D&D's bow breaks the fighter

Weapon design should be taken seriously even if D&D is only a game. I'm going to show how the current bow model in D&D negatively affects the fighter. Some may say that overly realistic weapon models may slow down game, that this is the way it's always been, that it's only a game and so many other reasons to maintain the status quo. The truth is the current bow model works against the fighter and in effect leads to its nerfing.

I'll begin by stating the rules I'll be using here. Strength bonus can be applied to a composite bow's damage roll and dexterity bonuses are applied to all bow's to hit roll (range weapon to hit bonus). I'm assuming that given a high score a fighter would most commonly use it in strength and a rogue would use it in dexterity. I will then show that the +1 from DEX works better for the rogue than the fighter's +1 from STR when both are using a composite bow.

A +1 added to damage will make an average arrow (1d8) go from 1-8 hp to 2-9 hp of damage. A +1 added to the to hit roll will increase the odds of hitting.

The average damage done by an arrow without the +1 is 4.5 hp as the 1d8 has a flat distribution, and 5.5 hp if the +1 is added. This damage only counts if the character hits. So against an AC of 10 the character has a 55% probability of hitting (10 or greater on a d20). Multiplying 55% vs 4.5 hp we get 2.48 hp/roll. Doing the same with 5.5 we get 3.03 hp/roll. The net benefit of the +1 STR is 0.55 hp or 22% improvement.

If we look at the rogue we see that the damage does not increase, but the odds of actually hitting are better. So while the hp damage does not increase the hp/roll does. A rogue with a +1 to hit has 60% of hitting an AC 10 target. Doing the math we get 2.48 hp/roll without the modifier and 2.7 hp/roll with the modifier. That's a 9% increase. Which so far is lower than the fighter's, and all would seem well.

But let's do the same process for all rolls leading up to 20. The tables below shows the data for the fighter and the rogue. As the AC improves and the required roll gets higher the hp/roll ratio remains the same for the fighter, but increases for the rogue. The fighter keeps getting that 22% benefit, but the rogue begins to get better beyond a roll of 16. Against a target that requires an 18 or better the rogue has 33% improvement when having the dexterity bonus than without it, while the fighter still has only 22%. A roll requiring a 19 or better requires an 18 or better when fired by the rogue. This creates a 50% hp/roll bonus.

Fighter Bonus Table

To Hit	Odds to hit	hp/roll at +0	hp/roll at +1 STR	Benefit hp/roll	% increase
10	55.00%	2.48	3.03	0.55	22.22%
11	50.00%	2.25	2.75	0.50	22.22%
12	45.00%	2.03	2.48	0.45	22.22%
13	40.00%	1.80	2.20	0.40	22.22%
14	35.00%	1.58	1.93	0.35	22.22%
15	30.00%	1.35	1.65	0.30	22.22%
16	25.00%	1.13	1.38	0.25	22.22%
17	20.00%	0.90	1.10	0.20	22.22%
18	15.00%	0.68	0.83	0.15	22.22%
19	10.00%	0.45	0.55	0.10	22.22%
20	5.00%	0.23	0.28	0.05	22.22%
				Average benefit	22.22%

Rogue Bonus Table

To Hit	Odds to hit	hp/roll at +0	hp/roll at +1 DEX	Benefit hp/roll	% increase
10	60.00%	2.48	2.70	0.23	9.09%
11	55.00%	2.25	2.48	0.23	10.00%
12	50.00%	2.03	2.25	0.23	11.11%
13	45.00%	1.80	2.03	0.23	12.50%
14	40.00%	1.58	1.80	0.23	14.29%
15	35.00%	1.35	1.58	0.23	16.67%
16	30.00%	1.13	1.35	0.23	20.00%
17	25.00%	0.90	1.13	0.23	25.00%
18	20.00%	0.68	0.90	0.23	33.33%
19	15.00%	0.45	0.68	0.23	50.00%
20	10.00%	0.23	0.45	0.23	100.00%
				Average benefit	27.45%

I can conclude that the +1 from dexterity benefits the rogue more than the +1 from strength benefits the fighter. The fighter gets a benefit against unarmored peasants, leather armored magic users, and studded leather on rogues. Whereas the rogue gets a great bonus against plate mail, banded mail, full plate and other highly armored targets. The table below shows the average benefit difference between the impact of STR and DEX as the bonuses increase.

Bonus	STR	DEX
+1	22.00%	27.00%
+2	44.00%	54.00%
+3	66.00%	82.00%

Now as some may say: it’s a game, it’s not meant to be real, but how can it be fun when the guy that’s supposed to be the lead fighter simply sucks against the hardened  opponents on the battlefield?

Realistic weapons or is it just a game?

I've had mixed responses from my posts and comments on bows and crossbows. Got some really good feedback from folks who know their stuff when it comes to bows and crossbow. I'm thankful for that opportunity to broaden my knowledge.  On the other hand I've had some responses along the lines of "oh it's a game", "if you don't like it go play something else". This seems to be a standard response from folks who don't want the system changed, and how is the system going to improve if it doesn't change? What happens when folks who bring these comments to me are also the more outspoken members of a community driven game design process? How much improvement can come from that?

I can understand some errors in D&D weapon design from back in the day, but things seem written in stone for the last 40 years. The internet allows a quick search that brings enough information to the table to show that the bow and arrow model in D&D is wrong and could be improved. In the seventies there was no internet, so I understand. Push forward 40 years and what's the excuse now?

I believe as designers we should work on making better models of the weapons, and not just copy paste from prior editions or similar games. It's our job. Even if it's a game. I like to believe we're building a game, but we're not playing around. As much fun as creating a game can be I think it should be taken seriously. More so if you're charging real money for it. Unless of course we're willing to accept game money.

Dinosaurs & Dandelions

Mike Mearls: Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again.
D&D community: No, you're making all new ones.

Do those quotes sound familiar? Mike didn't actually say them, it's taken from Jurassic Park. A conversation between John Hammond and Ian Malcolm. It did seem appropriate after reading Mike Mearls' latest post on D&D Next Goals out today. I couldn't help recall that famous quote from Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). In "Lost World", John Hammond is desperately trying to bring his park online. Which he thinks failed last time because he didn't take the proper precautions. Not enough fences, more security, all female population, etc. When in truth what he should have done is not breed velociraptors. He had been foretold by Ian himself:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: John, the kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.
John Hammond: [sardonically] There it is.
Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... breed?
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I'm, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.

RPGs have a tendency to build a life of their own. D&D is alive in so many of us and it wants to break free. That was the initial promise when we saw those books, right? They used to say "Products of your imagination" right below the TSR logo.

Mike listed eight design challenges in his article today. Three of which stand out to the balance and particularly caster/non caster balance issue. I'll quote a few: "Create 3E-style multiclassing that creates balanced characters within reasonable mixtures of class levels", "New options are nice only if they are balanced and interesting. Open, aggressive playtesting—maintained beyond the core game tests—is a key part of this goal." and "keep casters and noncasters distinct but balanced across all levels. This becomes more challenging as we allow for more customization, but it is important to keeping the game functional."

