Cyberpunk roleplaying

I gave up on OGL Cybernet, after getting to the second last chapter. As I mentioned below, there were a couple of issues that were really bugging me, and that I'd rant on later. In fact, that list grew, and grew, and eventually overwhelmed me.

Reinventing the Wheel

If there's one thing that pisses me off about d20 (and, incidentally, Storyteller) is core rulebooks that repeat huge swathes of the rules verbatim, and make a handful of small changes. So, you have to read hundreds of pages of the same old stuff in order to get to a handful of changes.

Frankly, if you're going to do a core rulebook, you really should provide clear guidance on what's different, for the benefit of players familiar with the system. This doesn't apply if there are huge changes, as is the case in Mutants & Masterminds, for instance, but does apply here.

Better still, if you don't need to produce a new core book, don't. Chances are most people interested in your game have the D&D Player's Handbook already. If it's d20 Modern based, it's likely that that book has well outsold your effort anyway. We have these resouces available. Use them, please.

Incomplete Games

If you are going to do a core rulebook, it better damn well be complete. You need to include rules for non-lethal damage if it's going to be a part of the game. Just because I can fill in the gaps doesn't mean that I should have to - and I resent carrying two books to the game when I should only need one.

General Editing

I've ranted about this before (although perhaps not here), but since the previous point is a symptom of general problems with editing, allow me to say it here: if your book doesn't read well, I'm going to be predisposed to hate it. Sorry, I don't care how good your ideas are, if you can't express them well I'm almost certainly nor interested.

Editors are worth their weight in gold. Find a good one, and never let her go.

Hit Points

Right, on to the specifics of OGL Cybernet. This game uses the standard hit point system as found in D&D and d20 Modern. Now, in the past I've defended hit points as being a good system. Granted, it's a very simple system, and not at all realistic, but it is a system that works, and can help build the exact feeling you're looking for in some games. Specifically, in D&D and Star Wars d20, hit points are the way to go.

However, cyberpunk should be dark, gritty, and very lethal. Although there's likely to be a lot of gunfire in such a game, there should be a strong incentive on the parts of the players to keep their characters out of it. And, there's absolutely no way to get that sort of a feel when moderate-level heroes can easily take multiple hits from heavy calibre firearms and keep on coming, with no impact on their capabilities.

There are various fixes to this problem:

1) Use the Vitality/Wounds system from Star Wars. This allows characters to take multiple hits, but also leaves them horribly vulnerable to criticals. Which is, I think, a good thing. That said, the VP/WP system is closed content at the moment, so not available for general use.

2) Use the hit point system from Babylon 5, where characters get 1d6+c hit points at first level, where c is a class-based constant. Each level, they gain 1 to 3 more hit points, again based on class. Constitution increases the chance a wounded character will stabilise; it does not give additional hit points. To be honest, I was sure this would be the route they'd take.

3) Use a save versus damage, coupled with wound levels. This is the system I would use:

Each time a character takes damage, he must roll a Fortitude save (see below for DC). If the character succeeds, he shrugs off the damage without effect.

If the character fails by 1-5 points, he takes a functional wound. Such wounds don't impair the character noticably at the time they are received, but may have greater effects after the combat ends. Functional wounds can also be of an aggravated and non-aggravated form. Basically, they start off non-aggravated, but become aggravated if the character engages in strenuous activity before getting them treated (so, if the character continues fighting, his wounds become aggravated). Functional wounds are things like stab wounds to the chest, torn muscles, and so on. Basically, anything that doesn't immediately take the character out.

If the character fails by 6-10 points, he suffers a non-functional wound. Such wounds take the character out of the fight immediately. Non-functional wounds are therefore quite serious, but they're not necessarily more dangerous than functional wounds - just more instantly debilitating. For instance, a non-functional wound could simply be a blow to the head that renders the character unconscious.

If the character fails by more than 10 points, the character takes a mortal wound. Such a character is immediately removed from the combat, and additionally proceeds to bleed out. Unless such a character stabilises on his own, or received treatment urgently, he will be dead in 10 rounds. (The rules for stabilisation are unchanged.)

The DC of the save versus damage is (15 + damage taken + wound modifiers). Each wound the character has taken (regardless of type) adds 5 to the base DC. So, a character takes 3 points of damage from a dagger, having previously received 2 functional wounds (which were treated), 1 functional wound (which has become aggravated) and a non-functional wound. The DC of the save versus damage is therefore (15+3+5+5+5+5 = 38).

After the combat, it is expected that the character will seek treatment for his wounds. This is also the time when the actual effects of the wounds are determined (useful in a cyberpunk game). At this point, we also reach the end of my thoughts on the matter, so I'll post again when I have more.

"What is Roleplaying"...

I'm currently reading OGL Cybernet, which is essentially d20 cyberpunk. I say essentially because it uses the d20 mechanics, but is published under the OGL rather than d20 license, in order to include character creation rules, and it's in no way related to the Cyberpunk 2020 game - except in that it covers the same genre.

Anyway, the game is moderately interesting, despite a couple of things that are driving me crazy (cyberware and hit points being the main ones, but that's another rant). However, as with so many other role-playing games, it opens with the standard discussion of what exactly roleplaying is.

Now, perhaps I'm being foolish, but I would expect that a game as obscure as this title (and, indeed, every other role-playing game except D&D and maybe Vampire) is only ever going to be sold in speciality game stores, or on places like Amazon where you're only going to find it if you specifically look for it. Either of which means that only gamers are likely to pick it up. And, one would expect, gamers already know what roleplaying is (not to mention that the concept is now generally understood, due to the use of roleplaying in education, staff training, and the like. It's only the concept of a role-playing game that might need explained).

So, frankly, what's the point? Just assume your readers know what the game's about, and use the space for more useful things. Like blank space or something.

Storyteller Advice

While I'm on the topic of wasted space, I'm starting to lean towards the notion that GM advice on constructing stories, campaigns and so forth (rather than specific issues like accurately balancing challenges, varying encounters, and so on) are a waste of space. Such discussions are often aimed at such a level that every good GM already knows everything that's mentioned in them. It's also manifestly obvious that bad GMs don't even read them, or if they do they don't pay any attention, instead being focussed on the 5,000 additional enemy groups you've just introduced, and are now advising they don't use.

Fascinating...

Many moons ago, Wizards of the Coast did extensive marketing surveys to help them design D&D 3rd edition so it would sell. Can't fault them for that.

Anyway, some of the results of the survey have recently been posted at . I must say, I find the sections that are given (and I don't really believe that these represent the entirety of the results, which isn't claimed there anyway) quite fascinating. The only thing that I wish we had was a copy of the surveys and also the algorithms used to profile people - it would be useful to profile the group in order to better tailor adventures to the players.

Anyway, the thing I found most interesting was the section that said that pretty much all players, regardless of other results, looked for games with the following elements:

• Strong Characters and Exciting Story
  
• Role Playing
  
• Complexity Increases over Time
  
• Requires Strategic Thinking
  
• Competitive
  
• Add on sets/New versions available
  
• Uses imagination
  
• Mentally challenging
  

So, if one ditches the sixth of these (add-on sets), this provides a checklist of elements for a DM to incorporate into his games in order to help ensure a good time is had by all.

(Also interesting was the notion that most good DMs fall into the "Storyteller" category, while most good game designers fall into the "Thinker" category. I'm not sure that's right - I suspect most good DMs and game designers probably have a little of both, but I might well be wrong.)

"So, you all meet in a pub, when this old guy..."

Sorry I haven't posted in ages. The problem with agreeing with what the other person says is that it doesn't leave much room for comment.

Anyway, it looks like my next game is going to be another D&D campaign. For this one, I've been looking into creating an entirely new setting, and one of the elements that I wanted to get rid of was the generic pub, especially as a launching ground for adventures.

So, I've set up the major culture of the setting with a social taboo against eating in front of strangers. It is considered common to do so (except in the military, but that's life for the enlisted grunt). Instead of the standard in with a single common room, villages would have boarding houses, where small groups would rent a large room, and both dine and sleep there, in the company of their friends. (I'm reasonably sure that the eating thing was more or less how things worked in the days of the Roman Empire, but I may well be wrong about that. It doesn't really matter.)

There are three problems with this, derived from the role of the inn in the standard campaign:

1) The inn was often used as a starting point for adventures, a recruiting ground for mercenaries, and so forth. Removing the common room removes the usefulness of this approach.

2) The common room was the best place to look for rumours and gossip in the village. Without the common room, again we lose out.

3) The inn also provided a safe haven and a few regular NPCs, which could be used to ground the game. To a certain extent, this can be lost as well, since PCs will dine alone.

Naturally, each of these problems can be solved quite easily, by ensuring that there are marketplaces and fora in which to gather rumours and information, arranging for alternative sources for adventure hooks, and ensuring that there are familiar NPCs. Still, just one more thing for me to worry about.

Gaming Groups and their size.

Archived post by Mort. I think I agree with everything here...

One of the big questions about gaming groups is what size of group is the correct one?

Of course in the end all it boils down to is personal preferences, if a GM is comfortable with handling a large group, and the players don't mind there's nothing wrong. But I think there are certain points worth talking about. Most of these are obviously my personal opinion on the matter.

First off, I think a good group size is about four or maybe five people, excluding the GM. When I first started playing RPGs and most of my active time I've been in smaller groups, and I've always found the group dynamics to work better with a smaller set of people.

