The Worst: Thieves turned up to 11

And now for something completely different.

This is the fourth in my series of the Best & Worst bits that I have had the luck (or misfortune) to read in RPG products. Normal service will resume shortly...

In 1981 David Cook and Steve Marsh's Expert D&D rule book was published.

The highest level covered is 14th, and at 14th level Thieves have 99% success in all skills except Pick Pockets which is 125% and Hear Noise which is 1-5. Awesome.

What can the future bring for 15th level+ in the forthcoming Companion Set?

Thieves will therefore gain new abilities requiring greater skill and danger. These will include the ability to climb overhangs, upside down, ventriloquism, powers of distraction, and the ability to mimic voices.

Cool...

Roll on 3 years and Frank Metzner's Companion Set finally arrives. Flick through the book to find these promised gems...

Level	Open Locks	Find Traps	Remove Traps	Pick Pockets	Move Silently	Climb Walls	Hide in Shadows	Hear Noise
15	75	73	67	90	70	101	58	87

From 99% down to 58%??? What the £&*$? This is the epitomy of lame.

Unbelievably even at 25th level you aren't back up to your former status - in fact you need to wait until the Master rules come out and you rise to level 36 (!!!) before you get better than you used to be in all skills than you used to be at 14th level.

That's right: the game extends the game from 14 levels to 36 levels by... making 36th level the new 14th level.

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

In the long history of nerfing, this nerfing of the Thief has to be the nerf to end all nerfs. And the saddest thing? The thief was always the worst character class in the first place.

Wounds and Healing

Here are the rules about wounds and healing to go with the recent combat posts.

Effect of Incapacitation
If you're incapacitated then you die unless someone tends to you after the battle, but you don't need a healing skill to do this - anyone can stabilise you.
For purposes of healing, incapacitation counts as 5 wounds, but track these separately as you are incapacitated until all these 5 wounds have been patched or healed.

I was going to play that beating incapacitation by 10 means death, but this is approx 10% of incapacitations, and it seems a bit of an anticlimax, so it should probably be a survival roll. But this is a no-go area for my players, so I'm steering well clear of it. There was still a sense of danger as they dragged Flairin's unconcious body away from the Ice Golems who were advancing up the ice covered stairs towards them on Sunday night. Any advice welcome!

Effect of Wounds
In addition to giving your opponent a bonus in combat, wounds act as a penalty on all Athletic or Acrobatic activities (such as running speed, or climbing or swimming) and all saving throws (poison / spells).

Patching Wounds

At the end of a battle, someone with Healing skill may try and patch a wound (takes 1 minute, only one attempt by one person per wound). The target they need to roll to patch each wound is 10 + the number of wounds or patched wounds.

For example, a PC is wounded 4 times. The healer needs to roll 14+ for each of the 4 wounds. They roll 14, 10, 8, and 16, so two of the wounds are patched so the PC is now W2, P2. But if they are wounded again then they will need 15+ to be healed (as the patched wounds still count).

Healing Wounds

Wounds heal at the rate of one wound per day plus one patched wound per day. A healer can roll to patch a wound every day. Incapacitation wounds heal first.

I've gone with a healing skill, utilising magical properties of herbs (so this isn't medieval medicine), as a change from healing spells. The increasing difficulty works nicely in play - you can be badly wounded, patched up, and then be OK but dreading being wounded again.

Magical Healing
The only magical healing is Revive, which revives someone who is incapacitated (but they still have 5 wounds which can be healed by a healer).

The rule is that spells should never directly make a skill redundant, so no open locks spell.

An example of Combat

To clarify my new combat system, let's take our sample PC, Morwulf:

Sword+Shield: P15/A5/K4;
7/10/13/16 (19);
Mail & Steel Cap:5

And pit him against a Kobold:

Sword: P14/A3/K0;
4/7/9/12 (14);
Leather: 2

(There's actually six kobolds, and they're going to come round the corner and fight him one at a time, but I'm not telling Morwulf that).

I'll play this by the book, with no fudging*, so I've no idea whether Morwulf will survive or not. I'm rooting for him (I hope you are).

For clarity I've put a prefix before any numbers so you see where they came from, R=Roll, A=Attack bonus, K=Kill bonus, W=Wound bonus.

COMBAT #1

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 6, Kobold 1.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 1+3 = 4. Attack = R4+A5 = 9. Miss (vs 14).
Kobold attacks: Rolls 3+3 = 6. Attack = R6+A3 = 9. Miss (vs 15).

