Category: Rules Discussion

Overview of Pathfinder's Skills: Climb to Diplomacy

Climb (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): This is a bad skill, and should be removed from the game. Or, at the very least, merged into some kind of “Athletics” skill, along with Swim and Fly. But even that combined skill would be worthless.

Climbing is a binary proposition. Either you CAN, or you CANNOT. Perhaps some characters can climb things which would otherwise be unclimbable, or can climb things faster than other characters, but that sounds like something which would be better handled by a class ability or a feat. The few times I’ve attempted to use it have never been fun for anyone involved, and I’ve always used a single roll to represent an entire climb. Can you imagine if I called for a roll every few feet the way Pathfinder’s rules dictate?

Judgement: House rule this skill out of the game. Allow characters with STR 16 or higher to climb walls at half of their speed, and characters with STR 15 or lower to climb walls at one quarter of their speed. If the surface is particularly difficult to climb, only characters with climbing equipment can climb it. If you like, you can even allow characters with a high dexterity (16+?) to climb such walls without climbing equipment. Characters cannot climb with heavy armor. Characters lose their dexterity bonus to AC while climbing. If a character takes damage while climbing they must make a STR check to avoid falling. The DC can be 10, or equal to the damage taken, or equal to half the damage taken, or whatever you prefer.

Coming up with a better mechanic for this isn’t really difficult. (Though most of that was pulled from -C, I admit.)

Craft (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post):

I do not like the craft skill, because I love crafting.

When -C covered this skill, his primary complaint was about the stupidity of crafting having random results. Which, I agree, is a problem. But that’s not my only problem. The entire implementation just seems strange to me. In order to craft any magical items (i.e. anything worth taking the time to craft) characters need to take a feat like “Craft Magical Arms and Armor,” which means that the craft skill is only valuable to those who are willing to sacrifice a feat. And if the character isn’t a spellcaster, they need to take two feats. One to be able to craft magical versions of whatever they’re able to make, and another (“Master Craftsman”) to be able to use scrolls to imbue items with magic.

So remind me: what are the Craft and Use Magic Item skills for? How can a character have max ranks in both of these things, yet still be unable to craft a magic item because they lack two feats? It’s frustrating how often I find myself linking to my post on the problem with feats, but the damned thing never stops being relevant.

I know this is never a popular thing to say within the tabletop gaming community, but I think World of Warcraft got it right. (I’m sure other games got it right as well, WoW is just a game which I’m very familiar with). For those who don’t play, I’ll break it down: every character in WoW is able to learn two of the ten available professions, which include things like “alchemy,” “blacksmithing,” “leatherworking,” and “tailoring.” These professions are developed independently from the character’s other abilities. Players are never forced to choose between “learn a new combat ability” and “learn to craft better,” which is precisely the choice being forced by Pathfinders feat requirements.

The progress of these crafting abilities is throttled in two ways: first, players must raise their crafting skill in order to craft better items. This seems logical to me, unlike Pathfinder’s “one out of twenty times, a novice painter will create a masterpiece” nonsense. The second throttle is patterns/schematics/blueprints. or what have you. Essentially, none of the best items in the game can be crafted until first finding instructions on how to craft them, which are often guarded the game’s most ferocious monsters.

I doubt restricting players to patterns would work very well in a game like Pathfinder, and I don’t think it would be good to try. Players who become invested in their crafting should feel as though they can create anything, so long as they can figure out a good way to do it. However, finding patterns to create powerful items could certainly be used to get players more interested in crafting. If a wizard finds a book detailing the method for crafting a powerful staff, they’re going to want to figure out how to make it.

Judgement: Crafting functions adequately in its current state, but adequately isn’t good enough. Sometime soon I plan to write a more detailed house-rule to replace the current Crafting mechanic entirely.

Diplomacy (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): The way diplomacy works is a problem. A huge problem. The fact that diplomacy is so broken as to be absolutely game-breaking is pretty well known at this point, so I won’t delve further into that. Though, if you never have, you really ought to read up on that link. It’s a pretty amazing and irrefutable critique of the system.

Diplomacy suffers from all the problems of bluff, and then some. On the one hand, it is valuable–I would go so far as to say necessary–to have a mechanic to handle NPC interaction in a game like Pathfinder. However, handling diplomacy as a single roll with a success/fail result is ludicrously random. Players quickly begin to wonder what the point of all their well-rehearsed arguments are if all it nets them is a circumstance bonus. And since attempting to make a point honestly is both less fun than lying, and comes up more often within a game context, diplomacy isn’t able to hide its flaws as well as bluff does.

As I mentioned in the bluff entry, I really think there needs to be a united social mechanic for players to rely on. Something completely different from Pathfinder’s skills system. However, lacking that, it may be a good idea to require multiple checks for each interaction, with circumstance modifiers playing an important roll. And, most importantly, don’t be afraid of judiciously applied GM fiat. Before you call for a roll, take a moment to think: if your players succeed in convincing their target, would you be able to justify that target being convinced? It works the other way around as well. If the PC’s present an overwhelmingly powerful argument, could you justify the target continuing to be unconvinced? If the answer to either question is no, then don’t call for a roll. Simply make a decision.

Judgement: Completely broken, without question. Can be made semi-workable with some fiddling. Ought to be expanded and revised. Future games would benefit from a complete overhaul.

Overview of Pathfinder's Skills: Acrobatics to Bluff

Acrobatics (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): This may be the single least broken skill in the game, so it’s somewhat unfortunate that I have to start the list with it, after that big angry buildup I wrote in the overview. The skill is intended for use when a character is on a narrow or uneven surface; when a character needs to pass through an enemy’s space during combat; or when a character is jumping or falling. I’ve personally found that this skill to be extremely handy when my players tell me they want to run up a wall, then back flip over their pursuer to deliver an attack from behind. Players often want to attempt the kinds of things they’ve seen in action movies, and the simplest way to accommodate that is to utilize a skill check.

My experience with Acrobatics has always been good, but it does have some serious flaws. It suffers more than most skills do from the linear probability of a 1d20 roll. Doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that someone with no ranks in this skill can jump anywhere from 1ft, to 20ft, with no result being more likely than any other? Additionally, if a GM calls for an Acrobatics check every time the game would technically require it, then rolling would get extremely tedious. Balancing and jumping are often simple tasks. Much of the time, a roll shouldn’t be required. When a roll is called for, there ought to be serious consequences for failure. Don’t simply call for a balance check every 15ft that a character moves along a narrow ledge. Call for a balance check only if the character’s footing is somehow compromised due to being attacked. And if they fail, the character falls, perhaps being granted a reflex save to grab the ledge before they do, but otherwise plummeting toward the ground below, and some scary amount of d6s.

In a recent game of mine, the party encountered a relatively small pit trap. The rogue was able to find it, but even after disarming it, there was still a 5ft by 5ft hole in the floor. Since it’s such a ridiculously small amount of space, I allowed the party’s Rogue, Ranger, and Sorceress to jump across without any problem. However, the party’s cleric was in full plate armor, had no ranks in the Acrobatics skill, and a -1 dexterity modifier. All things taken into account, she would need to roll a 12 or better to jump across the gap. (DC of 5, her roll would be -1 for dexterity, and -6 armor check penalty). The situation became particularly interesting when the cleric suggested they just go without her, since there were only two rooms to explore in that area. Of course, the Party didn’t know that a boss creature, as well as 4 giant spiders, were waiting for them. In the end, the Cleric decided to simply go for it, and successfully rolled high enough to leap across the gap. But as I’m sure you could imagine, things could have gotten very interesting if the party had encountered foes, called for the cleric, only to have the cleric fall into the pit and leave them without healing for the fight.

Judgement: This skill is acceptable as-is, but should be applied judiciously. It would benefit from from some polish and revision.

Appraise (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): This is the skill I wish I could have started the list with. Appraise perfectly exemplifies my frustration with Pathfinder’s skills. I really hope Paizo only included Appraise in the game because they felt it was important to remain backwards-compatible with D&D 3.5 modules and supplements. This skill, as written in the Core Rulebook, has no value except to slow down play and to frustrate players. You roll the skill, and if you roll well, you can determine the monetary value of an item.

