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4e: spell scrolls for non-wizards

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Monday I talked about re-introducing copyable spell scrolls into 4e D&D, so that PC wizards can drool over the possibility of raiding a rival wizard’s library and finally learning Acid Arrow. This is fine, but it’s sad for non-arcane classes, who don’t learn their attacks from scrolls. It would be cool if the other power sources had ways to learn improved versions of their attacks, in ways that supported their flavor. Here are my ideas.

Expanded spellbook and rare spells for divine classes

Wizards and their friends aren’t the only seekers after lost knowledge. Divine classes, like clerics and paladins, should be able to earn alternate prayers, but it doesn’t make as much sense for them to find them in the library.

I see divine classes gaining powerful versions of at-will prayers by completing holy pilgrimages: visiting the cathedrals of the campaign world and praying at the relics of saints. Each large city might contain a cathedral to each of the major gods, each of which contains its own relic. Each relic might grant a boosted form of a specific at-will spell: for instance, in Greyhawk’s Cathedral of Kord, the hammer of St. Nimbus might grant a +1-per-tier damage bonus to the Storm Hammer power.

While the pilgrimages required to boost at-wills are well known, those required for encounter and daily powers are secreted in hidden shrines in dungeons and in the wilderness. These shrines can be discovered randomly, as a form of treasure analagous to the scrolls of the arcane classes.

Martial classes

Fighters, rogues, rangers, warlords, and other martial classes usually learn new and improved powers from trainers. A great duelist might teach an improved version of Sly Flourish : it does +1 damage if the attacker has high ground.

Some ancient martial moves can be learned from manuals. Each manual teaches one move, and is no longer than 80 pages, because martial types can’t usually finish a book that’s longer than that.

Finally, if your fighter doesn’t want to constantly consult gurus and books, improved powers can be taught by opponents. Elite monsters who use the same power as a fighter might be using an improved version. By seeing it in action, the fighter might learn the improved technique. (This makes martial classes into a sort of Final Fantasy blue-magic specialist.)

Other power sources

Primal classes probably gain new abilities through rites of passage. The barbarian, for instance, has a laundry list of tasks he needs to accomplish in order to unlock new daily powers: killing a dragon, for instance, or winning a wrestling match against a tree spirit. After the task is accomplished, the character needs to have a druidic rite performed (typically involving tattooing or branding) to unlock the new ability.

I don’t really understand the shadow source very well, but it seems to involve death. Shadow characters might have to find the lingering spirits of ancient emperors and cursed wizards and convince them to give up their secrets. This might involve pilgrimages to ancient ruined palaces, haunted houses, or cities in the shadowfell. Or, hey, just go to Hogwarts! There’s like 50 ghosts in there.

Psionic training probably involves traveling to Dagobah and finding a Jedi master.

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Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

My simple XP rules: 1 XP per encounter

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

I know I’ll never fully embrace OD&D because I hate using charts. I prefer simple, easily internalized rules, like 3e’s Base Attack Bonus, rather than 1e’s Attack Matrix charts. 4e’s XP system still has a big ol’ level-advancement chart at the center of it, along with XP entries for every creature in the Monster Manual (which I often don’t use).

The 4e XP system has been formalized and math-checked, which means one of D&D’s central problems is more obvious than it has ever been: it suffers from “inflating-numbers-that-don’t-do-a-goddamn-thing-itis.” At level 1, you fight 10 battles in order to collect 1,000 XP. At level 10, you fight 10 battles to collect 20,500 XP. The specific amount of XP per battle changes, but the number of battles doesn’t.

There’s a historical reason for that. In old D&D, your XP was tied to your income. Since high-level characters won richer and richer treasures, XP totals per level had to rise. Now that characters don’t get 1 XP per GP earned, however, there’s no reason that XP needs to stick to that inflationary model.

Besides, calculating XP is kind of a pain: it involves flipping around in various books to add XP from monsters and traps, and dividing by the number of PCs.

I can’t be bothered to calculate XP, but I’m not ready to totally dump the idea of leveling up. Having the DM bestow levels arbitrarily takes away some of the treadmill charm of D&D. So here’s the super-simple XP system I use nowadays.

Every level costs 10 XP.

Most battles provide 1 XP. Boss battles provide 2 XP.

Same with quests and skill challenges: 1 XP, or 2 XP for major quests/challenges.

