Minimalistic D&D part V: Hirelings and Morale without Charisma

First and foremost, I've retooled the 2d6 morale roll to a 1d6 roll (roll equal or lower to stay in the fight). The real reason is that all the other mechanics I'm writing use 1d6 too, so it makes the rules prettier overall, but its hard to admit this vain part of me. The reason I tell myself is that it allows me to change the 2-12 range of morale in monsters to one with less granularity and that makes it easier for me to adscribe a rating to a monster based on their description.

morale 11-12 becomes 6 (mindless undead, never flees) 

morale 9-10 become 5 (really brave or mad warriors, dire animals, uruk hai or dragons)

morale 8 becomes 4 (monsters with martial training, annoyed predators, etc)

morale 7 becomes 3 (annoyed peoples, common predators when not overhungry, 50% chance to flee)

morale 5-6 becomes 2 (if a monster is sort of coward-ish, herbivore animals, etc)

morale 4 becomes 1 (mostly not combatants, rust monsters, etc)

Then we get to the next part: This rules I'm writing in this rule series have no attribute scores for characters, so I don't have charisma to determine number or loyalty for hirelings. 

For the number, I don't yet know what to do. Maybe base the cap on gold alone: if you can pay them, you can buy them. There is something I like about independizing charisma from hirelings, which is that I can treat hirelings as belonging/following to the whole party instead of a single PC individual, which makes more sense to me. This and reaction rolls I feel that could work better if adressed by the group as a whole.

The downside is that being "communal" and independent from charisma, PCs might lose some agency over the behavior of their henchmen. The upside is that when you die and must roll a new character, you can pick any of your common hirelings instead of your personal ones. Is like a common pool for second characeters.

For the loyalty: Whenever you find a tavern/inn/town in which 1dX hirelings are available, you roll for their morales secretly: 3d6 keep lowest. Sum the other 2 dice: that's the price he reclaims per month/adventure/whatever. The idea is that it gives you an idea of his morale without really telling you.

Morale 1 or 2 for torchbearers or sages, 3 and 4 for bandits or men at arms. Morale 5 is for this mysterious strangers smoking on the dark table by the bottom room. Maybe I could make a table of hirelings or something, with one special trait for each, like "+2 morale when tainted with jewels" "will steal from you" "morale drops to 1 in presence of spiders" etc.

When confronted with danger, they roll morale, not loyalty or anything. Their morale increases overtime somehow, with 5 being the maximum. 

When you give them an order that is not obviously dangerous they probably accept, mostly if it falls within their expected job. 

Loyalty takes two shapes: +1 to any morale roll derived from your orders if they have survived an adventure with you and +1 if you have some relevant special feat that allows you to be more charismatic than common people.

This rules can apply to Searchers of the Unknown or Here is some Fucking D&D, which I tried to scourge for hireling rules being both of them attribute-less. Just to find they hadn't any.

Alternativelly, there is another approach: to ditch all this post entirelly and to have monsters roll for reaction again at 50% hp left.

On the next chapter I'll probably steal something to abstract distances and get rid of counting feet altogether for this game.

High on grid // "allweaponsdod6damage but..."

 I'm running a game for friends who want to play D&D because they saw it on Stranger Things. They are in for the minis and they want to play with them because they use them on the show, no negociations. At first I tried to tell them that miniatures are optional, that I never used them. But they passed it on me in the end: I thought "what the fuck why not" and now I'm searching for cheap second hand warhammer Rohan warriors. 

Though I started playing rpgs with grids by drawing little combats in a squared notebook, I've trained myself to use abstract combat afterwards. But now that I'm bound to use it, I'm trying to devise ways in which to use it to its greater potential. I don't want to change things that are not broken (not re-defining combat or anything). But there are nebulous things that could be improved.

As in Basic D&D all weapons do d6 damage, the distinction between weapons could be how do they behave on a grid (ranged weapons already work that way with the "short-medium-long" ranges)

Spears, for example, could use their long shaft to strike in all directions, including diagonals (red and yellow arrows) while shortswords can only strike in the cardinal directions (yellow arrows). This makes swords and spears equally functional on 1 square wide corridors (which makes a lot of sense). You can make spears so they can also attack things 1 square away in the cardinal directions. Maybe is too unrealistic but if it follows game logic its OK for me.