Just like John Hammond didn't realize the problem was breeding velociraptors and t-rexes and not the lack of proper security, Mike Mearls fails to realize the problem is with D&D's underpinnings and not the "balanced" derived from "aggressive playtesting" as he calls it. Mike needs to understand that just like the dinosaurs, D&D is alive and will continue to grow in the player's hands as it is played. In the same way the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park became male and began to reproduce. Breaking away from the constraints imposed by their creators.

Until the D&D design team realizes this and begins to make a grass roots change to the system it will continue making all sorts of "new mistakes". They must realize that the old rule system: hit points, attack rolls, XP, level progression, etc., does not scale well to meet the current demand for skills, character personalization and growth, backgrounds, etc. These features still seem bolted on top of the "sacred cow rules", instead of being an integral part of them.

Nowadays I see D&D more like a dandelion. With every new edition being like a gust of wind blowing seeds in a new direction. These are planting new communities and groups of players that are thriving and without a compelling offer from WotC many see no reason to return. Mike Mearls keeps failing to address the weaknesses of each edition and prefers to focus on the strengths. A new edition built on the strengths of prior editions is good, for new players, but bad for old timers because they already have the good in their favourite edition. The only way I see for the dandelion to stop loosing seeds is to solve the quintessential issues from the ground up, even if that means doing away with the "sacred cows" of D&D.

Combat Aesthetics

How much is speed, book keeping and ease of use stopping us from looking in new directions when it comes to designing combat mechanisms? Are we tossing out good ideas because our prototypes are not up to standard?

My recent work on the combat mechanics for Era has got me thinking about the aesthetics and priorities when designing it.  I have come to see speed, ease of use and book keeping in mechanics as a hindrance to their design.  Not because speed, ease of use and less paperwork are not important when designing a combat mechanism, they are, but I've come to see them as obstacles rather than requirements. I don't want to hear that it will take too long or that's too much math, paperwork or die rolling.

Thinking on the implementation of an idea too early on I may lock out aesthetic requirements and concepts from the creative process that would otherwise improve the game. More so, working with an idea that may be too slow or hard to use is a great step ground it and get valuable insight. The idea may be too slow to implement right now, but actually working on it may lead to new ways of solving the problem, and quite possibly viable solution.

That said I believe combat should appeal to the player's interests.  It should focus on narrative, expression, fantasy, challenge, fellowship and discovery.  It should above all create a story worth telling.  It should promote narrative so the combat conforms to the story and not the story to the combat.  Break away from the round to round and initiative rolls that pause the narration of combat and thus break story into small elements called combat rounds.  Make the story continuous.

Allow players to express themselves through their characters.  Make each feature in the player's choice of weapons, armor and combat style relevant to the encounter.  It's fun to make a character like you dreamt it, but it is even more fun to see the character take a life of its own in combat when the combat mechanics helps him stand out.

For example you can have a rogue walk around with a short composite bow. You imagine him well, sneaking over roof tops or walking silently through the forest.  Silently raining death on his opponents with a bow that does 1d6 per attack, two attacks per round. It's cool, you feel it, you taste it, heck you can even feel the cold winter wind freezing your cheeks as you stand silent high above the plaza. Wouldn't it be better though, that the bow was custom built to your height and arm span? With a draw weight that matches your strength and that is great at that killing distance you always get to, and have it provide more attacks per round and a bit more damage because it was built just for your attributes. See that's what I'm talking about expression. Enable the mechanics to be an extension of the character's expression so the weapon and character are unique.

Combat has to be fantastic and challenging. Swing, twist, dodge, run  and jump. Do all those activities as you dreamt them. Don't limit combat to one or two actions per round that make all characters equal (see expression above).  Make combat a fantastic event worth retelling (see narrative above), and make it challenging. I'm want dodges and parries all over the place because it adds to the emotion. I'm taking away high hit points because I want each round to be a challenge. I don't want a bloodbath, I want heroic kills. Death will come swiftly and hopefully to the monsters. No more chewing through tens if not hundreds of hit points. More movement, more skill and less hit point walls.

Combat should also provide a sense of fellowship.  That feel that players are working together.  Not only by all attacking at once, but allowing for group tactics and mechanics that promote team work.  Imagine shield walls, close formations, coordinated attacks that break morale and a rarity among many games : monsters that are actually afraid of dying. Leaders and brave fighters in the group that hold the line against incredible odds. I want the strength of the party to be greater than the sum of its parts.

To make all this possible it is important to dream it first and worry about its implementation later.  If concern for speed, usability and book keeping come first then combat will always be crippled.  Concern for speed, usability and book keeping close off passages in that dungeon of discovery that can bring new ideas and thus new fast, usable and light solutions to the game.

The solution is out there.

Bows, a comparison between Era and D&D

As a game designer I want you to take full advantage of a bow's design to leverage the attributes and training of your character. You've trained your character, improved his attributes, now you want to see all this manifest itself in the adventure. Sounds fun? Read on.

I'm going to do a quick overview of the bow mechanics in D&D and how they're changed in Era to allow a more realistic experience and better character expression as a player.  We'll be looking at the range, damage and firing rate of the longbow, short bow and composite bow.

D&D has four types of bows: short, short composite, long and long composite. The main difference is range and damage. The shortbow has a range between 60 and 70 ft while the longbow has a range of 100 to 110 ft.  Damage is 1d6 for short and 1d8 for long. There are damage modifiers for strength that can be applied and a minimum strength to use a composite bow. If your character doesn't have sufficient strength the composite is used at -2 and the strength bonuses can only be applied composite bows. Finally I'd like to point out that they have a fixed amount of attacks per round. I play with 2 shots, other GMs may vary. Range affects aim and it's a to hit modifier.

Now in Era I want to make this more realistic without necessarily making it more complicated.  I want you as a player to be able to build a custom built bow that takes your character to the fullest potential as a marksman. Making use of Era's unique fatigue and combat mechanism to do so.

So I'll start with a few definitions:

a) A composite bow is one which is made of different materials so to have different draw-weights as the archer draws. "Almost all composite bows are also recurve bows as the shape curves away from the archer; this design gives higher draw-weight in the early stages of the archer's draw, storing somewhat more total energy for a given final draw-weight. It would be possible to make a wooden bow that has the same shape, length and draw-weight as a traditional composite bow, but it could not store the energy, and would break before full draw." (1)

b) What really matters is the draw-weight and stored energy.  The amount of stored energy in the bow is what sends the arrow flying faster and thus further and with more penetrating power.


As a player you want the bow to be an distinctive aspect of your character. As you move through the forest and stumble upon a group of unaware goblins you want to put as many arrows into them as quickly as possible. As you ride over the grasslands, guiding your horse with your knees, you want to shoot at passing orcs and take them down from their mounts. You want to take the evil knight at long range as he charges to your position.  The bow must feel like something awesome in your character's hand. Something that makes him stand out from the rest of the party.

Yet range, rate of fire, damage and size all seem opposing design factors.  How to put this into play in a simple way and also in a balanced manner, so the bow doesn't become an arrow Gatling gun with mega range?