Round 2
Initiative: Morwulf 4, Kobold 1.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 7+2 = 9. Attack = R9+A5 = 14. Hit vs 14! Rolls 5+6 = 11. Kill = R11+K4 = 15. Incapacitated.

One Kobold down. Now home with the loot. Hang on, what's that?

COMBAT #2

A second Kobold walks round the corner...

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 3, Kobold 6.
Kobold attacks: Rolls 7+5 = 12. Attack = R12+A3 = 15. Hit vs 15! Rolls 7+5=12. Kill = R12+K0 = 12. Wound 2.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 6+7 = 13. Attack = R13+A5 = 18. Hit vs 14! Rolls 9+7=16. Kill = R16+K4 = 20. Incapacitated.

Morwulf is licking his wounds, but he's also looting a second body. Oops - perhaps he should have scarpered...

COMBAT #3

A third Kobold walks round the corner... Morwulf is still wounded.

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 3, Kobold 5.
Kobold attacks: Rolls 3+1 = 4. Attack = R4+A3+W2 = 9. Miss vs 15!
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 5+5 = 10. Attack = R10+A5 = 15. Hit vs 14! Rolls 0+5 => (2+4)+5 = 11. Kill = R11+K4 = 15. Incapacitated.

Another Kobold felled with a one shot. Morwulf knows he should leave, but there's a pouch hanging round that Kobold's neck just inviting him to...

COMBAT #4

A fourth Kobold walks round the corner... Morwulf is still wounded.

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 4, Kobold 6.
Kobold attacks: Rolls 4+5 = 9. Attack = R9+A3+W2 = 14. Miss vs 15!
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 3+7 = 10. Attack = R10+A5 = 15. Hit vs 14! Rolls 0+9 => (0+4)+9 => (9+8)+4+9 = 30. Kill = 30+4 = 34. Decapitated! (Kill the monster by 10 and I'll let you narrate a gory demise).

Despite his fantastic blow, Morwulf scarpers. He runs into the next room and finds...

COMBAT #5

A fifth kobold standing in the room (it's a Quantum Kobold). Morwulf is still wounded.

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 3, Kobold 3.
Simulltaneous resolution...
Kobold attacks: Rolls 5+6 = 11. Attack = R11+A3+W2 = 16. Hit vs 15! Rolls 2+9 = 11. Kill = R11+K0+W2 = 13. Wound 3 for total of W5. Poor Morwullf.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 8+8 = 16. Attack = R16+A5 = 21. Hit vs 14! Rolls 5+2 = 7. Kill = R7+K4 = 11. Wound 3. Yay Morwulf!

Round 2
Initiative: Morwulf 2, Kobold 2.
Simulltaneous resolution...
Kobold attacks: Rolls 5+4 = 9. Attack = R9+A3+W5 = 17. Hit vs 15! Rolls 8+3 = 11. Kill = R11+K0+W5 = 16. Wound 4, for a total of W9. Morwulf is not looking too happy.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 2+1 = 3. Attack = R3+A5+W3 = 11. Miss vs 14!

Round 3
Initiative: Morwulf 5, Kobold 6.
Kobold attacks: Rolls 2+2 = 4. Attack = R4+A3+W9 = 16. Hit vs 15! Rolls 2+2 = 4. Kill = R4+K0+W9 = 13. Wound 3, for a total of W12. Morwulf is looking at the DM in an accusatory fashion.
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 0+5 => (5+0)+5 => 5+(6+0)+5 => 5+6+(6+1)+5=23. Attack = R23+A5+W3 = 31. Hit vs 14! Hits by more than 10 so he gets an extra kill dice (No, I haven't mentioned that rule before). Rolls 6+9+2 = 17. Kill = R17+K5+W3 = 25. Another dead Kobold.

Morwulf limps for the exit, rounding the last corner what should he find standing between him and the exit?

COMBAT #6

A sixth Kobold guards the exit. Morwulf will not play with this duplicitous DM again. It's the last one, but Morwulf had better win initiative and one-shot it or it's curtains for Morwulf - he's wounded 12 and can barely stand.

Round 1
Initiative: Morwulf 1, Kobold 3.
Kobold attacks: Rolls 3+6 = 9. Attack = R9+A3+W12 = 24. Hit vs 15!. Not enough for an extra kill dice though. Rolls 1+4 = 5. Kill = R5+K0+W12 = 17. Morwulf can't believe his luck. Wound 4 for total of W16!!!
Morwulf attacks: Rolls 0+5 => (7+3)+5=15. Attack = R15+K5 = 20. Hit vs 14! Rolls 5+9 = 14. Kill = R14+K4 = 18. Dead kobold #6.

