There, I said it. I like the concept of hit points as a measure of a character or monster's survivability, at least within the context of a game primarily focused on dungeon or wilderness crawls.
I've realized that I don't really care exactly what they represent, either. Gamers agonize over it to the point of absurdity, but it's enough for me to know that they're just some unspecified amalgam of a creature's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual vitality that keeps it going, and when they run out, either its body or spirit or both are too broken to go on, and it dies.
Yes, I know hit points aren't "realistic." That's not the point, either. Hit points make the vitality of each character, and the party as a whole, a resource to be carefully managed. In the real world, the greatest fighter who ever lived could theoretically be taken out by a stray arrow, a fall from a spooked horse, or a lucky stab from some grubby peasant with a kitchen knife. In the real world, warriors seldom just accrue nickel-and-dime wounds until they run out of health and keel over. One could enter a battle fresh as a daisy, and get cut down in the first clash. Personally, that's not what I want from D&D.
One of the most important functions of hit points in the game is to act as a buffer against the radical uncertainty of the dice, and enable a certain level of planning and strategizing that makes an adventure work as a continuous long haul rather than as a series of vignettes. In D&D, you go into battle with a pretty good idea of how much punishment you can take. You know with a fair degree of certainty whether, and for roughly how long, you can stand against a given opponent before you'll be in real danger. You know that if you have 18 hit points, you can last at least a few rounds against a couple of orcs, even if they get really lucky. That's the way it's supposed to be, because one of the major strategic elements of the game is Resource Management. You pick and choose your battles based not only on whether you think you can win, and what you stand to gain, but on how much it's going to cost you. Especially at mid and high levels, there's little chance of a character's dying in any single fight in an adventure. Instead, the entire adventure is a battle of attrition that will claim the lives of characters who squander their resources imprudently. Of course the adventure may be punctuated with intense moments of great danger, and instances where a single bad decision can mean instant death, but the very term "crawl" (as in "dungeon crawl" or "hex crawl") strongly suggests that the bulk of it is of less intensity and more strategy.
This is Combat as War. Hit points lend themselves well to Combat as War, precisely because of the resource management aspect, and their highly abstract nature. Damage subsumes not just wounds, but all the fatigue, trauma, discomfort, and deprivation of dungeon-delving and wilderness exploration. The fact that actual points of damage are usually accrued only through combat and traps is merely a point of convenience; combat and trap damage is usually a decent proxy for how much of a beating the PCs are taking from all the miscellaneous rigors of adventuring. You can judge roughly how hard a time the party has had overall by how well it has fared in the various combat encounters it has had to face.
Sure, you absolutely can construct a more specific and realistic system for dealing out combat injuries and do away with most of the abstraction of hit points. Every attack could have some chance of killing a character outright, or inflicting some particular would to some particular body part for some particular effect or hindrance. What you end up with is something which is much more radically uncertain than traditional hp-based combat.
Perhaps a more abstract analogy would make the distinction clearer. Imagine two different games of chance, each involving the rolling of a single ordinary six-sided die. In the first game, you have ten tokens and the house has only five. Each time you roll the die, you lose one token if you roll 3 or less, and the house loses one if you roll 4 or higher. You're twice as likely to wipe out the house as you are to go broke. It's still possible you could lose everything, but it's not going to happen all at once, out of the blue. If you get a couple unlucky rolls in a row and start feeling anxious, you can cut your losses and walk away.
In the other game, you and the house both have one token. Each time you roll the die, if you roll a 5 or 6, you take the house's token. If you roll a 1, it takes yours. The odds look similar, at least at a glance. You're about twice as likely to defeat the house as the house is to defeat you, (anybody with more expertise in statistics or probabilities, feel free to verify or debunk that quick and dirty assessment,) but the perceived risk is higher. There's a lot more riding on each roll of the die, and you could be wiped out all at once. Whether or not you roll again or walk away is based entirely on intuition or blind confidence, because the first round that produces a definite result ends the game.
In RPG combat, things aren't quite that simple, of course, but a game with hit point-based damage tends toward the former example, and a game with a "realistic" system of severe wounds and possible instant death tends toward the latter.
Additionally, with non-hp tracking of injuries, unless you add on some other system to track the
cumulative effects of fatigue, minor cuts and bruises, discomfort and
all that, what you have is a game in which each fight is much more a free-standing mini-scenario of its own, and much less an integral part of a whole adventure. Such a system treats a fighter
who's been tramping through a dungeon all day and fought a dozen battles as essentially equal to one who has just woken up from a peaceful
sleep in his comfortable bed, so long as their hides are intact and
their bones unbroken. In other words, as long as no serious wounds have
been taken, the party enters each fight basically fresh. I'm sure it's possible to design a system that would track a character's "energy" level separately from his significant physical injuries, and apply effects of high or low energy level to his combat ability and odds of being killed by the next attack against him, but I can't imagine it being anything other than a total logistical nightmare to run at the game table.
This isn't to say that a game with a more realistic system of combat injuries couldn't be as much fun as hp-based D&D, but it's a radical game changer.
Of course there are instances where hit points are a poor fit, too. Some styles of gaming are just made for the swingier, more radically uncertain approach like the second dice game above. A game of vignette-type encounters, in which the action cuts from scene to scene instead of crawling from room to room, probably demands that kind of uncertainty to be really exciting. I can imagine few things more boring than a series of almost certain victories in stand-alone fights.
I've also completely made peace with the idea of hit points increasing
with levels. It's just part of becoming a seasoned adventurer, and
represents not only increased combat ability, but general toughness and
tolerance for the rigors of an adventuring life. It's an amalgamation
of factors - part skill, part savvy, part plain old will to persevere,
and all the host of intangibles that separate the novice from the professional
and the merely good from the truly exceptional. Sure, you could break
it down, and try to tease out all the important elements, tracking and
applying them individually - but why? Unless it produces a hell of a lot of interesting choices and situations for the players, it's a waste of time and mental effort. Sure, there are other ways of
representing improving skill and experience, but hit points are a
perfectly good fit for a game focusing on exploration, resource
management, and Combat as War.
And besides, there are ways to inject a little more uncertainty into a hp system, without too badly diluting its virtue as a resource management element. Optional mechanics such as exploding damage dice and critical hits allow for the occasional unexpectedly lucky hit, and bolt onto the hp chassis quite nicely. "Death and dismemberment" tables (to be used either in the event of critical hits or dropping to zero hit points) provide the possibility of gruesome injuries, and again work just fine superimposed over a hit point system.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
There are games, and then there are roleplaying games
This is another one of those topics that's been bouncing around inside my skull for a while, but which seemed so...something...(Pedantic? Navel-gazing? Pointless? Already discussed to the point of futility on some gaming forum long before I took up interest in gaming again?) Anyway, as I was saying, so...something...as to be completely unworthy of wasting my time to post, or yours to read. Well, screw it. I'm posting it. Whether you want to read it through is your call.
It seems to me that for the most part, people don't expect non-roleplaying games to "make sense," except in the most superficial and abstract of ways. The rules are the rules, and that's that. Nobody questions why a hand of 21 in blackjack wins but 22 is an automatic loser. Nobody objects that Monopoly bears no resemblance to capitalism or real estate markets other than some loose terminology. Why does the knight in chess move in an L-shaped pattern? It just does, and nobody bats an eye. Nobody ever asked why you would walk right past a ladder without climbing it, and then slide down the chute two spaces farther on, just because a throw of the dice said so.
If official rules are omitted, it's not because it's not realistic or because it's unbalanced, but because the rule is too tedious to remember or apply, or bogs down the game, or just generally doesn't contribute to the fun at all. I don't ever remember using the official challenge rule in Scrabble; if somebody thought something wasn't a word, we'd look it up in the dictionary. If it was there, it stood, and if it wasn't, the player took back his tiles and played something else. I know there were obscure rules in Monopoly that we never applied. As for chess, I never had much interest in learning the rules in the first place. I just stuck with the much simpler game of checkers.
That was the attitude with which I began to read my first copy of Moldvay Basic too, because that was how I thought of games in general. For the most part that was the attitude with which I actually ran the game during those first formative months. It didn't matter to me WHY magic-users couldn't wear armor, or WHY clerics didn't get a spell at first level, or WHY movement rates were what they were. Those were just the rules of the game. The only thing in the rulebook that really struck me strange was the bit about fudging dice rolls at the DM's whim - for example, if a character with 3 hp is struck by a monster wielding a 1d8 sword, you just announce 2 points of damage and the game proceeds. (Side note: I think that bit of advice was a poor one, and to the extent that my games of old eventually descended into PC-coddling, railroading, and Monty Haul-ism, this was at the root of it.)
Just like in Scrabble or Monopoly, we didn't embrace every rule in the book. I mostly handwaved stuff that just bogged down the proceedings, at least in my view at the time. Encumbrance was a load (heh) so we ignored it - everybody had a movement rate of 120' (40') and whatever treasure they found they could cram into their packs and carry away. The Caller rule seemed to be a needless procedural thing rather than a rule that really affected play (sort of like the Banker in Monopoly) so we ignored that too. What we didn't do was to argue whether a rule best represented how something would really happen. We didn't quibble over realism. In other words, we played it a lot like a board game, if the game pieces had had personalities and goals.