In comes Era's fatigue combat mechanism and a few changes in the weapons description.  The combat mechanism factors in strength, endurance and dexterity.  If your character has higher strength he can carry more weight and be less loaded.  Endurance dictates how fast the character gets tired, as mechanism allows for more than one attack per round, the cap being the character's dexterity divided by two.  Era makes use of the term dynamic encumbrance or DynE, which represents the work required to move a weapon.  The heavier the weapon the higher the DynE.  The higher the DynE the quicker the character wears out as DynE eats away from the endurance.

So how does this apply to bow modeling in Era?

I'll put strength to be related to draw-weight.  The more strength the character has the higher the pull the bow can have and still be used by the character.  A character with a strength of 12 can pull a 20 to 25 lb bow.  One with 15 strength can pull 60 lbs, etc.  The draw-weight sets the damage and range.  In Era damage drops over range as the arrow slows down.  A higher pull bow will have more damage than a lower pull one, arrow being the same.  A higher draw-weight bow would also have a higher DynE, requiring more energy to fire and thus wearing the character's endurance faster.  A character may be able to get 4 shots off with a light bow before becoming fatigued in that round.  A heavier bow may allow only one shot per round or two at most, but will have higher range and damage.  Take note that DynE is independent of draw-weight and it is more a measure of power than force. A lower pull composite bow that packs more energy into the arrow will require less strength, but a higher DynE.  Because DynE is the amount of work your character's body needs to do to "power" the weapon.

As a player you can now decide how to build your character's bow.  To make it unique to that niche function you enjoy playing and in doing so leverage as much benefit out of it as possible.  Do you want a normal self bow made out of a single material.  It is cheaper, but it won't have the same pull and energy transfer as a composite.  This weapon may do 2d6 damage at short range (20m) with your characters 14 STR.  It would also have a DynE of 4 making it relatively easy to fire.  Now turning into the more expensive composite bow may grant a higher range doing 2d6 at 30m with a DynE of 6.  This will give you slightly less shots per round as your character's endurance is tolled higher.  Any of these weapons will give you anywhere from 5 to 8 shots per round (10 seconds) if your dexterity is high enough.  With this type of bow your the quick marksman.  Your character carries a small maneuverable bow that isn't very effective at long range, but a real killer at short range.  It may not have enough punch to break through full plate, but face it, how many encounters are against full plated knights?  That's not your character's niche.  He's quick, agile, stealthy, or maybe a swift horseman that gets in and out before the heavy and slow warhorse and knight can catch up.  So who needs that much power when you've got speed?

On the other if you want higher range and more power then your character can use the English longbow.  Pulling near 100lbs it would require constant training and a strength of 16 or higher.  This bow can deliver an armor piercing damage of 2d10 or 2d12 at up to 50m.  Having a much higher DynE of 10 or 12 it will require an extremely well fit character to fire continuously.  A horseman could easily cover 50m in about 15 seconds.  So getting as many arrows on target can be a live or die situation, but firing a lot of low power arrows won't get you anywhere if the knight is full plated.  So using a bow like this which allows two or maybe three shots that could kill is definitely the way to go in this scenario.  It's not a job for a rogue though, you need the strength and endurance of a professional soldier to do this. It is also not a bow you'll fire while mounted. Exposing your character to a charge and leaving him with no clear exit strategy. But with a good defending front line this could be the only way to stop this type of threat.

Thoughts? Any archer scenarios you've always dream of playing, but never quite manage to get that realistic feeling? With which of these do you identify better?

In the next article I'll talk about the mechanics of crossbows vs bows.  How character attributes factor in as well as skill, training and mastery of both weapons. Stay tuned.


(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_bow#Advantages
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/101942/Historically-archers-used-the-longbow-crossbow-and-composite-bow

D&D's composite longbow, does it even exist?

D&D lists the short bow and the longbow as its two main types.  Then it includes the "composite" version of both.  But try as I can't find a reference to a "composite longbow".  The longbow commonly refers to the English longbow which was by no means composite.  On the contrary it was build out of a single piece of wood, namely yew.

The composite bow is one made of various elements, thus its name.

It is possible to make a composite bow with the pull of a longbow.  But then the following rule would have to be amended:

If you have a Strength bonus, you can apply it to damage rolls when you use a composite longbow (see below), but not when you use a regular longbow."
It makes no sense to apply the strength bonus to one and not to the other when both have the same draw-weight.  After all they have practically the same range and damage.  It's just the build that changes and how compact it can be.  Allowing the composite bow to be used while mounted.

BTW, shouldn't higher strength mean longer range?  After all it means the character can pull a much stronger bow, right?

Source http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/weapons "composite longbow"

Fixing the fighter

Redesigning the fighter to place him back into a leading roll in the adventure has been one of my greatest challenges when designing Era.  Ironically the path to fixing the fighter was by taking away those things that are most commonly identified with the fighter class.  Namely stripping him of hit points and armor.

There are five changes which I clearly identify as key to putting the fighter back in the forefront of adventure.

• Limit hit points. Characters have the same amount of hit points for life.
• Separate to hit and to damage roll. Give the character a separate to hit roll on which all combat skills are applied.
• Penalize heavy weapon and armor usage. The heavier the character the slower the attack.
• Change the initiative roll. It's a skill check now.
• Add group skills. A great deal many fighter skills are fighter centric, let his skills affect the group.

Limit hit points

Rising hit points is a common game design concept. As characters level up they gain more hit points. The idea being that these hit points represent a degree of skill and luck. Unfortunately to maintain encounter balance as characters rise in level so do the monsters rise in hit points. This creates a requirement for ever rising spell powers too. After all if the magic user is going to be a relevant character in 6th level encounters the spells need to do more than the 1d6 magic arrows did at 1st level.  So magic user spell power rises because monster hit point rises.

In Era characters have the same hit points for life.

Separate to hit and to damage roll

Separating the to hit and to damage roll means having a roll to determine if the target is hit and another one to determine if the damage is sufficient to penetrate the armor.  Doing this gives a clear die roll to which the skill bonuses are applied.  Skill is not something abstracted into hit points, it is clearly applied on the to hit roll and also in the dodge and parry rolls.  The character either hits or misses.  If it hits it might pass the armor and damage the character.  Nonetheless there is no ambiguity as to what happened.  Nothing like a hit that does 10 hit points of damage, but actually means the character turned the attack into a glancing blow.

Having this separate skill allows the game mechanics to add all skill bonuses to the to hit roll in the form of skill bonuses and not as extra damage.  This once again reduces the classic hit point escalation that eventually leads to meaner monsters and more powerful magic.

You might guess by now that the fighter class will be the one enjoying the most bonuses when it comes to hit rolls.  More so, since the magic user spells are weaker now (see fixed hit points above).  It's harder for the magic user to hit and do damage than it is for the fighter.

Penalize heavy weapon and armor use

Most games don't take armor and weapon weight too seriously.  Yes, some do have a penalty or a cap on dexterity bonuses.  But that only matters if you have high dexterity to cap! By putting a fatigue based mechanism into place that grants more attacks to faster weapons and lighter armor the game benefits the lightly equipped character.

Initially you might think this is counter productive to the fighter, but take a closer look. Who's going to have the high strength, dexterity and constitution attributes to carry all that armor? Well the fighter of course! So the character best fit to use heavy armor is the fighter. He'll be really good in armor while the other classes not so much, and he'll be even better out of it because he'll be lighter and more agile.