Two handed swords and greataxes can affect all guys on an L shaped area around the wielder (because an L looks to me shaped like a slash), like in this picture, highlighted in green. This can work with systems with variable weapon damage by having the sword doing d8 damage to one target OR d6 to all in that area. Or maybe straight d8 in area.

Certain magic swords can also strike on cone or square area (a sword capable of summoning whirlwinds or sending flame waves, maybe) and certain magic items could improve your movement rate by some squares per turn (all the humanoid monsters/pcs have similar movement rates: 2 or 4 feet in combat, though I abstract it in 2 or 4 squares because I'm european and I dont want to learn what a feet or a yard are). Having a +1 square per turn is the edge to outrun that monster that moves just at your same rate.

Every other problem that arises with the game, I'll try to solve it or balance it by making up shit with the grid. Let's see what happens. 

Minimalistic D&D-like, part 4: Surprise, reaction, treasure rolls

Reaction and Surprise rolls, when apply, are made once for the whole party involved. Certain monsters have bonuses or penalties to this rolls integrated on them.

Reaction rolls:

1, 2, 3- Monster is immediately hostile
4, 5 - Monster is neutral for now. Maybe its studying you or maybe just minding its own business. Dont disturb it! You might also try to befriend it.
6 - Monster is friendly. Some monsters might make offers when this happens.

Possible mods: disadvantage if you've hurt similar monsters recently, if it hates the light of your torch, if you're armed, etc. Advantage if you give a sign of respect or share an alignment, etc. (like in 5e: roll an extra die and choose the most advantageous/disadvantageous)

Each monster entry in the guide might have specifics guidelines on their behaviors for each reaction type. An hostile bandit might try to rob the players by force, a neutral one might try to lure them by feigning partnership, but a friendly one might honestly try to sell them loot, or honestly propose the party to join him in a dishonest job.

Note for myself: It can also be done by not having a reaction table at all, but having each monster to have a random list of dispositions on their descriptions. 

Surprise:

1 - Monsters get the drop on you: Only monsters act the first round
2 - Monsters get the first turn
3 - Monsters get the first turn
4 - You get the first turn
5 - You get the first tutn
6 - You get to surprise the monsters: Only PCs act in this round

This roll can be made w.ith advantage or disadvantage on certain situations: for example, hobgoblins always force a disadvantage, while sneaking on distracted guards gives you advantage.

After one side plays a turn, the other side plays one, until all characters have acted their turns. Each side decides who goes from among their members

Treasure

Instead of having treasure types, having each monster have a treasure rate that represents the overall richness/status of the monster. Then you roll for treasure once or more times, depending on the time the monster has spent looting. 

For example, having a crew of patrolling goblins have 1d6-2 treasure hidden somewhere. A dragon rolls 2d6, and you roll three to five times depending on its age.

Then there should be a table like this:

1 - No treasure/personal items.
2 - Personal tools
3 - 10 GP
4 - 50 GP
5 - 100 GP
6 - Magic item
7 - 500 GP
8 - 500 GP (in jewelry)
9 - 500 GP (in masterwork)
10 - Scroll or Magical consumable
11 - Special (prisoner, secrets, notes, information)
12 - 1000 GP

Minimalistic D&D-like, part 3: Saves

Part of a series building a game without levels, hit dice, ability scores or classes. The main resolution is 1d6 for everything.

As a quick recap, numerically and chemically speaking, characters have:

#Hit Points, and some power ups derivated from their amount (+ac and +attacks per round)

#Spell Points per day, and some power ups derivated from their amount (+magic resistance and power) and a list of spells known

#Specials (like being strong, an animal companion, or whatever that is a significative trait but is not a spell)

So, without any level-related characteristic to increment the saving throws, how can we deal with such things when they arise? I'll run over the most common "Save Or" states to see what can be done. 