Against all the odds Morwulf limps out of the dungeon alive! It would have gone better if he'd healed himself between battles, but sadly for him I haven't posted those rules yet.

Counting his loot he's got 15sp. He's also killed 6 Kobolds at 8xp a shot, so 8*6+15 = 63xp, which he'll find out later gives him 6 skill points to spend, but only when I post those rules next month ;-)

*if I fudge Raven Crowking will have my guts for garters.

Damage as Wounds, not Hit Points

Now up until now in this blog I've given rules /suggestions which may be used in many games: stat generation, height and weights, open dice, initiative, mapping dungeons, and sizing things up. These rules may be used piecemeal and are easy to try out. Today's rule is a departure from this as it's a fairly major game changer; you can't drop this rule into the middle of an ongoing campaign!

After playing D&D for a couple of years as a family our first campaign came to an end, and we turned to Star Frontiers and Marvel Super Heroes for a change of scene. As we were already playing a heavily house ruled game I asked if there were any rules that the players wanted changing for the next D&D campaign. My eldest son said that he didn't like having lots of hit points at high level - he wanted there to always be a chance that a sword hit could kill you - and he didn't like armour reducing the chance to hit.

The system described below is the end result, and we've been using it for the last nine months. It aims to be simple, short, and fast; scalable for larger monsters and higher level PCs; keep the lethality of Old School play but not be so lethal that you can never progress.

Parry / Attack / Kill / Wounds
Everyone has three main fighting stats - Parry (the number needed to hit you), Attack (the bonus on your attack roll), and Kill (the bonus on your kill roll).

When you are hit you can suffer a Minor (W1), Moderate (W2), Major (W3), or Severe (W4) wound, or Incapacitation.
You have thresholds for these different types of wounds. Your armour adds on to each threshold.

For example, here are the values for a character with Incap 14, Armour 5:

SURVIVAL	W1	W2	W3	W4	INCAP
BASE	2	5	8	11	14
ARMOURED	7	10	13	16	19

For short we can write for example:
Sword+Shield: P15/A5/K4;
7/10/13/16 (19);
Mail & Steel Cap:5

Attack Roll
Attack rolls are pretty standard. You roll a 2d10 (open) attack roll, adding an attack bonus, and need to match the defender's parry.
Note that parry includes your shield, but does not include armour.

Kill Roll
When you hit something, you make a 2d10 (open) "Kill" roll, adding your Kill bonus, and see how wounded your opponent is.

Note that you always roll the same dice for every attack, even a dragon. Dragons just get a BIG kill bonus.

Tracking Wounds
You track the total amount of wounds, not individual wounds. For example if you have a minor (W1) wound followed by a severe (W4) wound, then you are wounded 5.

We track these wound values during combat by putting a red d6 against wounded PCs and a green d6 against wounded Monsters (on account of me having boxes of small red & green d6!). If anyone's wounded by more than 6... you find a bigger dice.

You only need to make a note of the final wound values at the end of the combat.

Effect of Wounds
The effect of a wound is to give your opponents a bonus on both their attack roll and their kill roll.

Wounds themselves never kill you, they make it easier for someone to incapacitate you.
By using dice to record wounds, you don't have to ask what the bonus is, since you can see it.
Being wounded does not affect how dangerous your attacks are, it just makes your opponent more likely to hit you, and more likely to kill you if they do hit you.
Hence being wounded moves the combat towards a conclusion, but it is never a foregone conclusion, there is no "death spiral".

Note that wounds are relative to the creature - a W3 is as bad for a dragon as a W3 is for a giant rat. W4 is the worst possible wound from a single attack in either case.

Consequences
No fight is a foregone conclusion: although a high level fighter is much, much better than a first level fighter just starting out, a lucky hit from that first level fighter might win the fight in the first round, so don't get complacent!
When you are hit, all your opponents get a bonus on to hit and to kill. Even being wounded 1 has an effect.
One consequence we've found is that a high level party meeting a bunch of Orcs becomes a much more meaningful encounter.

Inspiration from FASERIP?

My list of sizes looks remarkably similar to the numbers in the Universal Table from Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP), but in a quirk of timing I developed the system whilst we were playing Star Frontiers and just before I'd read the FASERIP rules (after an endorsement of them by ZakS), but I should give them a shout-out as the earliest such progression I've seen in RPGs:

The real oddity in this system is that normally every other category doubles, except 2->4 and 10->20 where it doubles in a single category. Very strange. I'd have gone with 4, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75, 100, 150.

