Consolation Ability Bump

Observation 1: New players often ask if there is any way they can increase their ability scores. Old school dogma states that only magic can do the trick (often, literally through a magical trick feature.)

Observation 2: The visible frustration in old school games when a player rolls 1 on their hit point die at a new level.

Solution:

Well, this works because all my classes roll d6 for hit points with various modifiers. But in a more standard game, it would end up giving benefits to small hit dice types over bigger. YOu can either roll with that as a feature, or try this hack; you gain the ability bonus:

d4: on a roll of 1 ,and 3-6 then rolled on d6:
d6: on a roll of 1
d8: on a roll of 1, or a roll of 2 if 5-6 then rolled on d6.
d10: on a roll of 1, or a roll of 2 if 3-6 then rolled on d6.
d12: on a roll of 1-2.

For monks' starting HP roll, if you're not using "maximum HP at first level" or similar, the stat gain ison a roll of 2 or 3 on 2d4; for rangers, 2 through 4 on 2d8.

52 Baroque Monster Abilities

In the aftermath of my cooled-down, ISOTYPE-inspired 52 Pages modular rules project, the inevitable backswing is for numerous,complicated, weird ideas to squat in its vacant form. Text, tiny. Graphics, irrelevant and obfuscatory. Ideas, idiosyncratic, not synthetic.

I generated a random number and got 41. I got to work on the topic of the 52 Pages page number 41 - monster basics - and eventually produced this table for anything but basic monsters. Roll d%, halve and round up, if you don't like an idea use the surefire 51 or 52. Click to enlarge, natch.

The form of the monster is secondary. Let your obsessions and phobias determine it.

Low Stats as Disadvantages: Wisdom

Continuing the series.

If low Intelligence means a visual or cognitive impairment, low Wisdom means an auditory one, or ... well, I've remarked before on how wacky a stat Wisdom is. Sanity? Willpower? Sensitivity? Percaption? The disadvantage approach can handle that though. It likes a multifarious attribute, for sure.

I'm liking more and more, too, the idea that +1 Wisdom is the most bonus you can get at 13 up, but that 15, 16, 17 and 18 Wisdom give benefits. Seems this would be the perfect stat to hand out psionic abilities on. I think an Advantages series at this point is almost inevitable. Not for core 52 Pages, but maybe a supplement, or for the other, painfully inelegant and baroque d20 variant game I have in me.

Oh yeah. Courtney is tearing it up on Hack & Slash with two don't miss series: incredibly various and devious rumors about monster ecologies (so much better than "Science tells us that the roper lays a clucth of 2d6 eggs...") and OSR New Wave creator interviews. Check it out!

Low Stats As Disadvantages: Intelligence

Continuing the series.

One nice side benefit of treating low stats as specific disadvantages is that for the mental stats, you avoid the tired old controversy of "oh, I must now play my INT 4 character as a moron." Really low Intelligence here gets you a reroll and a visual disability. (Hint: Blind characters make good clerics. Get a guide dog or trusted henchman. Seek out medusas.)

Kind of low Intelligence gets you a minor cognitive disability. Either way, you can be as clever and puzzle-y as you want to be.

Come to think of it ... there may be something to really high scores not giving you super big bonuses, but just a +1 and a special advantage like photographic memory, magic resistance, etc. I have been thinking about stacking and high levels, and I'm not sure that allowing 10th level characters to get +15 to hit from levels, magic, and stats is really where my rules should go.

Low Stats Are Good, Too

Here's the Random Wizard on G+:

I have been noodling over trying to make a system where having a low score is not necessarily a bad thing. It is easy for Charisma. You can make a low Charisma score = fearsome. Not so sure what could be done for the other ability scores...

Challenge accepted!

High STR = Low Manual Dexterity (missile weapons, lock and trap work). Fingers like hotdogs. Low STR = High Manual Dexterity. That works. You don't need two separate stats for manual and bodily dexterity - you need reversed Strength for manual.

DEX is bodily dexterity (AC, climbing, stealth), and low DEX = high CON (physical steadiness, tankitude). So we collapse those two stats into one.

You can get hit points from high DEX (dodge points) or low DEX (tank points). Outstanding.

High INT is book larnin'. Low INT is street smarts. Your players aren't morons, why should their characters be?

High WISdom is awareness and sensitivity. Low WISdom is willpower and steadiness. Probably it needs a different name - Awareness, Perception, Openness? but then it did already.

A cleric can draw on either extreme. Illustration:

Low CHA can be intimidation (affects opponent's Morale rolls) if high CHA is ingratiation (affects their Reaction rolls).

