Creeping Redesign

Over the past few weeks I've quietly been changing the look of the blog, little by little. I stayed with the overall color scheme that came with the default theme, but I tweaked the fonts, the layout, and now I finally added an image (courtesy of Old Book Illustrations) to the header.

I wonder if anyone actually noticed? I also wonder if anyone actually cares? When it comes to print stuff I am pretty OCD about typography and layout, but I didn't really care about those things for my blog before. I think the overall look and readability compare favorably to the default theme, but then again I am horribly biased. Feedback would be appreciated!

Delving Deeper

Edit: I should point out that the following is only my interpretation of things, not an "official" statement from Immersive Ink or anyone else involved with Delving Deeper. So if you don't like what I say, please complain to me and not to them, they already have enough work producing an excellent set of rules.

Over the past two weeks I've been "proof-reading" all three volumes of Immersive Ink's excellent Delving Deeper retroclone. It all started when I posted some feedback about the first volume over on the Original D&D Discussion boards. Simon Bull was nice enough to encourage me to finish my read-through although I had not initially planned to go beyond the first volume. But I have to say it was a fun, if at times tedious, experience. And I learned a lot about the rules in the process.

After the first volume I did change my attitude a little. Initially I read a bit in Delving Deeper, then looked for the corresponding info in the original game, then went back to Delving Deeper, etc. For the other two volumes I didn't really worry about OD&D very much anymore, I mostly focused on the consistency between the various rules and volumes of Delving Deeper itself. I should probably admit that I am rather OCD about stuff like that. I believe that a set of rules should be internally consistent no matter what kind of 40-year-old mess you're drawing your inspiration from.

But it's easy to do more than necessary, and Simon has an excellent point that weighs against my "grand ambitions" to fix everything: There are lots of things that are "exceedingly ambiguous" in OD&D that no matter what interpretation you pick (i.e. the one that makes the most sense to you), someone is going to be upset that you didn't pick theirs. So instead of a "true" retroclone that keeps the essential ambiguities, you'd end up with something closer to a "retroclone-ish" like Labyrinth Lord's Original Edition Characters or Swords & Wizardry's White Box rules.

Now of course Delving Deeper is not a perfect clone either. Thieves, for example, work quite differently from Greyhawk's OD&D thieves. Strangely enough, the variant that Delving Deeper presents actually feels more old-school than the original. Yes, in certain places Delving Deeper seems to "out-retro" even the original rules! Isn't that something?

I think my biggest pet-peeve about the rules is that a lot more things could be made more consistent without risking that "old school vibe" at all. So for example there are several monsters who "on 4 more than needed to hit" will cause some kind of special effect, swallowing a target for example. That's great, but those things are explained with every single monster and the explanations are not always totally consistent. For instance, some monsters get "on 4 more than needed (and on 20 of course)" instead. Which one is it? There are several examples like that and I hope that these things will be resolved with the next revision of Delving Deeper.

But aside from my pet peeve for consistency, there's nothing wrong with these rules. In fact, they are my favorite reinterpretation of the original game currently in existence, presumably exactly because they strive to stay close to the original and only go a different route when there's both a clear benefit and no chance of losing flavor.

If you haven't done so before, I highly recommend you take a look. They'll also be coming out with a sexy hardcover edition sometime this year! Right now you can grab the current version of it all for free right here. Maybe you'll even get hooked? Enjoy!

The "Ultimate 1e Tome" Pipe Dream?

I think I finally managed to score a "Deities and Demigods" with the Chaosium stuff in it. That was the last hurdle in my quest to clone this guy's idea for the "ultimate 1e" book. Okay, so I am 30 years late to that particular game and I probably won't even live long enough to see my leather-bound tome look this good, but hey, I still want to do it. Of course now I am stuck obsessing over which actual books to slice up and put back together in this "eternal" format.

The most minimalist version would include the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Monster Manual, and the Deities and Demigods cyclopedia. That would clock in at 622 pages (311 sheets) and seems to be a solid choice. Very old-school indeed.

However, there's a whole slew of creatures I like from both the Fiend Folio and even (gasp!) the Monster Manual II: Aboleth, Death Knight, Demilich, Githyanki, Graz'zt, Hook Horror, Drider, Gibbering Mouther, Tween, etc. Fiend Folio actually seems "old school" enough but Monster Manual II with the newer layout doesn't fit quite as nicely. Still, based on content it should probably go in. So now we're at 908 pages (454 sheets) and things are starting to get huge.

