This viscous black liquid usually comes in a stoppered jar or flask, frequently with a brush or dauber affixed to the inside of the stopper. It has no effect if consumed by a living creature. When applied to any solid non-living surface, it creates a void up to 10' deep in the material, penetrating all the way through material less than 10' thick. Any creature or object of an appropriate size may pass through or occupy the hole. Note that the hole created is not an extradimensional space; it is an actual physical gap in the material to which it is applied.
A flask of Hole Paint usually contains enough paint to cover about 10 square feet, though it need not be used all at once. A dab is enough to create a peep-hole, an eighth of a flask will make a hole large enough to extract loot from a locked chest, and an entire flask makes a hole about 3-1/2 feet in diameter through which most characters can easily crawl.
The hole lasts until the paint is scraped off or washed away with a solvent such as vinegar or alcohol. Anything inside the hole when the paint is removed becomes encased in solid material. This is immediately fatal to living creatures.
If splashed on a non-living construct such as a golem, a flask of Hole Paint will cause 6d8 points of damage.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Goblins & Greatswords: Armor and weapons
Figuring out the combat system for my fantasy heartbreaker turned out to be pretty easy compared to nailing down the particulars of the weapons and armor that characters will use in it. I want different types of weapons to have meaningful differences, but I don't want huge complicated tables with lots of messy modifiers to look up or remember. After a lot of false starts, I'm tentatively happy with what I have now.
Armor comes in three types: Light, medium, and heavy, giving a base AC of 12, 14, or 16, respectively. Light armor includes light, non-metallic, and relatively flexible options such as leather and padded armor. Medium armors are made of metal or other hard material, but in flexible forms such as mail, scale, brigandine, and such. Heavy armors are made of large rigid plates of metal or some other hard material. The exact type of armor a character gets in any of the three classes is determined by the player and GM, and has no further game mechanical effect.
Shields increase AC by 1, as usual. I'm considering making a shield a requirement to use the character's Combat Rating defensively, too.
Weapons come in broad categories: Axe, Blade, Bludgeon, and Stick, and further divided into light, medium, and heavy types.
Axes are chopping weapons which are good at breaking through armor, and so receive a +1 bonus to combat rolls. Damage is 4/6/8 for light, medium, and heavy types, respectively. Examples include the hand axe and tomahawk (light), battle axe (medium), and polearms* (heavy.) All axes use the wielder's Might modifier.
Blades are slashing and slicing weapons. They are among the hardest to master, but have the highest damage potential at 6/8/10. Examples include daggers and short swords (light), all of the various "normal" swords (medium), and great swords such as the bastard sword and two-handed sword (heavy.) Light and medium blades use the wielder's Agility modifier. Heavy blades use Might.
Bludgeons are blunt, smashing weapons. They are the easiest weapons to wield, and also good at delivering impact damage through armor, and so receive +2 to combat rolls, but also have the lowest damage potential at 3/4/6. Examples include the club/cudgel/shillelagh (light,) the mace and war hammer (medium), and the maul (heavy.) All bludgeons use the wielder's Might modifier.
Stick weapons are long, slender weapons used mainly for thrusting maneuvers. They gain a +2 bonus to Interpose actions. Damage is 4/6/8. Examples include the quarterstaff (light), the spear (medium), polearms* and lances (heavy.) All stick weapons use the wielder's Agility modifier.
*Since polearms typically feature both heavy chopping blades and spear points or spikes, they may be used as either axes or stick weapons, whichever is most advantageous to the wielder.
Most light and medium weapons (except the quarterstaff) may be wielded with one hand, and combined with a shield if desired. Most heavy weapons (except the lance from horseback) must be wielded two-handed.
Missile weapons are another can of worms with which I'm still grappling...
Armor comes in three types: Light, medium, and heavy, giving a base AC of 12, 14, or 16, respectively. Light armor includes light, non-metallic, and relatively flexible options such as leather and padded armor. Medium armors are made of metal or other hard material, but in flexible forms such as mail, scale, brigandine, and such. Heavy armors are made of large rigid plates of metal or some other hard material. The exact type of armor a character gets in any of the three classes is determined by the player and GM, and has no further game mechanical effect.
Shields increase AC by 1, as usual. I'm considering making a shield a requirement to use the character's Combat Rating defensively, too.
Weapons come in broad categories: Axe, Blade, Bludgeon, and Stick, and further divided into light, medium, and heavy types.
Axes are chopping weapons which are good at breaking through armor, and so receive a +1 bonus to combat rolls. Damage is 4/6/8 for light, medium, and heavy types, respectively. Examples include the hand axe and tomahawk (light), battle axe (medium), and polearms* (heavy.) All axes use the wielder's Might modifier.