So stripping the armor and heavy weapons from the fighter makes the character focus on skills to prevent getting hit. This promotes a fighter that is good without armor and excellent with it.

Change the initiative roll

Last game I changed the initiative roll from the classic 1d6 or 1d10 and lowest goes first to a skill check.  Characters must succeed in their skill check to maintain their coolness in combat.  Guess who has that the highest? The fighter. By moving away from a random initiative that anyone can win at, to one in which the fighter is more skilled at, I'm giving the fighter an advantage over the less battled hardened fellow party members.

Add group skills

Instead of adding more skills that grant more attacks per round, more damage per attack and more and more weapons, I'm adding group skills.  The fighters natural coolness in combat makes the class a natural leader for the party.  Why not exploit this as leadership and command skills which help make the party a better combat unit.  A bit like the cleric's bless spell, but with balls.

Do you play with Fibonacci?

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo died in 1250 so I doubt you'll be playing D&D or any other RPG with him anytime soon. Maybe later though. Leonardo, know to many as Fibonacci, made a certain number sequence very popular when he published Liber Abaci in 1202. Fibonacci made a great contribution to math in the west and as role players we should be thankful to him.  He introduced the Hinud-Arabic numeral system.  You know those numbers : 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 we use every day.  Without him 3d6 would look like IIIxVI and WotC would have registered DXX instead of D20.

Before I go into talking about the use I've given to the this number sequence in my game let me talk about it first.  The sequence I'm refereeing to is known as the Fibonacci numbers.

Fibonacci numbers looks like the following:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, 514229, 832040, 1346269, 2178309, 3524578, 5702887, 9227465, 14930352, 24157817, 39088169... etc. etc. etc.

As you can see the numbers grow and grow, but they're neither linear nor exponential. If we were to draw it out the image created would look like this.  Creating the very familiar image of a shell.

The Fibonacci numbers are also closely related to phi the golden ratio (1.6180339887498948482...).
The Fibonacci numbers are found all over the place in nature.  For starters in a sea shell as shown below.

Notice how each square is exactly the same size as every number on the series?
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13

But they're present in plants too.  You can find more examples here

http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

And bees! Did you know that the number of grandparents a bee has is a Fibonacci sequence? Read here for more detail.

As it so happens I've come to use the Fibonacci series as well when doing game design. In developing the combat and fatigue mechanism I included the Fibonacci series as the growth rate for fatigue points. When looking at the activity table you can see the row labeled Fatigue Rate. As the character takes more actions per round more points are needed and we move from left to right. This represents the rise in the character's heart rate and it's an indicator of fatigue.

(Fibonacci numbers in green for clarity)

When developing this I tried all types of numbers. Linear growth, exponential, logarithmic, you name it. Only when I put the Fibonacci numbers into the table did things begin to work as I wanted them to.

This gets me thinking. Shouldn't we as game designers look deeper into this and include such a number series in our games a bit more often? It is after all present all over nature, shouldn't it be present in our games when we creating a make believe reality.

Know any games that have numbers like these in them? Let us know!

Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number

http://mathforum.org/mathimages/index.php/Fibonacci_Numbers

http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

Dungeon builders are a extinct species

I'm not talking about you or me or others who like to draw up maps and create dungeons.  No, I'm talking about the mysterious men (and possibly women) who actually took to the task of digging the dungeons.  They're all gone now.  I mean, when was the last time your party went out to adventure into a dungeon that was being built?  Never!  Dungeons were built a long long time ago and filled with mysterious creatures eons ago.  Whoever built them died off millennia ago because there are no new dungeons around.  They're all worn out vintage things.

Along side their extinction these builders took many pieces of knowledge and power needed to build dungeons.  I will enumerate a few of them here.

Gas - The arcane dungeon builder put methane detectors and eliminator in all dungeon settings.  When was the last time your torch lit up a methane pocket in a dungeon?

Porous ground - Dungeon builders put water proof walls or built dungeons in places without ground water.  Flooding in dungeons is rare, at least a lot more rare than in real mines.  Mines have complex systems to eliminate ground water.  Maybe this is done by some magic spell cast on the dungeon?

Radon gas - Yup, none of that either.  Not that tracking radioactive materials with long term effects on the characters is particularly entertaining.  Maybe that explains the giant rats?  Which weren't so giant when they started living in the dungeon.

Collapse - earth quakes - support - Notice how a lot of dungeons don't have supporting structures.  They seem to be unaffected by structural issues which plague mines.  A Hold Ceiling spell maybe?

What dangers do you put in dungeons, aside from monsters, which add to the realism of traveling underground?  Vapors from deep magma activity?  Corrosive gases?  Steam from a deep geyser?

Any adventure in which the party actually meets the dungeon builder?

D&D needs an entirely new set of rules

D&D needs throw d20 away and rally around a new set of rules. Mike Mearls and WotC needs to scrap everything and start from zero.  A hard thing to say and even harder to execute given all the resources poured into Next already.  Yet, after reading Mike Mearls recent posts in Legends and Lore I see no other way out.

Let's look at the two goals:

To start with, here are our two guiding principles. These ideas guide everything we do.

1. Create a version of D&D that embraces the enduring, core elements of the game.
2. Create a set of rules that allows a smooth transition from a simple game to a complex one.

What are the core elements of the game?  Are they fantasy adventure, the spirit of dungeon crawling, fighting creatures, getting treasure and becoming rich and famous?  Or classes, d20 rolls, armor class, levels, skills and those basic elements that haven't changed from edition to edition.

Simple to complex?  Why would I ever want to buy that?  I barely have time to read the simple stuff and he wants to sell me the complex.  Maybe he meant detailed instead of complex.  You can add more detail to things by using the same simple rules, just look at fractals.

I want to point out a line Mearls writes "Changing the rules of a game in a fundamental way creates rifts within your community." I'm not sure if Mearls says that as a reason not to rewrite it or as a recognition of the fumbles WotC did with prior editions.  Nonetheless he recognizes a great deal of fragmentation and questions the returning of long time players, aka the old school.  He puts forth the question "Why go back to a familiar game if you find out that it isn't really familiar anymore?"

He answers it with the following paragraph.  "So, the first big picture goal is to make a version of D&D that speaks to the recognizable elements of the game. ... , but the design implication is that D&D Next should deliver the primary strengths that each edition brings to the table. If an edition was good at something, D&D Next needs to do a good job of providing it."

That is wrong wrong wrong, and wrong in so many ways.  Mike Mearls should focus on the weaknesses of each edition and bring a solution to them in D&D Next.  If I'm comfortable with 2nd Edition giving me a new edition which has all the strengths of 2nd is not compelling enough to change.  D&D Next needs to provide me the solution to 2nd Edition's weaknesses.

D&D Next needs to provide a solution to the weaknesses of all prior editions, even if that means taking d20 out of its guts.  D&D Next needs to provide the D&D adventure spirit with a new set of mechanics.  To do otherwise is to compete at price points with the likes of Pathfinder and the indie community.