Assumptions we're making:

1. Adventurers are exceptional. In any given domain they either have something going for them, or are totally average.

2. Some traits like muscle mass and fine motor skills are inversely correlated. Probably no more unrealistic than the default assumption that all skills are completely uncorrelated (most glaringly STR and CON). Again, would a complete weakling and klutz really set out on the path of adventure?

3. Characters can still (quite unlikely) be boring, but rarely useless.

Thanks, Random Wizard!

Tiny Competences

It started when the Band of Iron tried to snap the bard's ghost off the path of regret by singing one of his songs to him.

So the question came up for each of the characters - can they sing?

From twistedtwee

Singing, dancing, playing an instrument, riding, swimming, whistling ... Let's call these kinds of abilities competences. I find them tricky to handle because ...

• They don't easily fit into a given ability score or skill. Someone who's a great athlete could still have never learned how to swim. Someone who's a great singer may not know how to whistle.
• They don't work as skills that the characters can invest in, because many if not most people in the setting can do these things at some basic level; some people are hopeless at it, or never learned; and some people are naturally great at it. The distribution is two-tailed with a fat middle; it's not something like lockpicking where most people are bad and only a few are trained.

A comprehensive game system would have a list of several dozen skills already on each character sheet, with each of these competences represented. It's not likely any of these characters would put "points" into singing, so they would all be treated as fairly inept at the task. But this is not really satisfactory, even if we were playing that kind of complicated game. Some people are just naturally good at singing, others are not.

Another kind of solution, more compatible with the rules-light old-school ethos, is to key singing ability to the closest available stat, in this case Charisma, and roll an off-the-cuff check. But something about this solution also doesn't satisfy. It assumes that someone who is a great singer will also be a great leader and vice versa, but these things don't always go together.

In play, when the party's singing ability was called for, I just had them each roll d6 and note the result on their sheet:

1 = hopeless at it
2 = not good
3-4 = average
5 = good at it
6 = great at it

This system then got used in actual play to determine further uses of competences such as whistling (don't ask) and riding.

More recently, I've produced a character sheet with a list of short words, using an even simpler system. For each competence, you roll the die, circle the word if you got a "6" - meaning you're especially good - and X it out if you got a "1" - meaning you're especially bad.

So far, the list is: Ride, Swim, Sing, Dance, Play (instrument), Gamble. In practice, some of the competences do relate to ability scores if people are trying to do something exceptional or contested, but mostly it's a case of whether or not people can do the activity at a basic level.

Any more ideas for the list?

Monster Ability Scores on the Fly

As teens we played two roleplaying games: D&D plus variants and Runequest.

Runequest was attractive because it felt more realistic. But it was a pain to create adventures for, which is why we didn't play it all the time. The magic system was restrictively Gloranthan, but worse yet, each individual monster had separate stats that had to be rolled up.

Because it was AD&D, the two systems came off about the same in complexity, but at least in AD&D the DM could create a monster our of thin air, or throw a few ogres at the party without blinking. D&D was a system thrown together from a number of unrelated wargames. Runequest was a system that sought to simulate the world consistently, simplifying some areas (skill resolution) at the cost of others (monster generation).

3rd and later edition D&D assimilated the Runequest mentality with the triumph of consistency over ease. Skills got easier but monster statblocks grew fearsomely big.

D&D Next seems to pare down the monsters considerably but retain the "consistency" approach. Monster saving throws are ability score-based just like characters' and if you want to wrestle a gray ooze, its Strength is a known quantity.

Mike Mearls, to his credit, realizes that this can work out awkwardly in practice and gives the option to just wing ability scores. If your gray ooze's strength is a few points off, that can always be explained away ("He was a big strong ooze, even as a little puddle").

But here's my alternative, on the page of my large-print heartbreaker that explains monster stats. The relevant section lets you compute monster abilities from other parts of their statblock like move and hit dice. I also use descriptive terms like "nimble" and "frail" that should be easy to apply.

 I'm not sure if a simple algorithm for each stat is less unwieldy than just looking things up in the monster book, but at least it can give you some things to think about when improvising monster stats for Next/5th. Me - I'll work toward not requiring ability scores for monsters at all. And anyway, this exercise has got me moving again on the 52 Pages.

AD&D Gender Differences: Not Big Enough for Realism

If you defend gender limits on Strength in a game because of "the basic facts of anatomy," are you going far enough?