The crazy thing is, it worked on both levels. We played by the rules, because they were the rules, but we also played out heroic quests and adventures. We imagined characters and monsters, not game pieces, and caverns and ruins, not game boards. Characters developed and prospered, and characters died, and some of each were quite beloved by players and DM alike. Some of each were forgotten, too, either retired and discarded or killed in action to be replaced by a more compelling persona, but when was the last time anybody EVER felt a thrill for the Top Hat token when it just missed landing on Boardwalk with a hotel, or lamented the loss of a particular pawn on the chess board?
I guess the thrust of my whole line of inquiry here is, how granular and how "realistic" does a system need to be in order to foster that kind of imagination-centric experience, rather than just a contextless contest of tactics and probabilities like chess or blackjack or Scrabble?
A secondary question (or is it the primary one?): Why do RPG enthusiasts obsess over these things in a way that even the most ardent chess or poker player does not? Why, for example, the endless debates over what "hit points" are and what they mean in the game, and whether they ought to be replaced with some sort of realistic wound system? Nobody puzzles over how many "men" a checkers game piece represents, or whether defeating it on the game board represents slaughter or capture. To be honest, I have no idea what the hell, if anything, poker hands could possibly represent.
The major difference between a roleplaying game and a plain old game, as I see them, is that the former expressly encourages imagination on the part of players (including the DM/GM) as an integral and essential part of the game experience, while the latter does not. You can play chess or checkers without giving a flying rat's ass on the lower east side of hell what these armies are fighting about, the personalities of the commanders, the terrain of the battlefield, or what's at stake for the potential winner and loser. Nowhere in the rules of those games or in the culture of players who play them is there any very strong suggestion that such games are anything more than gridded boards, some tokens, some bits of stiff paper with numbers and symbols printed on them, etc. Drawing a royal flush in poker means nothing more than that you hold all the cards of a particular suit from 10 to Ace, and it beats any other hand. A hard 8 in craps is just that, a number. In an RPG, though, getting hit for 8 points of damage means something more. As such, it's completely natural for the player to want to know what that means beyond mere numbers. Does taking 8 points of damage and surviving mean your character just got run straight through with a sword (max damage, after all) and sucked it up like a badass, or did he get just get grazed, or did it just rattle his confidence?
Another facet of most RPGs is that they expressly state that the rules in the book do not cover all possible actions of the characters/"game pieces," but rather that they cover the most often encountered situations. That's in direct contrast to most games, in which all possible moves are prescribed by the rules. The pieces on a chess board each may be moved in a certain way, and no other. In blackjack, you stand or hit. In D&D, the actions your character may attempt are limited only by your imagination and the context of the setting. That naturally leads to a mentality that every nuance you might be able to describe in stating your actions should have a mechanical effect in the game. For example, shouldn't leaping from a shoulder-high wall and driving your sword point at your enemy be different somehow from just swinging at him in toe-to-toe combat? There's a certain impetus toward extreme granularity of rules, to uniquely accommodate every action a player can imagine. To what degree should that impetus be resisted, and to what degree should it be indulged or even encouraged?
I'm as guilty as anybody, and perhaps more than most, of compulsively putting rules under the microscope to see if they conform to my ideas of how combat and other elements of a fantasy world should behave, and of proposing new or modified systems or sub-systems to enhance the game experience. Perhaps it's the nostalgia of seeing B/X officially revived, but I'm starting to rethink all of my design tinkering, or at least my motives for engaging in it. I do think that there can be value in deconstructing and analyzing a system, figuring out exactly what the rules do and whether it's what they purport to do, and what to do about it when effect and purpose don't match. I think there's value in codifying house rules to deal with recurring situations that come up in one's own game that perhaps the game designers didn't anticipate, or that are just more important to one's own game than the original designers contemplated.
What I can't deny, though, is that, warts and all, I never had more fun playing D&D than when it was just good old B/X D&D, and at this point in my gaming and blogging "career" I think I may soon be shifting my focus away from so much rules tinkering, and toward my philosophy of DMing, of building atmosphere in a campaign setting, and similar topics.
It seems to me that for the most part, people don't expect non-roleplaying games to "make sense," except in the most superficial and abstract of ways. The rules are the rules, and that's that. Nobody questions why a hand of 21 in blackjack wins but 22 is an automatic loser. Nobody objects that Monopoly bears no resemblance to capitalism or real estate markets other than some loose terminology. Why does the knight in chess move in an L-shaped pattern? It just does, and nobody bats an eye. Nobody ever asked why you would walk right past a ladder without climbing it, and then slide down the chute two spaces farther on, just because a throw of the dice said so.
If official rules are omitted, it's not because it's not realistic or because it's unbalanced, but because the rule is too tedious to remember or apply, or bogs down the game, or just generally doesn't contribute to the fun at all. I don't ever remember using the official challenge rule in Scrabble; if somebody thought something wasn't a word, we'd look it up in the dictionary. If it was there, it stood, and if it wasn't, the player took back his tiles and played something else. I know there were obscure rules in Monopoly that we never applied. As for chess, I never had much interest in learning the rules in the first place. I just stuck with the much simpler game of checkers.
That was the attitude with which I began to read my first copy of Moldvay Basic too, because that was how I thought of games in general. For the most part that was the attitude with which I actually ran the game during those first formative months. It didn't matter to me WHY magic-users couldn't wear armor, or WHY clerics didn't get a spell at first level, or WHY movement rates were what they were. Those were just the rules of the game. The only thing in the rulebook that really struck me strange was the bit about fudging dice rolls at the DM's whim - for example, if a character with 3 hp is struck by a monster wielding a 1d8 sword, you just announce 2 points of damage and the game proceeds. (Side note: I think that bit of advice was a poor one, and to the extent that my games of old eventually descended into PC-coddling, railroading, and Monty Haul-ism, this was at the root of it.)
Just like in Scrabble or Monopoly, we didn't embrace every rule in the book. I mostly handwaved stuff that just bogged down the proceedings, at least in my view at the time. Encumbrance was a load (heh) so we ignored it - everybody had a movement rate of 120' (40') and whatever treasure they found they could cram into their packs and carry away. The Caller rule seemed to be a needless procedural thing rather than a rule that really affected play (sort of like the Banker in Monopoly) so we ignored that too. What we didn't do was to argue whether a rule best represented how something would really happen. We didn't quibble over realism. In other words, we played it a lot like a board game, if the game pieces had had personalities and goals.
The crazy thing is, it worked on both levels. We played by the rules, because they were the rules, but we also played out heroic quests and adventures. We imagined characters and monsters, not game pieces, and caverns and ruins, not game boards. Characters developed and prospered, and characters died, and some of each were quite beloved by players and DM alike. Some of each were forgotten, too, either retired and discarded or killed in action to be replaced by a more compelling persona, but when was the last time anybody EVER felt a thrill for the Top Hat token when it just missed landing on Boardwalk with a hotel, or lamented the loss of a particular pawn on the chess board?
I guess the thrust of my whole line of inquiry here is, how granular and how "realistic" does a system need to be in order to foster that kind of imagination-centric experience, rather than just a contextless contest of tactics and probabilities like chess or blackjack or Scrabble?
A secondary question (or is it the primary one?): Why do RPG enthusiasts obsess over these things in a way that even the most ardent chess or poker player does not? Why, for example, the endless debates over what "hit points" are and what they mean in the game, and whether they ought to be replaced with some sort of realistic wound system? Nobody puzzles over how many "men" a checkers game piece represents, or whether defeating it on the game board represents slaughter or capture. To be honest, I have no idea what the hell, if anything, poker hands could possibly represent.
The major difference between a roleplaying game and a plain old game, as I see them, is that the former expressly encourages imagination on the part of players (including the DM/GM) as an integral and essential part of the game experience, while the latter does not. You can play chess or checkers without giving a flying rat's ass on the lower east side of hell what these armies are fighting about, the personalities of the commanders, the terrain of the battlefield, or what's at stake for the potential winner and loser. Nowhere in the rules of those games or in the culture of players who play them is there any very strong suggestion that such games are anything more than gridded boards, some tokens, some bits of stiff paper with numbers and symbols printed on them, etc. Drawing a royal flush in poker means nothing more than that you hold all the cards of a particular suit from 10 to Ace, and it beats any other hand. A hard 8 in craps is just that, a number. In an RPG, though, getting hit for 8 points of damage means something more. As such, it's completely natural for the player to want to know what that means beyond mere numbers. Does taking 8 points of damage and surviving mean your character just got run straight through with a sword (max damage, after all) and sucked it up like a badass, or did he get just get grazed, or did it just rattle his confidence?
Another facet of most RPGs is that they expressly state that the rules in the book do not cover all possible actions of the characters/"game pieces," but rather that they cover the most often encountered situations. That's in direct contrast to most games, in which all possible moves are prescribed by the rules. The pieces on a chess board each may be moved in a certain way, and no other. In blackjack, you stand or hit. In D&D, the actions your character may attempt are limited only by your imagination and the context of the setting. That naturally leads to a mentality that every nuance you might be able to describe in stating your actions should have a mechanical effect in the game. For example, shouldn't leaping from a shoulder-high wall and driving your sword point at your enemy be different somehow from just swinging at him in toe-to-toe combat? There's a certain impetus toward extreme granularity of rules, to uniquely accommodate every action a player can imagine. To what degree should that impetus be resisted, and to what degree should it be indulged or even encouraged?
