The Awesome Dice Blog (which is indeed awesome) recently posted a fascinating infographic which is too cool not to share. The folks who made it have generously made it free to share, so here it is:
I see that Rome fell shortly after the invention of the D20. Maybe we ought to be giving more weight to Jack Chick’s warnings…
There’s a lot more interesting information in the original post, so be sure to check that out as well!
As the title notes, full credit for the creative parts of this post has to go to Telecanter, of Telecanter’s Receding Rules. To be frank, I’ve contributed nothing of value. I’m just taking care of the legwork that any halfway competent Pathfinder GM could handle on their own. If you don’t read TRR, then you’ve made some fundamental mistakes in your choice of which blogs deserve your attention. But hey, I won’t complain about the traffic.
Recently, Telecanter put up a post entitled “Three Spider Terrors,” where he created three types of deadly spiders which were meant to evoke the kind of terror giant spiders once instilled in us, before we became completely desensitized to fantasy creatures. All three connected with me, and I decided I would really like to use them in Pathfinder. And that’s exactly what I’ve done below: taken Telecanter’s spiders, and given them Pathfinder stats. Telecanter’s original descriptions of the spiders are also reproduced below as blockquotes, and all of this is done under Telecanter’s Creative Common’s License. The Pathfinder stats are based off of the Giant Spider and Spider Swarm stats on page 258 of the Pathfinder Bestiary.
A skittering noise hovers around the edge of the torch’s flickering light.
Pale Spiders live in the dark, and they feed on those who don’t belong there. They are attracted to sources of light as a means of procuring food, but prefer to bide their time, waiting just outside the outside edge of the light source’s radius. A quick party might see, at most, a white leg just as it disappears back into the darkness. Pale spiders like to wait until one of their intended victims is rendered incapacitated before they venture into the light to feed on the creature’s soul using their Soul Drain attack.
Pale Spider; CR 1; [Vermin] [Underground / Dungeon] [Damp & Dark Climate] [Any Activity Cycle]
XP: 400
N Tiny Vermin (Cat sized)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60ft, tremorsense 60 ft.,Perception +4
DEFENSE
AC 15, touch 14, flat-footed 12 [10 + Dex(3) + Size(2)]
HP 5 (1d8 + 0)
Fort +2 Ref +4 Will +1;
Immunities mind-affecting effects
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft., Climb 30ft.
Melee bite +5 (1d6 – 2 plus Soul Drain)
STATISTICS
Str 6 Dex 17 Con 12 Int — Wis 10 Cha 2
Base Attack +2; CMB -2; CMD 11 (15 vs. trip)
Skills Climb (+16), Perception +4 (+8 in webs), Stealth +11 (+27 in webs)
Feats Weapon Finesse (Bite Attack)
ECOLOGY
Environment Any
Organization Hunting Party (6-12), or Swarm (13-24)
Activity Cycle Any
Treasure Incidental
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Soul Drain(Ex) Bite–Injury; save Fort DC 14; frequency 1; effect 1d6 Charisma damage; Cha damage is maximized (6) on a character who is at -1 HP or lower. Any creature whose Charisma is reduced to 0 by this ability cannot be healed or resurrected.
TELECANTER’S ORIGINAL TEXT
These cat-sized spiders follow just at the edge of light, wait for a death, then swarm in. Never fewer than six, they prod and clamber over a body in order to steal a soul. They prove to be vicious fighters if an attempt is made to keep them from a body. Corpses pale spiders have fed on can not be revived.
A brief glimpse of fleeing grey legs moves quickly out of sight.
A young Grey Mugger is most often just looking for a safe place to rest. Most end up under a rock, or in a fallen log. However, when travelers are not careful with their discarded boots or open bags, these can seem like a perfect place to rest for a Grey Mugger. And when the creature’s rest is interrupted, they strike with surprising lethality, and use their remarkable speed to escape.
Grey Mugger; CR 1; [Vermin] [Dry, Warm Places] [Temperate Climate] [Any Activity Cycle]
XP: 400
N Diminutive Vermin
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60ft, tremorsense 60 ft.,Perception +4
DEFENSE
AC 17, touch 17, flat-footed 14 [10 + Dex(3) + Size(4)]
HP 2 (1d8 + 0)
Fort +2 Ref +4 Will +1;
Immunities mind-affecting effects
OFFENSE
Speed 50 ft., Climb 50ft.
Melee Touch Attack bite +2 (1 damage, plus Life Link)
STATISTICS
Str 6 Dex 17 Con 12 Int — Wis 10 Cha 2
Base Attack +2; CMB -4; CMD 9 (11 vs. trip)
Skills Climb (+16), Perception +4 (+8 in webs), Stealth +11 (+27 in webs)
Feats Weapon Finesse (Bite Attack)
ECOLOGY
Environment Any
Organization Solitary, pair, or colony (3-8)
Activity Cycle Any
Treasure Incidental
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Life Link(Su) Bite–Injury; save Fort DC 22; effect the target of the life link receives no benefit from any form of healing, regardless of its source. Instead, all magical, divine, natural, and mundane healing goes to the Grey Mugger. Every 8 hit points gives the spider an additional HD, increasing its maximum HP. Every 3 HD gained, the Grey Mugger grows one size category, and with each size category the damage dealt by the creature’s bite attack increases (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 2d6, and so on). In order for the Life Link to be broken, the Grey Mugger must be hunted down and killed. Until then, the victim can receive no healing whatsoever. A single Grey Mugger may establish a Life Link with any number of victims. In some rare cases, Grey Muggers have been known to absorb enough energy to gain Intelligence, sending out “drone” Grey Muggers, and devouring them to gain their Life Links.
TELECANTER’S ORIGINAL TEXT
A tiny reclusive spider that often catches explorers unaware as they probe old bags and chests. The bite of the grey mugger is but a sting (1 hit point) but thereafter the healing of the victim with serve to feed the spider (each hit point the victim heals, whether by magic, divine aid, or naturally, will go to the spider– every 8 hit points will grow the spider and give it an additional hit die making it more fierce). The spider must be found and slain to sever the link.