Blades are slashing and slicing weapons. They are among the hardest to master, but have the highest damage potential at 6/8/10. Examples include daggers and short swords (light), all of the various "normal" swords (medium), and great swords such as the bastard sword and two-handed sword (heavy.) Light and medium blades use the wielder's Agility modifier. Heavy blades use Might.
Bludgeons are blunt, smashing weapons. They are the easiest weapons to wield, and also good at delivering impact damage through armor, and so receive +2 to combat rolls, but also have the lowest damage potential at 3/4/6. Examples include the club/cudgel/shillelagh (light,) the mace and war hammer (medium), and the maul (heavy.) All bludgeons use the wielder's Might modifier.
Stick weapons are long, slender weapons used mainly for thrusting maneuvers. They gain a +2 bonus to Interpose actions. Damage is 4/6/8. Examples include the quarterstaff (light), the spear (medium), polearms* and lances (heavy.) All stick weapons use the wielder's Agility modifier.
*Since polearms typically feature both heavy chopping blades and spear points or spikes, they may be used as either axes or stick weapons, whichever is most advantageous to the wielder.
Most light and medium weapons (except the quarterstaff) may be wielded with one hand, and combined with a shield if desired. Most heavy weapons (except the lance from horseback) must be wielded two-handed.
Missile weapons are another can of worms with which I'm still grappling...
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Where everybody knows your name
A week or two ago I was poring over the forums at dragonsfoot and came across a thread about characters wishing to build or buy a tavern in-game. Most people seemed pretty neutral on the idea, with one or two wondering why players in a D&D game would want to concern themselves with a mundane enterprise like running a tavern, and a few looking at the up-side potential.
This was of interest to me at least in part because my players back in the day were wild for in-game business ventures in general, and their characters owned their share of taverns. At least in the case of my players, I can say with confidence that they were not at all interested in the minutiae of running the business. They were not keeping track of inventory, worrying about current prices of ale and wine, tallying up daily receipts of silver and copper, or fretting over maintenance of the premises. Why, then, would players want to own a tavern or other business in the game world, and why would the DM let them?
It's a little bit about fame and prestige in the game world. Buying or building an inn or tavern represents the point at which a party of characters graduates from grubby murderhobos to genuine members of the community. It's a step on the ladder that's within reach of low-level characters, long before the giddy heights of name level and titles of nobility.
Even more than that, it represents the players taking on a personal stake in the game world, or at least their chosen home town or village. Expressing a desire to open up a tavern is expressing a desire to be a part of your fictional society. Town isn't just the safe zone where they're allowed to rest without wandering monster checks and erase gold and add equipment to their character sheets; it's become a place in the shared story that they care about. And they'll care about it even more once they own a piece of it: Orcs raiding in the countryside and bandits preying on traffic on the high road aren't just opportunities for mayhem and loot; they're calls to protect the players' (fictional) financial and (real) emotional investments in the game.
An inn or tavern is a place characters can call home and store their loot, but it's also a place that attracts interesting people. There's no better place to hear weary travelers talk of faraway lands. Bards and minstrels will stop and regale the locals with their songs and stories, too. That's true in any watering hole the characters might visit, of course, but when you own the joint, you can have your serving staff keep an ear out for things even while you're not there, and you can do everything in your power to make the place more attractive to the best performers. The better the inn or tavern, the better the quality of the rumors you can gather there.
Speaking of NPCs, a position at an inn or tavern is a fun way for the PCs to reward less fortunate NPCs that the players would like to keep around. The beggar who provided them a vital clue, a peasant rescued from a goblin lair, or a former retainer who has given up the dangerous life of adventurer's assistant might all find new life as tapsters, handymen, grooms, or barflies in the PCs' establishment.
Lastly, an inn or tavern can be a source of income, but that should probably be much less than characters can make by adventuring. Most of the proceeds of the business will go toward inventory, maintenance, and wages for the folks who run the place in the PCs' absence. 3d6 gp (or whatever your base coin is) profit per month sounds about right to me. Perhaps adjust the amount depending on how much traffic the location gets - less for a backwater hamlet, more for a major trade route. The PCs may pocket the profits or reinvest them in improvements. If they manage to make their business truly exceptional in some way, extra d6s can be awarded. Dealing with losses and shortfalls is usually no fun, unless it's used as an adventure hook: Trolls have taken over the bridge north of town, or the baron just across the border has imposed a stiff tariff on goods entering the domain, and traffic has dried up. Time to strap on the armor and weapons, dust off the spell books, and show them who's in charge here!