Anyone know why it's such an odd progression?

Ten Examples of When Size Matters

In my last post I introduced ranks for measuring things, now it's time to apply that by seeing how it can answer 10 completely different questions.

Note that Explore doesn’t have hit points, it uses a saving-throw mechanic, so in this discussion I refer to “Kill” and “Survive” instead of damage and hit points. +3 on kill makes you twice as likely to kill something, +3 on survive makes you twice as likely to survive. You could adapt this system to use damage and hit points.

Q1: What are the stats for a Dwarf?

Humanoids are given a size which affects both height and weight, then an extra negative height mod for short & stout races, or positive height mod for tall & thin ones.

A Dwarf is size -1, but they’re short and stout so get an extra height mod of -1. So 6’ becomes 4’6'' (@ -2) and 180lbs becomes 125lbs (@-1). (There’s a simple lookup table for converting exact heights).

The size -1 also gives them -1 on Athletics and Kill. They have +1 hardiness, which cancels out this penalty, so they get +0 for Survive and Encumbrance.
So 4'6'', 125lbs, -1 Athletics, -1 Kill.

Q2: What are the stats for a Giant?

If it’s double the height/length, then the Giant version of any monster is Size +3, Weight +3, which gives it +3 to Strength, Kill, and Survive. This applies the same to humanoids, wolves, and crocodiles.

Q3: What are the stats for a Stone Statue?

An increase in density is always accompanied by a matching increase in weight, or decrease in size.

So a stone version of a monster is +3 density and +3 weight, which gives it +6 to Strength and Kill, +3 to Armour (for density), and +3 to Survive (for weight).

Q4: Can my Halfling use this Ogre’s magic dagger as a sword?

A normal dagger is 1’4’’, but this Ogre is size +3 so its dagger is size +3, or 2’, which is the size of a short sword; so they can use it as a magic short sword.

Q5: How much does my Halfling’s armour weigh?

Mail Hauberk over a quilted doublet with a Steel Cap normally weighs 16+3+1 = 20 lbs. At size -3, each item is -3 weight ranks, or 6+1+6 oz= 7lb 6oz (there are race-specific equipment lists). This reduction matters if you bother with tracking encumbrance!

Q6: How much is that golden statue I just killed worth?

Its density is +9, so it weighs 180lbs +9 ranks gives 4,000 lbs = 64,000 oz = 64,000 gp! I'd suggest to the DM to make it lead coated with gold... Still, at +18 kill, +9 armour, +9 survive you’re unlikely to kill it.

Q7: Can my PC survive a fall of 200’?

A fall of 10’ is a +0 survival roll, each +1 rank on the height of the drop gives +1 on the roll.
200’ is more than 160’, but not as big as the next value, so that’s +8 on the Kill roll. And you don’t get to take damage reduction from your armour. Ouch!

Q8: What is the Kill bonus for my ballista?

The ballista is just a large crossbow with the same range. My ballista is 5’ wide where my light crossbow is 1’8’’, so that’s Size +8, which means it’s +8 on Kill (you’re unlikely to survive a hit!). The bolts are 2oz +8 size => 2lbs.

Q9: What negative do I get when shooting 90’ away?

The standard distance for all missile weapons is 20’. Beyond that you get -1 on your attack roll per rank. 90’ falls into the 80’ rank, so is -4 attack. (A target nearer than 20’ doesn’t give you a bonus unless the target is prone).

Q10: I'm not strong so get -3 to kill on my spear throw. Does this affect how far can I throw it?

The range of a spear is 225’. Your -3 on kill means you’re not throwing it hard enough, so you get -3 range, which is 80’

Sizing Things Up

By way of explanation: This blog mostly consists of extracts from my homebrew system Explore, but they should mostly be applicable to any other system which is vaguely OSR related due to a shared heritage. Explore is a traditional role playing game of exploration / adventure / intrigue in a world of swords / sorcery / monsters. The rules have been iteratively developed and refined through the fire of play testing (I have very critical players!) in an attempt to make them as simple as they can be without losing their vital essence.

I've previously given a system of heights and weights of humans, which leads to the obvious question of heights and weights of other races. Here below is a unified system of measures and related bonuses, which in particular can be applied to the heights and weights of non-humans. My desire to find such a system has it's origin in the observation that it's very tricky to work out a consistent set of such bonuses, and I always find myself querying these bonuses in other systems, so such a system makes it much easier for me! As usual you can adapt this to other systems.