What appears to be a human man moves with jerky, sudden movements, as though he is controlled by an inexperienced puppeteer.
They were once human, or at least, their bodies once contained a human. Their internal organs have been replaced by a swarm of deadly spiders, and their nervous system and musculature has been replaced with an elaborate tangle of webs. The once-human creatures stagger about in a poor imitation of a human walk. They attempt to mime the desire for physical contact–and embrace or a kiss…
Jerky Man; CR 5; [Vermin] [Caves] [Temperate Climate] [Any Activity Cycle]
XP: 2,400
N Medium Vermin
Init -1; Senses darkvision 60ft.,Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 11, touch 10, flat-footed 11 [10 + Natural(1)]
HP 14 (3d8 + 0)
Fort +0 Ref +0 Will +3;
Immunities mind-affecting effects
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee slam + 2 (1d6 plus infect)
STATISTICS
Str 12 Dex 10 Con 10 Int — Wis 10 Cha 2
Base Attack +1; CMB +2; CMD 12
ECOLOGY
Environment Near Caves
Organization Solitary
Activity Cycle Any
Treasure Incidental
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Infect(Ex) Any touch from a Jerky Man requires a DC: 14 fortitude save. Failure indicates that the target has become infected by the spiders which control the Jerky man from within. The spiders immediately begin laying eggs and spreading themselves throughout the body of the host, dealing Con damage each day equal to the number of days which the host has been infected. (On the first day 1 Con damage is dealt, on the second day 2 Con damage is dealt, and so on) This ability damage cannot be healed unless the infection is cured. If the host reaches 0 Constitution, then the host dies, and their body becomes a new Jerky Man.
Cure It is exceedingly difficult to cure the Jerky Man Infection. Most who know its effects resort to self-amputation of the affected limb without hesitation. The clerical spell “Heal” can be used to cure the infection as well, if a cleric of sufficient level can be found.
Last Ditch Leap(Ex) Upon its destruction, the skin of a Jerky Man will rip open to reveal cobwebs roiling with spiders. The round following the creature’s destruction, the spiders will leap free from the ruined corpse in every direction, and quickly skitter towards the nearest viable host. Anyone standing within 5ft of the creature’s body must make a fortitude save as though they have been touched. Those with the evasion ability are entitled to a reflex save (DC: 16) to avoid the spiders altogether. The spiders will move about the battlefield as a Spider Swarm (Pathfinder Bestiary Pg. 258) for 3 rounds or until destroyed. After three rounds, spiders without a host die. Any who come in contact with the swarm during this juncture must make a fortitude save against infection.
TELECANTER’S ORIGINAL TEXT
They are said to come staggering out of caves or old mines and motion for passersby to come close. An embrace and a kiss is all they wish. But they are not men. A kiss from a jerky man, or just a touch, will infect the victim and the flesh near the bite will begin turning to tiny spiders (an inch per day) unless something is done.
If a jerky man is killed in combat its thin skin will rip open to reveal cobwebs roiling with spiders. The round after one dies, the person that killed them will be covered with spiders and begin taking one point of damage per round. Upon death the victim will become a jerky man themselves. (DMs can adjudicate how successful various means of removing the spiders are).
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.
As of late, I’ve been pondering how I can make travel more interesting for my players. It’s something I’ve always struggled with in my career as a Game Master. Sometimes I’ve tried just fading to black between points of interest, but that’s no good. If the players don’t somehow experience the travel, then there’s no tangible metric for how distant various locations are. And even if that’s not a problem for you (which it should be), it also deprives players of the opportunity to experience the game world outside of towns and plot events. Imagery of adventurers traveling together through a forest or desert fuels our imaginations, we can’t simply gloss over that part of an adventure because it’s difficult to present in an engaging manner! We can, of course, try to give the illusion distance by determining that a certain journey will require X days to complete, but even if you try to spice that up with random encounters, the players will get bored. After an unfortunate extended hiatus, my group is finally going to be able to get back together for a new adventure soon. The one I’m preparing will have a great deal of traveling in it, which has brought this problem to the forefront of my attention.
Of course, utilizing a hex map helps solve many of these problems, which I’ve talked about before. Making the players responsible for choosing each 6-mile step of their journey helps engage them in travel, because progress towards their destination won’t continue without their input. Giving them these choices also increases their player agency, which will always increase their engagement. And, as an added bonus, once you start asking your players to make choices, they’ll start making choices on their own. Before you know it, your players will be directing the course of their own adventure, and that’s when you know that you’re a good game master.
But how does it work?
I mean, when the whole group is actually sitting around the table, and you’ve got your filled-in hex map behind the GM screen, what happens next? How precisely do the players interact with the hex map. How do they know where to go? Does a single player just point to one hex after another until the end of the day? How are you going to describe each hex when the players enter it? These are questions which need to be considered, lest we be caught with our pants down at the table. We’re the GM after all, we need to give the appearance that we’re prepared for anything the players throw at us.
Step one is figuring out how the players are going to keep track of the map as they uncover it. Of course, I have a filled-in hex map which I’ll keep behind the screen, but there’s no reasonable way for me to show it to them without revealing information they have not yet earned. My map, after all, has notes on it indicating the locations of dungeons, treasure, and towns. So the players need a assign one of their number the duties of mapmaker, and that player will need a blank map which they can fill in as they play. A quick google search for “print hex graph” turned up a site which creates hexagonal graph paper for you. I printed off 25 or 30 sheets myself, just to keep on hand. I also have a very nice hexagonal battle mat which was given to me as a Christmas gift by a friend. It’s wet-erase, so I can actually have a nice visual “world environment” for my players as they explore. The only drawback is that the mat needs to be erased at the end of each session, so the players will need to keep a map as well.
As with most party decisions in RPGs, reasonable adults won’t need any GM guidance with respect to making a group decision. In my experience, a party leader most often emerges naturally, and when it doesn’t, players don’t have trouble coming to a consensus on issues like “which direction do we walk.” If getting the party to agree on things like this is a problem for your group, then your problems are outside the scope of this post. Likely outside the scope of anything I will ever write about, because I’m not from the “here’s how to handle your friends…” school of GM advice.