There are some minor variations here from the standard XP system:

  • XP differences between hard and easy battles are not so granular. Personally, I think this is fine, especially since the difficulty of a battle often has as much to do with circumstances and terrain as with the XP budget.
  • Quest XP is vastly higher in my system. In standard 4e, a minor quest gives about 1/5 the XP of one encounter, and a major quest as much XP as one encounter. This is probably a tiny fraction of the XP gathered from battles along the course of the quest. Video game RPGs, on the other hand, often give huge quest XP bonuses. This is great, because it’s weird when saving the world grants much less of a reward than fighting a random encounter.
  • It’s impossible to forget. You can give XP on the fly without consulting any charts. In fact, the players can track the 1 XP for each battle: all you have to do is grant the extra XP for quests and boss battles.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, RPG Hub | 11 Comments »

    don’t make me refuse the ice cream

    Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

    When you’re asking me what I want for dinner, don’t offer me a choice between, say, carrots and ice cream. And when I’m choosing a feat, don’t make me choose between, say, improved Diplomacy and +1 to hit in combat. Combat is ice cream, and I’ll choose ice cream every time. And I’ll make myself sick.

    Separate the combat and noncombat abilities into two different courses. Give me a main course, where my dwarf fighter can choose between, say, the ability to detect new construction or slanted passages. Then for dessert I can choose between +1 to hit or +2 to damage with my trusty axe.

    I know a lot of people will say that overindulging on combat abilities is a player problem, not a rules problem. Sure, if you’re disciplined, and you have a strong character concept, you might turn down the cool sword in order to pour money into your barony. And there are always a few people who genuinely prefer the carrots of character flavor to the sundae of combat optimization. But a lot of people are like me: given the choice, we’ll choose the ice cream and then feel disappointed that dinner didn’t feel nourishing at all. The perfect system would save me from my gluttony and force me to eat a balanced diet.

    Given “Don’t Make Me Refuse the Ice Cream” as a design principle, here are some requests for 5th edition D&D.

    You shouldn’t be able to buy combat-boosting magic items. Rory’s excellent magic items article makes a lot of good points, this among them. If it’s possible to buy a sword with a bigger plus, then that’s the ice cream, sitting there ruining the rest of the menu. Versatility items, like wolfsbane, rituals, and flying carpets, and fun story items, like castles and battleships, shouldn’t have to compete with +5 swords.
    (more…)

    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

    time as a pc resource

    Monday, September 5th, 2011

    I started thinking about D&D timekeeping while reading my swagged copy of Adventurer Conqueror King on the plane back from Gencon.

    There’s all sorts of rules in 1e D&D that require timekeeping: monthly cost of hirelings; spell research; recovery of HP; taxes; building; aging; income from lands. All that stuff is notable in its absence from modern D&D, and seems like it might be a fun addition to paragon-level 4e D&D. The problem is, tracking the passage of days and weeks is not something I do as a DM in 4e, any more than tracking players’ alignments or using charts to determine the weather each morning. I have an inefficient brain and I always forget anything that can be forgotten (I like to dignify this process with the title “streamlining the rules.”)

    What if timekeeping were turned over to the players to track? Well, unless time passing were interesting in some way, they wouldn’t do it. What if time were a resource to manage, and they got some benefit from spending it?

    Let’s say that, at the end of any session, the players may choose to spend a month. They can only do this if they’re at a home base where they can reasonably hang out – not if they’re in the middle of a combat or a dungeon. They may only spend one month per session, and they don’t have to spend one at all if they don’t want to.

    The DM can also spend one or more months during a session, if, for instance, the PCs are travelling uneventfully.

    What do the characters get when they spend a month?

  • Why not give them some XP? This would represent training and research outside of the adventure – the way normal people level up. If you gave PCs 3% of the XP towards the next level per month, that would be enough for totally sedentary PCs to get to level 10 over the course of a 30-year career. You could set this up as a money drain. In order to get the benefit of monthly training, they need to spend some amount of money on books/training/carousing.
  • Income from lands! This makes lands and titles an actual type of treasure, not a purely roleplaying reward.
  • Building! Even dwarven engineers can’t upgrade your fort overnight.
  • Politics moves at this scale. A month might be the amount of time it takes for a kingdom to raise an army, a spy to report back from a mission, or a caravan or army to travel from one kingdom to another.
  • Crazy long-lasting magical effects (that are compatible with normal adventuring)! Make a save at the end of every month to see if you are still under the love spell of the Lady of the Fey Grove. On a failure, you spend your non-adventuring time hawking and balladeering with her, and you won’t hear a word against her.
  • If you’re wanted by the law, you might want to lay low for a month or two until the heat dies down.

    Of course, time also takes a toll…

  • Taxes and rents! At low levels, PCs are more likely to have monthly expenses than monthly income, so low-level parties might not want to spend time willy nilly.
  • Aging! In a long-running campaign, a human might actually grow up, maybe have kids. Elves, of course, wouldn’t change at all.

    This system is unlikely to kill off your characters from old age, since, for a weekly group, time passes, at most, at around four times the rate of real time. In fact, between missed sessions and sessions ended in the dungeon, game time is likely to go about the same speed as real time.