Inns and tavers, for the reasons discussed above and more, are the most obvious choices for PC investment, but others are possible too, such as pawnbrokers, blacksmith shops, or even trading or shipping firms.
Done right, a PC business provides many interesting ways for players to interact with the game world and its inhabitants. Just leave the quill pens and accounting ledgers in the background where they belong and focus on the possibilities for adventure and intrigue that open up when players are willing to invest their characters' coins and their imaginations in having their very own piece of your world.
This was of interest to me at least in part because my players back in the day were wild for in-game business ventures in general, and their characters owned their share of taverns. At least in the case of my players, I can say with confidence that they were not at all interested in the minutiae of running the business. They were not keeping track of inventory, worrying about current prices of ale and wine, tallying up daily receipts of silver and copper, or fretting over maintenance of the premises. Why, then, would players want to own a tavern or other business in the game world, and why would the DM let them?
It's a little bit about fame and prestige in the game world. Buying or building an inn or tavern represents the point at which a party of characters graduates from grubby murderhobos to genuine members of the community. It's a step on the ladder that's within reach of low-level characters, long before the giddy heights of name level and titles of nobility.
Even more than that, it represents the players taking on a personal stake in the game world, or at least their chosen home town or village. Expressing a desire to open up a tavern is expressing a desire to be a part of your fictional society. Town isn't just the safe zone where they're allowed to rest without wandering monster checks and erase gold and add equipment to their character sheets; it's become a place in the shared story that they care about. And they'll care about it even more once they own a piece of it: Orcs raiding in the countryside and bandits preying on traffic on the high road aren't just opportunities for mayhem and loot; they're calls to protect the players' (fictional) financial and (real) emotional investments in the game.
An inn or tavern is a place characters can call home and store their loot, but it's also a place that attracts interesting people. There's no better place to hear weary travelers talk of faraway lands. Bards and minstrels will stop and regale the locals with their songs and stories, too. That's true in any watering hole the characters might visit, of course, but when you own the joint, you can have your serving staff keep an ear out for things even while you're not there, and you can do everything in your power to make the place more attractive to the best performers. The better the inn or tavern, the better the quality of the rumors you can gather there.
Speaking of NPCs, a position at an inn or tavern is a fun way for the PCs to reward less fortunate NPCs that the players would like to keep around. The beggar who provided them a vital clue, a peasant rescued from a goblin lair, or a former retainer who has given up the dangerous life of adventurer's assistant might all find new life as tapsters, handymen, grooms, or barflies in the PCs' establishment.
Lastly, an inn or tavern can be a source of income, but that should probably be much less than characters can make by adventuring. Most of the proceeds of the business will go toward inventory, maintenance, and wages for the folks who run the place in the PCs' absence. 3d6 gp (or whatever your base coin is) profit per month sounds about right to me. Perhaps adjust the amount depending on how much traffic the location gets - less for a backwater hamlet, more for a major trade route. The PCs may pocket the profits or reinvest them in improvements. If they manage to make their business truly exceptional in some way, extra d6s can be awarded. Dealing with losses and shortfalls is usually no fun, unless it's used as an adventure hook: Trolls have taken over the bridge north of town, or the baron just across the border has imposed a stiff tariff on goods entering the domain, and traffic has dried up. Time to strap on the armor and weapons, dust off the spell books, and show them who's in charge here!
Inns and tavers, for the reasons discussed above and more, are the most obvious choices for PC investment, but others are possible too, such as pawnbrokers, blacksmith shops, or even trading or shipping firms.
Done right, a PC business provides many interesting ways for players to interact with the game world and its inhabitants. Just leave the quill pens and accounting ledgers in the background where they belong and focus on the possibilities for adventure and intrigue that open up when players are willing to invest their characters' coins and their imaginations in having their very own piece of your world.
Friday, February 12, 2016
New monster: Melting zombie
Dreams are weird. I seem to have an inordinate number of dreams about zombies, often also including members of The Walking Dead cast. Well, what do you get when a run-of-the-mill Walking Dead dream goes sideways? A new monster to disgust and terrify a game group, of course.
Melting Zombie
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2**
Move: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 or 2
Damage: 1d6/1d6
No. Appearing: 1d6 (2d8)
Save as: F1
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Alignment: Chaotic
This shambling horror looks just like an ordinary zombie at first. Unlike the normal animated corpse, however, it hungers for fresh meat. When it is first damaged in combat, the rotting skin, blood, and organs of a melting zombie liquefy, forming a horrible puddle of necrotic slime. The slime has half the zombie's hit points and moves at a rate of 30' (10'.) It can seep through small cracks and even climb up walls to reach its prey, and its touch dissolves living flesh. This amorphous mess cannot be harmed by weapons, but is vulnerable to fire and holy water.