With that out of the way, the second step becomes determining the best way for players to interact with the hex crawl. What is the conversation that takes place between the players and the GM as they move from hex to hex on the way to their destination. For my purposes, in the upcoming game I’ll be running, the players will receive some very basic instructions. The first leg of their journey will first require them to travel in a certain direction until they reach a river, then they’ll need to follow that river until they reach a village. Pretty straightforward. Straightforward enough that it might end up being boring, but I’ll get to that later.
As the players begin to prepare for their journey, the GM should figure out what the slowest party member’s movement speed is. This will be the movement speed for the entire party, unless the faster party members are willing to leave someone behind. If the players are on foot, the slowest will likely be whatever character is a dwarf or halfling. If the players have mounts (which suddenly become a lot more appealing once you’re hex crawling) their speed will significantly increase. Remember also to consider whether the characters are encumbered or not. If you’re like me, you’ve probably never used encumbrance rules before. However, if we’re trying to make travel engaging, then using encumbrance rules gives the players something they’ll need to pay attention to lest their pace be slowed, and that’s too valuable to pass up. If Pathfinder’s encumbrance rules are too complicated for you, I did a mock up of an alternative a few months back which may be more to your liking. I haven’t got around to putting any spit or polish on it, though.
For simplicity’s sake (and also because this is likely what I’ll have in my game) lets say that the party is made up entirely of unencumbered humans, which have a movement speed of 30. According to Pathfinder’s movement rules (found in the Core Rulebook, on pages 170 through 172), this gives the party a daily movement speed of 24 miles. Now, if you like, you can simply say that since each hex is 6 miles, and 24 divided by 6 is 4, that means that a party may travel 4 hexes in a day–and that’s fine. However it fails to take into account that some terrain is more difficult to travel through than others. Fellow blogger Brendan recently wrote a post entitled “Wilderness Movement Costs,” (which itself was based on a post by Delta). In it, he outlines a basic system for tracking a party’s hex crawling movements which I’ve decided to rip off and adapt for Pathfinder/my own purposes.
Movement Points: Convert the number of miles the party may travel in a day into “points.” So, it the party can travel 24 miles in a day, they have 24 “movement points.” This may seem like a ridiculous extra step. However, its function is that it turns the party’s movement budget into an abstraction, rather than a literal unit of distance. This will help players understand the less-than-literal possible uses for movement points.The party can spend movement points on couple different things:
Travel: Travel is the most obvious function. (That is, after all, kinda the whole purpose of this post). The table below shows the cost in movement points for each of the four terrain difficulties. Since the players won’t know if the next hex will put them over their movement cost, it’s up to the GM to warn them when they’re about to do it, and let them know that continuing forward would constitute a forced march, meaning the players would not be able to move as much the following day. Note that traveling on roads actually allows the party to move at a faster speed than the standard rules would allow. This way, roads have an actual in-game purpose much closer to their real life one.
| Terrain | Examples | Movement Cost | Becoming Lost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | road | 4 | No Check |
| Average | clear, city, grasslands, trail* | 6 | Survival DC: 10 |
| Moderate | forest, hills, desert, badlands | 8 | Survival DC: 15 |
| Difficult | mountains, jungle, swamp | 12 | Survival DC: 20 |
*There is no Survival check required to avoid becoming lost when following a well marked trail.
The movement cost happens to be evenly divisible for our band of unencumbered humans, though it may not be for all parties. If a party has some movement points left at the end of the day, but not enough to enter the next hex, give them some extra time to spend on other activities. Remember that in Pathfinder, a “traveling day” is 8 hours. So if you divide their total allotment of daily movement points by 8, you can determine how many movement points are spent during each hour of travel. From there you can easily figure out how much time they gain. For example, if you divide the human’s daily allotment of movement points, 24, by 8, you get 3. That’s 3 miles every hour. So if they have 3 movement points remaining, they have an extra hour to spend on tasks such as crafting, foraging for food, or researching spells.
Searching: A six mile hex is huge. A character could spend a week or more in the same hex without discovering everything there is to learn there. Every time they enter a hex, they see only a tiny fraction of what the hex has to offer. By spending one half of the movement points required to enter the hex, they can explore a roughly equivalent fraction of the hex. For example, a character entering a forest hex spends 8 movement points to make a beeline through the hex. If the party would also like to spend 4 more movement points in the hex (for a total of 12) then they can explore a little bit on their way through. They certainly won’t see everything, but they’ll earn themselves a second roll on the encounter table. Maybe they’ll find nothing, maybe they’ll encounter monsters, or maybe they’ll find something worth searching for. See below for more information on encounters.
That covers how the party’s movement through a hex crawl is handled, but how is it entertaining? At this point all we have is a mini game where the players point to a hex, and the GM tells them whether or not they have enough movement left, or whether they need to bed down for the evening. This is a structure, but without putting some meat on that structure, the whole thing ends up being completely monotonous, and players will leave. That’s where the final two elements of engaging travel come into play: survival, and encounters.
Surviving in the wilderness won’t be easy. First off, each party will need to rely on the survival check of one of its members. Each time a hex is entered, that player must make a survival check to avoid getting lost. If the character fails their survival check, then when the party attempts to move on to the next hex, the DM should roll 1d6 to determine which hex the party actually travels to. A roll of one means the party travels to the hex they intended to travel to (though they are still lost). Rolling a 2 indicates that the party travels to the hex one-space clockwise of their intended hex, rolling a 3 indicates they travel to the hex 2 spaces clockwise, etc. The party remains lost until their guide can succeed on a survival check upon entering a new hex. Items such as a compass or a map can help characters improve their survival checks to avoid getting lost. Once a character is an experienced enough traveler, their survival skill will likely rise high enough that becoming lost is no longer an issue.
Players will also need to monitor their rations in order to survive in the wilderness. If you’ve never forced players to keep track of their food supply before, now’s the time to start. Once the players run out of food 4 days into a 10 day journey, you’ll find they’re much more engaged in figuring out how to reach their destination before they die of starvation. Foraging and hunting are always options, but what if they can’t find anything? Will they eat their mounts? Will they eat…each other? That’s the fun! And don’t forget the elements. If the character’s journey takes place during the colder months, they may regret not spending the encumbrance points on those extra blankets when it begins to snow, and they start to freeze to death.