Why is it desirable to force the players through this step? What value does it serve? I honestly do not know. I certainly cannot imagine that any theoretical value it has could be worth the investment of a skill point. Even in games, such as my own, where players often find themselves in possession of non-monetary treasure, I don’t see that this skill has a purpose. When my players go to fence a piece of artwork or some other oddity, the person they attempt to sell it to offers them a price which is a reflection of how much they value the piece. If the players want to haggle, I let them, and they might get a little more money. I also allow the players various means (such as Knowledge checks) to determine if there is anyone who might be particularly interested in a piece. Gnomish artwork might be worth 50 gold to a fence, but worth 100 gold to a gnomish collector.

And in the very rare cases where your game might be served by having a buyer attempt to cheat your players, wouldn’t a Sense Motive check work just fine? (Though, we’ll get to the problems with Sense Motive later)

Judgement: House rule this skill out of the game.

Bluff (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): The purpose of the bluff skill is to handle NPC Interaction, and I’ve written before about how I think NPC Interaction should be improved. However, the kind of improvement I’d like to see would probably require an entirely new sub-system, separate from the current skills system. Developing that idea further is outside the scope of this post. Here, I’d like to focus on working within the Pathfinder rules to improve them.

My experience with bluff has never been what I would call “bad.” Players understand its purpose, and they enjoy using it. In that regard, the skill fulfills its role adequately. I’ve even had one character who came to rely on bluff as his signature tactic, which created a lot of fun situations for everyone in the party, which is good.

My major problem with bluff, and with all social interaction skills, is that they  reduce a potentially involved and interesting process (in this case, deceiving someone) into a single, mechanical, fun-neutral roll. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I feel social interaction should be determined entirely by role playing. In fact, I would be vehemently opposed to that. Social Interaction can be as complex and entertaining as combat, and deserves to have some mechanics associated with it. The problem is that resolving social interaction encounters with a skill check is a lot like resolving combat by rolling initiative. A single roll doesn’t do it justice.

Without entirely overhauling the system, I think the best solution is to require multiple checks for each interaction, each heavily reliant on circumstance bonuses. For example, if the party is attempting to bluff their way past a goblin patrol, the first bluff check is to keep the goblins from attacking on sight. Then, when the players attempt to convince the goblins that they’ve been sent by “the master” on an important mission, their success or failure will be heavily influenced by what details they’re able to include in their lie. Further checks might be called for when the goblins ask what their mission is, or why they’ve never seen the player characters before. Each check would be modified significantly by the player’s ability to lie convincingly. And failure might not mean the goblins immediately attack, it might simply mean they ask more questions, or send another goblin to go speak with “the master” to verify the PC’s story.

Bluff has two other uses as well. It can be used to send secret messages, which seems a little odd but I have no real problem with it. It can also be used to feint, which I do have a problem with. I spent many of my early years studying fencing, and the feint is one of the most basic maneuvers a swordsman learns. Yet fighters don’t have Bluff as a class skill. I call bullshit. Feint is a combat maneuver, just like any other. It functions the same way described in the skill description, with “bluff” replaced by “CMB” and “sense motive” replaced by “CMD.”

Judgement: Not terrible, but its use ought to be expanded and revised. In future games it would benefit from a complete overhaul.

Overview of Pathfinder's Skills: Introduction

Funny story. I’ve got a whiteboard next to my computer with a list full of topics I’d like to cover on P&P. Some topics spend a week or a month on the whiteboard before I write about them. Other topics never get on the whiteboard in the first place, they go straight from my brain to the site. A few topics have been on the whiteboard for a long, long, long time. The follow up to my Scholomance post, for example, has been on the whiteboard for almost six months! Another topic which has been up there for-fucking-ever is “A Critical Analysis of Pathfinder’s Skills.” But unlike the Scholomance posts, this one isn’t because I’m lazy. In fact, in early December I sat down to write it. I had an introductory paragraph finished, and I was procrastinating by checking blogs. That’s when I found this.

-C, of Hack & Slash, had beaten me to the punch by mere hours. He had already been doing his series on skills for a few weeks, but I had not realized he was actually planning to go into that level of detail with regards to Pathfinder’s skills specifically. I could have gone ahead with my plans and written my post anyway, but I’m a prideful man, and I didn’t want to seem derivative. Plus, I figured that reading -C’s posts (which I knew would be much more critical than mine) would give me a better grasp of each skill’s individual flaws. That would give me a leg-up when I began my own analysis. I shelved the idea, and -C assured me that his posts would be coming out pretty fast, so I wouldn’t need to keep my own post on hold for too long. Four months later when -C finally put up his conclusions, I was so overwhelmed by the breadth of his series that there hardly seemed to be anything more to say on the subject. The thought of writing the single post I had planned on just seemed silly.

But after my recent learning experience, I’m fired up and ready to criticize. I believe a good mechanic for skills can exist, but the system that Pathfinder inherited from D&D third edition is not it. Not even close. It is rife with bizarrely wide margins of error due to the problems inherent with linear probability. It confuses new players by forcing them to make choices they can’t possibly understand without first gaining some actual play experience. It reduces the impact of a player’s choices by forcing an unreasonable chance of failure even after careful planning. It tricks new GMs into thinking that coming up with a Dice Check number is an acceptable substitute for understanding the elements of a problem. And it forces more veteran GMs to make a choice: do you allow your players utilize their character’s skills, and fill your game with excessive dice rolls, or do you ignore those skills which are pointless, and frustrate the players who wasted points on skills they’ll never get to use in your game?

This is a bigger problem than I’ve attempted to tackle in my writing before, and getting through everything there is to discuss will require a number of posts. To keep things from becoming too disjointed, I’ll be skipping the regularly scheduled Friday posts in favor of putting up these skills posts in a continuous stream. Following this introduction, the next week or two will focus on reviewing each of Pathfinder’s skills in turn. I won’t be writing a single post for each skill, as -C did. Based on what I already have written, it seems as though I’ll be able to get through about three-to-four skills in each post. My focus will be on analyzing each skill’s current playability and usefulness based on my experience. I’ll also attempt to offer simple suggestions for improving each skill, with a mind toward house-rules, rather than complete system overhauls. My goal is that once I’m finished with this series of posts, it can be used by other Pathfinder game masters as a “patch.”  The idea is to streamline the system without altering it so fundamentally that other parts of the game become too broken to use. Once this series is done, there are a number of skills which will require more thorough attention. Skills which I believe are valuable, but need to be re-built from the ground up to function as they should. In conclusion, I’ll outline the more fundamental problem with Pathfinder’s skills system, and what I’d like to see in a future game which is not bound to be compatible with the blunders committed by the D&D 3rd edition developers.

There are numerous indicators which can be used to determine if a skill is good or bad, but these are the touchstones I’ll be using to keep my analysis somewhat focused:

  • What is my Experience? I’ve played enough D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder to have a pretty good functional knowledge of how these skills are applied in the game. Or, at least, how they’ve been applied in the games I’ve GMed and played in. If a skill works well in actual play, it’s probably a good skill. If it works poorly in play, it may be a bad skill, even if the reason why is not immediately apparent.
  • What is the skill’s frequency of use? If a player puts skill points into a skill, they should have a reasonable expectation that they will be rewarded for doing so. If a skill is only helpful in very rare situations, then the skill ought to be dropped and replaced with some other resolution mechanic, or merged with another skill.
  • Is it necessary that the action’s success is uncertain? We don’t roll skill checks for walking or running, even though it is possible to trip and fall. Just because we can conceive of a way in which an action can fail doesn’t mean that every time that action is performed, we should check to see if it’s successful. A roll should only be called for if the character’s ability to perform an action can be reasonably called into question. A rogue should easily be able to walk along a 1ft wide ledge without anybody wasting time on a skill check. But a check might be appropriate when a cleric in full plate is attempting to cross a 1ft wide ice bridge between two windy mountain peaks whilst orcs fire arrows at her from above.
  • Does using a skill check circumvent potential fun? What exactly “fun” means is going to be different for everyone. I work from the assumption that rolling dice is a sort of fun-neutral activity. So it is only more fun than something which is un-fun.When a skill check is the most entertaining way to solve a problem, it is good. When there is a more interesting way to resolve a problem, but the game demands a skill check anyway, that is very bad.
  • Misc I reserve the right to make up new criteria as they occur to me, because I’m the GM, and I said so.