Now, a good group size also depends alot on the game you play, in a heavy combat D&D game you can afford to have a larger group, as long as you tailor the encounters to take this into account, and give each player a suitable challenge. While a heavily involved political Vampire game will bog down into a stalemate with a group larger than four people. However, most games seems to work fine with four to five players.

Now why would you care about group size? Well I personally feel that when I'm playing in a smaller group it's much easier to avoid excessive out of character banter, and if it does happend it tends to involve the whole group. If you have seven players sitting around, chances are that atleast two of these won't be actively involved in what is going on, and might decided to discuss the latest episode of their favourite Sci-fi show, something which can instantly ruin any kind of tension built up by the GM. Also in a smaller group you can sit closer together, which makes it easier to communicate things between players, and the players and the GM. I always feel more "in character" when I'm playing in a small group.

Also, in a small group the GM can spend more time wich each player, making sure everyone gets equal amount of screentime. In a large group it's easy for someone to just sit back and do nothing until he is either confronted directly or involved in a fight. This fosters an attitude of not caring, the forgotten player stops caring about his character, and usually ends up doing something really stupid, or silly, just to get some notice.

So that's my view on the issue, but as I said at the start, sometimes a large group works, but only really if the GM is capable of handling it and the players can accept having less amount of screentime per game.

A million elves for everyone

The latest Dragon magazine has yet another elven subrace, bringing the total to about 2,500 subraces of elves, each slightly different. I think this is great, for the following reasons:

1) Everyone knows that elves are just humans with pointy ears, so adding another subrace allows people to get access to another different package of powers with a minimum of role-playing required.

2) There is now a subrace for just about every combination of ability score adjustments. Want a sorcerer? There's a subrace especially for you. Want a ranger? Have a subrace...

3) Most games only use a handful of elven subraces, as some players remain reluctant to play them. This new subrace should convert a good one or two players to the elven cause.

As a plan, let's not bother with other races in 4th edition. Lets just have eight different subraces of elves. If we're feeling generous, we might also allow half-elves. However, no full humans will be allowed as PCs, as this can be considered too radical a step to be permitted.

Not that I dislike the proliferation of elven munchkin-races, of course.

Campaigns that Run Themselves

Some campaigns, notably Vampire at its best, pretty much run themselves. Granted, the GM still needs to be present, to run the NPCs and their plots, and the keep the game balanced, but there's little to no preparation work; the players do most of that for them. To get to this hallowed point in a campaign, certain things need to be done:

1) The players have to have characters they are comfortable playing, have to be interested and involved in the plot, and have to have at least some prospect of succeeding in their efforts.

2) There has to be plenty going on in the setting, and plenty of NPCs to interact with. Granted, this is a lot of prep work, but it should be done before the campaign begins, not between sessions.

3) The factions can't be too monolithic. If there's a clan war going on, there need to be several vampires on each side, each with a subtly different agenda. Some can be turned, and some can't, and some can be trusted and others not. The key thing is that you should never meet a "Red Shirt" vampire, unless he's destined to die in the next hour or two.

4) The NPCs have to be active without PC intervention, but not so overwhelming that they dominate the game. That is, if the PCs just sit things out, things should happen in the setting. However, if the PCs apply their efforts in a particular direction, this should seriously alter the outcome of the game.

5) The game needs secrets. Lots of secrets, and the players need to know that there are secrets, and be motivated to find them out. As a rule, every NPC, every faction, every plotline and every institution should have an associated secret, be it a secret power, a dirty little secret, or an undisclosed alliegance. Perhaps the Ventrue primogen is secretly Blood Bound to the Malkavian primogen's pet childe. Perhaps the Gangrel is secretly a Tzimisce agent, sent to drive the city into chaos?

6) The GM needs to keep a very close eye on the powers and dominions in the game. Make sure the PCs don't get their hands on a method to reliably kill NPCs, or more explosives than you're willing to have them use. Otherwise, the game will rapidly degenerate. It's okay to let them kill their great rivals, but ideally that shouldn't happen until they've put in the leg-work necessary to make him vulnerable.

7) The PCs need to be set against each other, at least to a certain extent. If everything is sweetness and light between the PCs, the likelihood is that they can eliminate any NPC threat with relative ease. This is fine, but it means the GM will have to run the game, rather than have it run itself.

So, you're playing a character who has no motivation to get involved?

If there's one thing I hate when running a game (and to a lesser extent when playing) is a player who decides his character has no motivation to get involved in any of the events of the campaign. Also, depending on the campaign, a player who decides his character has no reason to work with the rest of the party. At best, this ties up the GMs time as he is forced to run sub-plots for the awkward PC, at worst it ruins the mood for all concerned due to the player being manifestly bored during the game.

Bluntly, why the hell did you create that character? And if you don't like the way things are going for that character, why not just create a different one for this campaign - play the other character in some other, more appropriate game if you really want to play him?

It is the player's responsibility to create a character that they want to play, who can sensibly be involved in the events of the game and (possibly) fit in with the rest of the group. If you don't want to play in the campaign at all, either grin and bear it, or leave.

Of course, this does not apply to one-offs, or any other game in which the characters are not generated by the individual player. In such cases, the responsibility for ensuring that the players will get involved, can be useful, and (optionally) work together falls squarely on the GM. If running a combat-heavy game, you have no business letting any player end up with a character who is utterly useless in combat. And you certainly have no business letting someone end up with a character who's only advanced skill is knitting, unless you're going to run Cross-weave d20.

Okay, rant over.

Character Creation

I'm torn over which pisses me off more in character creation: statistical mistakes in character creation, or characters built without personality. So, I'll rant about both.

You'd think creating characters would be quite easy, that there are a huge number of character concepts that can be built without problems with the rules cropping up, and that no experienced player would ever be at risk of creating a faulty character, but no. Apparently, it's too hard to remember that Humanity = Conscience + Self-Control and Willpower = Courage. It's too hard to understand that a character's class determines his class skills, and adding ranks to cross-class skills costs double.

Once again, I should clarify that my ire is not aimed at novice players. If a person makes a mistake out of lack of experience, that's one thing. But when someone has been playing a game for years, it should be fairly safe to assume that they can actually create their own characters.

Anyway, character creation can be monitored by the GM, who can go through the submitted characters and make the necessary corrections, so that's not too bad (I think in future, I'll announce that I'm just going to make what I think are the most likely changes in the case of an error, rather than trying to consult with individual players). However, then there are those characters who are created without any sort of a background or personality.

The annoying thing here is that creating engaging characters is really easy. You need three things: a past, a quirk and a goal.

The past is simply enough a reflection of that character's past. It represents where he's been, and where he's come from. All you need is one single detail to make this work, not the full life's story. So, "he served in 'Nam" works, as does "he used to work in the docks in Glasgow". Or "his parents were gunned down while he watched." Or "he spent many enjoyable summers working in the bars in Majorca". All that is required is one thing.

The quirk is a reflection of who the character is in the present. It reflects some hobby, mannerism, or fear that the character has. Ideally, you want something noticable but not over-powering. So, while "he constantly interrupts any other character" technically works, it's not likely to make you many friends in the group.

Again, all that is required is a single detail: "he constantly smokes", "he fears spiders", "he always wears some item of red clothing".

The goal reflects where the character wants to go in the future. This can either be an attainable goal, such as saving for a flight to Australia to see his dying sister, or unattainable, such as world peace. Either way, it should be something that drives the character, but probably not something that drives the character to the exclusion of all else. You want to be able to justify your character adventuring with the group, after all. Additionally, you don't want the goal to be too trivial, since then you'll need another one. Something that will take months should be the minimal level of challenge the character should set himself.

"He wants to own a Porsche." "She wants to see her name up in lights." "I want to become a Jedi, like my father."

Once you have the past, the quirk and the goal, you're basically set. You might want to expand on just why your chain-smoking ex-gangster wants to become a Jedi, but adding details to this skeleton is basically easy.

As a simple example, I present for examination my two most recent characters.

Balthazar was a dwarven ranger from Mithral Hall. He had a past involving the death of a friend, and a period of wandering. I did a 20 page write-up of this (simply to annoy Roger), but it boiled down to the above. His quirk was that he was loud and boorish (quintessentially dwarven). His goal was to get home, to return to the hearth he'd left behind, a goal complicated by his being trapped in Ravenloft.

By contrast, Cathak Dan was a samurai. He was a product of the empire's academy, one of the most promising students. His quirk was that he considered honour to be a personal thing to be earned, rather than a social birthright, a view not shared by the majority of the nobles of the time. His goal was to serve his family with honour, and thus to demonstrate what a samurai should be, rather than what he felt they were.

My current character has a past that I'm keeping mysterious for the moment (this should become clear later). His quirk is that he demonstrates a constant impatience with all manner of authority figures, believeing them all to be incompetent or hypocritical. I haven't decided on a goal for him yet.

How to Ruin a Campaign

Just for laughs, here are a few of the means by which RPG campaigns can be ruined for all concerned, or that just plain piss me off. Some of these are GM faults and some player faults. Many of them are things I have done.

1) Take forever to resolve your action.

This pisses me off to no end - you're in a large combat with tons of stuff going on, everything is going quite nicely, and you turn to a player and ask what they're going to do. And wait. And wait.

Firstly, they dither over exactly what to do. Then they require the situation clarified. Then they painstakingly calculate just where to aim an attack for maximum effect (or to not hit allies). Then they roll the dice one at a time. If you're not lucky, they have to ask how to resolve the attack for the 500th time...