Lastly, there’s encounters. There are all types of encounters your players can have, which you can roll on a random chart. I won’t take the time to come up with a chart here, but I would say the chart should probably be about fifty percent “nothing,” which will allow the players to avoid getting bogged down in every single hex. The other half of the chart should be some combination of combat encounters, and ‘other.’ Other types of encounters can include walking in on a druidic ritual, finding the entrance to a random dungeon, coming upon a village of friendly or neutral wilderness dwellers, discovering a magic well, or any number of things you can come up with on your own. And for those times when combat encounters are rolled, there’s no need for them to be as boring as the standard “monsters appear” nonsense. Whose to say whether the monsters notice the players or not–or whether it’s a few monsters, or an entire village of them! Trollsmyth once posted an excellent chart which GMs could use to determine what monsters were doing when they were encountered. And don’t forget my Spicing Up the Battlemat series of posts to help make these combat encounters more interesting! (I really ought to do another of those. The last one was in December!)
As I’ve said a million times, keeping your players engaged is the number one duty of a game master. And whether want it to or not, travel is likely going to make up a large part of your game. You can either ignore it, or you can try to use it as another opportunity to challenge and entertain your players. After writing this post, I for one feel a lot more confident about running travel for my players in our upcoming game.
GM: After falling through the floor above, you land about 10 feet below. As the dust settles, you see that you’re in a simple stone room which appears to have been used in the recent past as a large creature’s den. There are bones scattered about, and a nest of some kind in the corner. The walls in the South East corner have been knocked away, and a ten foot wide tunnel extends beyond them. To the north is a simple iron door.
Lirnef: If we just fell into the nest of the Forest Serpent, then we need to get out of here. We barely escaped that last encounter. Lets head out the door.
GM: Does the party agree to exit through the door?
*Party nods*
GM: What’s your marching order?
*Party looks amongst themselves*
Merrag: Sedger, you have the most HP. I think I have spell to boost your saving throw prepared, let me cast that.
Sedger: Alright, I think I’m ready. I open the door.
GM: When you place your hand on the door’s handle-
Sedger: Woah, woah! I didn’t say I put my hand on the handle.
GM: Then how did you plan to open it?
Sedger: I kicked it open.
*GM facepalms*
GM: You…kick it open?
Sedger: Yup.
GM: Well since you didn’t turn the latch, you’ll need to roll a strength check.
*dice clatter*
Sedger: 28!
GM: The door falls inwards. The poison dart trap in the handle fires impotently into the stone wall.
Every GM is familiar with the scenario above. It is our bane, but sometimes we must ask questions which allows the players to easily infer some knowledge which they shouldn’t know. As GMs grow more experienced, they learn ways to counteract the most common of these questions. Marching orders can be established at the start of the dungeon, requiring players to speak up beforehand if they think they’d like to change it. And common actions, like opening doors, are performed using common methods unless the players specify otherwise in advance. Yet the problem remains. Even players who try to avoid metagaming don’t want their characters to get hurt, and if the GM tips his or her hand with a poorly timed question, who can blame a player for taking advantage of that?
A few years ago, I scrolled down below the Goblins comic to read Thunt’s blog. Normally his blog is just comic news, convention news, life news, things like that. But on this particular day, it was a collection of dungeon mastering tricks which had worked for him in the past. Unfortunately, there’s not really a good navigation for the blog part of the site, and google isn’t turning up the specific entry I remember, so I can’t link to the original. In the post he mentioned an idea which has stuck with me: the problem of a GM’s questions providing players with unintended information can be solved by asking ‘useless’ questions.
As an example, lets imagine that a player who wields a sword and shield is leading the group through a door. After failing a stealth check earlier, the orcs on the other side of that door, which the players don’t know about, have been alerted to their presence. As soon as the door opens, a half dozen orcish bows will fire arrows at whoever is standing in front. Since the lead player’s shield will have a strong impact on how many of those arrows hit him, the GM might ask “What do you do with your sword and shield when you open the door? You’ll need at least one free hand to grasp the latch.” This is the kind of question which any competent player will recognize as indicative of something unusual going on. That doesn’t mean the players will always make the right choice. The lead player may decide that their sword will be important as soon as he or she opens the door, and will tell the GM that they set down their shield. Or they might also choose to stand to the side of the door, and open it from a covered position. The problem isn’t the choice they make, but rather, the fact that those choices are informed by information they shouldn’t have.
Now consider the same scenario. Sword & Board leader, door, orcs with arrows, and the question. But this time, imagine that the GM had been asking simple questions at many of the previous doors as well. Not all of them, and not always the same question either. Three doors ago the GM had asked which hand was used to open the door. Two doors before that, the GM said the the door was just slightly stuck, and asked how the player wanted to apply additional force to get it open. There had also been that wooden door, when the GM wanted to know whether the players opened it inward, or outward. None of those doors had anything special behind them, and at this point the players don’t expect there to be. So this time, the player won’t set down their shield because they think they’ll need their sword more, nor do they stand to the side of the door and open it from cover because they’re worried about traps. The player does whatever seems the most reasonable, which is precisely what you want them to do. Not because you want them to fail or to succeed, but because you want your players to experience the game without outside influences.
Asking questions like this has an added benefit as well. In addition to obscuring a GM’s important questions, asking players to describe how their character perform simple actions gets the players thinking the way their character would. I can imagine that after a few sessions, players might even start offering some information without being asked, if they feel they may be in danger. So even the ‘useless’ questions aren’t entirely without value.
I’ve put together some examples of situations where the GM might ask questions, along with a selection of different questions to ask so you don’t start to sound like a broken record. Bear in mind that most of the time, only one of these questions should be asked at a time, and not every time the action is performed. The goal is to ask often enough that your players don’t read into your questions, but not so often that you slow down the game.