Before ending this introduction, I’d like to remind my readership of the Rule 0 Fallacy. Rule 0 (which is gamer jargon for “I’m the GM, so the rule is what I say it is!”) is one of the wonderful things about role playing games. We are not only able, but encouraged, to alter the rules of the games we run. Sometimes we do this simply so the rules better fit our specific needs, and that’s all well and good. Other times, however, we must change the rules because the game’s design is flawed. These skills posts are an example of the latter case: Pathfinder has a terrible skills system. I blame this more on Wizards of the Coast than I do on Paizo, since Paizo was only following D&D 3.5’s blueprint. But Paizo isn’t blameless: they could have done a better job of streamlining the system than they did. In at least one case that I can think of, Paizo actually made the skills system worse.

In the coming posts, I will attempt to fix the problems with this skills system. If I’m successful in making the game better, then that’s great–but it doesn’t excuse the fact that the skills system was bad in the first place. We should expect, and demand, higher quality than this from the role playing products we purchase.

I hope you enjoy these posts. I look forward to hearing feedback from the numerous perspectives represented among my readership.

A Twist on Race as Class

As you may or may not be aware, some games use a system of race selection commonly called “race as class.” It’s primarily found in older games, or “retro clones,” which attempt to capture the spirit of older games. The basic concept is that some or all races (normally excluding humans) are both a race and a class combined. A player might select a human fighter, or a human wizard, but if they choose an elf, then they’re just an elf. Elves grow in power as they gain experience points and levels, just as a normal class would, but they can’t be elven fighters/clerics/rogues. It’s an idea which has fallen out of style in recent decades, and I think the hobby is better for it. There are those who disagree, and they have some very compelling arguments. It’s just not for me.

As glad as I am that race and class are now thoroughly divided concepts within gaming, it has come at a cost: racial distinction. When a human and an elf have completely different leveling progressions, it’s hard from them to be more distinct from one another. They are completely different. But when humans and elves are racial choices in a game where most of a character’s abilities and flavor will be defined by their class, racial distinction can be lost. Or, to put it another way, the elves can become “humans in funny hats.” This problem has only become more pronounced since the elimination of a “maximum level” for certain race/class combinations. I’m not saying I want those to come back either, I’m just saying we need to recognize the problems which these changes have created.

Throughout the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the choice of which race to play was almost irrelevant. A fighter was a fighter, regardless of whether it was an elf, a dwarf, or even a halfling. There’s no doubt that each race came with some sweet benefits. Getting 2 feats at first level when you played a human was amazing, but after first level the choice of being a human lost any kind of relevance. Rather than being a defining feature, a character’s race essentially became a very powerful feat which can only be taken at 1st level. Paizo attempted to address this problem in Pathfinder, and they succeeded somewhat. Essentially they made race into a much more powerful feat. One which has a more dramatic effect on a character than before. This isn’t terrible, but it’s certainly inelegant.

And when designing a set of rules which, ideally, people will largely be able to memorize; elegance is key.

I’ve felt this way about races for some time, but I’ve never applied much thought to it. My thought has always been that race works better as a role playing element than as a mechanical element. But that does no justice to the concept of having races with different anatomies and abilities than humans have. The whole idea is for each race to be fantastical and unique; to be so different from humans that it can be difficult to find common ground. Dwarfs are more than Scottish accents and beer, and elves are more than nature loving know-it-alls. Choosing your race should have a powerful impact on your character’s abilities, flavor and progression!

Which brings me, finally, to my idea: what if the racial entries were simplified to the bare minimum, and each class progressed differently based on the character’s race?

Talking specifically about Pathfinder here, what if the 7 core races were boiled down to elements which would be universal to members of that race? For example, all humans are medium creatures, have a base land speed of 30ft, and that’s it. Everything else in the race entry is just fluff: descriptions of human appearance, what their society is like, etc. Other races might have an extra doo-dad or two, such as darkvision. But the racial entries themselves wouldn’t have bonuses or penalties to base ability scores, or other miscellaneous talents. Instead, all of that stuff would be moved to the class entries.

Each of the 9 class entries would have 7 small tables which detailed how the core races progressed through those classes. There would be, perhaps 5-10 levels where the character would gain racial abilities in addition to their class abilities, and those racial abilities would be unique to each class. An elven ranger, for example, could gain the ability to see great distances, whilst elven wizards and sorcerers would gain a +2 on their ability to overcome spell resistance. (“Logolys, what do your elf eyes see?” “I don’t know, I’m a Wizard!”) In essence, race and class are re-combined. But instead of the races being classes unto themselves, they modify whichever class they’re connected to. A player with an elven druid might be playing a very different class from a player with a dwarven druid.

This sounds complicated, I know. But consider this: in Pathfinder’s current form, racial entries contain a great deal of relevant information. Dwarfs get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against giants, Half Orcs can fight for one more round after they hit 0 HP, and gnomes get frickin’ spells if their charisma is high enough. These are the kinds of things which will almost never be written down on a player’s character sheet unless they anticipate needing to know it. That means that if they ever do need it, they’ll need to look it up in the book. This system condenses both racial and class abilities into a single, easily book-markable entry.

Still not convinced? What if I point out that Pathfinder is already doing something essentially like this? If you’ve ever picked up the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide, you’ve probably seen the Class Archetypes. They’re on page 72 if you haven’t. Instead of having eleventy-billion poorly balanced prestige & base classes like 3.5 did, Pathfinder offers “alternate versions” of the 9 core classes, which replace certain abilities with others. In this way you can take a Rogue (as an example) and turn them into a Scout, or a Swashbuckler, or a Spy. My twist on “Race as Class” wouldn’t be any more complicated than this. The only difference is that instead of substitute abilities, racial selection would grant additional abilities.

Is there any game out there doing something like this? I know many of my readers are familiar with RPGs I’ve never even heard of, so let me know if I’m just re-wording a system which is already present in “Lords of the Twisty Tunnels,” or “Chop & Kick Kings.”

Twittertop RPG

I’m pretty active on Twitter. For the longest time I thought a 140 character blog was the dumbest idea ever. After some odd circumstances led me to join it, though, I discovered that it’s less of a blogging service, and more of a giant instant messenger conversation. And while I’m not a huge fan of the kind of self-centric social media which prompts people to write about every mundane event occurring in their lives, I am quite fond of finding new ways to connect with people. I’ve made a number of friends on twitter. Several of whom I would even call very close friends!

One of my Twitter friends is a Scottish kid named @Mocharaid. He’s been a supporter of my writing ever since I first started Comma, Blank_, and often served as a source of encouragement for me in those first few months when my readership was much smaller. He’s never played a tabletop RPG himself, and often pesters me to run one for him. Its become something of a joke between us, but I know he’s really quite anxious to give this type of gaming a try. So the other night, when he was taunting me about how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are going to be aliens in the next film, I asked him if he wanted me to GM for him. My intent was to crush him with falling rocks the moment he accepted, but then I got to thinking: just how hard wo0uld it be to run a tabletop role playing game on Twitter?

Two or three hours of typing later, I had produced this. It’s completely unrefined, and hasn’t been through a single playtest yet, but I think it could prove fun.

TWITTERTOP RPG

By @LS_GM

Twittertop RPG is a simple adventure role playing game–like Dungeons & Dragons, or Pathfinder, designed to be played on Twitter. Given the extreme limitations of tweets (140 characters) the game is minimalistic in the extreme. But don’t let that fool you into thinking the game lacks options. With a good Game Master, and spirited players, endless amounts of fun is possible.

The Primary Rule of Twittertop RPG is that all game-related actions must fit within a single 140 character tweet, and must begin by being directed at the GM. In my case, that would mean that all tweets relevant to a game session (excepting my own) must begin with “@LS_GM” which is 6 characters long, leaving 134 characters for any actions to be described.