    The Month resource allows us some options:

  • I love in-game festivals! If time is actually passing, you can non-arbitrarily have, say, a harvest festival come up, or the dead rise during an eclipse.
  • We could decide that all effects of an extended rest – replenishment of daily powers, full healing – only take place when players spend a month. Sleeping overnight might have some lesser benefit, like getting back some number of surges.
  • You can have time-based campaign challenges. Maybe the orcs raid every winter when their food stores run out. Maybe the treaty with the Empire expires in three months.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    How We Spent Our Ad Revenue: Alea Tools

    Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

    Paul and I split the ad  revenue that we have made for Blog of Holding so far when we went to Gen Con. We each made an even $10! Instead of investing the money into an extra month of website hosting, I spent my money on Alea Tools Miniature Conversion Circles.

    Alea Tools, if you aren’t already familiar with them, make 1 inch colored bases for use with miniatures. The bases are magnetic and come in many different colors. Thus, you can stack them on top of each other and place them under the miniature to show different conditions. These are especially useful for 4th edition, where each there might be several different conditions affecting one or more miniatures at any given time. I use the orange bases to show which monsters are marked, the red bases to designate the bloodied condition, and light + dark gray bases to signify various negative effects, such as stunned or dazed. Pretty handy stuff!

    Of course, I already have a bunch of colored bases, so I didn’t buy any of those this year. Instead I spent my money on a bunch of adhesive metal circles you can stick on your most used miniatures so that the colored bases will stick right on via the power of magnetism! Thus, I can pick up my mini and his colored bloodied + dazed markers will stay with him instead of foolishly toppling back onto the grid map due to forces of gravity beyond my control and disastrously sticking onto other colored markers that are attached to another miniature. In essence, these magnetic bases allow me to DEFY GRAVITY with my miniatures.

    Check out Alea Tools here: http://www.aleatools.com/

    Buy miniature conversion circles HERE.

    Note: For 1 inch D&D miniatures, buy the SMALL circles, since they will neatly fit inside the base of the mini. For D&D miniatures that are small creatures, buy the 5/8th of an inch circles (as part of the accessory pack), since those will also neatly fit inside the base of the mini.

    Note: These magnetic circles are absolutely worthless without the colored Alea bases. Just keep that in mind!

    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

    handy haversack, leveled

    Monday, August 15th, 2011
    This entry is part 3 of 13 in the series wondrous items, leveled

    It’s hard to say what unique conceptual space Heward’s Handy Haversack occupies: it’s like a bag of holding but… on your back? Its main schtick seems to be that it’s more convenient. The level-up powers I assigned to the Haversack mostly have to do with convenience, although the bag and pack powers are pretty much interchangeable.

    My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but haven’t given us lots of examples.

    While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

    Jedd the Hunter’s Handy Haversack You can put one medium or small person inside Jedd’s haversack: they must be dead, helpless or willing. If they are Dead, the sack acts like a ritual of restful repose. if living, they will be put in suspended animation until they are removed from the haversack. A suspended creature will occasionally become conscious, and if not otherwise restrained, can make a Hard escape check once per day.

    A willing subject may ride around in the backpack with just his head sticking out, giving helpful advice like “Look behind you!”

    Handy Haversack Familiar
    This sentient haversack is loyal to its master. It may deny others access (opening it against its will requires a DC 22 strength check), or open to reveal a normal, empty bag interior. Once per turn, it may, unaided, either drop one of its items, or pick up an item in its square. It may also move, with a movement speed of 4, although it will generally not do this if observed by anyone but its owner.

    Handy Haversack of Useful Items
    Once per day, the Handy Haversack can produce an item that was never put into it. It can produce any item from the PHB1 equipment list, that is small enough to be removed and that has a price of less than 50 gp. The produced item will disappear at the end of the next extended rest.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

    Illustrated OD&D Wandering Monster tables poster

    Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

    I sold this poster (briefly, until my small stock ran out) at the Gygax Memorial Fund booth at GenCon. It contains the rules you need to generate dungeon and wilderness random encounters, and it’s lavishly, possibly even maniacally, illustrated.

    OD&D monsters (click to enlarge)

    OD&D monsters (click to enlarge)

    You can buy one for $7.50 here!

    Posted in advice/tools, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

    bag of holding, leveled

    Monday, August 1st, 2011
    This entry is part 2 of 13 in the series wondrous items, leveled

    In AD&D, where your treasure haul is limited by encumbrance, you need a way to increase encumbrance limits along with treasure hauls. Therefore there are 4 types of bags of holding in the AD&D DMG, with capacities of 250, 500, 1000, and 1500 pounds. In 4e, there is no assumption that weight limits for treasure will be a regular part of gameplay. Therefore, bags of holding need some other, more 4e-friendly ways to level up.