By "unified system of measures" I mean I’d like the same system for working out what damage penalty a Halfling gets compared to a human, and for working out what damage bonus a giant wolf gets compared to a standard wolf, and in fact for working out what damage bonus a statue made out of stone might get, or what bonus a ballista might give compared to a crossbow. And it’s got to give sensible answers. And it’s got to be simple.

Firstly I borrow from a popular idea for simplifying encumbrance - precise weight is not important (the earliest reference I know of this is Delta's weighing things in stones), and apply this to all measures. (So everything is measured to the nearest rank)

Secondly I continue the principle from my open dice system that +1 always means the same percentage increase. (So there is a fixed ratio increase between ranks)

Thirdly I link the different measures and bonus system, so that if you increase the height of a creature by one rank, you also make it +1 weight and +1 damage and +1 strength.

Let's start with weights:

Weight

Weights are given in pounds, and every two categories the weight doubles:

1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 45, 64, 90, 125, 180 etc.

Things will only ever be given a weight from that list.

How much does a Giant weigh?

If a 6’ human weighs 180lbs, how much should a 12’ giant of the same build weigh?

You might expect it to go up 2^3 = 8 times, but the general consensus appears to be that weight goes up at a power of 2.5, so 2^2.5 = 5.7 = approx 6 times. In our system of weights this means a size of +5 ranks, which is a weight of 1000lbs. Hence for +1/-1 in weight rank to match +1/-1 in height rank, the height ranks must double every +5.

Addendum - see Squaring The Cube for a discussion of this rule.

Height

Heights are given in feet and inches, and every five categories the height doubles:

3', 3'6'', 4', 4'6'', 5',

6', 7', 8', 9', 10', 12’, 

etc.

Again heights of things are only ever given from this list.

Note that characters have more precise heights and weights, but that's purely for flavour.

Inanimate objects

Surprisingly this rate of increase also works for inanimate man-made non-solid objects such as clothing or tables. As a table gets larger you have to make the legs thicker, so they go up by more than the square of the size, but they don’t need to be made as much thicker, so they don’t go up by as much as the cube of the size. Hence a giant’s sword (like the giant) is twice as long, and is six times as heavy.

How strong is a Giant?

The height bonus for a Giant of +5 translates into a +5 damage bonus purely because of their size (they will probably get another +3 for being strongly built for a total of +8), which seems reasonable.

Am I dense?

If you increase the density of a weapon (keeping it the same weight), then it concentrates the force and hence the damage. For density we keep with the same +2 categories = double the density (This is so that +1 density has to be accompanied by -1 size or +1 weight).

Density

Densities are given in pounds per square foot, and every two categories the weight doubles:

50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 300 etc.

For example, Animals are 50 lb/sq foot (as is water, ice, and wood), Stone is 150 lb/sq foot.

Note that for simplicity we assume that density and strength of a material are the same, which means we have to include a slight fudge - there is an ad-hoc rule where a human punch is less deadly which would not apply for example to a stone one.
So, how about a human-size statue made out of stone?

How strong is a Statue?

Stone has +3 density compared to flesh, but the statue is the same size so it is also +3 weight. So the statue is 6' tall, 150  lb/sq foot (+3), weighs 500 lb (+3) and is +6 damage.

Speed versus Size
Now the speed of an animal is more affected by their build than their size; small animals tend to scurry and large animals tend to plod. So I'm having Halflings and Giants move at the same speed as humans. Similarly I'm having their maximum speed they can throw things to be the same (Giants can just throw heavier items - they can throw a small boulder as far as I can throw a tennis ball).

A range of values
So what about range? How does throwing something faster and further affect damage?
If a giant hits me with a sword he gets +5 damage, and so if he throws a spear at me you’d also want +5 damage.

The spear's +5 damage comes not from increased speed / range, instead it comes from the +5 weight.

We're going to assume that the damage comes from increased Kinetic Energy, thus it is proportional to the velocity squared, thus proportional to the range.
So if +5 range gives the same bonus as +5 weight, range doubles every other rank, like weight.

Range / Drop

Ranges and drops are given in feet, and every two categories the weight doubles:

10', 15', 20', 30', 40', 60', 80', 120', 160', 240', 320', 480', 640', 960'

(Drops have the same maths as Ranges, so they use the same ranks).

So that's enough explanation for now. In the next post I'll cover in the next post examples of how to use this quickly for many different purposes.