondays

I have exhausted my initial batch of misconceptions. I'm certain more will come to me, but for now I'm out.

So, I have a new thing for Monday. Megadungeon Monday. I've been wanting to do this, but just didn't have a unifying theme. Just this very morning, one hit me like a ton of bricks. I am very excited about it, excited to share it, and hopeful that I'll get some feedback and conversations going with it.

Even though I'll be looking at it as a mythic underworld, I still wanted it to have some historical context for existing. I do want research in town to be a viable and worthy option. I wanted a good backstory for the players that could at least hint at why this sprawling underground complex would come to be. As far as my referee's backstory goes, there is a certain point where the dungeon took on a mythical life of its own, thus obviating the need to give even a passing nod to reality issues.

The inaugural Megadungeon Monday is up next, with a rough draft of the backstory idea. Please let me know what you think.

Level Caps

This will likely be brief, but once I get rolling . . . who knows?

Everybody that knows some basic D&D history knows that demihuman level caps were first introduced into the game as one of D&D's arbitrary balancing factors. Our game is much maligned for having several points of arbitrary balance, but this one is odd, to say the least. However, just this morning I think I may finally understand it. And it only took me 35 years.

First, the ironical portion: demihuman level limits are one of the things that D&D is regularly criticized for, by fans of the game, as well as the haters. Strangely, though, the players, the vocal ones, that hate it and speak/write/blog about hating it, also ignore it. It's one of those things like alignment languages. A person (I won't name names, you know who you are) will write a 10,000 word essay on the arbitrary and "silly" nature of such things, and in the last 50 words smugly declare that they never follow such rules anyway.

For years I, and the gaming circles I ran in, ignored level limits. We also ignored the rules for dual-classing and allowed humans to multiclass, but that's another post. I was never into the idea that being able to detect sloping passages and a bonus to certain saves was worth stunting my character's development. I mean, you're giving up a boatload of hit points (depending on exact flavor of D&D you play), spells and spell levels, better to-hit chances, and improved saving throws. That's a lot of stuff that will come up every single session, and it is sacrificed for some special abilities with a pretty narrow application. How is that "balance"?

This morning I realized I have been looking at it all wrong. It is not meant to balance demihumans against humans on a 1-to-1 basis. It is meant to balance entire populations. What is one of the things common to racial descriptions, no matter what setting or ruleset? The supposed rarity of dwarves, elves, whatever. Things like "The dwarves are rarely seen anymore, their numbers having been decimated by their centuries-old conflict with the goblins." or "The elves have been slowly and mysteriously disappearing for generations of men, their population now a shadow of its former numbers." From the beginning, demihumans were meant to be rare.

So, it is simple economics, really. If you want to control the flow of goods, you increase the price. A player would think twice about making his fighter a dwarf, if he knew the character couldn't go above 6th level. That alone would ensure the rarity of dwarven characters. And hobbits? Forget it. 4th level, are you kidding me?

But, there is another way. As much as I hate to say it (not because I'm an Edition Warrior, just because this is an OSR blog), 3E and up, including PF, figured it out. Rather than make it prohibitive to play demihumans, make it enticing to play humans. Instead of making humans the no-bonus-or-penalty baseline, give them some bonuses to make them attractive options alongside the demihumans.

Of course, this is a form of power creep, but if handled properly has its benefits. If the bonuses are kept slight in power, yet broad in application, and tied to specific human cultures/societies in the campaign, that should help. Things along the lines of humans from a certain region are Hardy, and gain a +1 to saving throws against the natural elements, ie freezing to death. Or another group that is known for their horse archers, so fighters have +1 to-hit with bows from horseback. I like mechanical ties to the setting, so minor perks like this are right up my alley.

Well, I didn't keep it as brief as I thought I would. I suppose I could have just said "Ignore them, it shouldn't break your game" and been done with it, but where's the blog in that?

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia

Any exploration of OD&D inevitably leads me here. As you know by now, I cut my teeth on the LBBs + Supplements, and went from there to AD&D. I never played Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X. In fact I've never held a physical copy in my mitts to this very day. The Mentzer BECMI boxes, though, is another story.