I'm as guilty as anybody, and perhaps more than most, of compulsively putting rules under the microscope to see if they conform to my ideas of how combat and other elements of a fantasy world should behave, and of proposing new or modified systems or sub-systems to enhance the game experience. Perhaps it's the nostalgia of seeing B/X officially revived, but I'm starting to rethink all of my design tinkering, or at least my motives for engaging in it. I do think that there can be value in deconstructing and analyzing a system, figuring out exactly what the rules do and whether it's what they purport to do, and what to do about it when effect and purpose don't match. I think there's value in codifying house rules to deal with recurring situations that come up in one's own game that perhaps the game designers didn't anticipate, or that are just more important to one's own game than the original designers contemplated.
What I can't deny, though, is that, warts and all, I never had more fun playing D&D than when it was just good old B/X D&D, and at this point in my gaming and blogging "career" I think I may soon be shifting my focus away from so much rules tinkering, and toward my philosophy of DMing, of building atmosphere in a campaign setting, and similar topics.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
More monkeying with combat
If you've been reading (or browsing, skimming, or offhandedly glancing at) this blog for a while, you might remember this, in which I posited that rather than continually escalating attack matrices vs. more or less static Armor Classes, we might extract a character or monster's attack bonus from the chart, and then, in a fight, apply the difference between the attack bonuses of the combatants to the attack rolls of the greater. In other words, opponents become easier to hit not based on the attacker's absolute skill, but on the difference in skill between attacker and defender. This means that a fighter with a THAC0 of 3 (an attack bonus of 17) dueling a fighter with a THAC0 of 5 (AB 15) doesn't hit his AC3 plate-and-mail clad opponent on a roll of 0 (i.e. missing only on a natural 1 as per the rules.) Instead, because his attack bonus is two points better than his opponent's, he'll hit on a roll of 14, and his opponent will hit with a 16. (We're using the line of the attack chart for 1st level characters to determine what number is needed to hit each AC.) If the fighter with the attack bonus of 17 is up against a fighter with a bonus of only 5, then he'll add the difference in his favor of +12 to his attack rolls, not simply because he's a high-level fighter in an absolute sense, but because he's a LOT better than his inexperienced opponent and capitalizes on every mistake the other fellow makes in battle.
Further Thoughts
Since composing that particular ramble, I've decided to drop the "attack bonus" terminology, and refer to this derived stat as Combat Rating, or CR. It also seems like a good idea to modify how ability scores affect combat. This is both to prevent extreme ACs right out of the starting gate (a level 1 halfling with plate, shield, and 18 Dex would be AC-1, and thus nearly unhittable to any opponent of similar level), and to tone down the massive advantages of high Strength (bonuses to hit AND damage make an 18 Strength fighter vastly more effective in melee than one with a 13.) The character's Dexterity adjustment should apply directly to his CR, and Strength adjustments apply only to damage rolls. This means that a Dex adjustment counts for both offense and defense, or more precisely, it affects the balance between the total (offensive and defensive) combat skill of both combatants. The 18 Dex, level 1 halfling has a CR of 4 (1 for his level, +3 for his Dex adjustment) and an AC of 2. The 18 Str, level 1 fighter has a CR of 1. He's raw and ungraceful in combat relative to the halfling, who with his net +3 CR advantage will be zipping in for quick slashes more often than Mongo is going to land a clumsy haymaker on him, but when Mongo DOES hit, he's going to mess the little guy up pretty badly with that +3 bonus to damage.
One interesting implication of this is that natural coordination and grace can to some extent make up for a lack of experience, and conversely, long experience and drilling of combat reflexes can make up for a lack of natural quickness and agility, but pure physical might is entirely its own thing. You just can't learn brute force. (As I used to hear a lot, back when I followed NBA basketball more closely and some team would take a chance on an awkward 7-footer, "You can't teach size.")
One option I've thought about is, instead of automatically applying the difference in CRs to the attack roll of the greater, how about the one with the higher CR gets to choose whether to apply that difference to his attack or to his defense? The more skilled dancer gets to lead, so to speak.
Of course, you still can have actual attack bonuses, whether those comes situationally (+1 for attacking from a position of superior height, say), or a magical bonus such as that of a sword +1. That would make these bonuses especially valuable to the lesser combatant. A CR 2 fighter against a CR 5 fighter who gets a +1 bonus to his CR will find that he can defend himself a little better. It affects the other fellow's hit rolls, not his own. If he gets a direct bonus to his attack roll, he actually stands a better chance of hitting.
CR and Climbing on the Dragon's Back
Another possibly interesting consequence of this combat system is that it makes the system of climbing onto really big monsters, first formulated by Scrap Princess and modified by Zak S., into a very valuable tactical option. I don't think it's too uncommon for parties of 4th-6th level characters to take on a red dragon, but using the CR system, none of them are going to have an advantage over teh dragon - in other words, no bonuses to hit vs. its AC-1. The dragon will have a little tougher time hitting the fighters than it otherwise would, but they're going to have a devil of a time dishing out any damage on it. What to do? Use those rules for climbing aboard and getting close to the vulnerable spots! (Zak's adaptation of the idea seems to fit a lot better with my underlying system, IMO.)
Weapons and CR
A while back, something I read on Charles's Spells and Steel blog got me thinking about the relative merits of different weapons. One of the points of the post was how bizarre it is that, in D&D, it's no more difficult to hit a trained fighter holding a sword and a peasant with nothing but his fists if both are similarly armored. Same goes for one fighter with a sword, and another with a dagger. In a real fight, it's quite as possible to kill a man in a single hit with a dagger as with a sword, but it's going to be tougher, all else being equal, for the dagger wielder to land a hit against the swordsman. Damage potential itself isn't so much an issue; it's the fact that the swordsman has a great advantage in reach, and he's got not only a sharp point but two or three feet of blade that has a chance to catch his opponent and deal some damage. The dagger wielder has to get in a lot closer, and to get a really good lick in, he must thrust with the weapon's point; slashing is far less effective. In other words, all else equal, bet on the swordsman.
Well now, what if, instead of variable weapon damage, different weapons added different bonuses to the wielder's CR, based on reach, ease of use, and defensive capabilities? A barehanded character fights with only his base CR, i.e. with a weapon bonus of zero. A dagger might add +1, a sword might grant +4. A two-handed greatsword might grant +5. Short swords, with less reach, might give CR +3. Maces and hammers, being heavier and less elegantly balanced, might be +2 to CR overall, but grant +2 to hit against medium and heavy armor, representing their purpose of defeating those armors with impact damage. (These numbers have been pulled out of the air with relatively little consideration. Perhaps a wider or narrower range might be more appropriate, but I haven't fully math-geeked out the details yet, much less consulted with folks more knowledgeable than I about the merits and demerits of medieval weaponry.)
Let's say a hypothetical rebellious peasant has gotten his hands on a sword, and caught a mercenary of the corrupt town alderman unarmed. Both are unarmored (AC9.) Under ordinary D&D rules, the 1st level mercenary fighter actually has a slightly better chance to land a blow against our sword-wielding peasant rebel (attack rolls for 1st level classed characters are 1 point better than those for Normal Humans.) Mercenary needs a 10 to hit AC9, peasant needs an 11.
Now let's try the CR system with weapon adjustments. Mercenary has a base CR 1, while the peasant's base CR is 0. Now put the sword in the peasant's hands, and add its +4 CR bonus. Peasant now has a total CR of 4 (0+4) and a net bonus of +3 over the unarmed mercenary, and the upper hand in combat. He can apply his bonus to attack, meaning he'll hit the mercenary on an 8 or better, or he can apply it defensively, and force the mercenary to roll a 13 or better to hit him. (But of course, not both at once.)
CR and Monsters
For monsters, the correlation of Hit Dice to escalating attack rolls in standard D&D wouldn't have to be modified at all. If a creature's Hit Dice are a function of its size, like a bear, dragon, or giant, then the corresponding CR represents an advantage in reach. If the creature's HD are more attributable to superlative skill at dodging or supernatural resistance, like a cockatrice or a wraith, there's no good reason we can't apply that same rationale to its ability to fight, too. Monsters who commonly use weapons can benefit from the standard CR bonus for weapons.
And finally, there's the issue of grappling, and of animals and other monsters with natural attacks mowing over weapon-wielding adventurers. As has been noted on another blog (which is utterly escaping me right now, so if it's yours or you know whose it is, please drop me a comment so I can give due credit!), it's pretty tough to bring a sword to bear on a wild boar that's goring you or a mountain lion that's jumped from a crag to pin you to the ground. But suppose that once you're grappled or successfully hit by an enemy in brawling range (i.e. occupying the same space on the combat grid, if applicable), only small weapons still grant a bonus to CR. Medium and large one-handed weapons convert their normal CR bonus to an equal penalty, and two-handed weapons are just unusable under those circumstances. A dagger is a lot more handy than a battle axe when a wolf has pounced on you and is going for your jugular. I'm thinking this just might be enough to counteract the advantage that creatures using weapons, and receiving a CR bonus for it, would seem to have over monsters that use natural weapons and get no CR bonus for them. The initial advantage will belong to the weapon-wielder, but once that wolf is tussling with you hand-to-paw, the advantage of holding a sword is less than nil, and you'd best let go of the sword and focus your efforts on throwing the wolf off, or stabbing it to death with your dagger.
I'm not at all sure that I'll actually use any of this in play, but it's fun to speculate and play with the numbers.