It needs to provide a new rule set with a low learning curve that uses emergence as a means to create more detail.  Mike Mearls and crew seem obsessed with writing more and more rules on how to do things.  He mentions "though people were seeking the introductory product, fewer and fewer players were moving deeper into additional material", and "We need to reverse that trend and make a version of D&D that new players can pick up with ease and that existing players can continue to play by utilizing a wealth of world-class adventure content."

What they hint at is selling more fluff and less crunch.  I'm in total agreement with that, but D&D's history has been quite the contrary.  D&D design philosophy has always been a "reductionist" one.  Writing endless rules as if that were the game.  A detailed description of things that can happen, how to handle them and how they fit together to build the whole.

They should consider a more "emergent" approach to the solution.  One in which a simple set of rules allows for a more detailed game without necessarily calling for a more complex set of rules.  He hints it here "To create a continuum of options and complexity, we need to make a game that has a simple, robust core that is easy to expand in a variety of directions.", but drops the ball when he says "We can't change the core game to accommodate those later options, whether they're new classes or detailed rules for climbing."  More detailed rules for climbing?  Leave that to the GM, concentrate on content, talk about wall types, issues rogues have encountered through history and let the GM have an understanding of this.  Do not fill the book with lookup tables which will only slow down the game.  I know you love writing it and enjoy selling it to us even more, but it's not practical and that's the reason most experienced players are not buying it.

I would suggest these two goals instead of the ones presented by Mike Mearls:

1) Write a new game focused on fixing the issues within all editions, even if that means throwing the d20 out and starting from scratch.
2) Focus your sales on content not rules.  The rules you build in 1 should be simple and generally applicable throughout the game.  All else should be content (fluff) that inspires the GM and players and explains how to use the simple rules (from 1) in new creative ways.  That means not a single extra table to lookup stuff in.

Is D&D magic not sufficiently advanced?

As Arthur C Clarke would point out "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".  So why the frack does my ranger travel on a horse through pouring rain, hungry and cold.

Shouldn't the statement "Magic is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced technology" be true too?  And if D&D has magic, why does the town smell so bad?

Why am I worried about the damage of a cross bow bolt?  Shouldn't crossbows have two settings kill or stun and automatically load bolts from a replicator device embedded right above the trigger?

Why is my fighter's magical sword made out of steel while Luke's is made out of light?  Potential Lukas lawsuits aside, wouldn't it make sense to have magical light swords in D&D?

Why worry about the obnoxious cleric when that little device Spock carries around is quite fit at saving anyone in the party?  Oh and find diseased items.  And traps.  And poisonous gas, and ah so many things.

Why is full plate armor so in fashion?  When full plate is less advanced than kevlar and kevlar is less advanced than Dune's personal shield?

How many of you play in such high magic settings that it is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from sci-fi?

What sets D&D apart from science fiction if in the end science fiction and magic can become intermingled.  At least according to Arthur C. Clarke.

The recognizable elements of D&D?

What are the recognizable elements of D&D?  Dice?  Hit Points?  The four classes?  Dragons?  I just finished reading Mike Mearls' articles D&D Next Goals, Part One & Part Two.  What the heck is he talking about when he says " So, the first big picture goal is to make a version of D&D that speaks to the recognizable elements of the game", and how distinct is that from last year's goal at about the same time of year "We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game."

Sorry, but one year later I don't see them one bit closer to their goal.  To be honest I'm having a hard time telling one article from the other without looking up the publication date on them.  For example this text "What that actually means will be covered in part two, but the design implication is that D&D Next should deliver the primary strengths that each edition brings to the table."  Hadn't they gotten over this "all in one goal" by about July last year?

They want one core rule set to provide the simple and the complex, and they want a smooth transition between the two on top of it all.  In my opinion that is impossible.  At least impossible with one core rule set based on the d20 system.

Take for example hit points.  A nice abstraction back in the day and very functional today in many OSR games.  But put the whole skill, feats and extra frosting on top of that and the system begins to break down.  Aren't we counting skill twice?  Once as a rise in hit points (it's harder to get hit and killed) and again as that skill that makes your character once again "harder to hit and kill"?

If you've been reading the posts by Mike Mearls last year you've probably heard all the ideas regarding healing surges and what to do with the cleric.  All that would go away if clerics didn't have to heal so much.  That would be so if hit points didn't rise so much and characters were simply harder to hit out of pure skill.

The original D&D rules are great and the abstraction simplifies gaming a lot.  As players add more rules and more detail (classes, powers, skills, feats, etc.)  The abstraction in the game is put to test and it doesn't fare too well.

What I'm about to say may sound like blasphemy to many, and if so I apologize.  It's my strong belief that D&D needs to be rewritten from the ground up, a grass roots change that takes the d20 system from its inside and replaces it with something better.  The Next best thing, pun intended.  Then maybe from those rules derive a simpler and more familiar D&D Basic.

Building on the current d20 mechanics hasn't gotten Mike's team any closer to their goal.  Read last year's publication and read today's.  They're still beating the same ol' dead horse.  WotC needs a new Gygax, or at least someone willing to take the risk with a whole new system built from the ground up to satisfy the Next 40 years of D&D.

Initiative, it's a matter of coolness not dexterity

In tonight's game with +Brian Kelsay , +Lawrence Augustine Mingoa and +Tre' Grisby  I changed the rules of initiative.  Instead of 1d6 or 1d10 plus dexterity bonuses I put initiative as a skill check.  Your character's mettle attribute is rolled against to determine if the character keeps his coolness in combat.  Win and you're cool and in control of the situation, lose and your character hesitates for those precious seconds that may mean the difference between life or death.

What am I looking for in with this?

• Initiative to be more than just getting to attack first.  It's the characters ability to stay cool and in control of the situation.
• Initiative to depend on the character's skill and preparation and not just some random roll that may land 1 or 8 with the same ease.  This benefits the more battle hardened characters.
• Allow character training, specially fighter training and combat hardening, to affect the rolls of others.  Leadership by a strong fighter character in the group can improve the overall mettle of the party and thus the control of the situation.  In doing so turn the tide of the battle.

For example, at one point while exploring a building in an old mill Brian's character is surprised  by a hiding orc.  Nothing to do about the surprise attack, he's clearly surprised, but the character succeeds in the mettle check and by a large margin.  His combat experience kicks in and instead of losing it the character stays cool and in control.

Brian yields "initiative" so to speak, letting the orc attack first.  He blocks the swing by successfully parrying the blow and trips the orc and attacks.  He hits the orc dead center on the back and brings him to floor where Tre's character pummels him silly with the morning star.

Initiative is no longer about swinging the sword first, but rather reacting first and keeping in control of the engagement.  Even if this means letting the enemy swing first and get closer so the party may get itself into a better fighting position.

Wisdom is for the player

When it comes to attributes I've decided to leave wisdom to the player.  For me this attribute has always been controversial.  The "character would be wise to do this and not that" situations seem to arise.  These not only create dispute as to what the character would or would not do, it also limits player immersion.  When a character has 7 wisdom somehow the player always makes the right calls.  Yet when the character has 15 wisdom it is the character who makes the right calls.  This gives me the feeling the player isn't playing the character, but rather using a tool.  Which is in my opinion contrary to the purpose of role playing games.