Just get on with it! You should be paying attention, and know the situation. You should have a fairly good idea of what to do before you even start. And you should know the rules by now! As for calculating the optimum placement of grenades/spells/whatever, if your character doesn't have time to measure out the distances, you shouldn't do it either. You should have a fairly good idea of how big your fireball is going to be, and point to a spot on the grid. That's it.

That said, I have no problem with new players taking their time, and at the start of the campaign my patience is necessarily extended. But, by the third week, you should know what you're doing.

2) Under- or over-play your character.

If your character is just an extension of you in the game, or worse has no personality at all (having all the wit and charm of the bishop in chess), you're doing the game a disservice. The days of "Bob the Fighter" should be long behind us - give us something to make him interesting. It's not hard.

By contrast, the goofy Malkavian, the compulsive thief and, yes, the drunken dwarf are equally old and annoying. If you over-play your character in this manner, all you're doing is declaring that the "Stephen Show" is more interesting than whatever your GMK has come up with. (Naturally, I admit to this one - my behaviour in Roger's game, particularly the first session, was disgraceful.)

3) Don't bother with description.

This is more for the GM, but can also apply to players. If there's "a guy" at the door, there's something wrong. Is he tall? Short? Well-dressed? Smelly? Again, give me one detail to bring the character to life. If I'm in a room, what colour are the walls?

This is particularly important in (potential) combat situations. If I'm to have my action ready to go, I need to know how many opponents I see. I need to know the general layout. And I need to know if there are police sirens in the background.

4) Don't bother to learn the rules.

If you're playing a typical D&D campaign, you have exactly 2 sessions to learn that you make an attack roll by rolling d20 and adding modifiers. After that, I start to lose patience. Similarly, in Storyteller, you need to know that you have to roll a bunch of d10s and try to get high numbers.

Ideally, the GM should know the rules of the game well before the campaign begins. The players need not, but need to make the effort to remember what to do from minute to minute. And they need to learn what their various powers do within a few sessions.

And that's not to say you need to know every detail of the rules. I'm not going to get upset if you don't know how to calculate magic item creation costs off the top of your head, no matter how long the campaign lasts. But I will get pissed off if you don't know what a Base Attack Bonus is after 5 months of d20.

5) Don't make it clear which rules are in use, or change the rules midstream without notice.

Many games start with a functional rulebook, then add supplements that progressively make characters of a particular type more powerful than others. Under such a game, I need to know which supplements I can use before creating a character. And if I am led to believe it's core book only, and some other player is told to use whatever he wants, be ready to see me walk out the door.

New editions of games can change things around a lot, and can have changes that seem subtle but are actually powerful. If there's a new edition, it should not be introduced to an ongoing campaign without discussion in the group.

6) Ignore PC knowledge and powers.

If one of your PCs can cast detect evil, your adventure needs to take that into account. You need to either find a reason for it to not work or, better still, build the adventure on the assumption that it will be used. If you don't do either of these, your game will suck.

7) Let the PCs away with anything/screw the PCs over

The GM must take control of the game, but at the same time must accept that the players are the centre of the game. If the GM let's the PCs do whatever they want, the game loses all its challenge, and there ceases to be a point. But, if the PCs are denied knowledge that they rightly should have, are forced down a pre-generated plot, or otherwise feel unfairly treated, the game similarly becomes a farce. You have to keep a balance here.

I've gone on too long, so I'll stop. Any others?

"Sorry, it's the rules"

I had to bite my tongue on Saturday when the storyteller made the ruling that led to this particular comment. It was fortunate that I didn't really care enough to correct him, because:

1) The ruling involved a Self-Control roll to allow my character to light a cigarette. Should have been a Courage roll.

2) The difficulty of the roll was a mere 3, and I had 5 dice in Courage (this being one of Roger's characters). So, per the rules, I qualified for an automatic success.

There are two morals I wish to draw from this little rant:

Firstly, if the GM wishes to appeal to the rules to justify a ruling he makes during the game, it's fairly important that the ruling actually be correct. This means knowing the rules of the game very, very well. Otherwise, an unkind player is liable to correct him, leading to potentially significant advantage.

Secondly, and more importantly, the GM should never resort to saying, "it's the rules", to justify himself. Better just to say, "you'll need to make a Self-Control roll", and leave it at that. Otherwise, he opens the door for the rules lawyers to come out to play.

In other news, my name is Stephen, and I'm a rules lawyer...

Vampire Boredom.

Archived thread started by Mort:

I've been struggling the last week trying to come up with a decent character concept for Craigs Vampire game, only to realise I don't have any inclination what so ever to play in a Vampire game. I've tried to motivate myself to no avail. I'm not sure why this is, maybe Underworld has forever ruined my chances to enjoy Vampires again?

No, on a more serious note, it could be the whole WOD that's annoying me, it's all dark and dreary and woe and sorrow and god knows what else. I'm in the mood for some Sci-fi, or fantasy. This is likely to change of course, but I don't know how soon.

I think I might have to withdraw from the Vampire game, unless I can re-motivate myself.

I don't want to start playing a game I won't enjoy...

Underworld.

Archived thread by Mort:

Slightly off topic, but still close enough to be somewhat on topic. (Hey, it's got Vampires and Werewolves in it.) I thought I'd take the chance to pimp my review of Underworld. It's available here.

Yes, Underworld is crap.

Sense of Wonder

From the original Monster Manual (1st Edition):

"Drow: The "Black Elves," or Drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good. Tales picture them as weak fighters but strong magic-users."

From Vampire: the Masquerade (Second Edition):

"It is whispered that the Sabbat knows of ways to break the Bond, but it is said that one must pledge to the sect before the process will be imparted. Whatever the case, those who most resent their Bondage and retain the free will to act independently flee to the Sabbat - fearing the Black Hand less than continued servitude to an elder."

My Point:

When Drizzt hit us, or when the guides to the Sabbat were published, the ability of these creatures to inspire any sense of wonder and mystery disappeared. If a DM wants to provoke any sort of awe and mystery about his criminal mastermind, he really can't make it a Mind Flayer. Similarly, Storytellers can't inspire any real mystery in Vampire any more, since the players are just too blase about garou, mages, inconnu, and everything else. There's no mystery any more, and no sense of wonder.

Perhaps White Wolf are right to end the World of Darkness. If they do the reset right, they might even build some new mysteries into the setting.

What this means for the individual games master is that he has three choices:

1) Play with newbies. To the new player, everything is new and mysterious again. They've never heard the name Illithid, so might rightly be scared of it.

2) Accept that the wonder is gone. Okay, so your PCs will never be scared of the Sabbat. This doesn't mean that you can't run a decent Vampire game, just assume that everyone knows all this stuff, and build accordingly.

3) Try new settings. When starting an Exalted game, immediately shoot any player who even thinks about reading the core book and supplements. Then, you can build on the mystery of the deathlords. Similarly, build a homebrew D&D setting with an entirely different set-up of NPC races and monsters (although you don't necessarily have to change the PC races, since these should be known anyway).

4) Move the goalposts. It doesn't matter how much your players know about Werewolf: the Apocalypse if the werewolves in your Vampire game aren't what that book claims. Likewise, if the Sabbat really are a canibalistic cult of death-worshippers whose only interest in other vampires is in killing them, your know-it-all player is in for a nasty shock.

Of course, if option 4 is in use, be sure to let your players know this before starting play, or they may well cry foul. It may be their own fault their elder Ventrue just got himself diablerised, but they'll probably not see things that way.

Right, I'm off to right an adventure about an attack on the fourth annual Granny Rally tournament by cyborg zombies, and the need for Ethel, Maisy, Jess and Dorothy to re-form their ninja-squad and fight back...

Star Wars Revised (again)

Huh, it turns out that I really had read enough to comment sensibly - the changes to starship combat boiled down to "use a battlemap".

So, here goes:

PC Races

This could be fixed in the original by simply using the Alien Anthology supplement, but it is nice that this version has more races available.

Classes

Truth be told, I didn't have any great problems here, but the addition of the Tech Specialist class is welcome.

Armour as Damage Reduction

It's nice to see that they've made armour even less useful than it already was. Good move.

Truthfully, I don't mind armour operating as damage reduction, but it should apply to all attacks. However, this ties in to a larger rant that I'll get into below. See "Wounds/Vitality", below.

Autofire

Why, why, why did they implement this rule like this? "Take a penalty to hit, and get one or two extra attacks per round". Quality.

Autofire should be implemented as it is in d20 Modern - pick an area to effect, roll vs AC10 to hit, and everyone in the area must roll a Ref save or take damage. That's not a perfect autofire rule, but it is the best one I've seen so far under d20.

Wounds/Vitality

This system makes no sense, and makes critical hits far too deadly.

If Vitality represents a character's ability to avoid harm, turning a killing blow into a near miss, why do weapons do different amounts of Vitality damage? Also, isn't that the roll of a character's Defense score? If it represents the character's ability to roll with damage, turning a killing blow into a lesser blow, why doesn't armour apply?

Worse still, since critical hits ignore Vitality, you have to balance encounters knowing that a freak dice roll can leave a PC dead in a single round. This is fine if it's what you want, but it's really not Star Wars.

Starship Combat

This was the big problem with the original edition of the game, and has at least been fixed in this version. However, the new version still has a significant problem in that the skill of the pilot is still of minor importance in vehicle combat. Okay, they roll Pilot checks for maneuvers, and their BAB applies to weapon fire, but this just leaves characters hideously vulnerable as their Defense value is limited to that of the ship, and their 100 Vitality Points are utterly useless when the ship explodes around them.