Further Thoughts
Since composing that particular ramble, I've decided to drop the "attack bonus" terminology, and refer to this derived stat as Combat Rating, or CR. It also seems like a good idea to modify how ability scores affect combat. This is both to prevent extreme ACs right out of the starting gate (a level 1 halfling with plate, shield, and 18 Dex would be AC-1, and thus nearly unhittable to any opponent of similar level), and to tone down the massive advantages of high Strength (bonuses to hit AND damage make an 18 Strength fighter vastly more effective in melee than one with a 13.) The character's Dexterity adjustment should apply directly to his CR, and Strength adjustments apply only to damage rolls. This means that a Dex adjustment counts for both offense and defense, or more precisely, it affects the balance between the total (offensive and defensive) combat skill of both combatants. The 18 Dex, level 1 halfling has a CR of 4 (1 for his level, +3 for his Dex adjustment) and an AC of 2. The 18 Str, level 1 fighter has a CR of 1. He's raw and ungraceful in combat relative to the halfling, who with his net +3 CR advantage will be zipping in for quick slashes more often than Mongo is going to land a clumsy haymaker on him, but when Mongo DOES hit, he's going to mess the little guy up pretty badly with that +3 bonus to damage.
One interesting implication of this is that natural coordination and grace can to some extent make up for a lack of experience, and conversely, long experience and drilling of combat reflexes can make up for a lack of natural quickness and agility, but pure physical might is entirely its own thing. You just can't learn brute force. (As I used to hear a lot, back when I followed NBA basketball more closely and some team would take a chance on an awkward 7-footer, "You can't teach size.")
One option I've thought about is, instead of automatically applying the difference in CRs to the attack roll of the greater, how about the one with the higher CR gets to choose whether to apply that difference to his attack or to his defense? The more skilled dancer gets to lead, so to speak.
Of course, you still can have actual attack bonuses, whether those comes situationally (+1 for attacking from a position of superior height, say), or a magical bonus such as that of a sword +1. That would make these bonuses especially valuable to the lesser combatant. A CR 2 fighter against a CR 5 fighter who gets a +1 bonus to his CR will find that he can defend himself a little better. It affects the other fellow's hit rolls, not his own. If he gets a direct bonus to his attack roll, he actually stands a better chance of hitting.
CR and Climbing on the Dragon's Back
Another possibly interesting consequence of this combat system is that it makes the system of climbing onto really big monsters, first formulated by Scrap Princess and modified by Zak S., into a very valuable tactical option. I don't think it's too uncommon for parties of 4th-6th level characters to take on a red dragon, but using the CR system, none of them are going to have an advantage over teh dragon - in other words, no bonuses to hit vs. its AC-1. The dragon will have a little tougher time hitting the fighters than it otherwise would, but they're going to have a devil of a time dishing out any damage on it. What to do? Use those rules for climbing aboard and getting close to the vulnerable spots! (Zak's adaptation of the idea seems to fit a lot better with my underlying system, IMO.)
Weapons and CR
A while back, something I read on Charles's Spells and Steel blog got me thinking about the relative merits of different weapons. One of the points of the post was how bizarre it is that, in D&D, it's no more difficult to hit a trained fighter holding a sword and a peasant with nothing but his fists if both are similarly armored. Same goes for one fighter with a sword, and another with a dagger. In a real fight, it's quite as possible to kill a man in a single hit with a dagger as with a sword, but it's going to be tougher, all else being equal, for the dagger wielder to land a hit against the swordsman. Damage potential itself isn't so much an issue; it's the fact that the swordsman has a great advantage in reach, and he's got not only a sharp point but two or three feet of blade that has a chance to catch his opponent and deal some damage. The dagger wielder has to get in a lot closer, and to get a really good lick in, he must thrust with the weapon's point; slashing is far less effective. In other words, all else equal, bet on the swordsman.
Well now, what if, instead of variable weapon damage, different weapons added different bonuses to the wielder's CR, based on reach, ease of use, and defensive capabilities? A barehanded character fights with only his base CR, i.e. with a weapon bonus of zero. A dagger might add +1, a sword might grant +4. A two-handed greatsword might grant +5. Short swords, with less reach, might give CR +3. Maces and hammers, being heavier and less elegantly balanced, might be +2 to CR overall, but grant +2 to hit against medium and heavy armor, representing their purpose of defeating those armors with impact damage. (These numbers have been pulled out of the air with relatively little consideration. Perhaps a wider or narrower range might be more appropriate, but I haven't fully math-geeked out the details yet, much less consulted with folks more knowledgeable than I about the merits and demerits of medieval weaponry.)
Let's say a hypothetical rebellious peasant has gotten his hands on a sword, and caught a mercenary of the corrupt town alderman unarmed. Both are unarmored (AC9.) Under ordinary D&D rules, the 1st level mercenary fighter actually has a slightly better chance to land a blow against our sword-wielding peasant rebel (attack rolls for 1st level classed characters are 1 point better than those for Normal Humans.) Mercenary needs a 10 to hit AC9, peasant needs an 11.
Now let's try the CR system with weapon adjustments. Mercenary has a base CR 1, while the peasant's base CR is 0. Now put the sword in the peasant's hands, and add its +4 CR bonus. Peasant now has a total CR of 4 (0+4) and a net bonus of +3 over the unarmed mercenary, and the upper hand in combat. He can apply his bonus to attack, meaning he'll hit the mercenary on an 8 or better, or he can apply it defensively, and force the mercenary to roll a 13 or better to hit him. (But of course, not both at once.)
CR and Monsters
For monsters, the correlation of Hit Dice to escalating attack rolls in standard D&D wouldn't have to be modified at all. If a creature's Hit Dice are a function of its size, like a bear, dragon, or giant, then the corresponding CR represents an advantage in reach. If the creature's HD are more attributable to superlative skill at dodging or supernatural resistance, like a cockatrice or a wraith, there's no good reason we can't apply that same rationale to its ability to fight, too. Monsters who commonly use weapons can benefit from the standard CR bonus for weapons.
And finally, there's the issue of grappling, and of animals and other monsters with natural attacks mowing over weapon-wielding adventurers. As has been noted on another blog (which is utterly escaping me right now, so if it's yours or you know whose it is, please drop me a comment so I can give due credit!), it's pretty tough to bring a sword to bear on a wild boar that's goring you or a mountain lion that's jumped from a crag to pin you to the ground. But suppose that once you're grappled or successfully hit by an enemy in brawling range (i.e. occupying the same space on the combat grid, if applicable), only small weapons still grant a bonus to CR. Medium and large one-handed weapons convert their normal CR bonus to an equal penalty, and two-handed weapons are just unusable under those circumstances. A dagger is a lot more handy than a battle axe when a wolf has pounced on you and is going for your jugular. I'm thinking this just might be enough to counteract the advantage that creatures using weapons, and receiving a CR bonus for it, would seem to have over monsters that use natural weapons and get no CR bonus for them. The initial advantage will belong to the weapon-wielder, but once that wolf is tussling with you hand-to-paw, the advantage of holding a sword is less than nil, and you'd best let go of the sword and focus your efforts on throwing the wolf off, or stabbing it to death with your dagger.
I'm not at all sure that I'll actually use any of this in play, but it's fun to speculate and play with the numbers.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Brawn vs. grace
**WARNING: PEDANTIC ANALYSIS OF NARROW RULES CATEGORY AHEAD**
One of the peculiarities of old versions of D&D (I can't speak at all of the new ones, as I'm barely familiar with them) and similar games is the very high relevance of the Strength ability score to melee combat. In fact, as I'll demonstrate shortly, a high Strength score is much better than an average one, and even superior to an equally high Dexterity in melee combat.
Fantasy fiction thrives on tropes like the immensely strong warrior who defeats his opponents by dealing mighty crushing blows. But there is also the equally popular archetype of the quick and wily fighter, the swashbuckling swordsman or Robin Hood-type who, physically fit though he may be, is never depicted lifting wagons in a military press or tearing ironbound doors from their hinges with his bare hands. Instead he overwhelms his foes with quickness, grace, nimble footwork, and skillful swordplay. Quite often in fiction, in fact, this type of hero is portrayed as the superior combatant, though he may be painted initially as the underdog for dramatic purposes.
In D&D, it's the musclebound basher who is the odds-on favorite. This stems from a simple quirk of the rules: Strength adjustments apply both to the attack roll and the damage caused. Dexterity applies only to AC. It affects the opponent's attack rolls negatively, but does nothing else, either offensive or defensive.
First, let's take the case of a strong fighter vs. one of equal experience but only ordinary brawn. We'll give them both AC5 mail and standard 1d8 swords. The first one has an outstanding, but not superhuman, Strength of 16, for a +2 bonus to hit and damage, while his opponent has a perfectly respectable score of 12 which grants him no bonuses.
The base number needed to hit for either man is 14, but Brawny Bob's great Strength drops that to a 12. He hits Average Joe 9 times in 20, or 45%. Joe hits him 7 times in 20, or 35%. When Bob hits Joe, he does an average of 6.5 points of damage - that's the 4.5 average of a 1d8 roll plus his bonus of 2 points. Joe does only the sword's base 1d8 damage, averaging 4.5 points per successful attack. Joe's average damage output per combat round overall, factoring in both hits and misses, is 35% times 4.5 points, or 1.575 points per round. Brawny Bob, meanwhile, is dishing out 45% times 6.5 points, or 2.925 per round. That's just a bit less than double what Joe can do.