"Partake of the fruit!!"

Poison: 

* "You drank poison... you died". This can actually work if the poison was telegraphed well enough. I think its even on an actual Raggi's module. Still, you can give the poison 2d6 turns to take effect, in which healing actions can be attempted. Sucking out the venom in the case of snakes, or applying an antidote, for example.  Shifting more agency to the equipment is another of my goals, so, in that line, buying antidotes for different venoms can be something interesting for adventurers to invest in. 

* The person who poisoned you might know or even carry the antidote.

* If it's deadly over time, roll 1d6 and keep that number. For every night or every strenous action you take, decrease the number by 1. Getting rests or treatment lets you re-roll, and maybe heal on a 6. 

* For creatures that can poison you, make it so they need to hit you. Maybe even apply a certain amount of damage (for example, if they score exactly 1 damage) and skip the save altogether. In the end the randomization is the same. If it seems unfair, its because the monster makes the roll, not the victim. But in the end it's the same.

* Poison doesn't have to be deadly: it can be paralizating or narcotic. For example, make it so the effect lasts (1d6-1) turns/hours/whatever.

* Let's not forget the magical solutions: Neutralize Poison is a cleric spell. 

Dragon breath: 

* This is just a dragon attacking, it just covers a big area, but its the same nonetheless. Just take the damage from the hit points, which are already a measure of how likely you are to survive an attack. I happen to have had a good idea for dragon breath and I leave it here for posterity (keep in mind that damage is scaled to an hypotetic game):

"Everyone in range of attack gets 1d6 damage, rolled separately. Then the smallest dice rolled deals damage again to ALL victims"

This way, the more people is attacked, the smallest the extra die will be. Using the same attack, the dragon will do statistically more damage to a single target (average 7, good chance of 12 hp) than to a group of targets (average drops towards 4'5, chances of more than 7+ hp decrease drastically with every new target). This models nicely the concentration of fire of the dragon and can be played around using decoys or even hirelings. But you will never do that, would you?

* The use of shields or any other blockage can shelter you from a little damage versus dragon breath. Of course, magical shields vs dragonbreath are even better, and should be one of the most ubiquitous magic items on any fantasy game that behaves realistically.

Petrification: 

* If players are savvy enough, they will activelly look away from the gaze of the basilisk. If they accept the (-1) penalty to attack rolls, they wont be turned into stone. Unless, you know, they roll a 1 or under. I'm against botch rolls in games, but they can be used in special situations like that. If they botch a roll attacking or running from the basilisk, they are turned to stone.

* You can make it less deadly: you don't turn into rock in a snap: instead you are paralyzed and you have 1d6-1 turns until you become solid rock. Anyone breaking line of sight between the basilisk and you will have you released in 1 turn (be it by covering you with a blanket, shooting an arrow into the basilisk eye, turning off the light, etc). Same for gorgons.

* On the "inventory" side, you can find:

- amulets against petrification (they break when you would otherwise be petrified)

- antidotes against petrification (like a "soft" from FFVII). You can make them cheap (and only works on those that are half-petrified), expensive af (can undo a recent petrification) or mythic (will turn any stone statue to flesh)

- a flash grenade that impedes vision. Same with a darkness spell or provoking a great smoke into the room,

- buying or asking an artificer for sunglasses made of mirrors. 

- installing mirrors at the medusa's halls, then making her follow you so she run into herself at the turn of a corner

* Make it so the gaze must be sustained for a turn (so it will only work on immobilized or tricked PCs)

* Hit points are abstracted enough so they can represent avoiding harms different from physical damage. You can make it so the basilisk gaze deals 1d6 doom damage that ignores armor. Once you are at 0 hp, you are turned into stone.

* The Stone to flesh spell is a thing. There is no reason that you can even make up more spells that ward against more ailings if in need.

* If nothing convinces you, just deal with a death save (see below)

Spells: 

* Make the spells require a mistake from the players to be committed in order to take effect. For example, eating strange fruits from weird silent ladies in the middle of a dungeon. Or make them require intimacy, or touch range. If you approach a weeping, encroached figure in a ghastly place, you can first weigh your chances and then take an action.