For this reason I've made characters have two different attributes.  One is illustration which measures the level of knowledge and abstract thinking.  The other is enlightenment, which as the word says measures how illuminated your character is to the world.  So while illustration may measure the academic preparation the character has, enlightenment measures the spiritual development.  A very illustrious character may still be very foolish.  Less so an enlightened one, but the player should play one much more wisely.  Either way there is no roll to help the player decide what is the right thing to do.  In that regard wisdom is left to the player.

In regards to magic, illustration is the key attribute for magic user while enlightenment is the one for clerics.  In between there is a third supporting attribute: mettle.  Mettle measures the character's conviction.  A very educated character may still have a weak character.  Having very high illustration while keeping your mettle low will not make your character's illusions work very well.

D&D Next, next

I could go into a long rant about what I see wrong in D&D Next, but I wont.  As the year begins and we close in on the anniversary of it's announcement I have this to say to the WotC crew.

I HAVE THE MONEY, 

BUT I DON'T HAVE THE TIME

KISS the rules folks.  You're making it too complex and not actually making anything new.  Sell me something light and refreshing.  Then sell me all the additional content and material.  LATER, when I understand what you're talking about.

I haven't signed up for the playtest material because, honestly,  I don't have the time to read through all that stuff.  I haven't finished reading +BareBones RPG which I purchased a month or two ago.  I haven't purchased 14 other things on my wish list because I know I won't be reading them any time soon.

Also, I do programming for a living.  I see enough if-then-else statements at work.  I don't want to disconnect from it all and see more of them with the rogue, cleric et al. progression path.  Trim down on the complexity please.

Please, make it concise, simple and quick.

Did you pack lemons with your iron rations?

So, you love to take your character into deep dungeon crawls? I hope you packed some dried lemon slices with those rations. An unbalanced meal can lead to a party with a serious vitamin C deficiency. And poor vitamin C leads to the dreaded scurvy.

Named after the latin scorbutus, scurvy is a very dangerous illness that if left untreated leads to character death.  Sailors were known to suffer scurvy on long sea journeys due to lack of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Traveling down deep, dark and damp dungeons can lead to the same lack of fresh food.  Bread will become stale, fruit will become over ripe just on the trip to the dungeon entrance and will spoil shortly afterwards.  So good supply of vitamin C needs to be ensured so your character's legs don't end up as these:

Yea, I know.  It makes rot grubs look like a walk in the park.  So players make sure to pack some of these on the following trip.

Just 3 dried orange slices will provide 120% of your characters daily USRDA required amount of vitamin C.  They are very easy to make and will preserve for quite some time.  The body consumes about 3% of the stored vitamin C per day (http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/658/Mayberry.html) and consumption will slow down as body reservoirs run low.   That means that scurvy will set in between 30 and 60 days.  Most surely around 60, but could be less if the diet was initially poor on vitamin C as the body needs 8 to 10 mg of vitamin per day.

Symptoms can be broken down into four stages.  Each successively more dangerous to the adventure.

1. Abnormally lazy and sudden fatigue.  Muscle ache in legs and lower abdomen.
2. Gums swell, itch and will bleed under pressure.  Teeth may become loose at the roots and actual joint and muscle pain will be felt.
3. Gums become putrid and begin to smell like rotten flesh.  Gum bleeding will occur.  Flesh will become gangrenous and spontaneously bleed.  Skin will develop ulcers, particularly in legs and feet, which will become gangrenous.  There will be severe muscle and joint pain.
4. To cut it short: death.

As a GM keeping tabs on food might be an administrative nightmare, but also open up options for adventure and treasure too if you concentrate on the concept and not so much on the actual amounts.  For starters any creature in the dungeon that can't metabolize vitamin C will need a source for it.  This may create interesting environments in which dungeon dwellers cultivate special mushrooms or plants.  Maybe that's a weak point for a tribe of creatures found deep under the earth.  Hit their food supply instead of hitting them directly.  Or distract them with an attack on those plants as a way to take them off guard.

It might also set up a small side adventure in the dungeon as the party loses its pack of orange slices and has to retrieve it, go find an alternative source of vitamin C or risk having to turn around and head back to the surface.  Remember the clock is ticking and your character is eating up the reserves at a rate of 3% per day.

Dried orange slices can be a great bargaining chip in negotiations.  Equally important in long dungeon crawls as in long sea or overland journeys (and steampunk balloon trips!).  Deserts, wastelands and frozen tundra provide very little fresh fruit and vegetables.  The party may meet a traveler or group of travelers willing to give information or help in return for fresh fruit or a cure for their scurvy.

As an inspiration for magic items there's room to get creative.  A never empty lemonade waterskin.  Or never ending orange slice which regenerates every night as long as you don't finish it all in one day.

Scurvy was historically a limitation to long sea journeys and its cure was not found until early in the 20th century although work arounds were available in the 19th century.  In the medieval setting of D&D scurvy can be woven into the campaign in many ways.  As part of the adventure as show above or as an advantage an armada has over another.  A whole adventure can be created around the idea of having your party go out and figure out how the threatening army manages to sail for so long without any illness.  Is it some secret spell?  A magic item?  Or arcane knowledge and potion making?

http://www.bellaviva.com/dried-oranges-slices

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_case_of_Scurvy_journal_of_Henry_Walsh_Mahon.jpg

Tunnels do flood

So when your party enters a dungeon you think it all looks like the following image?  All nice and dirty with lots of darkness ahead?

Well got news for you.  Underground passages are damp and humid.  Water drips from the roof and pools on the floor.  As it collects it flows to the lower parts and builds up there.  Water alongside gas have been an everlasting concern in mines, what would make us think it is different in dungeons?  A rainy season can bring flooding to an otherwise empty dungeon.  Turning it into something like this:

Flooding alongside rock hardness were the limiting factors for serious mining in the early middle ages.  Only when the issue of flooding was solved with water extraction mechanism was deep earth mining possible.  Such systems like the one shown below allowed for the pumping of water from the deep tunnels out to the surface.

A building like the one below could be a tell tale sign of a dungeon existing below its foundations.

The need for water pumps (mechanical or magical) can also be a great source for adventure.  Maybe the pump is in a remote part of a mine and the party is asked to help fix it.  A team of "engineers" are willing to go fix it, but the party is needed to flush out the monsters and clear the way through the deeper parts of the mine which are now abandoned.

Maybe the pump is of magical nature and the party can disable it to flood the dungeon and thus entrap a terrible threat about to break out.  Or the first part of the adventure is rehabilitating the pump so it clears the water out from the deeper sections of the dungeon.  This will allow the party to continue into the deeper areas of the maze.


Images

http://www.flickriver.com/places/United+Kingdom/Wales/Dinorwig/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geevor_waterwheel_stamps.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40132991@N07/4477207807/

2000 tp

So you party clears the room of some nasty rodents and among the rubble finds 2000 tp.  You say what's this?  It looks like silver, but it isn't.  It's way too soft although about as heavy.  You pass it around and one member of the party realizes what it is.  It's tin, a highly valued metal in the area.  As an element required to make bronze it is brought from distant lands to supply the smiths who mix it with copper.  Mined as Cassiterite it is then processed to make the metallic blocks we're more familiar with.