Here's the spread for damage per round for each level of Strength, to complete the picture:
(Assume target is AC5, and attacker is wielding a standard 1d8-damage sword and using the 1st level line of the attack roll tables, with THAC0=19. Remember also, penalties cannot adjust damage below 1 point; thus the wonky averages per hit for low Strength scores. All results are rounded to the nearest thousandth.)
Str 3 -3 penalty Hits 4 in 20 (20%) Avg. damage per hit 2.25 Avg. per round 0.450
Str 4-5 -2 penalty Hits 5 in 20 (25%) Avg. damage per hit 2.875 Avg. per round 0.719
Str 6-8 -1 penalty Hits 6 in 20 (30%) Avg. damage per hit 3.625 Avg. per round 1.089
Str 9-12 0 Hits 7 in 20 (35%) Avg. damage per hit 4.5 Avg. per round 1.575
Str 13-15 +1 bonus Hits 8 in 20 (40%) Avg. damage per hit 5.5 Avg. per round 2.200
Str 16-17 +2 bonus Hits 9 in 20 (45%) Avg. damage per hit 6.5 Avg. per round 2.925
Str 18 +3 bonus Hits 10 in 20 (50%) Avg. damage per hit 7.5 Avg. per round 3.750
As is clearly demonstrated here, an 18 Strength is not just a nice perk for a fighter; it's a monstrous advantage. The guy with the 18 is dishing out, on average, 238% of what a person of ordinary might can do. He's dealing out 170% of the punishment that a 15-Strength fighter - clearly no weakling himself - can manage.
Of course, there's sound reasoning behind both applications of the Strength adjustment; my question is whether the reason for applying them both at once is as sound. The logic behind the damage adjustment is pretty obvious - the more muscle power you put behind your swing, the harder it hits, and the more it hurts. The reasoning for the attack bonus isn't hard to grasp either - more force helps to penetrate armor. The problem is that, applying the bonus both ways actually compounds it, and the result is essentially just a bigger bonus to damage per round.
Without a damage bonus, each bonus to the attack roll equals an additional 0.225 points of damage per round, on average - just under a quarter of a point. This rate is constant within the limits of the d20 attack roll, assuming a minimum chance to hit of 1 in 20 and a maximum of 19 in 20; as long as a 1d8 damage weapon is used, each +1 to hit works out to 0.225 points of damage per round on average. If only a natural 20 hits, a fighter with Str 10 and a sword averages 0.225 points of damage per round, and one who only misses on a natural 1 averages 4.275 points per round.
Without a bonus to hit, each +1 bonus to the damage roll increases average damage per round by 0.35 points, or a little more than a third of a point (for a 1st level fighter attacking AC5.) Moreover, the greater the chance of scoring a hit, whether due to a better base THAC0 of the attacker or a poorer AC of the defender, the more the average damage bonus per round per point of Strength bonus increases. Whatever the attacker's chance to hit is, expressed as a decimal, that's the increase to its average damage output per round per point of Strength bonus. A fighter who hits 50% of the time adds 0.5 points average per round with a +1 bonus, a full point per round for a +2 Str bonus, and 1.5 points per round for a +3 Str bonus.
That's a lot of math, and I wouldn't blame you if you skimmed or skipped it. The upshot of all this is that, while there are some significant differences in how they play out mathematically, both attack roll bonuses and direct damage bonuses increase the characters potential for damage per round. This means that the Strength bonus applied both ways is a double-dip advantage.
Now, just for fun, let's imagine an ultimate championship fight between two 3rd level fighters: Mongo the Mauler, a muscular bruiser of 18 Strength, and Nimble Norman, fencing master with a Dexterity of 18. Once again, we'll assume that both are clad in AC 5 mail. Norman's adjusted AC is 2, his damage per hit is 4.5 points with a normal sword, and he needs a roll of 14 or better to hit Mongo. On average, he dishes out 1.575 points of damage per round. Mongo also needs a roll of 14 to hit Norman, because his +3 bonus from Strength completely cancels out Norman's -3 AC bonus from his amazing Dexterity. However, his mighty blows deliver 7.5 points of damage per hit, or an average of 2.625 per round. Mongo is clearly the favorite in this fight, dishing out the punishment at approximately 167% of the rate at which Norman can give it back to him.
Of course, combat is just about the swingiest (no pun intended, though in hindsight perhaps it should have been) part of D&D, and so those averages are averages of a very wide range of possible outcomes. Mongo's big theoretical advantage in average damage per round could very easily not pan out for him if only a few attack rolls don't go his way.
I'm curious, though, how removing the attack roll bonus from Strength, and retaining only the damage bonus, would affect things. Revisiting Mongo and Norman's match-up, Norman's average damage per round doesn't change. He still averages 1.575 points of damage per round. However, without Mongo's Strength attack bonus canceling out Norman's enhanced skills of evasion, Mongo needs a 17 to hit, and his average damage per round drops to 1.5. Advantage, Norman! Not by much, mind you, but it's a significant turnaround from the large advantage Mongo enjoyed when he got to apply his Strength bonus twice.
Despite the fairly even damage per round averages, there are still significant differences. Norman will hit more often, so on any given round he's more likely to inflict some damage. Mongo misses more, but when he does hit, he makes it count in a bigger way. Since attack rolls are far more swingy than damage rolls, Mongo stands to gain or lose more from the luck of the dice. He could put a quick end to the ruckus with a couple fortuitous attack rolls coupled with his heavily augmented damage dice, or he could have a frustrating time as Norman methodically nickel-and-dimes him to death in a drawn-out battle. As it turns out, this is actually a pretty good representation of what I'd expect a fight between a masher and a speedster to look like.
Is it worth changing a long-standing rule of D&D for what might amount to a minor impact in the game? Are these ruminations anything more than rank pedantry? I really don't know. It was just on my mind, so I decided to crunch some numbers. Make of them whatever you will.
One of the peculiarities of old versions of D&D (I can't speak at all of the new ones, as I'm barely familiar with them) and similar games is the very high relevance of the Strength ability score to melee combat. In fact, as I'll demonstrate shortly, a high Strength score is much better than an average one, and even superior to an equally high Dexterity in melee combat.
Fantasy fiction thrives on tropes like the immensely strong warrior who defeats his opponents by dealing mighty crushing blows. But there is also the equally popular archetype of the quick and wily fighter, the swashbuckling swordsman or Robin Hood-type who, physically fit though he may be, is never depicted lifting wagons in a military press or tearing ironbound doors from their hinges with his bare hands. Instead he overwhelms his foes with quickness, grace, nimble footwork, and skillful swordplay. Quite often in fiction, in fact, this type of hero is portrayed as the superior combatant, though he may be painted initially as the underdog for dramatic purposes.
In D&D, it's the musclebound basher who is the odds-on favorite. This stems from a simple quirk of the rules: Strength adjustments apply both to the attack roll and the damage caused. Dexterity applies only to AC. It affects the opponent's attack rolls negatively, but does nothing else, either offensive or defensive.
First, let's take the case of a strong fighter vs. one of equal experience but only ordinary brawn. We'll give them both AC5 mail and standard 1d8 swords. The first one has an outstanding, but not superhuman, Strength of 16, for a +2 bonus to hit and damage, while his opponent has a perfectly respectable score of 12 which grants him no bonuses.
The base number needed to hit for either man is 14, but Brawny Bob's great Strength drops that to a 12. He hits Average Joe 9 times in 20, or 45%. Joe hits him 7 times in 20, or 35%. When Bob hits Joe, he does an average of 6.5 points of damage - that's the 4.5 average of a 1d8 roll plus his bonus of 2 points. Joe does only the sword's base 1d8 damage, averaging 4.5 points per successful attack. Joe's average damage output per combat round overall, factoring in both hits and misses, is 35% times 4.5 points, or 1.575 points per round. Brawny Bob, meanwhile, is dishing out 45% times 6.5 points, or 2.925 per round. That's just a bit less than double what Joe can do.
Here's the spread for damage per round for each level of Strength, to complete the picture:
(Assume target is AC5, and attacker is wielding a standard 1d8-damage sword and using the 1st level line of the attack roll tables, with THAC0=19. Remember also, penalties cannot adjust damage below 1 point; thus the wonky averages per hit for low Strength scores. All results are rounded to the nearest thousandth.)
Str 3 -3 penalty Hits 4 in 20 (20%) Avg. damage per hit 2.25 Avg. per round 0.450
Str 4-5 -2 penalty Hits 5 in 20 (25%) Avg. damage per hit 2.875 Avg. per round 0.719
Str 6-8 -1 penalty Hits 6 in 20 (30%) Avg. damage per hit 3.625 Avg. per round 1.089
Str 9-12 0 Hits 7 in 20 (35%) Avg. damage per hit 4.5 Avg. per round 1.575
Str 13-15 +1 bonus Hits 8 in 20 (40%) Avg. damage per hit 5.5 Avg. per round 2.200
Str 16-17 +2 bonus Hits 9 in 20 (45%) Avg. damage per hit 6.5 Avg. per round 2.925
Str 18 +3 bonus Hits 10 in 20 (50%) Avg. damage per hit 7.5 Avg. per round 3.750
As is clearly demonstrated here, an 18 Strength is not just a nice perk for a fighter; it's a monstrous advantage. The guy with the 18 is dishing out, on average, 238% of what a person of ordinary might can do. He's dealing out 170% of the punishment that a 15-Strength fighter - clearly no weakling himself - can manage.