* As in poison, giving the spell a chance to work instead of working automatically accomplishes the same stastical function, though shifting the roll from the affected to the caster.

* Polymorph spells are not totally unfair if the target retains the agency in its new shape. Maybe you can play as a frog for a while, maybe even retain your hp and abilities. If you do polymorph, consider giving the players shapes that can still be played. 

* Again, certain inventory can be found or bought to protect from spells. This, paired with giving the spells a time to act (1d6 turns or 1d6 days) will also give players the chance to revert or minimize the damage. If you feel you've been hit by a sleep spell, you can try to eat coffee grains. If you are hearing a charming song, you can try to cover your ears (this makes you unable to hold or use weapons). Put on a walkman if you have one. Invent your share of magical antidotes, but also allow creative approaches. If some vines are coming out of the earth to grab you, dont bother with paralyzation rolls: you can try to cut them in time: give them an AC and start slashing. You can even try to scare or attack the wizard away in that 1d6 time. Who knows! 

* Spells that do damage, work as damage. Or even as dragon breath. Spells would otherwise paralyze can just hinder you slightly (penalties to rolls: you're feeling too cold to properly move, -1 to anything that requires finesse) or hard (penalties that are cumulative each turn: each turn, roll 1d6: on a 1, the chill gets worse: additional -1 and you will freeze completely when you get -3)

Death:

* When you suffer a grievous death, roll 1d6. On a 6, you get better. Fate favours you, something happens, whatever, but you are still OK. This roll can be modified by special things in game, such as having received the blessing of a princess before you had parted to your last quest (roll a second die, keep highest!) or by a healing spell by one of your comrades. EDIT: This also pairs nicely with another rule I made for monks and mummies: Get 1 free success for answering a question.

* Depending on the tone you want for your game, you can make it so this roll is only enabled after that certain things have happened, instead of being enhanced. Anyways, GM will describe something as absurd as the Naruto's resurrections if he must, but you won't die. 

polymorphed, no save.

Drudgeons and Dagons

This is something I have lying around for some time. Is not that I plan to really do anything with this for now, but man, this practically writes itself.

Though I really like Lovecraft, I've always felt that Chtulhu games are very limited in scope. As a player, you're there to find out about a mystery, but the usefulness of Agatha Christie style deductions is always confronted by the genre knowledge that there is a whole lot of supernatural causes and effects in motion; but that your character is supposed to be oblivious to. This causes some bad sync between PC and Player (unless the players do not know about the genre, which is also kind of cool)

But given that this blog is for now a collection of D&D rewrites, I ask myself: what if the PCs we're already initiated into the mythos and the players just have to worry about leveling up? 

All characters start as new members of a "good" cult, settled maybe in 1930's Miskatonic. The cult is dedicated to the preservation of the mythos knowledge, to prevent that it falls in the wrong hands and to combat those who might be using it for evil. Some kind of special agency against eldritch crime with minor rapport with the government. 

The only class is Drudgeon, 1d6 per HD. You get a skill to represent your background profession (Roll under INT to perform it, maybe) and you get spells as a cleric, from level 2 onwards. This represents the hidden knowledge your cult grants you, once you get more and more involved on the work for them. You might never get to advance combat, as in this world its mainly done through guns. Instead, you get buffs to HP and better Saves.

Instead of dungeons depleting your resources, you delve in towns, neighbourhoods, societies, etc which are suspected of mythos misuse activity, and the main resource you lose is time. 

When its a matter of hours, days are divided into six parts: Morning, noon, afternoon, evening, midnight and pre-dawn. When a mission is a matter of months or requires significant travel between two points, you only get morning, afternoon, evening. 

Attempting one action (interrogating a store owner, cracking into an abandoned house, going shopping, investigating a crime scene, etc) takes 1 day part, and might require a check: If the roll fails, no progress is done but you can try again. 

Losing enough time triggers events like:

1. Your enemies getting stronger: city gangster is to busy studying the practical uses for the Vermis Misteriis and has called some armed allies to patrol the streets searching for the missing idol.