CHARACTERS

Like everything in the game, the character sheet must fit within 140 characters, minus the GM’s name. They should be formatted thusly:

@GM’s_Name [Character Name],Class[Level]([Current Experience Points]);HP[# of max HP],AC[Current AC];ATK+[Attack Roll Modifer]/[# of Damage Points];[Profession];GP[# of gold](SP[Spells[# of times spell may be cast]])[Inventory]

Here is an example:

@LS_GM Magar,Mage0(4);HP2,AC6;ATK+0/1;Carpenter;GP100(SP:Fball3)ProtRing1

This is Magar, a level 0 Mage with 4 experience points. He can take 2 points of damage before death, and an enemy must roll a 6 or above to hurt him. When attacking physically, he does not get to add anything to his roll, and deals one point of damage. He was a carpenter, and has skills related to that field. He currently carries 100 gold pieces. He can cast the spell of Fireball 5 times, and wears a ring of protection +1 which increases his armor class–which is 6, but would normally be 5.

CLASSES

When beginning play, a player must select a class for their character. At level 0, the character gains all of the abilities listed under “First Level,” and “Each level.” At subsequent levels, characters gain only the abilities listed under “Each level.”

Warrior
First Level: +1 AC, +1 attack, can wear armor, attack roll of 10 is a crit.
Each Level: +8 HP, +2 dmg

Rogue
First Level: Can pick locks, can hide in shadows, can attack a distracted or unaware foe with +1 atk, and double damage, attack roll of 10 is a crit.
Each level: +4HP, +1 dmg

Mage
Each Level: +2 HP, can select one spell

Cleric
First Level: Can wear armor
Each Level: +6 HP, can select one spell

LEVELS

All characters start at level 0. The maximum level in Twittertop RPG is 9.

EXPERIENCE POINTS

Each time a character starts a new level, they begin with 0 experience points. As they overcome challenges, the Game Master will grant them experience points. When they recieve their 10th experience point, their level goes up, and their XP returns to 0. This means that experience points should always be represented by only a single digit.

HP

A character sheet always reflects that character’s current max amount of hit points, and their hit points return to max at the start of each new play session. Any time a character takes damage, their hit points will be reduced. If their hit points reach 0, the character is dead.

AC

AC stands for Armor Class. When a character is being attacked, their attacker must roll one 10 sided die, and add their ATK number. If the result equals or exceeds the target’s AC, then the attack is successful and damage is dealt. If the result is lower than the target’s AC, then the attack fails.

Base armor class is 5, and that number can be raised by class abilities, armor, or magic items.

ATTACK

The first number is your attack bonus. When you attempt to physically attack a creature, the GM will roll one 10 sided die, and add this number to see if your attack overcome’s the target’s Armor Class. The second number is the amount of damage the target takes if your attack is successful.

Characters begin play with +0/1, and these numbers are modified by the player’s class, and by any items they hold. A roll of 10 is always successful. For Warriors and Rogues, a roll of 10 also doubles their damage.

PROFESSION

Each character may have one simple profession. When the character attempts a to perform an action which has a chance of failure, and is not related to the character’s class, the GM should judge the effectiveness of the action based on the character’s profession. For example, if a character’s profession is Sailor, then they will be more successful in tying knots, navigating by the stars, or swimming. If a player so pleases, a non-human racial selection can be substituted for their profession, such as Dwarf, Elf, or Kobold. The selection of a profession or race has no effect on mechanics defined elsewhere in this document.

Some possible professions include: Carpenter, Bricklayer, Miner, Sailor, Scribe, Tailor, Blacksmith, Steward, Architect

GP

This is the character’s current gold. All characters start with 0 gold pieces, and may carry may carry up to 999 gold pieces, and use these gold pieces to purchase items.

SPELLS

Only Wizards and Clerics may learn spells. Since spells take up space on their character sheet, this reduces the amount of space which these classes have available for equipment in their inventory.

Both classes learn only one spell per level. The spell must be written on their character sheet the same way it is written here, followed by a number. The number indicates the number of times per day a spell may be cast. A spell may be selected multiple times to increase the number of times per day it can be cast. The first time a spell is selected it may be cast 3 times, the second time it is selected it may be cast 6 times, and the thired time it is selected it may be cast 9 times.

WIZARD SPELLS
Fball – A ball of fire envelops a 10ft radius, dealing 10 damage to all within its area. Caster is immune.
Necro – Raise a dead body as a skeleton under your command.
Tport – Teleport you and any of your allies up to 100ft to a location you can see, or have been to.
Mbolt – Magical bolts of energy fly from your fingertips, dealing 15 damage to a single target. Can be cast from 30ft away.
Ice – Freeze enemies in place for 3 rounds. Target cannot move, but can otherwise act normally.
Haste – Your allies may act twice in this round. You do not gain a second action.
Illus – Create silent illusions.
XRay – See through one wall or door to what is on the other side.

CLERIC SPELLS
Cure – Restore a number of hit points equal to your level.
Heal – Remove diseases, poisons, and other harmful effects.
Turn – Cause undead to cower for 3 rounds.
Smite – Call down the wrath of your god, dealing 15 damage. Must touch foe to accomplish this.
Fear – Foes flee in terror for 1 round.

INVENTORY

Characters begin play with nothing but the clothes on their back. They have no weapons, and no armor. They attack with their fists, and defend by dodging. When a character finds an item, they may add it to their inventory. At the end of each ession of play, the GM should ask for everyone’s character sheets. At this time the player must drop any items which cannot fit into the tweet.

All items must be written into the inventory in the same way they are written when the GM gives them to the player. Some example items include:

ProtRing+1 – A ring which adds 1 to the Armor Class of any who wear it.
Sword+1 – A sword which adds 1 to both attack, and to damage.
Armor+1 – Armor which adds 1 to the Armor Class of any who wear it.
Wand+1 – May cast 1 spell which has already been expended for the day.

GAME MASTER SECTION

Twittertop RPG is a game which relies heavily on the game master. Lacking mechancis for many situations, a Twittertop GM must be able to arbitrate situations liberally. Simple actions should be able to be performed by anyone, while more complex actions should be judged based on the character’s class, profession, or race.

COMBAT

At the start of combat, roll 1d10. If the die is 6 or above, then the players go first. If the die is 5 or below, the player’s foes act first. Allow all members of a given “side” to act before switching to the other group. Each individual within a group is allowed three actions on each turn:

Move: The character can move throughout the battlefield.
Fight: The player may attack or cast spells.
Prepare: The player may prepare a simple non-Fight action, which they will perform on the enemy’s turn IF the enemy meets certain conditions. For example, a Warrior’s prepared action might be “If the zombie tries to move to the Mage, I block him.” while a Mage’s prepared action might be “If the zombie tris to move to me, I run!”

Lacking a visual grid on which to do battle, Twittertop GMs must rely on description to communicate positioning to their players. This means that the tactical combat style found in games like Pathfinder won’t be found here. Instead, allow players to describe how they would like to position themselves relative to an enemy. Warriors will want to stand close, while Mages will want to stand far away. Rogues will want to get behind a foe, and clerics will likely want to move close to whoever needs to be healed. Allow players to move anywhere in the current arena of battle as a “Move” action.

Given how simple it is to create Twittertop RPG characters, combat can be very deadly. If a player reaches 0 hit points, the player is dead, and should create another character to join the party after the combat has ended. Any players who survive combat should be given either 1 or 2 experience points, depending on how difficult the combat was.

How Players Make Enemies & Influence People

In my experience, NPCs are an underutilized element in most role playing games. They serve a few very limited, very one dimensional roles. That NPC is a quest giver, those NPCs are vendors, and this NPC is a villain. GMs tend either to treat NPCs as “their” characters (a bad idea), or as static game world elements which exist to serve the player. The king would never be found outside of his throne room unless it serves a specific purpose. And once an NPC’s immediate usefulness has ended, or the players have moved on to a new location, the NPC’s notes are filed away, or crumpled up and forgotten. This later method isn’t entirely bad, it’s just not as good as it can be. The basic premise of it is true: non-player characters exist for the sole purpose of serving the players in one way or another. The trick, though, is that the players shouldn’t realize the NPCs exist only to serve them. There are a number of ways to accomplish this which I may discuss at a later time, but for today I’d like to discuss Contacts and Foes.