The other half of the zombie's hit points still reside in the skeletal frame, held together by muscle and tendon, which continues to attack by clawing and biting. Both parts must be killed, or else the zombie will re-form, regenerating 1 hit point per turn.
A character hit by either attack must make a saving throw vs. death ray or contract a rotting disease which will kill the character within 1d4 days unless cured. A character slain by a melting zombie, whether by damage or by disease, will reanimate as a melting zombie 1d4 turns after death. Melting zombies may be turned as wights.
Melting Zombie
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2**
Move: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 or 2
Damage: 1d6/1d6
No. Appearing: 1d6 (2d8)
Save as: F1
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Alignment: Chaotic
This shambling horror looks just like an ordinary zombie at first. Unlike the normal animated corpse, however, it hungers for fresh meat. When it is first damaged in combat, the rotting skin, blood, and organs of a melting zombie liquefy, forming a horrible puddle of necrotic slime. The slime has half the zombie's hit points and moves at a rate of 30' (10'.) It can seep through small cracks and even climb up walls to reach its prey, and its touch dissolves living flesh. This amorphous mess cannot be harmed by weapons, but is vulnerable to fire and holy water.
The other half of the zombie's hit points still reside in the skeletal frame, held together by muscle and tendon, which continues to attack by clawing and biting. Both parts must be killed, or else the zombie will re-form, regenerating 1 hit point per turn.
A character hit by either attack must make a saving throw vs. death ray or contract a rotting disease which will kill the character within 1d4 days unless cured. A character slain by a melting zombie, whether by damage or by disease, will reanimate as a melting zombie 1d4 turns after death. Melting zombies may be turned as wights.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Goblins & Greatswords: An alternate resolution mechanic for the thiefly arts and other skills
A while back, I posted my ideas on how the skills of thieves (plus a few others) would work in my fantasy heartbreaker, Goblins and Greatswords. I chose to stick with the percentile dice model used by most old school iterations of D&D, as opposed to a simple d20 or d6 mechanic. One reason for this is that rolling two dice allows for special results to be triggered on a roll of doubles. Another is that the percentile dice "roll-under" format allows degrees of success to be easily determined and scale in the right direction: just take the tens digit of a successful roll, and the highest degrees of success are possible only with the highest levels of skill.
However, there are some things I don't like about it too. It's very inelegant when applying modifiers, for one, and ability score modifiers are something I very much want to include. The standard -3 to +3 ability score modifier is dwarfed by a 100-point range. Sure, you can convert those to plus or minus 5, 10, or 15%, but you're still asking your players to crunch bigger numbers at the table, and either adding them to the base chance or subtracting them from the roll, which feels weird. Then there's the problem of looking up numbers in a table every time you want to do something. It's a lot easier to remember that you have a +5 bonus to your Stealth skill than it is to remember that you have, say, a 47% chance of success.
So, I'm considering a system using a roll of two dice, but adding them together in a roll-over format. My first thought was 2d6, but the range just isn't big enough to accomodate both improving skill by level and modifiers. 2d10 has the range to work, but the "success" point would have to be at some wonky number like 16 in order to start with reasonable odds, and 2d8 has a similar issue.
2d12, now...that's interesting. (Go here and click on the "At Least" tab if you want to follow along with a visual aid.) There's a 10.42% chance to roll 20 or higher, which means that, if you set the target number at 20 (intuitive and easy to remember!) the average schmuck who has no bonus in a skill would succeed roughly 10% of the time. Start out with a +1 bonus, and you're up to 14.58%, which seems good enough for a dabbler in the skill. A more serious student of a skill might start at +2, for a 19.44% chance, which maps pretty well to the beginning percentages of most thief skills in B/X.
Add a bonus for a high ability score, and a character could start with 25%, 31.25%, or 38.19% odds - a meaningful bump, but not so much that it swamps the whole system. There's still lots of room for improvement, which is desirable because I want leveling up to mean something, and it doesn't if you're bumping against the 100% success ceiling too soon.
Rather than using a table of percentages, increasing at different rates for Basic, Good, or Elite skill progression, I'd use a relatively simple formula: Basic starts at +1, and gains an additional +1 at odd-numbered levels. Good starts at +2 and gains +1 at levels divisible by 2 or 3; thus at level 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, and so on. Elite also starts at +2, and gains +1 at every level. One interesting feature of this is that Good and Elite are essentially the same at beginning levels -- all the way through 4th, in fact -- but Elite slowly pulls ahead at higher levels.