Most research studies put men on average at about twice the physical upper-body strength of women, whether measured by lifting or throwing (even this meta-analysis challenging the importance of psychological sex differences has to acknowledge the strong physical sex differences on this score.) To put it statistically, effect size differences on things related to the Strength stat in roleplaying games range from 1.5 to 3 standard deviation units (d). The distribution overlap for a d of 2 looks like this:

What this would mean is that 2.5% of women are physically stronger than the average man, and 2.5% of men are less strong than the average woman. If you assume that the male is the norm for the D&D character (and given the premises of this discussion, hey, why not?), this translates to a -6 penalty to female Strength, so that the top 2.5th percentile cutoff of the female distribution (3d6 roll of 17+) matches the top 50th percentile cutoff of the male one (3d6 roll of 11+).

Nothing this size exists for psychological differences, so unless you're positing some very bizarre cultural constraints, balancing out male strength  by giving women characters a +6 to "wisdom" or "charisma" or what have you is just as unrealistic.

And people are arguing about AD&D capping human females at 18/50 strength? It's clear that neither realism nor equality are served by the classic  rule, which can only be defended on the grounds of tradition.

My own game's rationale for not having gender modify strength: Along with the wizard, the dwarf, the elf, the barbarian - each of which rests to some extent on a suspension of disbelief - there is another fantasy archetype, the "warrior maid" or "kick-ass woman." Whether her name is Penthesilia, Bradamante, Wonder Woman, or Xena, both men and women love to watch her, and sometimes to play in her role. Anything the system does to make this character possible, and attractive to play, is allowable.

Long story short: why the hell are people so concerned about female anatomical realism when half the female fighters in D&D art look like this:

And if so, why can't they equally "unrealistically" look like this?

Wisdom: For the Ultimate Priest or the Ultimate Scout?

D&D's Wisdom stat seems to be the most easily dispensed when people write house rules and variants. If you don't like clerics, you won't like wisdom, for starters. Even with clerics left in, something seems to compel people to re-envision this unwanted stat ... as sanity, luck, piety, will. Check out this D&D tutorial video and the way Wisdom has to be handwaved around. Do "common sense" and "sense of self" really go together with "religious involvement"? Why, in 2nd edition on, does Wisdom give bonuses for skills like perception, outdoor survival and healing?

A wise guy, huh?

The prevailing view of wisdom in psychology is that it's the long-term knowledge of how best to achieve a meaningful life. Fine, but try translating that into a die roll bonus. Robert Sternberg, one of the predominant researchers in intelligence, argues that beyond IQ (reasoning ability, equivalent to D&D's Intelligence stat), success in life is also predicted by creativity, and by a third "street smarts" factor which he sometimes calls "practical intelligence" and sometimes "wisdom." The problem with this third factor as a game stat is that it's about making the right decisions. Feeding players the right decisions or forcing them to make the wrong ones because of their Wisdom would be a recipe for frustration.

This is why Wisdom constantly has to be reinterpreted as a character, not player, attribute. One approach (let's call it "Piety") is to just say it's whatever it takes to be a cleric/priest/paladin and tie it exclusively to divine magic. This is similar to what I do with Intelligence, renaming it Intellect, and treating it as "head for book learning." The problem here is that really no other character class has any reason to have a high Wisdom.

There are two other very different things Wisdom's asked to do, especially in 3rd edition D&D, with its design pressure to make all game elements meaningful. One is "Will" or ability to resist mental influence: 3rd edition has Wisdom modifying Will saves. The other is "Perception" or awareness of one's surroundings: 3rd edition also has Wisdom modifying a variety of skills like Spot, Listen, Sense Motive and Survival.

Well... Will and Piety perhaps go together, if you make the long assumption that contact with divine forces is the only way to resist influences on your mind. But Will and Piety are definitely at odds with Wisdom as Perception. The static, supportive role of cleric in the original game is right opposite the scouting, mobile role of the thief. It doesn't seem right that both classes draw on the same stat, when AD&D explicitly stated that their roles were opposite, and each one's prime requisite was the ability score the other could ignore completely.

How to resolve this mess? I recently had the insight that if Wisdom = Awareness it could mean different things for divine and profane classes. Simply put, have priest-types (or prophets) not get the Wisdom bonuses for earthly things like listening. Their awareness is attuned to a different sphere.