And one final note. The paradigm example of this problem is the perception check. The GM asks players for a perception check to see if they notice something, and the players roll low. But since players aren’t dumb, they know that the GM’s announcement that they didn’t notice anything only means that whatever is out there is too stealthy for them. This problem is easily solved by making note of each character’s perception skill, and rolling in secret behind the GM screen, without any announcements in the first place. I sometimes roll meaningless rolls and glance at the result just so my players won’t come to associate unannounced die rolls with missed checks.
Wizards are the scholars of Pathfinder. Other spellcasting classes, such as the sorcerer, cleric, or druid, draw their powers from their ancestry, their gods, or nature itself. The unique flavor of wizards is that they are the scientists of a magical world. Their power comes from hours of study, and dutifully logged research. At each level, wizards automatically learn two new spells which represent research performed between adventures. A wizard can also learn new spells by studying the spellbooks of other wizards. The only real limit on the number of spells a wizard can know is however many books the GM will let him get away with carrying.
This versatility is one of the great draws of the wizard class. Unfortunately, the nearly limitless ability to expand their spell repertoire also allow wizards to completely overshadow the other classes. This uncontested dominance has plagued the game ever since D&D 3rd edition’s release. Over time, balance has improved through lowering the effectiveness of some spells, and increasing the abilities of other classes, but wizards are still considerably overpowered in Pathfinder.
Editions ago, when wizards were still called magic users, this was not as much of an issue. I’m not exactly an expert on older versions of D&D, but my understanding is that not only did wizards level at a slower rate than other classes do, but their abilities were also significantly less comprehensive. In Pathfinder, the idea is that anything which can happen in the game world can potentially be achieved by players. If there are mighty magic users who can cast spells powerful enough to raise continents out of the sea, then players should be able to look forward to similar abilities at some point. Obviously this creates much more powerful casters, but I don’t think I would want to give either of these things up. I like that ever class levels at the same rate, and I like that nothing is ever completely out of reach of player characters. I would, however, like to see wizards brought more in line with other classes. It’s a problem which is often floating around the periphery of my awareness. I haven’t come up with a solid solution, but recently I struck upon an idea which I think is flavorful, interesting, and goes a small way towards helping with balance issues.
As I’ve posted about before, I’ve been reading a few first edition D&D modules. Alas I’ve been too busy to really make a dent in the small stack of them that I have, but one thing I’ve noticed is the big to-do which is made about NPC spellbooks. Any time a magic user appears in a module, the author makes note of where the magic user keeps his or her spellbook, and what spells are in it. Magic users often seem to go to great lengths to hide their books. It seems that in 1st edition, stealing finding and stealing a spellbook was considered a great prize. And why shouldn’t it be? In first edition, as in Pathfinder, getting your hands on someone else’ spell book means that–after a little study–all of that person’s spells can be added to your own collection.
I toyed with this idea for awhile, not really sure what I wanted to do with it. I could start making spellbooks a bigger part of my games, but all that would do is make any wizard players more overpowered than they already were. I jotted the idea down in one of my notebooks for future reference, and promptly forgot about it for a few weeks. That’s when I read a post by Paul over at Blog of Holding called 4e Spells as Treasure. I find it amusing that many of my best ideas come after reading Blog of Holding, since it most often focuses on 4th edition D&D, a game which I find personally quite distasteful. In this post, Paul discusses the possibility of including scrolls which have improved versions of spells in treasure hordes. Wizards could transcribe the spells into their books, and forever be able to cast a slightly better version of a common spell. This set me to thinking:
What if wizards only learned spells by finding them?
It wouldn’t be difficult. Simply drop the 2 spells wizards learn automatically with each new level. Since those spells are explained as research performed between adventures, all a GM need say is that spell research in the game world is significantly more time consuming and difficult than in the standard Pathfinder game. Players could still research spells on their own, but doing so would need to be handled with the GM, and would probably have significant costs associated with it. As Paul writes, “DMs and players can go crazy with rules for spending money on research, libraries, and labs.”
Using this house rule, characters would no longer be able to learn spells independently from the game world. Players never like to see their characters become weaker, but once they accepted this way of doing things, I think it would make spell acquisition a much more involving and entertaining process. Gaining two new spells instantaneously with each level is fine, but it’s an abstraction which reminds everyone that they’re playing a game. Instead, every time players encountered a wizard, they would be engaged in trying either to befriend her so they could learn from her, or defeat her so they could steal her secrets.
This house rule also provides the GM with useful tools for controlling their game world. Many spells make a GMs job significantly more difficult, such as the various permutations of polymorph, flight spells, teleportation spells, invisibility spells, and worst of all, divination spells. And while I think it would be inadvisable to simply block players from ever finding these spells, this rule does give the GM a throttle with which to control their inclusion in the game. Overland Flight, for example, might never appear in the game until an enemy wizard uses it in a level 14 adventure. If the players then earn the spell by defeating their foe and finding his spellbook, it’s still just a 5th level spell. But the GM is able to prevent it from effecting the game until they’re ready for it, 5 levels after it would normally be available to characters.
Another benefit of this house rule is that treasure hordes become much more interesting. My experience with D&D is that most GMs include two things in treasure piles: coins, and gear they want their players to use. I did this myself for many years, so I understand the desire to simplify player rewards. Artwork, weapons which won’t be used, and even gems seem like they’re simply obstructions to game play. All the player will want to do is find out how much gold he can get in exchange for these items, and sell them as soon as they can. But simple treasure hordes become boring very quickly. Players can only get excited about a pile of coins and a replacement for their weapon with an extra +1 on it so many times. Including the spellbooks of long dead magic users, or even just scrolls containing a new spell, will go a long way towards getting players more excited about what they find.
It’s just a thought at this point. I haven’t had an opportunity to implement this rule in a game yet. When I do I’ll be sure to take copious notes on player reactions and update the blog on how it went.
Above is a selection from the wilderness map created for “The Endless Stair,” a TSR module for 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons originally published in 1987. Prior to the release of third edition D&D by Wizards of the Coast, maps such as this were commonplace. With that release, for reasons unknown to me, Wizards of the Coast apparently thought it was best to completely sever the connection between D&D and the noble hexagon. As a tabletop role player who started with D&D 3.x, I spent a number of years vaguely aware that some people liked hexes, but had to context as to how they could be beneficial.