Which brings us to the really iffy choices.

I dislike Unearthed Arcana a lot. Not just because it turned AD&D into a zoo of over-powered races and classes, not just because there were a lot of "bugs" as it were, but also because plenty of it seems "ripped off" from other people's work without much in terms of careful editing. There are, however, a good number of spells and magic items that I like, and there's weapon specialization which at least gives fighters a little edge to distinguish themselves from rangers and paladins.

Then there is Oriental Adventures, a tome I actually sort of like. It finally puts monks where they belong and it does provide some fascinating options (such as the shukenja/sohei tradeoff which I have chosen to read back into the original game as a priest/cleric tradeoff). But it's also the first 1e hardcover that is obviously not Gary's work anymore. At least for Unearthed Arcana you can still show his involvement (witness the trail of articles he wrote in Dragon magazine) even if the source material was "collected" from all over the place and therefore lacks a unifying vision. But Oriental Adventures?

In any case, if I added those two volumes as well we'd be at 1180 pages (590 sheets) which is probably as much as any sane book binder would put together, not to even speak of how much that thing would weigh. So paraphrasing Gary a little:

What would you, Gentle Reader, put into your "ultimate 1e" leather-bound tome of eternity?

And yes, I do feel bad about slicing up perfectly good hardcover books, but I really wouldn't want to use scans or copies or whatnot. I have a secondary plan which involves carefully separating and (where appropriate) framing the covers that are still in a good enough state for that treatment. Those that are "too worn" already I'll probably turn into my "ultimate 1e" DM screen instead. So hopefully that makes up for the "sin" of tearing them apart in the first place?

Quick Note on Refining Hexes

I have been playing with hex maps recently and one of the "big things" I was trying to figure out is how people "refine" them from one level of detail to the next. In the back of my mind I remembered some method that I just could not come up with anymore and today I finally found it while browsing the old AD&D "Wilderness Survival Guide" hardcover from 1986. So, as a permanent reminder to myself, here it is:

from Wilderness Survival Guide, page 106

I am not entirely convinced that this is better than the method I've been using (and I've seen others use) which keeps the orientation of the hexes. The tradeoff seems to be that things "fit better" if you change the hex orientation on each level of refinement, meaning there's less "duplictation" between neighboring large-scale hexes. In any case, I'll try both methods for a simple example and we'll see what the results look like when I get done. :-)

Edit: Obviously this only works for individual large-scale hexes. If you try to "tile" things the "surrounding" large-scale hexes will end up with a totally "uneven" number of small-scale hexes.

Of Hit-Dice, Multi-Classing, and Dual-Classing

This post is the result of work I am doing on my own retroclone-ish roleplaying game, but to make it at least semi-useful for others I'll follow the AD&D 1st edition rules instead.

Let's start with the basics. Your character earns experience points (xp) and after a certain number of xp have been collected, your character's level goes up. For a good chunk of your character's career, every new level means more hit-points, and you roll hit-dice (HD) for those. Both the kind of HD you use and the xp required to gain a level depend on your character's class.

So let's compare a fighter and a magic-user. Let's say each character has earned 100,000 xp which puts the fighter at level 7 and the magic-user at level 8. The fighter uses d10 while the magic-user uses d4 for their HD so (ignoring all other adjustments) we get these distributions for their hit-points: 38.5 (fighter) versus 20.0 (magic-user) on average. No surprises, all good.

Now let's consider an elven character who is a multi-classed fighter/magic-user instead. This character has to split xp evenly between classes, so 50,000 xp each for the fighter and magic-user classes, putting them both at level 6. The hit-points for a multi-classed character with two classes are generated by rolling both hit-dice but then dividing by two, leading to this distribution instead. (There's a small inaccuracy here because the rules specify rounding whereas the anydice.com engine truncates by default; I tried to compensate for that by rolling all the dice at once instead of dividing each and every one by two.) The shocking truth is that our fighter/magic-user is really not much of a fighter at all: 23.75 hit-points (on average) is a lot closer to the single-class magic-user (20.0) than the single-class fighter (38.5). (In fact it's worse than rolling 7d6, which is what a single-class thief would have at 50,000 xp.)