House Rules

To whip the game into a shape I'd actually be happy running it in would require a horrible number of house rules. Since I'm really not fond of such things, this leaves me with something of a problem.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, here's what I feel I'd need to do:

Return to the hit point system. Mooks still only have hit points equal to their Constitution score (poor Stormtroopers), but other characters have hit points equal to their previous Vitality totals. All damage codes are reduced by one die (that is, 3d6 weapons become 2d6, and so on). Critical hits do double damage in all cases, and armour applies to all attacks. Unarmed attacks now do subdual damage, as does any other attack that can only do Vitality damage (I don't think there are any of these, but there we go).

Force powers now do subdual damage to a character rather than Vitality damage. This is my big worry when it comes to balancing all this - I'm afraid I may have just crippled Jedi characters.

The autofire rules from d20 modern, along with the related feats, are used here in place of the existing rules.

Starship combat needs re-done (again). This is going to be a huge change, as I've outlined in previous posts.

Essentially, on a starfighter scale, ships have hit points equal to their pilot at full health (a wounded pilot in a fresh fighter returns to full hit points in the fighter; a fresh pilot in a damaged ship would have a percentage hit point loss equal to the percentage damage of the fighter. In all cases, a character returns to their previous total when they leave the ship). The defense value of the ship would equal that of the character, with a modifier based purely on the size and maneuverability of the ship. Armour and energy shielding would act as damage reduction.

That's pretty much it. I've not yet worked out quite what place the pilot's ranks in Pilot has in all of this. Nor have I worked out the details of different ship scales. And, of course, I'd need to write new stats for every ship in existence.

It's all a mess, as you can see. However, I really don't care for the elements of the system I've discussed above, and wouldn't like to run the game without house rules.

It's a damn shame - Star Wars deserves better.

Losing the will to read (Star Wars Revised Core Rulebook)

I got the Star Wars Revised Core Rulebook a couple of weeks ago, and it has been in my to-read pile ever since. Since I already have, and have read, the previous version, I'd approached this one with some hesitation, mostly since d20 core rulebooks, particularly from Wizards of the Coast, are awful.

The problem is that the d20 system is now fairly stable, but the details invariably change from one book to another. Consider the death by massive damage rule. In D&D, if you take 50 hit points of damage from a single attack, you must make a Fortitude save or die. In Call of Cthulhu, you must save after 10 hit points of damage. In d20 Modern, you must save after Con hit points of damage, or drop to -1 hit point. It's madness.

Since the variations aren't clearly spelled out, you have to read the whole book carefully to find them. And since there are generally only half a dozen such changes, you end up re-reading much the same material over and over again.

And heaven forbid you wish to master more than one version of the d20 rules.

I haven't read enough of SWRev to comment sensibly on it as a whole yet, so I'll hold off on that rant. However, this should do for now.

Exalted and Stunts

Well, Exalted was fun. Lots of stuff going on, lots of flashy combat, and plenty of opportunity to annoy the other players (in character, of course). It uses the Storyteller system, which is quick and fairly easy to understand (balacing can be a bit of a problem, but that's another rant).

The one mechanic I'm not so sure I like, however, is the Stunt mechanic, whereby a player describes some outrageous maneuver that his PC is going to pull off, and the Storyteller assigns a one to three dice bonus to pools for the roll.

This is fine, right up to the point where the character becomes capable of feats that he couldn't have normally pulled off, but that become possible with a Stunt. The problem there is that there might be another PC in the group who has spent lots of XP to get those precise abilities, and suddenly this other guy can do it for free.

Hmm...

Then again, the mechanic is quick, simple, and does exactly what it sets out to do.

And, of course, the alternative is to put lots of restrictions on the use of Stunts, which kills the mechanic dead. So, I guess it's just a taste thing.

What is D20?

Archiving a thread started by Mort:

As usual I've been reading rpg.net, and happened upon the standard d20 moaning thread. Wherein the question about what d20 really is was asked.

So, what is d20 really? Obviously to use the d20 logo you have to follow the guidelines set up by WotC, which has been nerfed badly lately from what I've seen. But is a OGL game also a d20 game? Only without the license? Or is it something else? Can you make a OGL where you roll only d10's?

From what I've understood d20 is basically two things:
You have six stats, with the standard names.
You roll a d20 to beat a DC.

But this is not the OGL, as the OGL just basically lets you take advantage of the system developed for d20 in your own games. From my understanding of the license (I don't read legaleese very well so I might be wrong) there's nothing stopping you from making a d10 dice pool OGL game. So in other words OGL is not d20.

This means that what d20 is is rather more defined than most people think, d20 is what is covered by the d20 license, which is much more restrictive than the OGL license, and thus d20 is a distinct and only to a limited extent mutable system.

Did that make any sense at all?

What's Left to Do?

I was reading a "Previews" column on the Wizards web-site a few minutes ago, and was reading about the upcoming "Book of Exalted Deeds" and the "Miniatures Handbook". For both books, the sample material was in the form of a monster from the book. I didn't read the specifics of the monsters, so can't comment on them, but my response was, "Big deal".

It seems that every D&D book, and a large number of d20 books, contain lots and lots of pages of Prestige Classes, Feats, Monsters and Spells. I'm sorry, I don't want any more.

The thing is, I already have the Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2, Fiend Folio, Creature Collection, Creature Collection 2, the Tome of Horrors, Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss. I have enough monsters for a million and one adventures, and only ever use about 20 of them in the course of a campaign.

In terms of spells, I have the Players' Handbook, Relics & Rituals, Relics & Rituals 2 and Magic of Faerun. PCs in my games have never strayed beyond the PHB, and are unlikely ever to use all these spells.

And, for feats, I have the Players' Handbook, Ultimate Feats, and all the Wizards splatbooks. I also have all the Quintessential books dealing with core and psionic classes, except Ranger.

Now, I feel somewhat sorry for game designers in this: I just don't want any more feats, monsters or spells. Until 4th Edition, you should feel free to never publish another one of these things. The reason I feel sorry is that there are some wonderful ideas out there that I'm rejecting out of hand, and there is the problem that those were probably the easy bits of the books to fill. But, I don't want them.

This leaves the question at the top of the post: what's left to do? What do I want to see?

Well...

I don't particularly want more settings, or more information on any existing setting. I usually create my own settings anyway, and would rather use a 'sparse' setting than a 'packed' one like the Forgotten Realms anyway (not that I have anything against the Realms - I just don't intend to use it).

I don't want an epic dungeon campaign, like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I can't see my players going for a campaign of nothing but dungeoneering. And I don't want any books describing alignment - my views on the topic don't seem to match those of the current crop of designers, and in my game, my way rules. In any event, if we don't agree, your book is useless to me.

What I would love to see, although it would probably die a death on the market, is a serious book on campaign development, dealing with everything from cartography to altering the rules, to creating new races, to setting up 'realistic' cultures and religions. Ideally, this would contain a CD-ROM containing cartography and campaign-management programs, and a proper character generator (which would need to be scalable, and fully licensed to use any d20 materials).

I would also like to see a mega-campaign adventure that doesn't deal with dungeon crawling. I'm not sure that's actually possible, though, without becoming hopelessly nebulous. It would need to include extensive advice to the GM on tailoring the material for his game.

And, that's about it. I'm starting to think I might not be spending much money on RPGs in the next few months :-)

Any thoughts?

The Paragon

Everywhere I look, people are wanting Paladins of non-LG alignments, Paladins of specific deities, or generic Champions of a cause. Arcana Unearthed has the Champion, Dragon has non-LG Paladins, and FR has every Paladin tied to a specific deity.

Personally, I don't see the need for non-LG Paladins, since I like my knights in shining armour as they are, thank you very much. Still, as a thought experiment, I gave some thought to how I would construct a variant Paladin class to allow access to all alignments, and to represent any deity or alignment force.

I'm only going to describe the rules information associated with the class; I'm sure the reader can understand the concept I'm aiming for. Note also that the Paragon is not a Paladin - you can't build a Paladin by selecting a Paragon of Good with the right powers. (To be honest, I'm also not 100% happy with the disease mastery power. I think I'd prefer a more tailored power for the specific deity in question, but can't think of an easy way to implement that.)

Here's what I came up with:

The Paragon

Paragons have the following game statistics.

Abilities: Charisma enhances the paragon's self-protective capabilities and undead influencing abilities. Strength is important for her because of its role in combat. A Wisdom score of 14 or higher is required to gain access to the most powerful paragon spells, and a score of 11 or higher is required to cast any paragon spells at all.

Alignment: The paragon's alignment must exactly match that of her deity. If the paragon serves an alignment instead, her alignment must match that served, with a neutral alignment in the other component. For example, a paragon of good must be neutral good, while a paragon of chaos must be chaotic neutral.

Hit Die: d10.

Class Skills

The paragon's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge(nobility and royalty) (Int), Knowledge(religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex) and Sense Motive (Wis). See the PHB for skill descriptions.

Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int modifier) X 4.

Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier.