I used to buy a lot of D&D stuff, always trying to recapture the wonder of those first adventures, the halcyon days of youth. This was one of those purchases, made during a time when I came to the conclusion that I needed two things in my gaming: 1) Completeness and 2) Simplicity. I had already learned from 2nd Edition that I didn't want a million splatbooks and rules spread across 12,000 pages. (I'm an option whore, so I always want all the class books, race books, whatever).

Anyway, this one book had it all, and it had it all for 36 levels. It also had a charming, almost naive simplicity to it. Before it is said, I know BECMI is not considered as simple as B/X. I'm not prepared to debate that in this post (maybe in the comments), but one thing I think we can all agree on is that BECMI is much simpler that AD&D 1st or 2nd Edition. I even liked the race-as-class, because sometimes I think I tend toward too many house rules and feel a need to return to the source from time to time.

Sad thing is, I never got to play it. My group had become geographically challenged in those days and we only got together once a month or so. It wasn't my turn on the DM carousel, either. Besides all that, I doubt my group at the time would have played with these rules anyway. They were too advanced for that. By advanced, I mean they were into a 1st/2nd edition hybrid, with a cornucopia of house rules, Dragon articles, and whatever whimsy overtook the DM during any given session.

As should be plain over these last few weeks, I am once again tilting at windmills of simplicity. Thus, I arrive once again on the shores of Mystara. Unfortunately, I gave away my copy of the Cyclopedia to the 13 year old son of a (then) friend. He was wanting to learn D&D, it was his birthday, and I could introduce my beloved hobby to him in a single book. Besides, I wasn't playing from it anyway.

Enter:

A retro-clone of the Cyclopedia. I won't go into a review here (I'm not really qualified since I haven't played it), but I will say that this is a very cool game. Especially if, like me, you loved the Cyclopedia, but no longer have access. It is a free download here and come in three versions and two editions. All free. There are POD options, as well, costing no more than print cost plus shipping.

Since it is free, I feel comfortable recommending Dark Dungeons based on my simple read-thru. If you want a complete game, with a little more crunch than some titles, this won't disappoint.

The Role of the Referee

Something in my last post has started me thinking. The role of the referee has evolved along with everything else in our hobby. Even the name went from referee (my preferred term, in case you haven't noticed) to Dungeon Master. I think this is worth looking into closer.

In the olden days, the guy that ran the game was called the referee. That was his role, to referee the events and conflicts of the game. He was supposed to be completely impartial, neither favoring nor hindering the player characters with his behind-the-scenes knowledge. He was instructed to devise cunning traps and carefully craft certain encounters. The rest of the encounters were to be left to chance. Once committed to paper, the traps and encounters were to be administered with impartiality. Curiously enough, even though in those early days there were very few modules (as we called adventures), and no published settings as we know them today, the referee was to be an impartial judge. Almost as if he had no creative connection to the material.

Sometime prior to the release of AD&D it was suggested that the referee be called Dungeon Master (DM). I believe it was first published as a term in Dragon magazine, called The Dragon in those days. It is ironic to me that while over time published settings became the standard, the connotation of the referee shifted. Where the impartial term referee was first used, the participant in that role was forced to devise their own setting. Later, when the referee became "master" he was master over a pre-written, pre-imagined, published setting.

In the days of the referee, there was little to no thought wasted on balancing encounters. Players were given free reign to go anywhere they wanted and pick a fight with whomever they found there. If the fight turned out to be more than they could handle, they better have a Plan B. One of the best pieces of player advice in the old days was "Know when to run away. It is always better to live to fight another day than force a bad fight."

Now, D&DIV is all about a succession of well-balanced encounters. They are designed to challenge the characters. The inference there, to me, is that it shouldn't necessarily be deadly, just challenging. Kind of like watching a Conan movie. You know there may be a desperate fight and Conan will be challenged. We don't ever fear for his life though, because it wouldn't be a Conan movie without Conan. It may very well be challenging. It may be a desperate, pitched battle. One thing it won't be, though, is suspenseful. So, the latest iteration has the DM carefully balancing encounters.

I'll take a sandbox, a few random encounter tables, and a couple of purpose-designed lairs any day. Then again I am a Referee.