It was Trollsmyth’s superb series of hex mapping posts which finally drove home for me the importance of hex maps. They are not intended as a replacement for maps constructed using squares, but rather, are intended to supplement those maps in situations where squares are less appropriate. Squares work best for dungeons and other structures, where walls and rooms and corridors often snap neatly into a square grid anyway. In fact, the module I mentioned above, The Endless Stair, contains a number of dungeon maps printed on a square grid.
What hex maps are intended for is the outdoors. Squares have no place measuring nature. If any of my readers are old enough to have played the original Dragon Warrior game for the NES, they know what I mean. The game was great fun, but the squared-off overworld map looked silly even in those days of primitive technology. And while the righteous hexagon may not necessarily be a more ‘natural’ shape, it certainly approximates a natural shape more efficiently than its brutish cousin the square. Through the use of its two additional sides, the hexagon is more uniform in size than the square. The the distance between the center of a hex, and the center of any adjacent hex, is equal for all six sides. Whereas the square, with its 8 adjacent spaces, allows characters to travel much greater distances when moving diagonally than when moving up, down, left, or right. The only way to compensate for this extra distance is to penalize a character somehow for moving diagonally. And while this may be a simple matter on a small scale map (each space moved diagonally is counted as 1.5 spaces.), it becomes more difficult on a larger scale.
Which brings us to the next point regarding hexes: scale. Maps of dungeons or other areas which utilize squares are generally done on a small scale. The most common measurement is that 1 square is equal to 5 square feet. It’s simple, and when a room is only thirty feet square, it’s effective. However, wilderness travel require a larger scale by definition. No one in their right mind would try to map a forest, a mountain range, or a continent, in five-by-five foot increments. To even attempt it would be ludicrous. The standard size for a single hex on a wilderness map is six miles across from flat side to flat side. While a GM can use any scale he or she pleases, the six mile scale has a good balance. It’s small enough that overland travel can be measured in a meaningful way (with most characters being able to travel between 12 and 18 miles in a day), but large enough to allow a good sized continent to fit on a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 graph paper.
The largeness of a six mile hex comes with other benefits as well. At over 30 square miles*, it’s impossible for a party to fully explore every hex. They can mark down the primary terrain, and any items which they come across, but there will always be more. This means that even a hex which has already been explored can offer new challenges for players. From wandering monsters which they didn’t encounter the last time, to dungeon entrances, or perhaps an entire community or fortress which was 2 or 3 miles away from the route the party took last time they passed through. The blog “I Waste the Buddha With My Crossbow” has a great post which gives you an idea of just how large this scale is.
For all the arguments I can make demonstrating the benefits of hex maps, there’s one which I keep returning to time and again. An argument which, in my mind, is irrefutable proof that the D&D community needs to re-embrace hex mapping:
We don’t have anything better yet!
It baffles me why Wizards of the Coast would abandon a perfectly good system without at least attempting to provide a replacement for it. But they did nothing of the sort! Wilderness travel was downplayed significantly in 3.x, and that hasn’t been remedied in Pathfinder. On the rare occasion that wilderness maps are included in adventure modules, the best they can do is indicate scale with a measuring stick. Take a look at this map from one of my favorite D&D 3.5 modules, “The Standing Stone:”
What about this map is improved by the lack of a hex overlay? Nothing! Refusing to include an overlay of mighty hexagons forces the GM to add measuring tape to the already cluttered area behind the GM screen. And while it may be argued that the map is too small in scale for six-mile hexagons to be of use, I would reply that the map is perfectly scaled for three-mile hexagons. Wizards of the Coast had better options. Options which they chose to ignore for reasons I cannot even begin to guess at.
Hex maps provide us with the metric which makes world exploration possible. Without it, completely open-ended, sandbox exploration can seem like a daunting task to players and GMs alike. I know I certainly never had the guts to provide a world exploration game to my players before I learned about Hex mapping–despite being very proud of the maps I’d created! Nor have I ever been given much choice as a traveling player. Travel is always handled by indicating where I’m going, and then fading to black as I travel there. And you know what? That’s sad.
As the old saying goes: “The journey is more important than the destination.” Isn’t that the essence of an adventure?
*Yes, I am aware of the irony of using square miles as a measurement in a post decrying the use of squares as a unit of measure. Stop mocking me!
Yesterday I wrote regarding the general consensus I’ve observed in the OSR community regarding player agency and game master guidance. On that issue the OSR community is very much opposed to the emphasis on GM guidance they perceive to be more present in modern games than in older ones. And, while their criticisms have merit, I ultimately disagree.
Today’s post is similar. It again relates to the OSR community, this time relating to character creation and progression. The consensus is that the forms of character generation used in older role playing games are superior to systems of character building present in more modern RPGs. I’ll explore this in more depth below, but first I’d like to define these two terms as I understand them.
Character Generation is quick, simple, and requires a minimum of knowledge on the part of the character. Many character generation systems actively discourage GMs from allowing their players too much access to the rules, because knowing what the rules are will limit what the player thinks they can do. Often these systems are not much deeper than rolling dice for your basic statistics and picking a class. Generating a character is a great way to get into the game quickly, with a minimal amount of time spent on other things.
Character Building, by contrast, can be a very intensive process. Ability scores tend to be generated less randomly, with many of the most modern systems simply using a point-buy as the default. Players have a multitude (some might even say a deluge) of options available to them to customize and specialize their character’s abilities. Character building systems offer greater depth to a player interested in customizing their character.
These are less dichotomous than simple labels would imply. There are gradations between the two, as well as alternatives to either system. Traveler’s ‘lifepath’ system is both amazing, and unlike anything described above. However, in most games (particularly those closely related to Dungeons and Dragons) some variant of character generation or character building is used.
As a matter of personal preference, when I’m a player, I’m very attached to the character building model. That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the speed, simplicity, and unpredictability of character generation. However, when Zalekios finishes a hard day’s work being a horrible person, and the GM goes home, I’m still on a role-playing high. I want more. Unfortunately, as a player, there’s not a lot more for me to do. The only thing I have control over is my character.