--

Table 1: The Paragon

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special			1st	2nd	3rd	4th
1	+1	+2	+0	+0	Aura, domain, smite enemy 1/day			-	-	-	-
2	+2	+3	+0	+0	Divine grace, lay on hands			-	-	-	-
3	+3	+3	+1	+1	Aura of courage, divine health			-	-	-	-
4	+4	+4	+1	+1	Turn or rebuke undead				0	-	-
5	+5	+4	+1	+1	Smite enemy 2/day, special mount			0	-	-	-
6	+6/+1	+5	+2	+2	Disease mastery 1/week			1	-	-	-
7	+7/+2	+5	+2	+2				1	-	-	-
8	+8/+3	+6	+2	+2				1	0	-	-
9	+9/+4	+6	+3	+3	Disease mastery 2/week			1	0	-	-
10	+10/+5	+7	+3	+3	Smite enemy 3/day			1	1	-	-
11	+11/+6/+1	+7	+3	+3				1	1	0	-
12	+12/+7/+2	+8	+4	+4	Disease mastery 2/week			1	1	1	-
13	+13/+8/+3	+8	+4	+4				1	1	1	-
14	+14/+9/+4	+9	+4	+4				2	1	1	0
15	+15/+10/+5	+9	+5	+5	Smite enemy 4/day, disease mastery 4/week			2	1	1	1
16	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+5	+5				2	2	1	1
17	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+5				2	2	2	1
18	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+6	Disease mastery 5/week			3	2	2	1
19	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+6				3	3	3	2
20	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+6	Smite enemy 5/day			3	3	3	3

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the paragon.

Weapon and Armour Proficiency: Paragons are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, with all types of armour (light, medium and heavy), and with shields (except tower shields).

Aura(Ex): A paragon os a chaotic, evil, good or lawful deity (or of the alignments themselves) has a particularly powerful aura corresponding to the alignment in question (see the detect evil spell for details).

Domain: A paragon selects one of the domains of her chosen deity. If a paragon of an alignment, she gains access to the associated domain instead (Chaos, Evil, Good or Law). She immediately gains access to the granted power of the domain, and adds the domain spells of 1st through 4th level to the list of paragon spells (see below).

Smite enemy: A paragon must declare a particular group as a chosen enemy. This should be an enemy of his deity or alignment. The choice of enemy can be quite broad, so a paragon might declare all servants of a rival deity as her enemy, all evil creatures, or all heretics within her own religion. Once per day, a paragon may attempt to smite a member of this enemy group with one normal melee attack. She adds her Charisma bonus (if any) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per paragon level. For example, a 13th-level paragon armed with a longsword would deal 1d8+13 points of damage, plus any additional bonuses for high Strength or magical effects that would normally apply. If the paragon accidentally smites a creature that is not part of the enemy group, the smite has no effect, but the ability is still used up for that day.

At 5th level, and at every 5 levels thereafter, the paragon may smite her enemy one additional time per day, as indicated in the table above, to a maximum of five times per day at 20th level.

Divine Grace(Su): At 2nd level, a paragon gains a bonus equal to her Charisma bonus (if any) on all saving throws.

Lay on Hands (Su): Beginning at 2nd level, a paragon with a Charisma score of 12 or higher can heal or harm by touch. A good paragon gains the ability to heal wounds, while an evil paragon may inflict wounds. A neutral paragon may choose which ability to use, although once made this choice cannot be altered (a neutral paragon who heals by touch also turns undead, while one who inflicts by touch rebukes undead. See below.) Each day, she can heal or inflict a total number of hit points of damage equal to her paragon level x her Charisma bonus. For example, a good 7th level paragon with a 16 Charisma (+3 bonus) can heal 21 points of damage each day. A paragon may choose to divide this among multiple recipients, and she doesn't have to use it all at once. Using lay on hands is a standard action. Using this power to inflict wounds requires a successful touch attack, which does not provoke an attack of opportunity, and allows no saving throw.

When used on undead, a paragon who heals by touch can instead inflict damage, while one who inflicts wounds by touch instead heals. Using lay on hands to harm undead also requires a successful melee touch attack and does not provoke an attack of opportunity. The paragon decides how many of her daily allotment of points to use as damage after successfully touching an undead creature.

Aura of Courage(Su): Beginning at 3rd level, a paragon is immune to fear (magical or otherwise). Each ally within 10 feet of her gains a +4 morale bonus on saving throws against fear effects. This ability functions while the paragon is conscious, but not if she is unconscious or dead.

Divine Health(Ex): At 3rd level, a paragon gains immunity to all diseases, including supernatural and magical diseases (such as mummy rot and lycanthropy).

Turn or Rebuke Undead(Su): When a paragon reaches 4th level, she gains the supernatural ability to turn or rebuke undead. A paragon of good alignment can turn undead, while paragons of evil alignment rebuke undead. Neutral paragons may select whether to turn or rebuke undead, but once this choice is made, it cannot ever be changed. A paragon may use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + her Charisma modifier. She turns or rebukes undead as a cleric of three levels lower would.

Spells: Beginning at 4th level, a paragon gains the ability to cast a small number of divine spells (the same type of spells availabel to the cleric, druid and ranger), which must be drawn from the paragon spell list (see below). A paragon must choose and prepare her spells in advance.

To prepare or cast a spell, a paragon must have a Wisdom score equal to at least 10 + the spell level (Wis 11 for 1st-level spells, Wis 12 for 2nd-level spells, and so forth). The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a paragon's spell is 10 + the spell level + the paragon's Wisdom modifier.

Like other spellcasters, a paragon can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily allotment is given in the table above. In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Wisdom score (see the PHB). When the table indicates that the paragon gets 0 spells per day of a given spell level (for instance, 1st-level spells for a 4th-level paragon), she gains only the bonus spells she would be entitled to based on her Wisdom score for that spell level. The paragon has access to a single domain, but receives no additional spell slots for these spells; they must be selected from the paragon's regular allotment of spells instead.

A paragon prepares and casts spells the way a cleric does, though she cannot lose a prepared spell to spontaneously cast a cure or inflict spell in its place. A paragon may prepare and cast any spell on the paragon spell list, provided that she can cast spells of that level, but she must choose which spells to prepare during her daily meditation.

Through 3rd level, a paragon has no caster level. At 4th level and higher, her caster level is one-half her paragon level.

Chaotic, Evil, Good and Lawful Spells: A paragon can't cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity's (if she has one). For example, a neutral good paragon cannot cast evil spells. Spells associated with particular alignments are indicated by the chaos, evil, good and law descriptors in their spell descriptions.

Special Mount(Sp): Upon reaching 5th level, a paragon gains the service of an unusually intelligent, strong, and loyal steed to serve her. This mount is usually a heavy warhorse (for a Medium paragon) or warpony (for a Small paragon).

Once per day, as a full-round action, a paragon may magically call her mount from the celestial (or infernal) realms in which it resides. The mount immediately appears adjacent to the paragon and remains for 2 hours per paragon level; it may be dismissed at any time as a free action. The mount is the same creature each time it is summoned, though the paragon may release a particular mount from service (if it has grown to old to serve, for instance). Each time the mount is called, ir appears in full health, regardless of any damage it may have taken previously. The mount also appears wearing or carrying any gear it had when it was last dismissed (including barding, saddlebags, and the like). Calling a mount is a conjuration (calling) effect.

Should a paragon's mount die, it immediately disappears, leaving behind any equipment it was carrying. The paragon may not summon another mount for thirty days or until she gains a paragon level, whichever comes first, even if the mount is somehow returned from the dead. During this thirty-day period, the paragon takes a -1 penalty on attack and weapon damage rolls.

Disease Mastery (Sp): At 6th level, a paragon can channel energy to either create or remove diseases. A good paragon may produce a remove disease effect, as the spell, once per week, while an evil paragon produces a contagion effect. Neutral paragons may select which effect to generate, but once this choice is made it cannot be altered. Moreover, a neutral paragon who turns undead also removes disease, while one who rebukes undead also creates disease. A paragon may use this ability one additional time per week for every three levels after 6th, and indicated in the table above, to a maximum of five times per week at 18th level.

Code of Conduct: A paragon must maintain her alignment correctly at all times. A paragon who changes alignment, or willingly acts in a manner directly contrary to this alignment immediately loses all class abilities. Additionally, the paragon's code requires that she obey the commandments of her deity, and uphold the tenets of the corresponding religion, as would a cleric of the same faith.

Associates: While she may adventure with characters of any alignment within one step of her own (including diagonally), a paragon will never knowingly associate with characters of another alignment, nor will she continue an association with anyone who consistently offends her moral code. A paragon may accept only henchmen, followers or cohort who share her alignment exactly.

Ex-Paragons

A paragon who ceases to share the alignment of her deity, who willfully commits an act contrary to her alignment, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paragon spells and abilities (including the service of the paragn's mount, but not weapons, armour and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paragon. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

Like a member of any other class, a paragon may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paragons face a special restriction. A paragon who gains a level in any class other than paragon may never again raise her paragon level, though she retains all her paragon abilities. The path of the paragon requires a constant heart. If a character adopts this class, she must pursue it to the exclusion of all other careers. Once she has turned off the path, she may never return.