2. Somebody attacks you or your team to sabotage your investigation

3. Valuable resources leave the area (a book, an idol) which would have granted you XP

4. Possible clues wither or witnesses leave the area, or are eaten by a stellar vampire. 

5. Eldritch spawns attack the area, ghoul awakening. Chances are that the happening makes mythos a public affair (it will be on the papers for some weeks until it starts to sound like somebody made it up)

6. The stars are right / Enemy Cult forces confrontation, so you must stand with anything you've got

This is what this game "wandering monster checks" look like. Of course, sometimes a wandering monster is just a monster: there is a bestiary, in which mostly anything is too tough to be shot down nicely (ghouls, cultists, fishmen... maybe. Byakhees? Non-Euclideans? hardly). Once we get to that, the only thing to defeat them is to use magic or ancient technology (The first game I ever ran was Pokethulu, and I love the concept of catching shoggots into shining dodecahedrons)

inspiration: The Last Door

I guess that the main thematic antagonistic forces of the time would be: evil cults, criminal gangs, private collectors, lone madmen, communist factions or maybe even nazis. The main reason for which I would probably never write this is because I'm not very learned on North America, much less early XXs century North America. But its the kind of game that would be cool to mix with actual events that happened around that era. I picture the mythos themselves being treated by the populace much like UFOs were later: most anybody has heard about them vaguely, but few really have dedicated time or resources to really investigate them. But of course there are independent individuals who are fascinated by it, and keep a scrapbook with all the weird reports they read on the printed press.

I want to resist to give this project a plain XP for mission. Following the milestone approach I made on there, I'd try to make it so there is always incentives for players to go forward on their own whims, if they see that the reward is good enough. Basically you level up once you cross out one of this:

[_] [_] Recovered an ancient book or relic

[_] [_] Sealed or repelled a powerful entity

[_] [_] Thwarted the plans of an mythos misuser without it trascending to public knowledge

[_] [_] Reported back information about a rival group (your GM will tell you when you have gathered enough information to earn this, but by then the problem is probably getting out of there alive)

[_] Deal with something pending from your past, that somehow is involved on an investigation (is your call to say how the current situation has to do with that, let your GM work the details)

2d6 under ability score: A system sketch

Expanding from the last entry, and opposed to all the other previous entries, in this one I devise a system without levels, classes, hit dice, etc. But the weight falls over the ability scores, and uses 2d6 for resolutions. But there are no +mods involved, only the scores themselves.

A good curve seems to be to roll 2d4 at the start to generate the scores. 6s are meant to be greater than average; and anything over 7 carries implicit superheroic feats. Saves are rolled with 2d6 under relevant stats, with only super-heroic characters able to stastically save more often than not.

The basic combat rules are that you roll 2d6 to attack, everything that exceeds the monster's AC is damage dealt. Longer weapons attack first. Over this premise, I explain some uses of each attribute:

STRENGHT: 

-When you attack with a heavy weapon, and roll your strenght or less, you can re-roll the smaller die.

-When you have strenght 7 or higher, you get a save vs death when at 0 hp

-The score is also the amount of big things you can carry

DEXTERITY

-Spend a turn aiming with a bow and roll 2d6: If under this score, you add +2 when shooting after.

-If you use a light weapon and roll less than your dexterity, you can diss your roll but get +1 AC this turn.

-You roll a save to catch or flee from a monster with higher dexterity. It doesn't have to roll anything, only the one with lowest score does.

-Over 7 you can perform acrobacy feats.

WISDOM (the magical stat)

-At 6, roll under it to use magical tools, detect magic and other minor magical skills 

-At 7 you can cast level 1 spells, at 8 you can cast level 2 and so on.

INTELLIGENCE (the mundane knowledge)

-At 6, you can use one set of specialist tools (Specialized kits detailed in the inventory: doctor bag, thief's tools, artificer, etc) or know an extra language.