One of my favorite GMing tricks is one which I admittedly stole out of the online comic Goblins by Tarol Hunt. When I’m first dealing with a group of new players, I like to start things out on the stereotypical side. Taverns, villages under attack, or any typical plot hook will do. Eventually this hook will lead the players to a tribe of typical level 1 monstrous humanoids, such as Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, etc. Now I should point out that I always go out of my way to avoid having these creatures be responsible for anything evil, and I make sure to drop four or five hints that negotiation is an option. Most of the time, the players assume these creatures are evil, and attack. And in another GM’s game, this might be the right choice, but in my games the only creatures which are evil incarnate are creatures like demons or devils. In matter of fact, the creatures the players are attacking are usually neutral. The creatures defend their home, and then they die. I then point out to my players that they, not the monsters, were the aggressors in this situation. I don’t force any alignment change or anything like that, I simply let the players know that, in the future, they’ll want to pay more attention to the specifics of a situation. It’s a learning experience for them, and the hope is that they apply their learning to all aspects of the game. Players who pay attention are players who survive.

The game moves on without the players being aware of the secret penalty I’ve given them. A group of creatures escaped the destruction of their tribe, and have vowed revenge. After acquiring a few class levels, they’ll hunt the PCs down, and attack them at a later date.

If you think about it, players are making friends and enemies every day. Every person they kill is a person that other people card about. Every plan the players foil is a plan other people were invested in. Every treasure they recover is a treasure other people want. And it works the other way as well! Every person the players help is a potential ally in the future. That doesn’t mean that every creature the players encounter ought to show up at a later time, that would just be a clusterfuck of self referential bullshit. But if a character is interesting, or a quest is particularly engaging for the players, you can reintroduce those elements into your game in a completely different place an time.

Not only does this give your game world more coherence, but it enhances the player’s sense that they’re having an impact on the world. Just don’t make the mistake of expecting your players to remember your pet NPC. I recently made that mistake myself by assuming my players would remember a halfling scout named Tacha. When they first met her she had been a bandit, but after briefly joining the PCs’ party, she decided to settle down. When she had been in the game, they players had loved her, and talked about her for several days afterwords. But even that level of involvement in the character didn’t mean they remembered her when they encountered her as the captain of a city’s guard a few years later.

How Zalekios Gromar Learned Clarity

4.0.1

Today, for the first time in a few months now, I managed to get together with my friend Jeremy to play a session of our Zalekios Gromar campaign. For me, this is always a huge amount of fun. Not only is Jeremy an entertaining fellow to sit around and chat with, but he’s also the only person I know who is willing to occasionally take on the mantle of game master. Most of the time managing the game is my responsibility, and I love it. That’s why I have an entire site dedicated to running Pathfinder games. But being the game master can also be both limiting, and stressful. Taking some time to be a player rather than a GM lets me cut loose a little bit. All I really need to worry about is my own actions, and how I can survive and succeed with my own goals.

Being a player also allows me the opportunity to see the game from the opposite perspective. No matter how concerned I am with ensuring that my players are having fun, it’s always valuable to sit down, be a player, and figure out what I want. Are the things I want as a player being facilitated in the games I run as the game master? Which elements of the game am I enjoying, and which am I finding arduous? I find that my occasional jaunts to the other side of the GM screen are often more educational than a week’s worth of reading blogs and old Dragon magazines. And tonight, two lessons stood out to me.

First, some quick background on the game. Zalekios is currently working a number of angles within the game world, many of which are indirectly opposed to one another. Not only is he working for a kingdom, but he’s also working for someone else who wants to destroy all the kingdoms, whilst simultaneously attempting to establish his own kingdom. It can become a little confusing, but I’ve got 23 charisma and 10 wisdom, so what do you expect? Anyway, the kingdom Zalekios is working for (Angle #1) sent him to investigate some strange attacks which were destroying ships as they left a nearby port city. This worked to Zalekios’ advantage, since he needed to scout that same port city as part of a plot to destroy all the kingdoms (Angle #2). In the city, he booked passage on one of the ships, and sailed with it until it was attacked. He captured one of the Sahuagins, and forced it to lead the vessel to the mysterious “Wet Gnome Lord” who was behind these attacks.

So here’s a bit which will become relevant later. Having captured this creature, I began forming plans for how I might find use for it as a minion. So, when we left the ship to venture to the island home of the Wet Gnome Lord, I took the Sahuagin with me. Memory may fail me, but my conversation with the GM went something like this:

Me: I’d like to take the…Sha-hugga-mug with me.
GM: The Sahuagin?
Me: Yes. That. I’ll untie him from the mast, but leave him tied up with some loose rope for me to hang onto.
GM: Like a leash?
Me: Yeah, kinda like a leash. How long can he go without breathing water?
GM: Lets say 48 hours.
Me: Alright, well, we’ve been sailing for over 30, so I’ll let him swim to the island in the water, whilst I hold his leash from within a rowboat.

Now, what I understood to be happening was that the Sha-hugga-mug’s arms were tied to its sides, and I had a rope around its neck to serve as a leash. I figured it could swim well enough with its legs, and if it couldn’t…well, Zalekios is Chaotic Evil. Keel hauling a sea creature is far from the worst thing he’s done. Hell, earlier in that same session I’d committed a murder simply to enhance an intimidation check. Then killed the fellow I had been intimidating to keep him from pinning the murder on me!

Once we reached land, we entered the Wet Gnome Lord’s tower, and that’s about the time my ladyfriend joined the game, once again playing as Zalekios’ four faithful level 1 goblins. We encountered the wet gnome lord, and I completely ruined all my GM’s plans by negotiating with the session’s endboss. (Let that be a lesson to all GMs: players will always defy your expectations.) It ended up being well worth my while, because not only did I convince a powerful wizard to leave the ships alone (Thus fulfilling my obligation to Angle #1), but I also convinced him that we were allies, making him Angle #4. I am a devious little schemer, yes I am.

To solidify our partnership, the Wet Gnome Lord asked Zalekios to take care of a golem which had gotten a little out of control. Zalekios agreed, and climbed up into the locked attic, where he found the golem walking around in circles, paying the intruders no mind. Zalekios moved off to kill the creature, and assumed the four goblins would find some way to help (or, more likely, find a way to make things much more difficult) We rolled initiative, and I leaped into combat. It was then that the GM asked;

GM: So, wait a minute, you’re just leaving the Sahuagin there unattended?
Me: So what? It’s tied up.
GM: No, it only has a leash.
Me: …fuck, yeah, I guess that’s how you would have interpreted that. What I meant is that its arms were still tied to its sides.
GM: Then how would it have swam?
Me: It has webbed feet, I figured that would be fine.
GM: No, it would need its arms to swim effectively.

Oops.

I was already engaged with the golem, so I wasn’t going to bother with a low level creature like the Sha-hugga-mug when I was already facing something which could probably kill me. Fortunately, thanks to the marching order, my four goblin worshipers had the creature surrounded. So whilst I battled the golem, they subdued my prisoner. They even managed not to kill him! Though he will have a nasty burn on his face, and a bad limp from now on. Everything went better than expected, but this all goes to illustrate a point. I wrote recently on the point of GM clarity, but this story goes to show that player clarity is just as important. There was no clear point during play when my GM being more clear with me would have fixed the problem. Even if he had allowed me to have the creature’s arms bound due to the misconception, that would have meant changing a minor ruling from an hour’s worth of game time prior. (Namely, whether or note the creature could swim, and thus continue to survive on land). The entire problem could have been fixed had I, as the player, simply been more clear about my intentions.

On an unrelated note, a funny story from this game session: one of the four goblins, named Poog, is a cleric. He cast the spell Burning Hands on the Sha-hugga-mug during combat, and I quickly looked it up in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, where I was surprised to learn it was a 15ft cone. My GM, also surprised, said “Well I guarantee you it wasn’t that way in 3.5.” So, I got out my 3.5 PHB, and we looked it up, and much to our surprise, it had been a 15ft cone in 3rd edition as well! Flustered, my GM added “They must have changed it from second edition!” So, I pulled out my 2nd edition PHB, and he found the spell and read the description aloud.

GM: When the wizard casts this spell, a jet of searing flame shoots from his fingertips. His hands must be held so as to send forth a fanlike sheet of flames: the wizard’s thumbs must touch each other and the fingers must be spread. The burning hands send out flame jets 5 feet long in a horizontal arc about 120 degrees in front of the wizard.”
Me: …So, it’s a cone?
GM: Shut up.

Good times.