Paragon Spell List

1st-level: Bane, Bless, Bless Water, Bless Weapon, Cause Fear, Corrupt Weapon, Create Water, Cure Light Wounds, Curse Water, Detect Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Detect Poison, Detect Undead, Divine Favour, Doom, Endure Elements, Inflict Light Wounds, Magic Weapon, Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Read Magic, Resistance, Restoration (Lesser), Summon Monster I, Virtue

2nd-level: Bull's Strength, Darkness, Death Knell, Delay Poison, Eagle's Splendour, Owl's Wisdom, Remove Paralysis, Resist Energy, Shatter, Shield Other, Summon Monster II, Undetectable Alignment, Zone of Truth

3rd-level: Blindness/Deafness, Cure Moderate Wounds, Daylight, Deeper Darkness, Discern Lies, Dispel Magic, Heal Mount, Inflict Moderate Wounds, Magic Circle against Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Magic Weapon (Greater), Prayer, Protection from Elements, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Curse, Summon Monster III

4th-level: Break Enchantment, Cure Serious Wounds, Death Ward, Dispel Chaos/Evil/Good/Law, Freedom of Movement, Holy Sword, Inflict Serious Wounds, Mark of Justice, Neutralise Poison, Poison, Restoration, Summon Monster IV

Arcana Unearthed and 3.5

3rd Edition has been kicking about for 3 years, and has shown a number of weak spots. Which is good, since it has given me hours of wasted time posting here. Anyway, after 3 years, Wizards released 3.5 edition, which is intended to close a lot of the loopholes, and generally make the game more like it's actually played (I'm not sure that makes any sense, but there it is). Co-incidentally, at about the same time, Monte Cook published Arcana Unearthed, which is intended as a replacement PHB for use in his Diamond Throne setting. Interestingly, AU also fixes, or attempts to fix, some of the same problems as were identified and 'fixed' in 3.5. So, I thought it would be interesting to see how the two books approached some of the problems.

Two-weapon Fighting

Problem: In 3rd Edition, you needed 2 feats to be at all useful with 2-weapon fighting, and were still left slightly less effective that using a single 2-handed weapon. Ranger gave these feats as "virtual feats", making one level of Ranger a munchkin option for Rogues, and perhaps some other characters.

3.5: Combine the Ambidexterity and Two-weapon Fighting feats into one. Rangers don't get these feats until 2nd level, eliminating the munchkin option. Two-weapon fighting becomes a viable option, although still slightly over-priced.

AU: Ambidexterity can only be bought at 1st level. Two-weapon fighting decreases the penalties by 4, rather than 2. A new feat allows the use of non-light weapons in the off-hand with further reduced penalties. This means that buying two feats (one at 1st level) makes 2-weapon fighting marginally better than a single 2-handed weapon, with a third feat making it significantly better. Thus, a character can viably focus on 2-weapon fighting, although it remains an expensive choice. AU doesn't have Rangers.

Verdict: Both methods are better than the original, but I prefer the 3.5 option. Feats are fairly rare, and 2-weapon fighting is not so good as to make the investment required in AU worthwhile unless a player is really determined.

Multi-class Spellcasters

Problem: Levels in different spellcasting classes don't stack, making the Wizard/Cleric combination, amongst others, laughable.

3.5: A partial solution exists in the much-aligned Mystic Theurge prestige class, and others for other combinations.

AU: This game completely changes the magic system, and there aren't different lists by class. Instead, spells are listed as being Simple, Complex, or Exotic. Multiclass spellcasters thus have access to some of these types by class, and add their slots and caster levels together.

Verdict: AU wins hands down. However, since it was created from a blank slate, whereas D&D has always had an arcane/divine split, it had a somewhat unfair advantage going in.

Creating Magic Items

Problem: Items are created by type, so Craft Wondrous Item is over-powered. Also, some spells become abusively powerful when placed in certain types of item.

3.5: No change.

AU: Items are created by uses (Craft Single Use Item, etc). Spells have modifiers assigned when being placed in certain item types, and some can't be placed in some item types at all.

Verdict: AU wins, of course. Additionally, this seems to fix the problem entirely (something not true of 2-weapon fighting. The multi-class spellcasters fix does work, but is useless to D&D as it stands).

Counterspelling

Problem: Counterspelling is largely useless. You have to Ready a counterspell, effectively giving up a round of your own actions, and even then you might not have a suitable counterspell available. Better simply to wipe out your opponents as quickly as possible.

3.5: No change.

AU: Counterspelling is possible with dispel magic (as before), or can be purchased as a feat. With the feat, you can try to counterspell any spell, a number of times per day. You still need to ready to counterspell, though.

Verdict: AU wins, but only provides a partial solution. I would prefer to see some mechanism where you need not Ready an action (a "Counterspell of Opportunity"), but have no idea how it would be implemented.

Too-weak Skills

Problem: Some skills are over-specific. Examples include Use Rope and Intuit Direction.

3.5: Intuit Direction rolled into Survival (with Wilderness Lore). Alchemy becomes Craft(Alchemy). A few other changes. Use Rope remains.

AU: Hide and Move Silently are rolled into Sneak. Others stay the same.

Verdict: I like the Sneak skill, but otherwise 3.5 wins handily. I'd still like to see the removal of Use Rope, as it's not really useful enough. However, I think the only skill it can be rolled into is Sleight of Hand, which seems an odd choice.

Exclusive Skills

Problem: Some skills are only available to some classes. If these are class abilities, they should be treated as such.

3.5: Exclusive skills are gone.

AU: Exclusive skills are gone.

Verdict: Either way, I'm happy :-)

Swim and Encumberance

Problem: The swim skill has a penalty based on weight carried, rather than armour, which forces the rather tedious tracking of encumberance. Okay, it's realistic, but I'm lay and would rather ditch encumberance.

3.5: Swim uses a double armour check penalty.

AU: No change.

Verdict: 3.5 wins, from the lazy man's point of view :-)

Conclusion

I'm aware that Monte didn't set out to "do D&D right", and the timing is a coincidence. That said, it is interesting to see how these problems were approached. It also seems that some of the problems were addressed in one book, and others in the other. Neither solves all the problems.

With luck, in about five years, when Wizards are ready to do 4th Edition, they'll have the good sense to look at books like Arcana Unearthed (and also some of the other good d20 and OGL works, and roll the good ideas into the core rulebooks). That way, we might end up with a game that is a genuine improvement over what we currently have.

I haven't looked at all the changes, or even all the areas where I wasn't entirely happy (metamagic for one), nor am I advocating one option over the other. Both 3.5 edition and AU represent an improvement over 3rd Edition (which is rather a good thing, don't you think), but neither is such an improvement that you must immediately run out and get the new books, and burn the old ones. Instead, get AU if you want to play AU, and get 3.5 if you want to play D&D and want to stay current (or are new to the game).

Or, ignore me. These are hardly pompous words from on high. Just those of some bored guy.

Death of d20?

Wizards of the Coast have just changed the d20 license to include a 'decency clause', stating that d20 products may not include nudity or overly graphic depictions of violence (and a few other things - if you care enough, it's easy enough to find the actual text of the changes). This is, in part, aimed at the "Book of Erotic Fantasy", a book on d20 sex that is due to be published in a few weeks. Unfortunately, it's the wrong solution to a non-problem, and may kill d20 dead.

Now, before I go off into my rant, I should point out that I was never intending on getting the BoEF. Not because of the topic, although I don't think rules for sex are really needed. Instead, I found that I really strongly disagreed with some of the commentary in the sample I read (about alignment views towards sexuality). I felt that it was yet another example of game designers not really understanding alignment, and/or failing to seperate their views on alignment and morality, and thus projecting them onto the game. Or, perhaps, it was I who couldn't make the distinction. Either way, that was enough to remove the book from my consideration.

The changes to the d20 license aren't going to make me buy the book.

Now, on with the rant.

Publishing RPG books is a rather large gamble. Returns are notoriously small, and most businesses survive only by carefully controlling their expenses. Certainly, very few companies could afford to remain in business if required to issue a recall on one or more of their products. By adding a content clause to the d20 license, Wizards of the Coast have set a precedent, allowing them to dictate what is and is not acceptable in a d20 product, rather than simply providing rules on how to call attention to the need for the PHB, and so on. Further, since these changes are retroactive, they have shown that they can, and will, kill the publication of books as they see fit.

What this means is that a company could put out "The Big Book of Toasters" just before Wizards were due to launch their own line of bread-based products. Wizards could then, in theory, adjust the license to kill the competing product. I'm not suggesting that they necessarily would, merely that they could.

The net effect of this is that an aspiring d20 publisher would have to consider the risk/reward benefit of using the d20 license, rather than just the OGL license (which cannot be changed retroactively). And, I suspect a significant number of publishers may well choose to go that route.

Then again, I'm just a player, with no plans of ever running a d20 business, so what do I care?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I have said should be taken as legal advice. Although, quite who would take legal advice from some clown posting on a Blog on the internet is a mystery I hope never to learn the answer to.

Intimidate and Charisma

Another of the d20 rules that is often said to not make sense, but really does is the association between the Intimidate skill and the Charisma attribute. "Why is the slim 150-pound half-elf Bard better at intimidation than my 250-pound half-orc barbarian?" goes the argument.

This discounts the fact that the player asking the question had the opportunity to assign a high score to Charisma, but never mind. Let's deal with the argument rather than the munchkin :-)

The basic problem with the argument is that it reflects a common misconception amongst gamers that high Charisma is tied to good looks, or at least being well-spoken. Neither of these is necessarily true. Certainly, it is unlikely that Napoleon, Julius Caesar or even Abraham Lincoln would have won any beauty contest, but there are few who would argue that they don't have high Charisma scores. By contrast, the character Harmony in Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be considered very attractive, but clearly has a very low Charisma (and Wisdom, and Intelligence, but that's another matter). Similarly, it's not hard to picture a nobleman army lietenant who is perfectly well-spoken, but gets not one whit of respect from the men under his command, or a foul-mouthed drill sergeant who gets the best out of the troops.