To sum up, in my game going forward, high Wisdom has the following benefits for a prophet:

• Qualifies for the class
• Stronger miracles, healing and abjuring evil.
• Stronger Mind saves (similar to 3rd edition's Will)

And for a non-prophet:

• 13+ Wisdom gives +1 on d6 perception skills; 8- Wisdom gives -1..
• Bonuses in Wisdom gives 10/15/20% bonus to experience, but no penalty for low Wisdom - the logic here being similar to awareness, that a prophet's Wisdom is too tied up in higher things to help learn pragmatically from experience.
• Stronger Mind saves.

Yes, this means that Wisdom is still a melange of Piety, Perception, Will and even the kind of life-learning that shows up in the psychology definition. I'm happy to live with that conflation, just as I'm happy for Dexterity to cover both fine and gross motor skills. The important thing in a character system is to give a variety of choices that make global sense, not create the ultimate human resources instrument.

Another thing to think about - if and when I introduce a Druid class to the game, their nature-bound spirituality would let them get both divine and mundane benefits of Wisdom.

Two Page Character Basics: False and Forced Choices

These two pages really go together; one gives the basics of an approach to character creation, the other follows it through with some of the basic stats for each character class. After that there is one page for each class detailing the special powers they get.

One click makes you larger, one click makes you small...

Some comments on the design here. I take a "cut the crap" approach to the relationship between ability scores and character class. If you don't take the obvious incentives in Original, Basic and Advanced D&D to put your highest abilities into the class' prime requisites - the experience bonuses, the stats helping with class powers - you must be making some kind of point. The kind of point that no player I have ever known, ever wanted to make.

So why not just require it?

Making a fighter with average Strength so he can have high Wisdom is a false choice. It's the illusion of an option because it's completely suboptimal, and can only lead to regret once the player understands the game system. By turning the false choice into a forced choice by the rules, mental capacity is freed up to make other, more meaningful choices.

(Other meaningless choices in old school D&D and the neo-clones who won't let its design choices go: duff seldom-useful spells that have to be memorized beforehand ... weapons with no reason to use ...)

After all, characters can still be quirky on their secondary stats, because I only allow the one switch necessary to bring you into the class of your choice. If you roll 9 strength, 15 intelligence and 13 wisdom and you want to play a fighter, he'll still be either smarter or wiser than your average grunt.

Another thing. Turning Constitution into Confidence keeps the abbreviation in line with Original Standard D&D, and lines up with my previous arguments about changing the CON stat and treating character hit points as morale. I'm pretty pleased with this move. It even feels right in its old school location next to Charisma, instead of feeling out of place as a physical stat most akin to Strength.

Another other thing: Dwarf and Elf "class" to let you know, this is race-as-class territory.

This may not be the most modular of the handouts, but it's necessary for a complete game and it lays down the background for some of the assumptions and choices in the more portable stuff coming up.

One Page Vital Stats

Following the program of One Page Rules, today I present a kind of "master handout" that introduces many of the vital stats characterizing PCs, NPCs and other beings in the game.

This is page 2 ... right after the introductory page where the general play and point of the game, and such terms as "character", "creature", "DM", "d6" and so forth are described. I haven't laid that out yet.

This is a different system than the more elaborate Old School Players rules I'm using for my current campaign. It's built for concision.

More to come ... as always, let me know if this way of presenting rules is clear.

I'm also going to issue a blanket acknowledgment to Telecanter, whose silhouettes will show up throughout this series.

Stats: 3d6

Thinking about character stats and methods, using this chart of cumulative probabilities on 3d6 for the high end. The chance of rolling a ...

18   = 0.5%

17+ = 1.9%

16+ = 4.6%

15+ = 9.3%

14+ = 16.2%

13+ = 25.9%

12+ = 37.5%

11+ = 50.0%

For straight 3d6, and 6 stat rolls per character, having a character with at least one score at:

18 = 2.7%; 

17+ = 10.6 %; 

15+ = 44.2%; 

13+ = 83.5%.

These numbers explain why I like the bonus system:

13-15 = +1

16-17 = +2

18 = +3

I feel this makes the best compromise between players' needs to play a distinct character, ease of use, and focus on player rather than character skills.

It justifies using 3d6, giving a special bonus to the truly rare rolls. (With a flat bonus at 13, you may as well roll d4 for the stat, giving the bonus on a 4 and penalty on a 1)

It makes sure a large majority of characters will have some bonus from stats, which goes a long way toward making players feel special. This is true even if +1 is just a token bonus to a d20 roll, overshadowed by the +2 or more that can be handed out based on player-skill choices. (With bonuses starting at 15, most characters will be unexceptional.)

What makes players obsess about stats is stuff like extra spells at low levels for high stats. A high stat should make a character 15-25% more effective at what he or she does best, not 100% more effective...