Of course, there's sound reasoning behind both applications of the Strength adjustment; my question is whether the reason for applying them both at once is as sound. The logic behind the damage adjustment is pretty obvious - the more muscle power you put behind your swing, the harder it hits, and the more it hurts. The reasoning for the attack bonus isn't hard to grasp either - more force helps to penetrate armor. The problem is that, applying the bonus both ways actually compounds it, and the result is essentially just a bigger bonus to damage per round.
Without a damage bonus, each bonus to the attack roll equals an additional 0.225 points of damage per round, on average - just under a quarter of a point. This rate is constant within the limits of the d20 attack roll, assuming a minimum chance to hit of 1 in 20 and a maximum of 19 in 20; as long as a 1d8 damage weapon is used, each +1 to hit works out to 0.225 points of damage per round on average. If only a natural 20 hits, a fighter with Str 10 and a sword averages 0.225 points of damage per round, and one who only misses on a natural 1 averages 4.275 points per round.
Without a bonus to hit, each +1 bonus to the damage roll increases average damage per round by 0.35 points, or a little more than a third of a point (for a 1st level fighter attacking AC5.) Moreover, the greater the chance of scoring a hit, whether due to a better base THAC0 of the attacker or a poorer AC of the defender, the more the average damage bonus per round per point of Strength bonus increases. Whatever the attacker's chance to hit is, expressed as a decimal, that's the increase to its average damage output per round per point of Strength bonus. A fighter who hits 50% of the time adds 0.5 points average per round with a +1 bonus, a full point per round for a +2 Str bonus, and 1.5 points per round for a +3 Str bonus.
That's a lot of math, and I wouldn't blame you if you skimmed or skipped it. The upshot of all this is that, while there are some significant differences in how they play out mathematically, both attack roll bonuses and direct damage bonuses increase the characters potential for damage per round. This means that the Strength bonus applied both ways is a double-dip advantage.
Now, just for fun, let's imagine an ultimate championship fight between two 3rd level fighters: Mongo the Mauler, a muscular bruiser of 18 Strength, and Nimble Norman, fencing master with a Dexterity of 18. Once again, we'll assume that both are clad in AC 5 mail. Norman's adjusted AC is 2, his damage per hit is 4.5 points with a normal sword, and he needs a roll of 14 or better to hit Mongo. On average, he dishes out 1.575 points of damage per round. Mongo also needs a roll of 14 to hit Norman, because his +3 bonus from Strength completely cancels out Norman's -3 AC bonus from his amazing Dexterity. However, his mighty blows deliver 7.5 points of damage per hit, or an average of 2.625 per round. Mongo is clearly the favorite in this fight, dishing out the punishment at approximately 167% of the rate at which Norman can give it back to him.
Of course, combat is just about the swingiest (no pun intended, though in hindsight perhaps it should have been) part of D&D, and so those averages are averages of a very wide range of possible outcomes. Mongo's big theoretical advantage in average damage per round could very easily not pan out for him if only a few attack rolls don't go his way.
I'm curious, though, how removing the attack roll bonus from Strength, and retaining only the damage bonus, would affect things. Revisiting Mongo and Norman's match-up, Norman's average damage per round doesn't change. He still averages 1.575 points of damage per round. However, without Mongo's Strength attack bonus canceling out Norman's enhanced skills of evasion, Mongo needs a 17 to hit, and his average damage per round drops to 1.5. Advantage, Norman! Not by much, mind you, but it's a significant turnaround from the large advantage Mongo enjoyed when he got to apply his Strength bonus twice.
Despite the fairly even damage per round averages, there are still significant differences. Norman will hit more often, so on any given round he's more likely to inflict some damage. Mongo misses more, but when he does hit, he makes it count in a bigger way. Since attack rolls are far more swingy than damage rolls, Mongo stands to gain or lose more from the luck of the dice. He could put a quick end to the ruckus with a couple fortuitous attack rolls coupled with his heavily augmented damage dice, or he could have a frustrating time as Norman methodically nickel-and-dimes him to death in a drawn-out battle. As it turns out, this is actually a pretty good representation of what I'd expect a fight between a masher and a speedster to look like.
Is it worth changing a long-standing rule of D&D for what might amount to a minor impact in the game? Are these ruminations anything more than rank pedantry? I really don't know. It was just on my mind, so I decided to crunch some numbers. Make of them whatever you will.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
They're back!
My two favorite D&D-themed web comics, that is. This may be old news, but in case you're one who gets discouraged checking for updates after a long stretch of nothing new, you might be interested to know.
A big thumbs-up (irony intended) for Order of the Stick which has posted a couple new strips recently. Rich Burlew's maimed thumb seems to have recovered sufficiently for at least the occasional update, and hopefully for both him and the fans who've missed his wit, that trend continues.
My other favorite, Marvin the Mage, had been stalled seemingly forever on issue 41 for reasons unknown. It looks like he's got a new gig with Gygax magazine now, and two new strips. The graphic on the page says "Also appearing in Gygax magazine," as in additionally rather than exclusively, so it looks like those of us who've been following him on the web won't be left out in the cold.
That's it for this post. Just wanted to spread the word, in case there's some remote corner of Internet Game Geek Land where the news has not yet reached, and to proclaim my own elation at their long-awaited return.
A big thumbs-up (irony intended) for Order of the Stick which has posted a couple new strips recently. Rich Burlew's maimed thumb seems to have recovered sufficiently for at least the occasional update, and hopefully for both him and the fans who've missed his wit, that trend continues.
My other favorite, Marvin the Mage, had been stalled seemingly forever on issue 41 for reasons unknown. It looks like he's got a new gig with Gygax magazine now, and two new strips. The graphic on the page says "Also appearing in Gygax magazine," as in additionally rather than exclusively, so it looks like those of us who've been following him on the web won't be left out in the cold.
That's it for this post. Just wanted to spread the word, in case there's some remote corner of Internet Game Geek Land where the news has not yet reached, and to proclaim my own elation at their long-awaited return.
Monday, January 28, 2013
REALLY missing the mark
As you may or may not have noticed, I've been out of the blogging loop for a few weeks. As is its frustrating tendency, real life intrudes, and I've barely had even a stray thought about gaming during that time. (In case you're curious, the real life intrusion was the sort of anxiety breakdown that might afflict a Charisma 7 social phobic introvert with ADD tendencies who works a customer service-intensive retail job.) But I'm better now, mostly, I think. At least, I'm having ideas about D&D again, and the focus to write about them. Without further ado, here's one of them...
Everybody's familiar with the idea of critical hits and misses - the notion that rolling a natural 20 or a natural 1 produces some special result beyond just a garden-variety hit or miss. The usual method of handling critical hits is to allow for extra damage. Sometimes (probably most commonly) it's as simple as doubling the normal damage roll, or it can kick things over to an extra roll on a table of gruesome results which can be as complicated as players and GM are willing to endure for the sake of some vividly descriptive splatter effects.
But I'm not here to talk about the awesome effects of critical hits. I want to talk about the fumbles, the bumbles, the airballs of RPG combat. Doing some extra damage is just fine for a well-placed hit, but what do you do for a critical miss? There's the dropped weapon, the broken bowstring, some unspecified mishap that causes the character to forfeit his next round of actions, but those get old fast, even if they do only happen once in 20 attacks. I'm pretty sure I've seen critical miss tables out there too, but I really don't like rolling on extra tables.
The last couple game sessions, I had been using a rule that when an attacker misses with a natural 1, it must save vs. paralysis or drop its weapon. My new idea, inspired by the Simple Combat Maneuvers rule from Telecanter's most excellent document, is this: Let the player decide what happens when an opponent attacks the PC and fumbles.
Melee combat is all about trying to outmaneuver your opponent. Sure, a natural 1 could just be bad luck or clumsiness solely on the part of the attacker, but it's even more likely to be a blunder made under pressure from the opponent. How often do you think a skilled basketball player dribbles the ball off his foot when he's not under pressure from a defensive player? How often does a quarterback miss his receiver by a country mile when he's playing a leisurely game of catch, without a 300-pound dude bearing down on him like a freight train?
So, why not give the player some say-so as to what sort of blunder he's maneuvered his opponent into making?
How severe the effect of a critical miss might be depends on the lethality of your game, but in general, minor but colorful is probably a good default assumption. The opponent might lose a round of actions, or be forced into a less advantageous position, or just humiliated or embarrassed. Remember that the player doesn't get to decide the ultimate effects, only the immediate effect of the fumble, so you're well within your rights to set the game mechanical effects at whatever level is comfortable. It doesn't hurt to remind the players that you'll be using similar tricks against them when their d20s come up 1s too.
Some examples of possible player suggestions, and how I'd handle them:
"I duck just in time, and he sticks his sword in the tree behind me." I'd require a Strength check to wrench the weapon free again, taking one or more rounds. Or the attacker can draw another weapon and just lose initiative next round while leaving his blade quivering in the bark.
"I lurch aside, and she lunges too hard, resulting in a Wardrobe Malfunction of her chainmail bikini top." Well, that's just good comedy. Depending on the personality of the unfortunate warrior maiden, she might just keep fighting and no further special effect occurs, she might withdraw to cover herself, or she might explode in rage at the PC.