Maybe years back when the dungeon you're in was first explored tin was common in the area and this metal practically worthless, but as the mines ran dry it was necessary to bring the valued tin from distant lands.  To bring this small treasure to town could mean some good gold for your party.

So what other apparently worthless pieces of treasure could a GM put in a dungeon?

Well there's salt for starters.  A very valuable product for salting food.  Medieval fantasy settings lack something we take for granted: refrigerators.  So food needs to be salted to preserve itself.  Armies marched on their stomachs and needed lots of preserved food.  Salt can be a valuable item to find in a dungeon or as a treasure after defeating a hostile tribe of monsters.

Salt was traded for gold in the Sahara. Large caravans would take it from its mines in the middle of the desert to the sub-saharan cities and trade them there for gold.

Another metal you might want to put as treasure is quicksilver, now known as mercury.  It is a liquid metal at room temperature and can be used in many things.  One of which is amalgamation of gold, making it useful in gold extraction and processing.  Mercury is very heavy though, as can be seen by the floating coin in the image below.

Mercury has another outstanding property.  It is very toxic.  So it can be useful in spell components and for not so honest activities.  As its ore cinnabar it is very toxic to mine and process.

Pure elements like sodium can be very interesting as treasure too.  Sodium doesn't naturally exist in pure form.  It can be isolated through electrolysis or in the world of D&D through magic.  Pure sodium in a jar full of oil can be easy to carry around, but take it out and place it in water and a monster comes to life.

Sodium is one of the elements of common salt which is found diluted in water in large amounts known as oceans.  Isolated though, sodium becomes very exothermic in water (produces a lot of heat).  The reaction produces the highly caustic sodium hydroxide (trust me I accidentally took a breath of it and it burned my nose and throat real bad) and the highly flammable and explosive hydrogen.  When in water and in sufficiently large quantities sodium might melt into spheres and explode.  So you've got heat, corrosive colorless and odorless gas and liquid and a very explosive gas.  Could there possibly be something cooler than that?  What better for a party to have at hand and a GM to surprise players with!

Sodium Hydroxide burn (2d8 HP + 1d6 per round until neutralized)

Images from :
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/photogalleries/salt/photo6.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pound-coin-floating-in-mercury.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nametal.JPG.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cinnabarit_01.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sodium_hydroxide_burn.png

To the Bitter End

Should characters die only when they run out of hit points? Or should the character be susceptible to death at any one moment by a well crafted hit?  If your game doesn't use hit points, should they only die when they reach a predetermined amount of damage?  For example three hits.

Most games that use wounds as damage tokens still can't easily allow for a single kill wound.  So should there be a threat index?  A level of damage that is significant above which the character dies?  Is that the meaning of weapon damage or should there be another indicator?  A damage effectiveness?

Death by RPG impact is pretty final, but there's a lot of room for discussion between taking a .45 to the heart and a 7.62 to the femoral artery and bleeding to death over the course of minutes.

Hit point systems that add hit points give characters a fighting chance during combat.  It protects them from sudden death, extends their life expectancy and thus the game and enjoyment.  But they bring forth other issues.  Escalating power issues as weapons, spells and healing needs to escalate as the characters level up.

Personally I prefer systems which are closer to one hit and your dead.  That promote character survival through skill and training.  You can't die if you can't get hit.  Characters can have about the same life expectancy as hit point systems with the added adrenaline rush for the player (and the excitement that brings).  It also eliminates many of the drawbacks of having to deal with large hit point values.

Emergent game dynamics in RPGs

Emerging dynamics have caught my attention recently.  It is something that is talked about in computer games, but I see little talk about it on table top RPGs.  I think it is a great table top RPG strength   The potential for simple rules to build synergy and create new and thrilling dynamics in the game.

While synergy has can make things blow out of proportion it is something I'm looking to exploit and not kill through imposed balance.  I'm looking into not imposing balance through game rules. For example: classes or fixed progression, but rather make things fall into place by using negative feedback.  Tailor the rules so opposing forces interact and balance out.  Putting "costs" in such a way that it favors the underdog.

Table top RPGs have a great strength in the GM and player creativity.  Something no other game can equal. Sure computer RPGs have great graphics, but are undoubtedly bound.  Table top RPGs obviously are not bound in that way and I don't believe they should be bound by unnecessary balance rules either.  Sure these rules seem needed to balance the game and make it fair for all in the party, but they should not interfere with the creative potential of players.

High hit points nerf fighters

The more I think about it the more I believe that higher hit points in D&D is counter productive for the fighter class.  From my point of view it is one strong element that makes the power curve so unbalanced as compared to other character classes like the wizard.

At higher levels and unless there is an outstanding damage in one attack the fighter and wizard have the same number of hit points.  Not that they have the same overall amount, but imagine they both take 20 hit points of damage.  They would certainly have died at lower levels, but at higher levels it's pretty much the same thing within the scope of a single round.  Sure the magic user goes from 50 to 30 while the fighter goes from 90 to 70, but they both suffered 20 hit points.  Shouldn't the fighter, who is more skilled and better trained in the art of combat suffer less?  To which you'd answer, yes they do.  Proportionally the fighter does suffer less than the magic user.  A little over 20% for the fighter vs nearly 50% for the wizard. But they never risk their life until the end. There is no risk of sudden death from a hit during the first attacks.  Unless, as I mentioned earlier, the damage is outstanding.  So for practical purposes the magic user is just as good as the fighter.  The fighter will just be good a few more rounds longer than the magic user.

So what am I getting at? Read on.

The problem arises when the party level goes up and alongside it the hit points.  The more hit points the more the spells and weapons need to do damage to remain competitive at those higher levels.  Thus the wizard spells become stronger and deal more damage.  I'd like to focus on area of effect spells in particular.  Namely fireball.

As the magic user's level rises so does the damage of the spell in hit points.  Does this mean the spell gets luckier?  More effective?  Hotter and more intense?  I don't want to get all tangled up in the "what hit points are" rhetoric. What I want to point out is that overall the magic user has more power because the spell hit point damage increase is needed to overcome overall hit point increase in NPCs and monsters, which are in turn increasing due to player character hit point increase.  Characters increase so opponents increase so spell increase and so forth a positive feedback loop is created that quite surely spirals out of control.

Meanwhile the fighter also increases the damage that can be done per attack and also increases the attacks per round.  But lets face it, it doesn't matter if the fighter does 10 or 36 hit points to an orc, the orc is dead.  So that extra damage is overkill wasted on a single creature.  Meanwhile the magic user that does 10 or 36 hit points of damage is laughing himself silly as no damage is wasted.  He just wipes out the charging horde.

Now lets consider for a second what happens if the hit points don't increase with level.  Death for one would come much faster.  Unless some means of representing skill and endurance is placed into the game a second blow would end a character's life at any level.  To solve this in Era I've added a secondary value called stamina which acts as a shield around hit points.  But only so much of it can be used in any one attack to buffer damage.  Let me put forward an example of different character classes and their values for a fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard.