But now compare this to a human character who starts out as a fighter but then dual-classes to magic-user. To make things roughly comparable to the multi-classing example, let's say we advance to level 6 as fighter for 35,000 xp. That leaves us 65,000 xp to pour into the magic-user class which gets us level 7. So we get 6d10 and 1d4 which leads to this distribution instead. So not only does a human dual-class character get an additional magic-user level, they also end up with 35.5 hit-points on average, very close to the single-class fighter with 38.5 hit-points on average.

So multi-classing sucks. And not just a little: It sucks big time.
Also dual-classing rules. And not just a little: It rules hard core.

Now let's do something really weird: Let's pretend we had the "unified level progression" mechanic from 3rd edition but let's pick the most expensive 1st edition progression for it. (We can't use the progression from 3rd edition "as is" because they lowered the cost for gaining a level a lot compared to 1st edition. Using the most expensive progression from 1st edition means we'll be conservative.)

Turns out that with 100,000 xp all classes in the 1st edition Player's Handbook reach at least level 7, but the Paladin progression cuts it closest with 95,000 xp required. (The monk progression requires 98,000 xp but that's for 8 HD since monks start with 2 HD at level 1.)

So if we translate forward into 3rd edition again we have at most 7 levels to play with: We could build a fighter/magic-user with levels 1/6, 2/5, 3/4, 4/3, 5/2, or 6/1. Let's pick 3/4 with the magic-user level higher than the fighter level to stay close to our previous dual-class example. All that futzing around gets us this distribution which is perhaps the most shocking one so far: 

It's absolutely perfect!

In terms of averages it comes in at 26.5 which is significantly higher than the 20.0 a single-class magic-user gets. It's of course also significantly lower than the 38.5 a single-class fighter gets. This is in contrast to multi-classing with 23.75 which is much too close to a single-class magic-user and dual-classing with 35.5 which is much too close to a single-class fighter.

Like many who consider themselves "old school" I didn't expect to find something great in the 3rd edition design. But it's clearly the case that unified level progression and the revised multi/dual-classing mechanic achieve the kind of balance I would expect from mixing multiple classes. Neither of the 1st edition approaches even comes close.

Which is why my own retroclone-ish roleplaying game works like 3rd edition in this regard. Stealing the best ideas from all editions, that's my kind of old school.

Favored Enemies: A History

I thought I was done with my historical research missions, alas there was one more I needed to complete. Luckily this was a short one! :-)

In the various incarnations of D&D, rangers have always had a special advantage against a certain category of creatures. The details, however, have changed at least three times.

The original ranger class by Joe Fisher (Strategic Review Vol. 1 No. 2) as well as the AD&D 1st edition ranger received their advantage against "giant class" enemies, defined (for whatever reason) as anything remotely "goblinoid" between kobolds and (actual) giants. Mechanically rangers get +1 damage per level against these enemies, so a level 6 ranger who hits a troll gets +6 to damage.

The AD&D 2nd edition ranger drops the "giant class" notion and instead let's the player decide (and the referee approve) against what monster the ranger is particularly effective. Since a specific monster has to be chosen (at least that's what the wording implies) the ability is seriously nerfed. Also the mechanic changes: Rangers now get a constant +4 on their to-hit roll instead of a damage bonus that increases by level. So on the one hand the improvement aspect is also nerfed, but on the other hand a to-hit bonus is probably a better mechanical choice overall. What's cute though is that along with their +4 to-hit bonus rangers also get a -4 reaction penalty against the creature they chose.

The "D&D" 3rd edition ranger changes things up again. First we now get a list of "monster categories" (such as "goblinoid" or "undead" or "dragon" and so on) from which the player picks their "favored enemy" as it were. This is probably the best approach yet, provided those categories can be chosen sanely in such a way that they actually matter in the campaign. Of course the mechanic changes again, but also for the better: Rangers now get a +2 on their to-hit rolls against favored enemies. That may seem like a step back at first, but we also get level-based improvement! Roughly every 5 levels the character can pick a new favored enemy, and attacks against them will again be at +2 to-hit. However, the existing favored enemies gain an additional +2 at the same time. So now a level 15 ranger can be +2 against undead, +4 against dragons, and +6 against goblinoids. That's not too shabby, although it does open up the door to a lot of fiddling during character creation and advancement. Edit: Forgot to say that the reaction penalty from 2nd edition is gone again, which presumably means that 3rd edition rangers aren't infamous killing machines of their favored enemies anymore? :-/

I shall once again ignore whatever "D&D" 4th edition did, feel free to enlighten me if you think I am missing out.