"He misses me and hits the rope that holds up the chandelier." If it's an edged weapon, I can't think of any good reason for that rope not to be cut, and that chandelier to come crashing down in epic fashion.
"He swings wide, and I take the opportunity to pull his visor over his eyes with my off hand." The opponent spends a round blinded while he fixes his visor.
"As the gelatinous cube comes at me, I dodge, and it suctions itself to the wall." The cube can't move for a round, until it pulls itself free, but it could still attack anyone already in melee range.
"The golem punches the shelf full of alchemy jars." Holy hell, is this ever going to be fun, and I will love this player forever!
"The ogre swings and I duck under and past him, so now he's the one next to the edge of the cliff." That certainly puts the ogre in a compromising position, should the PCs find a way to exploit it next round.
"The goblin whacks himself in the knee with his mace and hops around in pain." The goblin loses a round. I'd allow this to succeed automatically, because the consequences are both amusing and limited in scope. Compare to...
"The goblin hits himself (or an ally) with his mace!" I wouldn't make this automatically successful. Instead, the goblin makes a second attack roll against himself or the ally, and if it misses, no further effect occurs...unless I decide that the ally in question reacts very badly to being an inadvertent target of friendly fire, even if it doesn't hit.
"The orc king misses me and bashes his sword into the stone wall!" I'd have the orc roll damage, and if he rolls high (meaning he hit the wrong thing and hit it HARD) his sword breaks.
"He trips on that ridiculous beard and falls on his face." The opponent falls prone, and spends a round getting up.
My rules of thumb:
The proposed result must at least have an air of plausibility. (No cutting ropes with a club, no elaborate Rube Goldberg effects, etc.) This condition must be met before any further consideration.
If the effect is colorful or amusing, but has no game mechanical effects, allow it!
If it causes a loss of one round of actions or similar inconvenience, allow it.
If it chews up the scenery in some way that is entertaining and/or injects some chaos into the battle, allow it.
If it results in a shift in positions of relative advantage and disadvantage, allow it.
If it would cause damage roughly the equivalent of a normal attack or less, allow a possibility. That could mean an attack roll, saving throw, or some other check; if this goes in the victim's favor, no effects are suffered.
The more aggressive and daring the attack that fumbles, the more consequential the results can be without requiring a check. If a fighter rushes an opponent standing in front of a window with intent to push him out, and rolls a 1, I'd have no problem allowing the opponent to say, "I duck and he rolls off my back and out the window himself." If two combatants are fighting on a narrow ledge over a chasm, and one of them fumbles, the other could perfectly reasonably say that the attacker dropped his sword and I'd allow a pretty good chance that it falls into the abyss.
Allow a reasonable amount of time for the player to think of something, but no more. If no suggestion is forthcoming in five or ten seconds, the attack just whiffed.
That's pretty much it. You allow the players to exercise their imaginations and exert a little creative control over the dramatic flourishes of the battle, while avoiding falling back on a small set of bland results or referring to tables, and tailoring the results to the unique scene and situation far better and more interestingly than any pregenerated list ever could.
Everybody's familiar with the idea of critical hits and misses - the notion that rolling a natural 20 or a natural 1 produces some special result beyond just a garden-variety hit or miss. The usual method of handling critical hits is to allow for extra damage. Sometimes (probably most commonly) it's as simple as doubling the normal damage roll, or it can kick things over to an extra roll on a table of gruesome results which can be as complicated as players and GM are willing to endure for the sake of some vividly descriptive splatter effects.
But I'm not here to talk about the awesome effects of critical hits. I want to talk about the fumbles, the bumbles, the airballs of RPG combat. Doing some extra damage is just fine for a well-placed hit, but what do you do for a critical miss? There's the dropped weapon, the broken bowstring, some unspecified mishap that causes the character to forfeit his next round of actions, but those get old fast, even if they do only happen once in 20 attacks. I'm pretty sure I've seen critical miss tables out there too, but I really don't like rolling on extra tables.
The last couple game sessions, I had been using a rule that when an attacker misses with a natural 1, it must save vs. paralysis or drop its weapon. My new idea, inspired by the Simple Combat Maneuvers rule from Telecanter's most excellent document, is this: Let the player decide what happens when an opponent attacks the PC and fumbles.
Melee combat is all about trying to outmaneuver your opponent. Sure, a natural 1 could just be bad luck or clumsiness solely on the part of the attacker, but it's even more likely to be a blunder made under pressure from the opponent. How often do you think a skilled basketball player dribbles the ball off his foot when he's not under pressure from a defensive player? How often does a quarterback miss his receiver by a country mile when he's playing a leisurely game of catch, without a 300-pound dude bearing down on him like a freight train?
So, why not give the player some say-so as to what sort of blunder he's maneuvered his opponent into making?
How severe the effect of a critical miss might be depends on the lethality of your game, but in general, minor but colorful is probably a good default assumption. The opponent might lose a round of actions, or be forced into a less advantageous position, or just humiliated or embarrassed. Remember that the player doesn't get to decide the ultimate effects, only the immediate effect of the fumble, so you're well within your rights to set the game mechanical effects at whatever level is comfortable. It doesn't hurt to remind the players that you'll be using similar tricks against them when their d20s come up 1s too.
Some examples of possible player suggestions, and how I'd handle them:
"I duck just in time, and he sticks his sword in the tree behind me." I'd require a Strength check to wrench the weapon free again, taking one or more rounds. Or the attacker can draw another weapon and just lose initiative next round while leaving his blade quivering in the bark.
"I lurch aside, and she lunges too hard, resulting in a Wardrobe Malfunction of her chainmail bikini top." Well, that's just good comedy. Depending on the personality of the unfortunate warrior maiden, she might just keep fighting and no further special effect occurs, she might withdraw to cover herself, or she might explode in rage at the PC.
"He misses me and hits the rope that holds up the chandelier." If it's an edged weapon, I can't think of any good reason for that rope not to be cut, and that chandelier to come crashing down in epic fashion.
"He swings wide, and I take the opportunity to pull his visor over his eyes with my off hand." The opponent spends a round blinded while he fixes his visor.
"As the gelatinous cube comes at me, I dodge, and it suctions itself to the wall." The cube can't move for a round, until it pulls itself free, but it could still attack anyone already in melee range.
"The golem punches the shelf full of alchemy jars." Holy hell, is this ever going to be fun, and I will love this player forever!
"The ogre swings and I duck under and past him, so now he's the one next to the edge of the cliff." That certainly puts the ogre in a compromising position, should the PCs find a way to exploit it next round.
"The goblin whacks himself in the knee with his mace and hops around in pain." The goblin loses a round. I'd allow this to succeed automatically, because the consequences are both amusing and limited in scope. Compare to...
"The goblin hits himself (or an ally) with his mace!" I wouldn't make this automatically successful. Instead, the goblin makes a second attack roll against himself or the ally, and if it misses, no further effect occurs...unless I decide that the ally in question reacts very badly to being an inadvertent target of friendly fire, even if it doesn't hit.
"The orc king misses me and bashes his sword into the stone wall!" I'd have the orc roll damage, and if he rolls high (meaning he hit the wrong thing and hit it HARD) his sword breaks.
"He trips on that ridiculous beard and falls on his face." The opponent falls prone, and spends a round getting up.
My rules of thumb:
The proposed result must at least have an air of plausibility. (No cutting ropes with a club, no elaborate Rube Goldberg effects, etc.) This condition must be met before any further consideration.
If the effect is colorful or amusing, but has no game mechanical effects, allow it!
If it causes a loss of one round of actions or similar inconvenience, allow it.
If it chews up the scenery in some way that is entertaining and/or injects some chaos into the battle, allow it.
If it results in a shift in positions of relative advantage and disadvantage, allow it.
If it would cause damage roughly the equivalent of a normal attack or less, allow a possibility. That could mean an attack roll, saving throw, or some other check; if this goes in the victim's favor, no effects are suffered.
The more aggressive and daring the attack that fumbles, the more consequential the results can be without requiring a check. If a fighter rushes an opponent standing in front of a window with intent to push him out, and rolls a 1, I'd have no problem allowing the opponent to say, "I duck and he rolls off my back and out the window himself." If two combatants are fighting on a narrow ledge over a chasm, and one of them fumbles, the other could perfectly reasonably say that the attacker dropped his sword and I'd allow a pretty good chance that it falls into the abyss.
Allow a reasonable amount of time for the player to think of something, but no more. If no suggestion is forthcoming in five or ten seconds, the attack just whiffed.
That's pretty much it. You allow the players to exercise their imaginations and exert a little creative control over the dramatic flourishes of the battle, while avoiding falling back on a small set of bland results or referring to tables, and tailoring the results to the unique scene and situation far better and more interestingly than any pregenerated list ever could.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Pondering "plus" paradigm of magic weapons
One of the first things in D&D with which players and DMs become jaded, I think, is the "plus something" model of magical weapons. At least, that was and is true for me.
The whole "plus something" weapon mechanic smacks strongly of what I've come via the OSR to understand as an effect-first mechanic. It exists not to model any particular fictional power of a weapon, but to grant bonuses to attack and damage rolls. While that does allow DMs and gaming groups to decide for themselves in post-hoc fashion what exactly those bonuses represent, that's addressed barely or not at all in the rule sets with which I'm familiar. Moreover, any +1 weapon is as good as any other +1 weapon of the same type, regardless of the "fluff" any particular DM or setting attaches to it.