Cleric - hit points: 18 stamina: 18 pain threshold: 2
Fighter - hit points: 21 stamina: 30 pain threshold: 5
Wizard - hit points: 12 stamina: 15 pain threshold: 2
Rogue - hit points: 22 stamina: 16 pain threshold: 3

Note: weapon damage in the game is in the order of 2d8 for arrows and 2d10 for heavy swords.

Hit points are the life of the character.  Once they reach zero they are dead.  Stamina represents combat endurance and could be seen as similar to current D&D hit points.  Pain threshold is the amount of stamina allowed to buffer a single attack.

As you can see the fighter has the highest pain threshold, as it should be, given his battle hardened body.  He has less hit points than the rouge, but higher stamina and can endure harder blows.  A 10 hit point hit would only do 5 hit points of damage as the other 5 would be soaked by stamina (pain threshold).  Whereas the rogue would take 7 hit points after the 3 stamina soak.  The fighter can endure 4 such hits while the rogue only 3.  The cleric can endure 2, but hardly 3 and the wizard would be hard pressed to endure 1 as 14 points of damage with a 2d8 take him down regardless of stamina (14 - 2 = 12, which kills him).

We are now looking at the 90 hit point vs 50 hit point example from another angle.  One in which weapon damage weighs less depending on character class.  More so stamina and pain threshold depend on constitution values.  So a fighter type who puts higher values in those attributes would be directly benefited with higher stamina and less direct damage to hit points (higher pain threshold).

The need for ever escalating damage in spells is no longer needed.  Since pain threshold is but a fraction (usually 10%, but slightly higher with better CON) hit points don't spiral out of control.  Characters will gain more stamina level after level, but only one or two points at best can be added to the buffer ever so often.  A fireball that does 3d6 is pretty life threatening and will be so many levels later as well although the more hardened characters will have a good fighting chance against it.  As the pain threshold goes from 2 to 5 or higher the probability of enduring a blast grows, but not as fast as it does in D&D.

This breaks the positive feedback loop of D&D and eliminates the need for ever escalating spell powers and actually nerfs the wizard instead of the fighter.  More so as you can see the fighter now has a clear advantage round after round in melee combat.  Holding 5 vs 2 points of pain threshold is huge advantage.  Adding that to twice the stamina makes the fighter capable of withstanding 5 times more hits than the average wizard.

Monsters don't need to spiral their hit points out of control and thus spells don't need to be so powerful.  Keeping them within human killing range is ok.  The wizard might not be laughing so hard against a horde of orcs if his fireball now does only 2d6 or 3d6 at best for higher level spells.  A giant will have a bit more hit points, certainly a higher stamina, but a fraction of that as pain threshold.  So it could be considerably injured by a single well placed hit.

Thus my belief that high hit points, the quintessential characteristic of the fighter, is also its largest limitation and the source of imbalance with other classes.

Field repairs and the value of chainmail

So you've encountered a few ogres.  You've come out triumphant, but they've shaken your party a bit.  What now?  Pick up the treasure and keep driving deeper into the dungeon?  No thought about fixing those beaten up armors?

Keeping track of armor damage can be a pain.  I'm not really concerned about going down the "realistic" road of having some quasi-simulation of combat.  I want to explore the implications of tracking armor damage and the though of having to do field repair.

Armor damage and the eventual degradation of protection that it brings means the character can't go on forever without loss of armor class bonuses.  This will either lead to a much shorter adventure as the party needs to go back to town for repairs or it will lead to a longer game session as the party slows down to fix things.

But there are two other options as well.  The party might get smarter at fighting to actually reduce being hit and thus having the armor damaged or it can choose armor that is easier to repair.  This is the part that I really like to look into.  Generally armor damage and field repairs are seen as a hindrance to adventure.  An unnecessary realism that only slows things down.  Yet as a stimulus to change gaming habits it is of great value to the game.

Chainmail is clearly easier to repair than banded armor or full plate.  Fixing chainmail can be done by spare patches, extra links and wire.  Fixing banded or plate mail requires a lot more hardware and heat to fix.  Not something you'd find nearby, unless you're near an underground dwarven city.  Which, BTW, gives inspiration for a quick adventure to fix the armor.

Armor damage and field repairs can be used as a stimulus to promote armor types that characters would generally migrate away from once they get sufficient money to buy the "better" stuff.  Better being measured by AC bonus only.

Thoughts?

There is chainmail and then there is chainmail

I never knew there were so many chainmail weaves until I began researching chainmail to build my own.  Like this beauty called dragonscale.  Built with two ring sizes and clearly a very tight knit.

The type of chainmail I always knew about was the 4 in 1.  Called that way because each ring is crossed by 4 others as seen in the following image.

But there are tighter weaves as well.  For example the following image shows a 6 in 1 which has six rings passing through any one ring.

This clearly leads to stronger chainmail which is harder to pierce or slash through.  So it got me thinking how does this get represented in games.  Chainmail was a very common piece of armor.  Its invention attributed to the celts it became the standard armor for the Roman Empire under the name of lorica hamata.

Unlike the more commercial examples shown above the real thing (lorica hamata) was made of punched and riveted rings as shown below.  This made for a stronger chainmail.  Half the pieces were solid rings of iron and half the other were riveted shut.  So a weapon was not prone to easily separate them and bring the rings loose.

As you might imagine making the riveted part of the mail was very hard.  The following video shows how to make riveted mail with today's comforts like electricity, power tools and nails.  Just imagine doing this back in the middle ages.  Chain mail was a cherished item, very costly and quite literally the difference between life and death on the battle field.

So shouldn't all that hard work pay off on the battle field?  What about paying an extra for 6 in 1 or even 8 in 1 chain mail which adds more protection to the wearer?  And how should this be represented in the game?  As a +1?  A +2?  Where does this leave plate mail and full plate then?  What mechanical benefits does it convey?  Is armor encumbrance represented well enough in the game to be worth it?

D&D economics is to inflated to make a real difference.  After all chain mail is cheap relatively speaking.  Once a character gets going and survives the first few adventures there is little interest in worrying about chainmail anymore.  In Pathfinder chainmail gives +6 armor bonus, costs 150gp and has a -5 armor check penalty coupled with a +2 max dex bonus.  Full plate costs 1500gp has a +9 armor bonus, -1 max dex bonus and -6 armor check.  Is there niche for chainmail costing between 150 and 1500 gp that can give +7 or +8 bonus while still have the same low penalties for chainmail?  I sure think so.  Thoughts?

Images from http://www.chainmailbasket.com/ , http://www.legionxxiv.org/loricapage/ & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_hamata

Three stabs for every cut

Watch this video (minute 4).  Listen to the closing sentence "You can stab me three times for every cut I can give you".

So, why does your D&D character have only one attack per round regardless of weapon?  I understand that combat in D&D is an abstraction and the one roll represents a chance of a successful hit among many movements and strikes (except with arrows in which those movements and strikes represent the usage of just one arrow, but who's counting).

Anyway, even within this abstraction, shouldn't a weapon that allows three times more stabs than the opposing cuts get three times more die rolls?  After all there are three times more possibilities of getting a successful hit?