No, Charisma is not particularly tied to appearance or eloquence (although it can be). Instead, Charisma represents the strength of a character's personality, and the ability to affect others. Essentially, it's the 'mental' equivalent of Strength, in the same way that Intelligence is the counterpart of Dexterity, and Wisdom mirrors Constitution.

Now, to the specific issue of Intimidation. The classic example of intimidation is not the big guy browbeating a smaller guy into submission, as is often thought. Instead, we usually see a pair of hulking bruisers backing up a smaller guy, as HE intimidates the mark. Effectively, in terms of game rules, the bruisers are using the "Aid Another" action, to assist the smaller guy in his skill check.

Still, that doesn't really address the issue. Instead, we need to accept that the guy with the big muscles, but low Charisma, must fail to impress his point on the target. Perhaps his body language fails to impart the right message (when trying to intimidate, the big guy should try to tower over the smaller guy, and press him into a small space. Perhaps the low-Cha guy failed to do that). Or, perhaps his tone gives the small guy reason to believe that the big guy is bluffing. Whatever.

As for the frothing half-orc barbarian, what is needed here is a racial bonus to Intimidate checks, or a bonus to the same associated with Rage. And, if the player of the Fighter wants his character to be especially good at intimidation, there's always the much-maligned Skill Focus feat.

Where I will agree that there is a problem is the notion that Intimidate is a class skill for Barbarians, Fighters and Rogues, but not to any other class. Yet there is precedent for Wizards and Sorcerers being considered scary by virtue of their mystical might, regardless of whether they actually do anything mystical with it. (Consider the classic witch) Certainly, not ever Wizard should necessarily be good at intimidation, but making it a class skill doesn't guarantee that - Wizards have enough to spend their few skill points on anyway.

This latter comment applies to certain other skills, including Climb, Jump, Swim, Gather Information, Perform, Profession and Ride, which I feel should be class skills for everyone, allowing characters who are so inclined to gain ranks in these skills easily. I doubt few people would take advantage of these options, and the applications of these skills are hardly game breaking (some, like Hide, Use Magic Device and Tumble are potentially game-breaking if equally available to everyone). Still, that's another matter.

(Perhaps a better option would be to give 3 'floating' class skills that each character can choose, like in Exalted. Characters then treat these three as class skills for all their classes, for the duration of their career. The problem there is that the three skills I named above would be particularly popular choices, I think.)

Singularity Campaign Post-Mortem

Whenever I finish a campaign, I like to think back on it, and consider what I think went well, what I think sucked, and what I would do differently if I were to do it again. The Singularity Campaign is going to finish next week, and so here are a few of my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

d20 Mecha Crusade Mini-game

This was published as a Polyhedron bonus about a year ago, and is absolutely fabulous. That said, I have a few reservations:

• The rules are necessarily very lightweight. As a result, I feel there are a number of balance issues that cropped up during play that led to some PCs being utterly unkillable (especially when power-gamed) while others were horribly fragile in places.
  
• Having to maintain two different versions of the PC character sheets was a pain. Further, character management seemed to take up a huge part of the game time, which rather sucked. d20 is complex enough to make automated character sheets extremely useful - this campaign made such things far harder to use.
  

Military Campaigns The structure of this campaign was very much one of "here's your mission for this week. Off you go". That's fine for one-offs, but it didn't allow a lot of room for actual role-playing. Moreover, the challenges faced were very similar throughout the campaign, which made the Fast Hero the optimum choice of class for all PCs (by the end of the campaign, every PC had taken at least some levels in the class). This wasn't too good. Actual Gameplay The rules for the game were suitably simple (by d20 terms), and ran very well. It improved further once I got a handle on setting attack and damage bonuses, which led to opponents providing a genuine threat. I certainly enjoyed the challenge of building more interestign combat situations, which I'll carry over into other games. Doing It Again To be honest, I doubt I'd run this campaign again - the structure was just too limited. I don't think there were any gaping flaws in DMing or the rules that I could have improved, but it was all a bit dull, especially nearer the end. What I am inclined to do is retrofit the mecha rules for use in Star Wars d20, should I ever run a campaign in that setting again. By stripping the melee combat aspect of Mecha, providing a number of fighter wing options, and changing a few rules, we gat a very simple and very respectable starfighter combat system, that provides an appropriate vehicle for use. Before I do that, though, I'm going to have to pick up a copy of Star Wars d20 Revised. My Next Campaign
I'm getting a hankering to run D&D again, so I think that'll be my next campaign. However, I'm going to be taking a stint playing Exalted first, which looks interesting.

Building Tone

In the past week or so, I've been giving a fair amount of thought to tone within role-playing games, mostly spurred on by the destruction of the horror tone in Roger's game, for which I must accept a large part of the blame (not all, certainly, but I did essentially crush the first session under a mass of humour).

It strikes me that the default tone of an RPG campaign is inevitably going to be fairly lightweight, free-wheeling, and with a fair dash of "comedy" in the mix. I say "comedy" since it seems to involve weekly repetitions of certain jokes, quotes and themes from selected sources, which tends not to be all that funny.

It is certainly possible for RPGs to have a different tone, it just takes a fair amount of work. So, in the hope of generating a bit of discussion, here are some thoughts on generating a different tone. I'm going to focus on horror and comedy, diametrically opposite tones, as these appear to be the hardest to achieve.

Rule 1: The Rules Will Not Help You

It's obvious what this means. However, I should clarify it a little. What I mean by this is that adding rules to simulate a horror/comedy feel won't help you generate that tone in itself. Ravenloft has rules for fear/horror checks, which are singularly useless in building the tone. Vampire has rules for Frenzy and Rotschreck, again useless (most players seem to welcome the chance to Frenzy, so they can ignore wound penalties). Rules for pratfalls, custard pies as weapons, and the like won't make a game funny. Sorry, but it's true.

This is not to say that the rules don't make any difference. A rules-light game is probably better for comedy, for instance, since it allows more focus to be placed on the doings of the game, rather than character management (which isn't funny at all). That said, you can probably run a decent comedy game with d20, if you set your mind to it - it's just more work.

Rule 2: Anything that Doesn't Build the Tone Detracts from It

If you're going for a horror (or really any serious) tone, ban alcohol from the game table. Strongly discourage off-topic conversations. Make sure the background music is either suitably dark, or switched off. No books should be present that are not directly relevant to the game (for this reason, reduce reliance on supplements to a minimum). Comedy, either on- or off-topic is the enemy of horror.

For comedy, alcohol probably helps. Background music should be suitably light, and would definately be helpful. Off-topic conversations aren't a big problem, as long as they are kept light.

Note that you can't build a tone without help from your players. It simply isn't possible to do horror if your players aren't going to go there. Similarly, comedy can't be pulled off if your players are going to laugh at you all the way - they need to be willing to laugh with you.

Rule 3: Character is Key

In both horror and comedy, characters are the key to a successful game. If I don't care about my character, there's no way you can make me afraid for him. In that case, you might as well not bother. Similarly, you'll never see a comedy with totally blank characters. Every character will have some sort of quirk or story to tell. Bad characters lead to a bad game.

To this end, if you're going for a specific tone, you really need to sit down with your players (literally or metaphorically), and build their characters with them. Okay, so a player wants a Dwarf Ranger. That's fine, but how exactly do you threaten that character? And I don't just mean, "use three orcs". That's not scary, it's pure mechanics.

Specific to horror, I should mention the nature of morality. In a horror game, there is very little moral ambiguity. Either a character is a hero, he is a villain, or he is an NPC. There is no middle ground. You can't effectively scare the standard bunch of self-absorbed morally-ambiguous "heroes". If they can't benefit from the situation, they'll try to leave, and if anyone or anything gets in the way, they'll happily throw it to one side.

Rule 4: Description Matters

"Up ahead, you see thirteen Balrogs in a row."

It should be hardly surprising that that isn't even remotely scary. Adding

"Make a fear check."

doesn't exactly help either. A well-described encounter with a single kobold can be rather more scary. The equivalent is true with comedy - a lot of comedy involves people hurting or embarrasing themselves in amusing ways, which really can only be conveyed with proper description. Get it right, or don't bother.

Rule 5: Make Sure the Pay-off is There

In a horror game, if the heroes go into the giant temple of ultime evil, they better damn well be hit with something truly nasty. If they meet your master villain, he should be every bit as scary as the setting deserves. As soon as the players are getting a bit blase about the dangers in your setting, you must kill off a PC. And you better damn well do it - if you wuss out on a kill, you can forget horror forever.

In a comedy game, you have to have a certain rate of laughs. Terry Pratchett's first Discworld novels are comedies. The latter ones aren't really, for this very reason. That's not to say they're not enjoyable, but they've changed from comedy to very light fantasy. If you can't pull off one good laugh every 20 minutes (on average), you're probably not doing comedy. At least, that's the measure that tells me that most of today's "sit-coms" aren't.

Rule 6: Once the Tone is Gone, it's Gone

There is exactly one horrific moment in the entirety of Star Trek that I can remember - Armus killed Tasha Yar in a totally arbitrary manner. Now, Star Trek isn't, and has never claimed to be, horror, so that's not a criticism. However, that's the sort of extreme you would need to go to to restore a horror tone ot a game, and even that might well not work.

Similarly, if a comedy game falls flat, any attempt you make to restore the tone will just come off as ever more tragic capering. Better simply to give it up.

So, if you go for a toe, and you lose it, there are two choices: accept the different tone that is generated, or fold the game.

Finis

That's all I have to say. Comments? Argument?