The "plus something" model also contributes to inflation of the power curve and the devaluation of magical weapons in general. You stick a +1 sword in the dungeon, and the party finds it. That +1 to hit and damage seems pretty trivial right now, but remember that it applies to pretty much every opponent the sword's wielder might face. It's universally effective. There's little or no reason why anyone might want to use a different magical weapon based on in-game circumstances. So where do you go from there when you roll up the next treasure hoard with a magical weapon? Once everyone in the party who can use one has a +1 sword, any further one you might place is just redundant, and you either have to allow them to sell it or make excuses why they can't and have them accumulate closets full of weapons for which they have no practical use. ("Another sword +1? Just put it with the others.") One solution is simply to be very, very stingy with magical weapons, but unless there are cool non-magical things on which to spend loot with purely monetary value, a dearth of magic makes finding a hoard of treasure a ho-hum experience. Or, you could grit your teeth and start placing +2 swords...
Sure, there are other powers to add to weapons, especially in the Expert Set and onward. They certainly add some welcome variety, but in the rules as written they're always applied to a platform of plus-something. You don't just have a sword that flames or extinguishes flames, you have a sword +1 of flaming or a sword +2 of extinguishing. In other words, it's just more power creep as powers are stacked on top of bonuses.
Instead of starting with an assumption of pluses to hit and damage, what if we started with none at all? Attack and damage bonuses wouldn't have to be done away with entirely; they simply would not be present in every magical weapon by default, nor would an attack bonus and a damage bonus necessarily be present in the same weapon. Attack bonuses, damage bonuses, and other mechanical effects can then be applied to weapons based on a meaning-first construction.
For example:
Hero weapons: Formerly wielded by great heroes (or villains), these weapons have absorbed some of their wielder's combat prowess. When used by a new wielder, this knowledge is imparted subconsciously - he finds himself able to anticipate his opponent's moves and counter them with techniques of a more seasoned warrior, conferring a bonus of +1 to +3 to attack rolls.
Rune weapons: Inscribed with the runic true-names of particular species or types, which hold power over those creatures, these weapons deal +1 to +3 damage against the appropriate creature type only. A dragonbane sword does extra damage against dragons, while one inscribed with the rune for ogres does extra damage against them. The runes can be deciphered, and thus the weapon's properties deduced, with a read magic spell.
Flaming: The blade or striking surface of the weapon will burst into flames (possibly strangely or spectacularly colored) on command or when a specific condition is met (i.e. the sun is out or undead are near.) The flame causes extra damage (either +1 to +3, or double, or roll twice take highest) to creatures notably vulnerable to fire, like yetis and white dragons. It may also ignite flammable materials (10% chance per hit in combat).
Holy: The weapon can strike unholy and blasphemous creatures, such as undead, which are immune to normal weapons.
Wolf-bane: Made of enchanted silver with the durability of steel, and capable of harming any creature that can be harmed by ordinary silvered weapons. Especially appropriate if ordinary silver weapons in the campaign are subject to damage or wear.
Enemy detection: When hostile creatures are near, the weapon emits a glow or vibration, the intensity of which is proportional to either the magnitude of the threat or the proximity of the enemies. May also be a feature of rune weapons, indicating the presence of its target creatures. The swords in Tolkien's Middle-earth which glow when orcs are near are a good example.
Bound spirit: The weapon holds a bound spirit of some sort, such as a demon, angel, ghost, or elemental. Powers conferred on the weapon could be nearly anything, and the bound spirit may exert influence or control over the wielder, either subconsciously if the spirit is dormant or non-sapient, or consciously in the manner of an intelligent sword.
All sorts of other effects are possible, of course, greater and lesser, combat and non-combat. Light, invisibility, energy drain or defense against it, charm, detections of various things, stunning, paralyzing, poison, fear, and more are all viable, useful, and interesting powers for weapons. There's no reason at all that these couldn't stand on their own, without the need for an underlying plus-something bonus. Rather, they should be on equal terms with attack bonuses and damage bonuses, with none considered "must have" or essential to the very concept of magical arms. In doing so, the potential for variety is expanded, and the potential for power creep is lessened. A "hero" sword with +1 to hit is distinct from a "rune" sword with a +1 damage against orcs or a flaming sword with no pluses at all, without any being objectively and universally "better."
It might be worthwhile to cobble together an alternative magic weapons random table using this philosophy. Is there any interest in such a thing?
The whole "plus something" weapon mechanic smacks strongly of what I've come via the OSR to understand as an effect-first mechanic. It exists not to model any particular fictional power of a weapon, but to grant bonuses to attack and damage rolls. While that does allow DMs and gaming groups to decide for themselves in post-hoc fashion what exactly those bonuses represent, that's addressed barely or not at all in the rule sets with which I'm familiar. Moreover, any +1 weapon is as good as any other +1 weapon of the same type, regardless of the "fluff" any particular DM or setting attaches to it.
The "plus something" model also contributes to inflation of the power curve and the devaluation of magical weapons in general. You stick a +1 sword in the dungeon, and the party finds it. That +1 to hit and damage seems pretty trivial right now, but remember that it applies to pretty much every opponent the sword's wielder might face. It's universally effective. There's little or no reason why anyone might want to use a different magical weapon based on in-game circumstances. So where do you go from there when you roll up the next treasure hoard with a magical weapon? Once everyone in the party who can use one has a +1 sword, any further one you might place is just redundant, and you either have to allow them to sell it or make excuses why they can't and have them accumulate closets full of weapons for which they have no practical use. ("Another sword +1? Just put it with the others.") One solution is simply to be very, very stingy with magical weapons, but unless there are cool non-magical things on which to spend loot with purely monetary value, a dearth of magic makes finding a hoard of treasure a ho-hum experience. Or, you could grit your teeth and start placing +2 swords...
Sure, there are other powers to add to weapons, especially in the Expert Set and onward. They certainly add some welcome variety, but in the rules as written they're always applied to a platform of plus-something. You don't just have a sword that flames or extinguishes flames, you have a sword +1 of flaming or a sword +2 of extinguishing. In other words, it's just more power creep as powers are stacked on top of bonuses.
Instead of starting with an assumption of pluses to hit and damage, what if we started with none at all? Attack and damage bonuses wouldn't have to be done away with entirely; they simply would not be present in every magical weapon by default, nor would an attack bonus and a damage bonus necessarily be present in the same weapon. Attack bonuses, damage bonuses, and other mechanical effects can then be applied to weapons based on a meaning-first construction.
For example:
Hero weapons: Formerly wielded by great heroes (or villains), these weapons have absorbed some of their wielder's combat prowess. When used by a new wielder, this knowledge is imparted subconsciously - he finds himself able to anticipate his opponent's moves and counter them with techniques of a more seasoned warrior, conferring a bonus of +1 to +3 to attack rolls.
Rune weapons: Inscribed with the runic true-names of particular species or types, which hold power over those creatures, these weapons deal +1 to +3 damage against the appropriate creature type only. A dragonbane sword does extra damage against dragons, while one inscribed with the rune for ogres does extra damage against them. The runes can be deciphered, and thus the weapon's properties deduced, with a read magic spell.
Flaming: The blade or striking surface of the weapon will burst into flames (possibly strangely or spectacularly colored) on command or when a specific condition is met (i.e. the sun is out or undead are near.) The flame causes extra damage (either +1 to +3, or double, or roll twice take highest) to creatures notably vulnerable to fire, like yetis and white dragons. It may also ignite flammable materials (10% chance per hit in combat).
Holy: The weapon can strike unholy and blasphemous creatures, such as undead, which are immune to normal weapons.
Wolf-bane: Made of enchanted silver with the durability of steel, and capable of harming any creature that can be harmed by ordinary silvered weapons. Especially appropriate if ordinary silver weapons in the campaign are subject to damage or wear.
Enemy detection: When hostile creatures are near, the weapon emits a glow or vibration, the intensity of which is proportional to either the magnitude of the threat or the proximity of the enemies. May also be a feature of rune weapons, indicating the presence of its target creatures. The swords in Tolkien's Middle-earth which glow when orcs are near are a good example.
Bound spirit: The weapon holds a bound spirit of some sort, such as a demon, angel, ghost, or elemental. Powers conferred on the weapon could be nearly anything, and the bound spirit may exert influence or control over the wielder, either subconsciously if the spirit is dormant or non-sapient, or consciously in the manner of an intelligent sword.
All sorts of other effects are possible, of course, greater and lesser, combat and non-combat. Light, invisibility, energy drain or defense against it, charm, detections of various things, stunning, paralyzing, poison, fear, and more are all viable, useful, and interesting powers for weapons. There's no reason at all that these couldn't stand on their own, without the need for an underlying plus-something bonus. Rather, they should be on equal terms with attack bonuses and damage bonuses, with none considered "must have" or essential to the very concept of magical arms. In doing so, the potential for variety is expanded, and the potential for power creep is lessened. A "hero" sword with +1 to hit is distinct from a "rune" sword with a +1 damage against orcs or a flaming sword with no pluses at all, without any being objectively and universally "better."
It might be worthwhile to cobble together an alternative magic weapons random table using this philosophy. Is there any interest in such a thing?
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