Here it is in table form, so you can clearly see the relative progressions.
However, there are some things I don't like about it too. It's very inelegant when applying modifiers, for one, and ability score modifiers are something I very much want to include. The standard -3 to +3 ability score modifier is dwarfed by a 100-point range. Sure, you can convert those to plus or minus 5, 10, or 15%, but you're still asking your players to crunch bigger numbers at the table, and either adding them to the base chance or subtracting them from the roll, which feels weird. Then there's the problem of looking up numbers in a table every time you want to do something. It's a lot easier to remember that you have a +5 bonus to your Stealth skill than it is to remember that you have, say, a 47% chance of success.
So, I'm considering a system using a roll of two dice, but adding them together in a roll-over format. My first thought was 2d6, but the range just isn't big enough to accomodate both improving skill by level and modifiers. 2d10 has the range to work, but the "success" point would have to be at some wonky number like 16 in order to start with reasonable odds, and 2d8 has a similar issue.
2d12, now...that's interesting. (Go here and click on the "At Least" tab if you want to follow along with a visual aid.) There's a 10.42% chance to roll 20 or higher, which means that, if you set the target number at 20 (intuitive and easy to remember!) the average schmuck who has no bonus in a skill would succeed roughly 10% of the time. Start out with a +1 bonus, and you're up to 14.58%, which seems good enough for a dabbler in the skill. A more serious student of a skill might start at +2, for a 19.44% chance, which maps pretty well to the beginning percentages of most thief skills in B/X.
Add a bonus for a high ability score, and a character could start with 25%, 31.25%, or 38.19% odds - a meaningful bump, but not so much that it swamps the whole system. There's still lots of room for improvement, which is desirable because I want leveling up to mean something, and it doesn't if you're bumping against the 100% success ceiling too soon.
Rather than using a table of percentages, increasing at different rates for Basic, Good, or Elite skill progression, I'd use a relatively simple formula: Basic starts at +1, and gains an additional +1 at odd-numbered levels. Good starts at +2 and gains +1 at levels divisible by 2 or 3; thus at level 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, and so on. Elite also starts at +2, and gains +1 at every level. One interesting feature of this is that Good and Elite are essentially the same at beginning levels -- all the way through 4th, in fact -- but Elite slowly pulls ahead at higher levels.
Here it is in table form, so you can clearly see the relative progressions.
-
Level
Basic
Good
Elite
1
+1
+2
+2
2
+1
+3
+3
3
+2
+4
+4
4
+2
+5
+5
5
+3
+5
+6
6
+3
+6
+7
7
+4
+6
+8
8
+4
+7
+9
9
+5
+8
+10
10
+5
+9
+11
11
+6
+9
+12
12
+6
+10
+13
13
+7
+10
+14
14
+7
+11
+15
15
+8
+12
+16
If levels top out around 15 (and really, there's not much reason to go beyond that, is there?) then a Basic skill ends up succeeding 61.81% of the time, Good 85.42%, and Elite 97.92%, before any ability adjustments. That sounds about right to me.
Of course, we also still have easy access to the special-effect-on-doubles mechanic. It's the degrees of success which get a little funky: something along the lines of subtracting half the larger die roll from 7, to generate a number between 1 and 5 (no 6 - if neither of your dice are higher than 1, you obviously didn't succeed - snake eyes is always a failure) with higher levels of success reserved to those for whom lower dice rolls can succeed. (I could simply subtract the higher die roll from 13, but that generates a number between 1 and 11, but thats an awful lot of range. Some skills use the degree of success for the number of questions the player gets to ask of the GM, for instance, and any more than 5 or so seems like it would bog down the pace of the game tremendously.) Only a couple of skills, as I've written them, really make use of degrees of success, so this might not be a big issue anyway.
I'm still a little bit on the fence about this, so please weigh in: If you were running a game, which one would be easier, more fluid, more intuitive to use? Is this the respect the humble d12 deserves, or is 2d12 for one of the game's core resolution systems just too weird to stick? Would the moderate fiddliness of calculating degrees of success with 2d12 make you not want to use that particular mechanic? Is there something else that strikes you as broken or unworkable? Let me know in the comments!
I'm still a little bit on the fence about this, so please weigh in: If you were running a game, which one would be easier, more fluid, more intuitive to use? Is this the respect the humble d12 deserves, or is 2d12 for one of the game's core resolution systems just too weird to stick? Would the moderate fiddliness of calculating degrees of success with 2d12 make you not want to use that particular mechanic? Is there something else that strikes you as broken or unworkable? Let me know in the comments!
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