    My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but haven’t given us lots of examples.

    While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

    Pockets of Holding This bag of holding can be cut according to a specific eldritch pattern and sewn as pockets into six garments. Each pocket allows access to the same shared bag of holding.

    The Pockets of Holding pattern was invented by an honorable adventuring party who wanted to share their healing potions, but later misused by a band of dwarven thieves who discovered their shoplifting applications.

    Self-Holding Bag: The bag of holding-boosting ritual from Dragon 385 could as easily be a leveled magic item. This bag can be hidden in or removed from an extradimensional space as a minor action.

    Seleris the Magician’s Bag of Holding
    If you put one hand in the bag of holding (a minor action) you can transfer items from your other hand to the bag and vice versa as a free action.

    Seleris the Magician used to put one hand in his pocket while doing conjuring tricks with his other hand. Due to his Bag of Holding and other magical trinkets, he developed a great reputation as a wizard without ever learning a single spell.

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    Freestyling Skill Difficulties in D&D 4e

    Thursday, July 28th, 2011

    A PC wants to jump 10 feet in the air without a running start? No problem. Just look up the difficulty in the Player’s Handbook or Rules Compendium.

    Jumping Man

    DC 10?

    A PC wants to “sell” a random traveling merchant the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge in your game world for a mere 20,000 gold pieces? Ummm… That’s a difficult DC, right?

    Skill DCs can be tough to decide on the fly. Sometimes a difficult DC doesn’t seem to cut it for the crazy thing a PC wants to try, and sometimes you’ll notice DC inflation as you constantly make every skill check high difficulty to challenge highly skilled PCs. How does one navigate the harrowing minefield of skill DCs? Never fear; I will tell you!

    Easy DCs: I often look at these as the consolation prize for what would otherwise be a failed check. Example: you ask me what you know about Minotaurs. I have you roll a knowledge check. You roll poorly but still make an easy DC. I tell you common knowledge about minotaurs; they are horned humanoid bull-like creatures that can sometimes be found roaming mazes. So basically, your character gets to know what an average player might know (or a little less) and you save yourself from complete embarrassment.

    Other than that, I save easy DCs for rolls that should only be interesting if you roll really low on them. Things like tricking a child (hilarious if you fail) or securing a meeting with the head of the thieves guild (raise suspicion or get into a fight on a failure). Heroes shouldn’t routinely find these things difficult so higher DCs aren’t appropriate, but it can make a memorable session if you roll a 1 or 2 on one of these rolls and get yourself into more trouble.

    I should note that I do not use easy DCs for group skill checks, even though this is recommended by the rules.  Requiring only half of PCs to succeed on these checks for overall success makes these challenges easy enough; they don’t need to be easy DCs on top of that. I determine the DCs for group checks like any other DC, but I do keep the rule for requiring only half the PCs to succeed. (more…)

    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    character sheet on a business card

    Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

    One of the obstacles to pick-up D&D is that you probably don’t have your character sheet with you. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could fit it in your wallet, along with your Monster Manual?

    Business card front

    (high-quality printable version)

    Business card back

    (high-quality printable version)

    Character sheet sizes have varied greatly, from the austerity of the one-page Basic character (with lots of whitespace) to the excesses of the four-page 3rd edition sheets. In fourth edition, the character sheet has shrunk from the original front-and-back version to the delightful one-page Essentials sheet, which now has 12 lines for “Powers and Feats”, enough for any character as long as they’re level 1.

    Character Sheet on a Business Card: My 2 x 3.5-inch character sheet has pretty much everything the official D&D one has, but it’s dollhouse-sized. In order to use it, you might have to write in a fine, spidery script, and possibly change your character name from “Robert the Warhorn, Eater of Worlds” to “Bob W. Eater”, but that’s a small price to pay for the ability to accidentally hand your 12th-level warlock to visiting businessmen.

    Skills and Attributes: I laid out the business card so that you write your skill bonuses in the margins. Also, you’ll underline your trained skills, which saves a couple dozen checkboxes.

    Powers and Feats: You don’t have room to write your powers, but that’s not really unusual for a 4e character sheet. You should be using power cards: they also fit in your wallet. Also notice that this character sheet has room for 15 feats – three more than the Essentials sheet!

    Notes and Character Portrait: It’s not a character sheet if there’s nowhere to draw a portrait. In the combined Notes/Portrait section, you won’t have much room for both, but the player who is doodling elaborate blood spatters on her orc barbarian is not the party note-taker anyway.

    The business card format: The nice thing about business cards is that they’re super cheap. You can print up, like, 500 business cards for like $10!

    Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, RPG Hub | 13 Comments »

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