Making Encumbrance Work

Way back in November I wrote a piece entitled “Stuff Which Never Works.” The post details three elements of adventure gaming which I personally have never seen work well: ammunition tracking, encumbrance, and chase scenes. I actually started with a much larger list of things which need to be improved, but I boiled it down to these three items because each of them strike me as something which ought to work. Running out of arrows in the middle of combat, being unable to carry every single piece of treasure out of a collapsing dungeon, fleeing for your life; these are all staples of the novels and films which inspire our adventuring spirit. I tried to offer suggestions for improving the way each of these issues could be handled in Pathfinder, but none of my suggestions were very thoroughly considered, and I haven’t implemented anything in my games. However, as I mentioned in my much more recent post “Making Travel More Engaging,” the benefits of encumbrance are too valuable to pass up when you’re running a hex crawl.

Before we start crafting a house rule, though, it’s always important to have a thorough understanding of how the official rules on the subject work. The excerpts from the book would be longer than I’d like to post here, but you can find the basic information starting on page 169 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook under “Carrying Capacity.” The information is arranged somewhat awkwardly in the book, so you may want to use the Pathfinder SRD entry on Carrying Capacity instead. The essential breakdown of the rule is that you consult table 7-4 to determine what your character’s light, medium, and heavy loads are based on their strength. Characters of larger or smaller sizes must multiply or divide the listed weights to get their correct carrying capacities. Light loads can can be carried with no penalties, while medium and heavy loads each reduce a characters maximum dexterity and speed, as well as bestowing a skill check penalty. A character’s maximum load is the upper-range of of their listed “heavy load.” Twice the maximum weight can be lifted, but characters can only hobble around in 5ft steps. Up to five times a character’s maximum load can be pushed or dragged along even ground.

I think I can safely say that these rules are bad. I know I just finished saying that encumbrance is important, but it’s not that important. Figuring out whether their character is straining under the weight of their backpack is not why your players are sitting around your table. They’re sitting around your table because they want to go on adventures! They want to slay monsters and recover treasures and create fantastic, epic stories of heroism together!  Nobody wants to spend time thumbing through the equipment chapter of the rulebook to find the weight of anything from a spyglass to a coil of rope. Anytime they got found a potion in a chest, or fired 10 arrows, they’d need to remember to recalculate their encumbrance. Not to mention consulting a chart every time their strength changes! With all of the abilities, potions, spells, and magic items that can alter a character’s strength, requiring the players to flip through the rulebook to find table 7-4 every time their strength changes is unacceptable.

I realize that the game intends for people to play encumbrance less than exactly. Nobody is expected to track every single potion’s weight as it is added to and removed from the inventory. And 90% of the time that a character’s strength changes, knowing how their carrying capacity changes won’t be relevant. But the way in which the system is designed, that kind of exhaustive tracking is the ideal. Pathfinder’s encumbrance system works best when it is handled by a computer, and that is unacceptable to me. No rule that complicated should be allowed to remain in a tabletop RPG. And that is why I’ve neglected encumbrance for so many years.

But as I’ve come to appreciate, encumbrance adds so much to a game. When the party is traveling, encumbrance affects their speed, which in turn changes how many days it can take to reach their destination. The need for the players to make decisions for how they will travel–decisions which affect how well they can travel–can be engaging. More importantly, anything the players need to leave behind is something they can come back for later. Returning to a dungeon to retrieve the piles of gold they were unable to carry can be an adventure in itself, requiring them to face unique challenges such as getting a large cart through the wilderness. In addition, it encourages the players to establish a base of operations. In all the time I’ve been GMing games, my players have never been really interested in buying a house in the city, or establishing a stronghold all their own, and it’s because they could carry as much as they wanted to on their backs. But if they can’t carry everything, they’re going to want to establish a place to keep everything. And once they have a fixed location, I can design adventures where those homes are attacked or burgled. And, perhaps best of all, enforcing an encumbrance system causes a bag of holding to actually mean something.

Assuming you’ve agreed with me up to this point, we’ve established that 1) an encumbrance system is valuable to the game, and 2) the current encumbrance system is unacceptably bad. So step three is obvious: we make a better encumbrance system and use that instead.

The Rule: Items are either Significant, or Insignificant, as determined by the GM. A character may carry any number of insignificant items without penalty. Significant items may be determined on the basis of either weight, or size, and most have a base encumbrance 1. Exceptionally heavy or unwieldy items may have an encumbrance of 2 or more. A character’s carrying capacity is based off of their strength score. An encumbrance equal to a character’s strength score is considered a light load, while a medium load would be twice that, and a heavy load would be three times that. Quadrapeds, such as horses, have double the standard encumbrance capacity. Lightly encumbered characters suffer no penalty. Characters with a medium encumbrance have their speed reduced by 1/4, and take a -3 penalty on all rolls relating to physical activity. Heavily encumbered characters have their speed reduced by 1/2, and take a -6 penalty on all rolls relating to physical activity.

That’s the entire rule. It can be easily memorized, and doesn’t require looking at any charts. No accommodations need to be made for larger or smaller characters, because those differences will likely already be accounted for by the character’s strength. And in cases where they are not, I see no reason to penalize a halfling for being strong, or reward an giant for being weak. All that remains to be done is to determine what is significant? The rule establishes that it is determined by the GM, but there needs to be a baseline suggestion.

The simple answer is that a significant item is any item which is heavy enough, or large enough, for the character to take notice of its addition to their equipment. If I’m wearing a backpack, and someone places a candle, or a pair of manacles, or a blanket in it, then I’m not likely to notice  the addition of the weight. I might notice somebody fiddling with my backpack, but if they were sly about it, I might never know that my pack was technically heavier. And in some cases, an item might be noticeable not because it is heavy, but because it is large. A rapier, for example, is a good 4 feet long or more from pommel to point–even though it might be considered pretty light. Or, if you prefer, consider a fully inflated beach ball. It may weigh next to nothing, but there’s no way you’d miss its addition to your pack. If you need a more exact conversion, then use 5lb as a cutoff for insignificant items. That means that items such as a flask, grappling hook, hammer, or  iron pot will be considered insignificant items. But items like a 10ft pole, tent, portable ram, or a 50ft coil of rope would be considered significant.

Now that we have a method to figure out what a significant item is, the question becomes: how heavy does a significant item need to be to count for more than 1 encumbrance? Obviously there needs to be an upward limit on which significant items only count for 1. Otherwise a character with a strength of 12 could carry around a dozen 2-ton golden statues without hitting medium encumbrance. Once again, this should be determined by the GM. As a baseline, something which would normally require both hands to hold (such as a suit of full plate) should be considered to count for 2 encumbrance. If, on top of being heavy, it is also large (such as an empty chest) it might count as 3 or 4 encumbrance. Again, if you would like a more exact conversion, use 30lb as the weight at which a significant item becomes worth 2 encumbrance. Going from there you could use 60lb for three encumbrance, 90lb for four encumbrance, etc.

There is one major flaw with this system to keep in mind: consumables. Food rations, torches, ammunition for bows and crossbows, and in particular money. Items like these are the kinds of things which players will carry an infinite amount of if they can. It doesn’t really matter all that much if your players decide they want to carry 40 cooking pots, but if you treat arrows as an insignificant item, then you may as well give the ranger a Quiver of Infinite Arrows at first level. To solve that problem, you can have vendors sell consumables in groups which amount to a single significant item. Some basic examples:

  • 1 week of rations (1 significant item.)
  • 20 arrows/bolts/shurikens/throwing knives (1 significant item)
  • 5 bags of caltrops / flasks of oil / torches (1 significant item)
  • 250 coins of any denomination (1 significant item)

Keep in mind that this system is not meant to approximate reality. It is very possible for characters to end up carrying much more than they should be able to. But assuming you’re playing with rational adults, they’re not going to be trying to game the encumbrance system. The idea is not to make encumbrance accurate, it is to make encumbrance function in such a way that it serves its purpose with a minimum amount of negative impact on play. And that’s what I think this system does.

I would love feedback on this, though. Having never played with encumbrance myself, this is all just theory.

Of Forgotten Lore and Ancient Sourcebooks

Huh…for some reason, I find it somewhat intimidating to actually sit down and type up a post on the new site. Which might have something to do with breaking 100 hits in a single day for the very first time, largely thanks to a link from Hack & Slash. Hello new readers! Hope you’re enjoying yourselves.