Which is why Zalekios often has written and diagrammed plans prepared for the next gaming session. It’s why I designed my own character sheet layout for him, I’ve made character sheets for NPCs in his backstory and sent them along to my GM in case he ever wants to use them. It’s why I’m level 12, but already have my character sheet ready-to-go for when I hit level 13. The fact of the matter is that I enjoy fiddling with my character.
Having said that, the OSR community is correct. Character building is harmful to RPGs.
When I think back over my career as a game master–a great deal more extensive than my career as a player–I have a hard time coming up with any of my players who enjoyed building their character. Many, if not most, have needed me to help them with updating their character sheet for every successive level. And that includes the group in which I purchased Player’s Handbooks for the entire party. Most people are far more interested in playing the game than they are in deciding where to put their skill points. Or at least most people I’ve played with feel that way. Anecdotal evidence is not hard evidence, after all.
This doesn’t mean that complex character building needs to go away. I enjoy it, and I know for a fact that many others enjoy it as well. But if we want our hobby to grow, then we need to make our favorite games more accessible. We need to engage people who are less interested in putting points into acrobatics, and more interested in leaping across a gaping chasm without caring why they landed safely. This is too big to house rule. It needs to be built-in to future systems.
I propose a theoretical system which offers players a choice between character generation and character building. Those players who want to spend their evenings pouring over rulebooks looking for the perfect combination of skills and talents should be able to do so. While players who don’t want to, shouldn’t have to. They should be able to roll their character ten minutes before the game and be ready to go.
This is a difficult, if not impossible task. In order for such a system to function, characters rolled using the shorter method will need to be just as effective overall as other members of the party built by dedicated players. Yet simultaneously, players who spend hours building their characters must not be made to feel as though their efforts have gone to waste. I think this would be best achieved by making a “general purpose” and “special focus” distinction. Whilst a generated fighter would be good at all the things fighters are good at, a built fighter might excel in fighting casters, or taking damage, or sundering weapons, while being less adept in other areas.
Considering the fact that games such as D&D and Pathfinder are unable to maintain class balance in the systems they’ve already got, my theoretical system seems like a pipe dream. I’m confident, though, that with sufficient ingenuity it can potentially be achieved. I fully intend to devote some of my attention to the problem. Until this magical system makes itself manifest, however, we’ve got to make due with what we’ve got.
I’m presently working within Pathfinder to try and devise a stopgap solution. I want to work out a method of character generation & leveling which functions quickly and simply. My current criteria for the system are:
-Characters created using this method must be reasonably well balanced with characters who are built within pathfinder. I’m never going to be able to make a formula for creating Pathfinder characters which will be able to rival min-maxed characters, so I won’t try. All I want is for a party of casual players to be able to contain both built and generated characters without there being an obvious disparity in power.
-The method must be able to easily create a character of any level, not just first level. And it must maintain its ease of use throughout the leveling process.
-Any mechanisms used in this method of quick character generation should be easy to commit to memory. At the very most it could require a single page printout to run effectively.
I’ve made some minor progress. The difficult items like feats, spells, and class abilities such as rogue talents are still hurdles for me to make a jump check at. However, I did come up with a quick method of generating skills that I like.
Each class grants x + Int Modifier skill points each level. Select a number of class skills equal to x + Int Modifier. These are the character’s skills. The modifier for any check is Level + 3 + Relevant Ability Modifier.
It’s a start.
In an effort to educate myself further on the variety and subtlety of the role playing hobbyscape, I’ve spent the last few weeks trolling for good blogs. Many of the ones I’ve gravitated towards affiliate themselves with the OSR sub genre of role playing. To sum OSR up in a single sentence, it’s essentially a group of people who think RPGs reached their zenith with older games like first edition Dungeons and Dragons, or Hackmaster. And while I doubt you’ll hear me espousing a return to treating elves and dwarfs as classes rather than races, I firmly believe that history is an excellent teacher, regardless of the subject.
One issue discussed frequently is the conflict between what is called Player Agency (D&D’s version of ethical agency, for my fellow philosophy majors) and what I’ll call GM Guidance. This issue is particularly well illustrated by a post over at Hack & Slash. Stated simply, a player has agency when he or she is able to control their own in-game destiny. Any circumventions of a player’s choice, or arbitrary restriction placed on the choices available, reduces player agency.
The general consensus I’ve observed among the OSR community is that modern games fail at creating sufficient player agency. At best, this failure is the result of a failure to communicate the importance of player agency to gamers. At worst, it is argued, modern games actively discourage or prevent an acceptable degree of player agency. The examples given in the post linked above deal primarily with how fourth edition D&D discourages player agency. Any game, though, can suppress player agency if the GM fails to recognize how important it is to preserve.
On this matter, the OSR community has a point. Any game master of quality will warn new GMs of the temptations and dangers of railroading. And I’ve often told new players that the most remarkable thing about this hobby is that you can do anything with it. That freedom, that player agency is what makes these types of games so worth playing. To harm that freedom by telling a player who just wants to hunt for treasure “No, the king wants you to go on a diplomatic mission!” is bad game mastering.
Where I start to disagree with the OSR community is when they espouse unrestricted player agency. The idea that the GM should place no limits whatsoever on player freedom. It seems that many view the role of the GM to be one of world total world creation. NPCs may plead the players for help at a village to the north, and a sage may hint at a long forgotten dungeon to the east, but if the players want to go South West the GM damned well better be able to keep up. As fun as that sounds, I cannot accept it as the ‘correct’ way to play.
The work which goes into simply running a pre-written adventure for your players warrants some guidance from the GM. At a minimum, published adventures are thirty or forty pages long. That’s an evening’s worth of reading, plus any additional time the GM would need to create reference sheets, handouts, maps, or to integrate the module’s locations into the campaign world. And as much time as that would take, it is easily the least work-intensive method to prepare a game. Designing a high quality adventure from scratch requires creativity, and hours of preparation detailing locations, challenges, and so forth.