Death's Door

Well, for the first time in my current mini-campaign, I fudged a dice roll. Previously, I've made a few mistakes, mis-counting damage rolls, forgetting modifiers, or whatever, but tonight I deliberately changed a roll to allow a PC to live where he should have died.

The situation was desperate, and the PCs were in real trouble. The character in question had 64 hit points remaining, which meant he could probably survive two hits. The NPCs were carefully designed to hit about 50% of the time. So, when three of them attacked the lone PC, he was probably going to be okay.

Of course, all three hit. I was asked if I wanted to roll the damage behind a screen, but declined. The damage result came up at precisely enough to drop the character to -10 hit points. Dead. So, I fudged things. I allowed him an immediate roll to stabilise, which I did roll behind the screen (I rolled because the player wasn't there - but I like to think that that wasn't a factor in my actions; I would have done the same for a player who was there, and would probably have allowed them to make the stabilisation roll behind a screen). Anyway, the roll was passed, and the PC lived.

Tsk. Naughty GM.

That said, losing a PC sucks, especially when you're not there. And it may be worse when the campaign is winding down - I'm ending it in the session after next. Plus, I'm really not a fan of allowing a PC to go from perfectly healthy to dead as a doornail in a single roll.

So, I think in my next campaign I'll institute a house rule that no PC may be slain instantly by a single attack. The worst that can happen is that they'll drop to -9 hit points, and have at least one chance to stabilise. I'm not sure how this will mesh with such things as disintegrate spells, but then in 3.5e these spells have all been changed to avoid instant death anyway, so I doubt it will matter too much.

Oh, I should also point out that a PC who is already at negative hit points is on their own; once you're down your chances at grace have faded.

Any thoughts?

Re: Cheat!

I just thought I'd mention here that my PCs also made use of the "Aid Another" action to good effect tonight, so my guilt at screwing them over with it last week is no longer bothering me.

Size Modifiers

It's an odd thing that there are a couple of rules in d20 that make no sense logically, yet work rather well in implementation. For instance, there's the whole "armour makes you harder to hit" thing that keeps getting bounced around. However, the one that's been really bugging me for the past eight hours are size modifiers to AC and attack rolls.

The principle of the size modifier to AC is really simple, and doesn't need much justification: big things are easier to hit.

The difficulty comes with the size modifier to attack rolls, which is a bit more confusing. Why should a small character naturally be better at hitting things that a big one.

The reason is a pure rules dodge - if a small character is fighting a small character, neither should have any bonus or penalty due to size. However, it's easier to give a permanent +1 AC than it is to recalculate AC all the time (how often do such modifiers get missed?), so small characters are given a +1 to attack rolls as well. Thus, although both characters get a bonus, these cancel out, and any problem goes away.

It is also a consequence of this that medium characters don't need to apply an AC penalty when fighting small characters - the small characters get a +1 to hit which has the same mathematical effects.

The problem I've hit occurs where a character is riding in a mech. Since mecha give AC bonuses, it rapidly becomes almost impossible for a Medium character in a Colossal mech to hit the broad-side of a barn (assuming said barn is made out of refractalloy or the like). Add in NPC class-based defense bonuses, mecha ace class features, and dexterity bonuses (would any mecha pilot ever NOT have maxed out dexterity?), and it becomes ridiculous. Colossal mecha have the ability to single-handedly dominate the battlefield? Please. The damn things are useful for precisely one thing - to stand there and be shot at.

Still, we'll see what my players think, when their carefully maxed attack rolls change from an average of +11 to an average of +2. The enemy AC values will remain at a nice comfortably 24 or so, of course.

Cheat!

I've been having trouble coming up with anything much to say. However, here's a thought or two regarding hordes of NPCs, fighter wings in Star Wars, and the game last Saturday.

On Saturday, I faced my PCs with a huge number of enemies. Unfortunately, I botched slightly, in that the enemy were about two steps too powerful for them, and for the story I was planning on running. Still, adopt, adapt and improve. No-one died, so there's no huge problem. And, they think they know how to get out of this mess...

That's an aside - I was wanting to get to the point that I was bouncing some ideas I've had about how to handle fighter wings in Star Wars and similar games. Broadly speaking, I think a fighter wing should move and fight as a single unit, with what amounts to a single attack roll and damage tally from the whole wing in the round. My current thinking is that each fighter beyond the first should provide a +1 bonus to attack rolls and AC to the main fighter in the wing, with each successful hit on the wing as a whole either being assigned to a random member of the wing or shifted to a member of the wing at his choice, if a Pilot roll is made (I don't know a likely DC). The basic idea there is that damage is generally assigned randomly, but individuals could choose to "drop back far enough to cover you", as in Star Wars, effectively taking the hits for their buddy.

Anyway, as a first step to this, I decided to have to 'secondary' members of the wing instead make use of the "Aid Another" action in combat, with each member thus providing what amounted to a +2 bonus to attack rolls (only) to the main pilot. I did this because I didn't want to drop in some new house rules without telling my players, especially when they're untested rules.

This worked fine. The effect was that the wing hardly ever missed, but the energy resistance of my PCs' mechs negated most hits - as expected. I've commented on my thinking that mechs should provide an AC bonus OR hardness, but not both, before.

The only problem I had with it occurred half-way through the battle, when I chanced to look up the "id Another" action in the rule-book. At this point, I discovered that it only applied to melee attacks. Whoops.

Of course, people make mistakes all the time, and it wasn't as though the mistake had cost anyone their life, so no problem. That I then didn't confess my error, and continued using the ruling even after I knew it was wrong was another matter, though...

One of the problems I sometimes feel when running D&D (and similar d20 games) is that PCs gradually become so powerful that they become immune to all attacks from low-level NPCs. So, we can have a lone Barbarian facing off against a horde of orcs and win. I have no problem with this. However, they also tend to come out of the combat totally unscathed, since the NPCs all too often require a natural 20 to hit, which doesn't happen often. Henceforth, I think I'll counter this by having my orcs make extensive use of the aid another action. Just a thought.

I'll try to think of something a bit more interesting to post nearer the end of the week.

'Fixing' d20 Call of Cthulhu

Okay, I now have a solution to the 'ninja grandmother' problem found in Call of Cthulhu d20. As with all my other suggestions, this isn't original - it's nicked wholesale from Babylon 5.

Firstly, change the number of hit points characters receive. Instead of 1d6 + Con bonus at each level, give them 1d6+4 at 1st level, plus one for each additonal level. Constitution no longer provides a hit point bonus, but instead affects a wounded character's chance of stabilisation.

Secondly, replace AC with Defence Value (DV). This works exactly as does AC, but is calculated as:

DV = 10 + Reflex save modifier

So, a character with a +3 base Reflex save, and 14 Dexterity will have a total Reflex save of +5, and a DV of 15.

Thirdly, change armour so it no longer gives an AC bonus, but rather damage reduction. The DR value is equal to the normal AC adjustment divided by 3 (rounded down). This makes armour rather bland in the game, but given that it's not a focus of the game, this doesn't seem to be a huge problem. (Technically, the armours should also give Energy Resistances to the same amount, against all applicable forms of damage.)

And there it is.

Now, let's consider Ethel, our poster-gran for the new millennium. She's a 70-year old defensive hero, built with the standard array. In the previous example, she was able to effortlessly beat the crap out of 6 burly young security guards (1st level offensive hero).

Now, let's assume she has used the standard array of scores, and assigned S8, D10, C12, I14, W15, Ch13. Applying the adjustments for age (Old), we get S5, D7, C9, I16, W17, Ch15. We'll assume also that her two good saves are Fortitude and Will (since I have an easier time picturing a granny who's tough as old boots than one who can catch a fly with chopsticks). At 8th level, then, her base saves are F+6, R+2, W+6, which adjust to F+5, R+0, W+9 (she'd be R+4 if Reflex was a good save). Her DV is therefore 10+0 (or 10+4). Her BAB is +2, which modifies to -1 melee and +0 ranged. Finally, let's assume a hit die roll of 4 at 1st level, giving Ethel 4+4+7 = 15 hit points.

The burly guards have 10 in every stat, a poor Reflex save, and BAB +1. They have 7 hit points on average. Also, they're armed with clubs, doing 1d6 damage. DV is 10.

Let's give Ethel the benefit of the doubt, and assume she wins initiative (doubtful - they have better Dex than she does). She has a 50% chance of hitting one with her cane, for a whopping 1d4-2 damage (I have no idea what cane damage is). This most likely fails to knock out one of the guards. They then return the favour.

Each guard has a 60% chance of hitting (need to roll a 9 on d20. This would be 40% if Ethel had good Ref save). On average, they do 3.5 damage. So, Ethel takes an average of 2.1 damage from each guard, or an average of 12.6 damage per round.

The net result of this is that it takes the guards 12 seconds to subdue Ethel, who is unlikely to take down even one of them. This is still not ideal (Ethel could probably beat up 2 or 3 guards, which isn't right), but it's rather better than previously was the case. And we are dealing with a rather extreme example here.

I have one more thing to say: if you make these changes, it's important to check damages before using spells and similar powers. Any effect doing comparable damage to a Fireball will now be instantly fatal to any character in this game, which might not be what you want. So, these damages will need to be scaled down. That said, CoC doesn't have a lot of such effects, and it might be appropriate for many of the ones that it does have to be instantly fatal.

So, does this fix the ninja-granny objection to d20 Call of Cthulhu, and are there any other problems that need tackled?