-At 7 you can attempt to produce something you've been working on (state what it is at the moment) related to the tools you carry (poison, chemicals, a small gadget), and maybe more times per day at 8+

CONSTITUTION (which really just says how well a fighter you are, or a measure of you will to live): 

-The score is your HP. Armor adds to your AC, but some armors also add some HP.

-At 6 you always act before your opponent in combat providing there are no other substantial differences in leverage.

-At 7 you get +1 attack per round with any favored weapon

-At 8 you get +1 AC for free

-At 9 you get an extra attack regardless of weapon

CHARISMA

-I like to conceive it as a save vs manipulation, fear or some measurement of "self-integrity"

-Also the classic hireling numbers and their morale checks.

-If you use animal companions, you also use this for complex rapport with them.

-On monsters (because with this system, numeric values from monsters are also rolled like this as there is no other math) this can represent how many allies they have in an area. For example an undine with 7+ charisma might use this to command friendly animals or entangling vines in the encounter area. This is the score that a Disney Princess would max out.

Advancement rules: 

When you level up using whatever method you prefer (as there is no need for numeric levels, I'd try to avoid using them for advancement and probably use sandbox milestones) you roll 1d6 against one ability score you want to increase.

If you roll less than it, raise it by 1, to a maximum of 9 or maybe 10

If you roll equal or over than it, raise it by 1 and raise any other stat by 1 

In this way, people who rolls bad stats at creation can increase them slightly faster than the others, and there is some risk/reward between raising "dump stats" and maybe not getting what you wanted, or raising your main ability score straight.

No class, no saves, no problem: All in the Attribute Scores

An opposite approach from what I did in here is to ditch classes, level and skills and choose the other abstraction to build the system around: The ability scores.
Wisdom decides how well a cleric you are. Dexterity does that for thieves. Strenght doesn't really work for fighters, however, as there are other factors that might decide in how good a fighter you are than your bulk body power, so I'm using CON instead
The most obvious advantage on using ability scores is that it keeps the thrill of rolling a character (instead of just rolling the HP), and also allows checks by rolling under the given ability score. For a game with both clerics and wizards WIS and INT can be separated. I prefer to merge both concepts into an attribute called MAG.

When you create a character, roll 2d8 in order (yeah, that will produce below average guys) Mods, however, can't go below -1. Positive mods ALLOW you to perform certain tasks,  and you still roll under score to see how well you perform (having +2 STR is better to force doors than just +1 even if you can attempt it with just +1)

STR: Mods adds to melee damage. +1 allows for force doors, +2 allows to bend bars
DEX: Adds to missile. +1 allows for easy thieving skills like pickpockets, +2 allows for advanced thief skills like climb sheer walls. Used as a reflex save.
CHA: Your common hireling/reaction mods. Also used to save VS any soul or mind controlling effect (willpower save).

CON: This amount is literally your Hit Points, and also says how well you are as a fighter. At +1 you get an extra attack with your favored weapon, or maybe some armor. At +2 or +3 you get extra attacks regardless of weapons. Read the last articles to know more about my stubborness of claiming that Fighting Prowess is indisoluble from Having more HP. Can be used as a Fortitude save but I'd rather make that kind of things just drain HP
MAG: How much magical shit you know. Roll under this to detect magic or to get a glimpse of the otherwordly side of your surroundings.
At +1 you get a 1st level spell
At +2 you get a 2nd level spell and two 1st level spells
At +3 you get a 3rd level spell, two 2nd level spells and three 1st level spells.
Rearrange spells to fit in three level categories OR allow higher level spells to be cast using magical trinkets, magical places or other aids.



Provisional score to mod conversion:

2-8: -1
9-12: 0
13-15: +1
16-17: +2
18:+3


Evidently, in a game deprived of levels or other mechanical parts, when you "level up" you raise your ability scores (thats why I had them start low at 2d8). Maybe raising 2 points at will per level, always capped at 18.
And that is how you become a better figher/wizard/thief, not by picking it as a class.


Rolling certain distributions at the start might give you the chance of playing an ELF, DWARF or any other, like a class requirement. Then you get the darkvision or knowledge about caves; thats the only way to pick them.