I always hesitate to use my own experiences as an example in an argument, because that’s simply anecdotal. However, in the years I’ve engaged in this hobby, both as a player and as a GM, I’ve never felt as though fun was lost due to the guidance of a game master. As a player, I make sure the GM knows what my player wants. If I want treasure, I’ll try to find a treasure map, or even just tell the GM that I’d like to go looking for some treasure. As a GM, I ask my players after each game what they liked, what they didn’t like, and if there’s anything they want to do moving forward. Much to my delight, they’re often too busy talking about how awesome it was when they ran away from the tribe of goblins to pay much mind to my probing.
That’s what’s really important: engaging your players. It doesn’t matter if you nudge them along a vaguely linear progression, or simply drop them in a sandbox. So long as your players are engaged and having fun, you’re doing it right. There is no excuse for half-assing your plot hooks and expecting your players to fall in line. Nor is there an excuse for dropping your players into a finely crafted campaign world and being frustrated when they want someone to give them some direction.
I don’t want anybody to think I dislike sandbox style role playing, however. I actually prepared a campaign world for one once, several years back, which I was going to play with members of my World of Warcraft guild. That game fell apart, but the more I learn from the OSR community, the more I want to give it another try with the tools and knowledge I’ve gained in the years since that first attempt. Both styles of play are an excellent way to spend time with friends, or to make new friends.
Above all, Game Masters should remember: players will always defy your expectations. It’s their job to break your game, and if you don’t know how to handle it, you’re doing it wrong.
lrn2GM
As a Game Master, I have always hated experience points. It is one of the most frustrating and poorly designed aspects of many role playing games. Including my beloved Pathfinder.
I understand function of EXP, and why it’s valuable. Players enjoy being rewarded for their work, and (along with treasure) experience points are the most direct and tangible form of reward in an RPG. Watching the number of accrued XP grow larger and larger, bringing a character ever closer to the threshold of the next level, is not only encouraging, but it gives players a sense of control over their own progression
For the GM, though, it’s nothing but a pain in the ass. Every encounter in the game needs to have an encounter level applied to it. Each encounter level is modified by the variables in combat. If the giant slime had a challenge rating of 6, and each of the two dozen skeletons had a challenge rating of 1/2, what was the encounter level of the combat? Should the characters gain more experience because the floor was covered in pit traps? Should they gain less because they have that powerful magic item which kept the giant slime pinned down for most of the combat? Should the total amount of experience gained change if the players find it unexpectedly more or less difficult than the GM expected they would?
I don’t shy away from using a complicated system if I can be convinced it needs to be complicated. But experience gain never struck me as having that kind of need. Almost every game I’ve run as a GM has used a kind of ad hoc experience distribution system. I look up how many experience points are needed for the characters to reach the next level, and I give them whatever percentage of that number which I feel like they’ve earned. Most of the time I base that percentage on what speed of progression is optimal to keep the players in-step with events in my game world, rather than basing it off of challenges they have overcome.
At best, the method I’ve been using make experience points redundant. At worst, my method reduces player agency. It’s an arrangement I’ve never been happy with, but not one I never thought of a good solution to. Maybe I was just being dense about it, though, because the solution seems damned obvious now.
Last week during my morning blog reading. I found this post over at Blog of Holding. According to Paul, Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is normalized so that each level requires roughly 10 encounters to reach. So, instead of bothering to calculate large XP numbers, Paul simply gives his players 1 experience point for every encounter, and once they reach 10xp they get to level.
I immediately fell in love with the simplicity and elegance of the system. But, not wanting to rush into things headlong, I ran the numbers for Pathfinder’s own leveling graph. My formula was simple:
[(Amount of XP required to reach next level) – (Amount of XP required to reach previous level] * (XP awarded to a character in a party of 1-3 when overcoming an encounter with a CR equal to the Average Party Level.)
This should produce the rough number of combats required to reach each level. While it is possible to raise or lower this number by having more members in the party, or dealing with encounters with a CR above or below the APL, this should provide a reliable average.
Since Pathfinder provides groups with slow, normal, or fast leveling progressions, I punched in the numbers sixty times, and lo and behold, the numbers are consistent.
Slow progression levels every 22 encounters, normal progression levels every 15 encounters, and fast progression levels every 10 encounters. I have to admit, as the results started to become apparent, I started to get angry. It seems ridiculous to me that leveling is actually based on such an exceptionally simple system, which is hidden behind needless layers of complexity. I can understand that large XP numbers are perhaps more fun to talk about, but couldn’t they have let GMs in on this? Knowing would have saved me a lot of work.
Having now shown that leveling is simply a function of the number of encounters players have overcome, I will now be using a modified version of Paul’s Simple XP House Rule in all of my future Pathfinder games:
At slow progression, each level requires 44 experience points.
At normal progression, each level requires 30 experience points.
At fast progression, each level requires 20 experience points.
Characters receive 1 experience point for: overcoming an easy battle; escaping from a difficult battle or boss battle; overcoming a non-combat challenge such as a trap, or diplomatic negotiation; other misc tasks the GM would like to offer rewards for.
Characters receive 2 experience points for: overcoming an appropriately leveled combat encounter.
Characters receive 3 experience points for: overcoming a very difficult encounter or boss battle, or completing a major task such as saving a kingdom.
The major difference between my system and Paul’s is that while his system converts the number of encounters into the total amount of required XP, I doubled the number of encounters to get the amount of required XP. This allows for more more nuanced experience rewards. The baseline for most of the experience most characters will receive is 2, which means that the average number of encounters will remain unchanged. Characters who only fight monsters appropriate for their level will still reach a new level every 22, 15, or 10 fights.
However, with my variation on the system, a GM is better able to reward players for more minor actions. Something like successfully disabling a complicated trap, using stealth to avoid a ferocious band of orcs, or convincing a band of marauders that it’s not in their best interests to raid the village which is under the PC’s protection. I’ve never liked RPGs which punished players for skillfully avoiding combat. As a guy who likes to play rogues who rely heavily on stealth, I’ve experienced this in essentially every class based video game I’ve ever played. It’s just poor design.
Let me know what you think. I haven’t actually play tested this system yet, so I’m sure I’ll have cause to update it eventually.