I’m Pathfinder player and a Paizo fan. I think that much has been made pretty clear on this site. I am also a firm believer in being open about criticism. Criticism drives improvement. If we don’t criticize the things we love, then any changes made to what we love will be based on the criticisms of someone else. Besides, no one who is genuinely interested in creating something they can be proud of ever shies away from good criticism. On the contrary, it’s a highly sought upon treasure. When I ask someone to critique my writing ninety-nine people out of every hundred will tell me it’s “great.”

I know it’s not great. I want it to be great. That’s why I asked you to tell me why it’s not great.

Last week, I criticized modern game developers for failing to include any time management in their games. A criticism which ended up going on so long that it spawned a follow up post that same week. In the past, I’ve also criticized modern game designers for the lack of information on hex mapping. These are just two amongst a sea of criticisms I have for Pathfinder and the various modern iterations of Dungeons and Dragons. The common thread which connects these two criticisms, though, is that both of them used to be part of the game, but were dropped for no cogent reason I can discern.

 Unfortunately, there are numerous game elements like this. Mechanisms which have, for whatever reason, fallen out of use. I’m sure it always sounded like a good idea at the time, and that’s okay! Elegance of design is important, so if a game’s developers thought they were streamlining gameplay by dropping superfluous systems, then good on them. But in many cases it seems to me as though they were wrong, and ought to start reversing their mistakes. I’ve already written on the topic of time management and hex maps, here are a few other gameplay mechanics which RPG designers used in the old days, and which modern RPG designers really ought to be talking about.

Combat Facing

Have I mentioned I like rogues? Because I like rogues. I play so many rogues, that the one time I didn’t play a rogue, I had to multiclass into rogue, because my GM was conditioned to fill his adventures with opportunities for sneaking and lockpicking. I’m trying to branch out into other classes, but rogues will always have a very special place in my heart.

Part of the reason I love rogues as much as I do is their reliance on a large variety of skills, most of which are not well suited to combat. At least not face-to-face, even-steven, Combat As Sport style combat. Rogues function best when you’re not quite sure what they’re doing. If they just ran behind a tree, you don’t know if they’re trying to lure you into a trap, retrieve a hidden weapon, disappear into the bushes, climb the tree so they can leap down on you from above, or something entirely different which you haven’t even considered. Any class can play this way, but it is a rogue’s specialty. And it’s a play style which is severely hampered by D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder’s “360 degree field of vision.”

Characters in these modern incarnations of tabletop RPGs are not considered to be “facing” in any particular direction. They are always looking all around them at all times. No matter where you’re standing relative to a character, you are in that character’s full view, unless there is something between you. The idea was to simplify combat, which seems rather silly, since D&D 3rd edition added a number of largely superfluous rules.

In fairness, combat facing has not been completely neglected, but an optional rule in a supplemental book is not good enough. This should be part of the core combat system, no question.

Wizards Learning Spells at Random

A couple months ago, I wrote a post about an alternative to the current methods by which Wizards learn spells in Pathfinder. I’ll freely admit it’s not one of my better posts, but give me a break. I was severely sleep deprived and wrote the whole damned thing in a rush before work. My hope was that by removing the Wizard’s ability to automatically learn two new spells upon leveling up (and placing a larger emphasis on other methods for learning spells) we could partially overcome the vast power gap between casters and non-casters which has plagued this generation of games. I still think it’s a solid idea, but shortly after posting it, -C of Hack and Slash informed me that balance was less of an issue in older editions because Wizards didn’t get to select which spells they would learn, but rather, learned new spells at random each level.

I hold to my initial reaction upon learning this: that it doesn’t make any sense, but it sounds incredibly awesome. On the one hand, it seems silly to me that a Wizard would ever not be aware of what he or she was studying. Wizards (or “Magic Users” in the more traditional terminology) are scholars, they learn magic through something akin to the scientific method: observe, hypothesize, experiment, theorize. So if a spell which a wizard has mastered is a “Magical Theory,” shouldn’t they figure out which spells they’re working on in the “observation” or “experimentation” stages?

That having been said, there’s an undeniable charm to the idea. Being thrown a completely random grab-bag of spells, and then being forced to figure out how to use them most efficiently, sounds fun to me. I doubt future incarnations of Pathfinder will revert back to randomly determining spells. Nor do I think they should. But it’s certainly something which we should be talking about. Maybe as a house rule, or perhaps something which we could use for the sorcerer, to further differentiate it from the Wizard.

Incidentally, there’s an entire post about this issue over on Hack & Slash.

Monster Activity Cycles & Diets

These are extremely minor, which makes it all the more strange that I even need to talk about them. In old editions of Dungeons and Dragons, each monster had both an “Activity Cycle,” and a “Diet” listed in their stat block. The purpose of these is pretty simple. The activity cycle let GMs know when a creature was active. If it was nocturnal, the GM knew not to have it attack during the day, if it had an activity cycle of “any,” then the GM knew it didn’t matter, and so on. In most fantasy books or films, night is a particularly dangerous time when particularly vile monsters are on the prowl, so it makes good sense for GMs to be aware of when monsters can be active.  The diet of a monster is, of course, what they eat. Also useful, since herbivores are unlikely to try and eat adventurers, yet may still pose dangers for other reasons.

I wouldn’t say that either of these rank high enough on the “usefulness” scale to qualify Pathfinder as severely flawed for lacking them. However, I can see no reason not to include them. If the choice is between knowing when my players are in danger from trolls, and knowing which feats a typical troll has, then I would much rather know the activity cycle.

Experience Points based on Gold Pieces

Now, personally, I’m a fan of my Simple XP system. It has improved my game by an immeasurable degree. But if we’re going to be using large experience point rewards, why not use the original system wherein 1 gold piece granted a character 1 experience point? I’ve never personally played with this system, nor have I researched it in great detail, but on the surface it seems simple and logical. If experience points are a measure of the useful experience your character has gained, then why do we only really receive it for defeating monsters? If the goal of adventuring is to find treasure, then we should reward equally all methods of acquiring that treasure. The group who cleverly sneaks around a monster, or convinces a less intelligent monster to give them the treasure freely, deserves just as much credit as the group who kicks down the door and stabs everything around them until there’s nothing left between them the shiny shiny gold.

More Supplements for Game Masters

Looking over the various first edition Dungeons and Dragons stuff I’ve got, I notice that very little of it is aimed towards players, most of it is aimed towards GMs. Whereas when I look at my extensive collection of D&D 3rd edition and Pathfinder books, I notice that most of them are geared primarily towards players.

It makes good business sense, really. For every GM, there are what? An average of three players? Four? More? There are more potential customers for a player’s handbook than there are for a dungeon master’s guide. I’m sure the shift in priorities has made a lot of money for the developers of these games, and that’s cool with me. I would never ask a company to focus on a less-profitable demographic simply because it is my preference. Though I would question whether or not it is a more profitable demographic. In my experience, Players own the core rules, and mooch off the GM for everything else.

But even if it is more profitable to market to players, I’d like to see more books for Game Masters out there. Pathfinder has taken a step in the right direction with their excellent Game Mastery Guide, which is easily my favorite Pathfinder supplement thus far. I’d like to see them take it further with a Game Domination Guide, then perhaps a Game Supremacy Guide.

Remember this, Paizo: the collective of Game Masters are 100 times more effective than any marketing department. We’re the ones who find new players, and draw them in. The better we are at running games, the happier our players will be, and the more likely that they’ll purchase your products.

Are there any other oldschool game mechanics you’d like modern game developers to be learning from? Let me know in the comments! If nothing else, I can better educate myself.

Suppositions on Tabletop RPG Time Tracking

Since Monday’s post on time management, I’ve had four separate people ask me how keeping track of time would work in a game. This may not seem like much, but it’s probably the most universal response I’ve received to a single post. Normally I don’t even get that much feedback on a given day’s writing, and when I do, it’s pretty varied. So to have four people ask the same question is unusual, and warrants further attention. I thought I would use tonight’s post to look into time management further. Specifically, to look at how it might be applied to a Pathfinder game. I would like to make clear before hand that I’ve never actually kept track of time in a game–at least not in the ways I’m about to delve into. This post is, at best, educated speculation. If nothing else, the following will be a solid outline for what I will be attempting in the future, and I can do another follow up post with what I learn.

Before I get started, lets go over some basic definitions. As mentioned yesterday, I think the best way to scale time tracking is to use the same definitions Pathfinder establishes for movement on pages 170-172 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Tactical Time is something any Pathfinder player will be familiar with. It is built on the 6-second round, and is what we use to measure the passage of time in combat, or in other severely time-critical situations. Local Time is for exploration, such as when the players are delving into a dungeon. The six second round would be far too short for this, and slow down gameplay to a ridiculous degree, so for Local Time, we will use the 10 minute turn, which can also be divided into 1 minute fragments. Overland Time can be measured in days. If the party is simply traveling from point A to point B across a great distance, breaking things down into a unit smaller than a day would be tedious. Lastly, the Hour can be useful as a unit of measure for both Local, and Overland Time, when the situation warrants it.

With our basic units of measure established, we need to know how they fit into one another, and how they eventually build into a year. This may seem somewhat silly at first, but consider: the Gregorian Calendar (the calendar most westerners use) is as confusing as the endless layers of the abyss. Largely due to the fact that it is an imprecise attempt to force a variety of natural phenomena into logical time-measurement boxes. By taking advantage of the fact that we’re playing a fantasy adventure game, we can easily redefine the way units of time fit into one another so that we can more easily keep track.

For most of the smaller measurements, it’s simpler just to keep them consistent with the real world, to avoid the need to alter game rules. Casters need to rest 8 hours to recover their spells because 8 hours is 1/3 of the standard day, so changing the standard day would upset the balance of the game. However, larger units of measure can be toyed with at will.

6 Seconds = 1 Tactical Round
10 Tactical Rounds = 1 Minute
10 Minutes = 1 Local Turn
6 Local Turns = 1 Hour
24 Hours = 1 Day
7 Days = 1 Week
5 Weeks = 1 Month (35 Days)
10 Months = 1 Year (350 days)

Keeping a week at 7 days means that the few spells which have a 1 week cooldown are not unintentionally weakened or empowered. Making each month a consistent 5 weeks means you can avoid any confusion by having a single week bridging two months. And 10 months to a year keeps the everything close enough to our reality that the players won’t feel detached. Everything is uniform, which will be helpful later on.

Now that we’ve established our definitions, lets talk about movement. A character’s speed is already listed on their character sheet for use in combat. The speed which is listed on a character sheet is the distance, in feet, which a character can cover in a 6 second round. (The “move action” in combat is treated as a hustle, rather than a walk, which is why it takes less than the full round). This means that a character with a speed of 30 can move 30 feet in a round, 300 feet in a minute, and 3000 feet per 10 minute turn. This may seem ridiculous, but consider that the average human can walk a mile in 13 minutes. A mile is 5280 feet, which actually breaks down to a little over 406 feet per minute, so Pathfinder actually underestimates our movement speed.

Wouldn’t this be easier if we were using metric?

Considering the size of most dungeons, players will likely be moving in 50-100 foot spurts, rather than moving in increments of 300 or 3000 at a time. So I think the simplest way to handle time tracking within a dungeon will be to mentally keep track of how far your players have moved. Your figure only needs to be a rough estimate. Every time the players have moved about 300 feet, make a tally mark on a piece of paper. Once you’ve got 10 tally marks, make note that a turn has past. Bear also in mind that often players will not be moving at walking speed. Sometimes they will be hustling (in which case, they can move 600ft per minute), and other times they will be tapping every cobblestone with their 10ft pole. (There is no official rule on this, so lets just say they’d be moving at 1/3rd their normal pace, at 100ft per minute).

This sounds like a huge pain, doesn’t it? I know, I’m thinking the same thing. But think of how much depth you can add to your game by having your player’s torches burn out, or having time sensitive events in your dungeons, such as secret meetings that begin 3 turns after your players enter the dungeon, and end 2 turns later. Maybe your players will find them and be able to listen in, or maybe they won’t! That’s part of the beauty of tracking time.

Overland Movement should be much simpler to track. A character with a speed of 30 can move 24 miles at walking speed in a given day. A day, in this case, being 8 hours, which is the maximum amount of time a character can travel without requiring a constitution check. This amounts to precisely four hexes, if you’re using the standard six-mile hex. If you’re not using a hex map (like me, in my current campaign, where I haven’t yet converted the world map yet) you’ll need to figure out how far 24 miles is in some other way. One thing you’ll definitely want to keep in mind is how your player’s traveling speed might be affected by obstacles such as mountainous terrain, swamps, etc. It would probably be beneficial to establish a baseline speed difference between traveling on roads and traveling through the wilderness as well. Perhaps road travelers can move and even 30 miles, or 5 hexes?

Movement isn’t the only thing which takes time. Players don’t simply walk from their home base to the dungeon any more than they walk from the dungeon entrance directly to the treasure room. There are things to explore, battles to fight, an traps to disarm. So how do we measure those in our time tracking system?

Combat is obviously going to be the most frequent interruption to movement–particularly if you’re fond of random encounters. When working with Overland Time, their interruption can be largely ignored. Unless the party faced a large number of encounters in a given day, the amount of time a battle takes should be negligible. Whilst using Local Time, however, the length of combat is much more significant. Regardless of how long combat takes, you should probably round the time up to the next minute. Gygax even recommends that “they should rest a turn [LS: 10 minutes] after every time they engage in combat or any other strenuous activities.”

Other activities can include any number of things. Dealing with a trap, discussing a strategy, negotiating with a monster, exploring a room, opening a locked door, bashing open a locked door, the list goes on. GMs will have to use their judgement on a case by case basis to determine whether an action should be considered negligible (such as glancing around a room), a minute long (such as opening a relatively simple lock, or busting down a door), or longer (negotiating a truce with a hostile creature, or thoroughly exploring a room). I would advise against trying to track increments of time smaller than a minute. Either put a tally mark down for a minute, or don’t mark anything at all. It’ll even out eventually. Chapter 4 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, “Skills,” notes what type of action each skill requires. This can be helpful to determine how much time you want to mark down, though your players will probably hate you if you check the action-typeevery time they make a skill check. Some GM arbitration is called for here.

The number of events which consume enough time to be counted as relevant on an overland scale are few and far between. Sleeping tops the list, followed by crafting, and perhaps a few other activities which have their time requirements listed as hours. Overland time might also be consumed by switching to local time for a significant period. For example, if a party can travel 24 miles a day, then the party might travel 12 miles, discover a village, switch to local time, spend 10 10-minute turns in the village, then continue on their way. They could still make it the full 24 miles (since that distance is traveled in 8 hours of the day), while the time they spent in the village would be rounded up to 2 hours, leaving them with 6 hours of rest before needing to sleep for 8 hours.

Tracking time in towns is tricky. As best I can tell, most GMs don’t even bother with it. However, I think there could be some real value to it if you pulled it off. Often, as a GM, one of my players will want to do something in town, while the rest are content merely to wait. This, to me, seems silly. If the player who has something they need done takes 3 hours, then what is the rest of the party really doing? Sitting at a bench next to the town gate waiting? It strikes me that if I actually turned to them and said “What would you like to do during your 1 hour turn,” that might encourage players to engage with the world around them.

Lastly, I’d like to touch on long-term time tracking, which is actually what I’ve found the most information on. The common wisdom seems to be to print out calendar sheets using whatever number of days you have in a month. Many GMs seem to simply mark days off as they pass, which would work fine. However, I think the calendar is a good opportunity to enhance your campaign record keeping. Simple notes such as meeting an important NPC, engaging in a major battle, or recovering a valuable treasure could be notated on the calendar. And, if you’re like me and want to create a living world around your players, you can make notes for things the players didn’t witness, such as the day two nations went to war, or the day your villain recovers the Big Evil Thingamaboo which will allow them to summon demonic servants. You could also use the calendar to plan future events–keeping in mind that you may need to erase them if your players avert those events from happening.

Once again, these are just my musings on how I think I’ll try to track time in my upcoming game sessions. I haven’t done it before, and I’ve found a remarkable lack of information on the Internet about how to do it well. So if any more experienced GMs out there would like to set me straight on something, please comment!

Either way, I’ll be gathering notes on my success and failure, and will revisit this topic once I have a little more experience.