So looking at these different approaches to the "favored enemy" ability, I think it's safe to say that 3rd edition got it mostly right in terms balance: It's somewhat broadly useful, there's some potential for players customizing their characters, and yet it's not overpowering. Good job!

However, for my own games, I'd rather go with a slightly simpler procedure. Yes, some rangers may develop "new grudges" over time and so letting them choose new enemies may be cool. But why would they get better against already favored enemies as well in such a situation? To get the "new grudge" they must have been up against many of those "new favored enemy" creatures and presumably they didn't keep fighting their "previously favored enemies" all that much during that time. So I'd give the player the choice to either pick up a new favored enemy at +2 or to improve the to-hit bonus for an existing favored enemy by +2, but not both at the same time. I'd probably also go with a smaller increment, say every 3 levels instead of every 5 levels. Sound good?

Taming Attack Routines

Just saw this post over at Talysman's blog which reminded me of the problem: Do you really want to roll eight attacks for a carrion crawler's eight tentacles? Simple, abstract combat is something of an "ideal" in old-school circles after all, and that's a lot of rolling.

I think Talysman's rule is too fiddly (no offense!) and it occurred to me that there's already a common "house rule" that could be extended instead: lots of people seem to give characters who attack with two weapons (aka "dual wielding") a +1 on their to-hit roll. (I don't want to debate whether that's a "realistic" approach, let's just take the mechanic at face value.)

A direct application of this to the carrion crawler may not be such a good idea: they'd get +7 on their to-hit roll and that seems way too much of an advantage. (Actually it may not be, but I didn't want to run the probabilities and just went with "gut feeling" instead.) But we can go with an "exponential" system to "soften the blow" as it were:

#attacks	to-hit bonus
1	+0
2-3	+1
4-7	+2
8+	+3

Seems fair to me, and the math is nice too because the bonus is just the logarithm (base 2) of the number of attacks. (I should get extra credit for that!) But some may complain that this way ghouls with their 3 attacks are not scary enough anymore: a measly +1? Tweaking the cutoffs a bit differently we get this:

#attacks	to-hit bonus
1	+0
2	+1
3-4	+2
5-8	+3
9+	+4

The math is now off, but hey, your beloved ghouls stay relatively scary while at the same time carrion crawlers are not completely "off-the-charts" either. And I don't even know of a monster with 9+ physical attacks, so the +4 probably never applies at all? Anyway, just my $0.02!

Edit (aka Actually Doing the Depressing Math): Carrion crawlers have 3+1 hit-dice and 8 attacks in B/X. Let's say one of these beasties is fighting a guy with AC 3 (plate mail) and no other bonuses, so it needs a 13+ to hit. Rolling 13+ on a d20 means a 40% chance to hit. Using (hopefully correctly) the binomial distribution we find that the chance for no hit in 8 attacks is only 1.6% meaning the chance for at least one hit is 98.4%! (The most likely outcome is actually 3 hits which has a 28% chance.)

That's rather sobering and sort of what I feared when I said "it may not be" in parenthesis above: Using the +7 suggestion the carrion crawler would make a single attack roll for which it needs 6+ on a d20 which is a 75% chance, a far cry from the 98.4% of actually rolling 8 attacks. It really should get +12 bonus, then it would have at least a 95% chance to hit.

Now let's do this again for a ghoul, just to see what's what. Ghouls have 2 hit-dice and 3 attacks in B/X. Again assuming an opponent with AC 3 a ghoul needs a 15+ to hit, that's a 30% chance. (This is actually small enough to run a simulation to double-check our math.) The formula comes out to 32.4% for no hit, meaning 67.6% for at least one hit. Translating that back into a attack bonus, we should give a ghoul +7 or +8 for its attack routine.

And what about a character using two weapons? Assuming we use the same reasoning, that there are really two attacks but we abstract that into a bonus for a single die roll, what should that bonus be? Let's say a level 3 fighter attacks a carrion crawler with two weapons. The carrion crawler has AC 7 so our fighter needs a 12+ to hit, that's a 45% chance. (Here's the simulation.) That's a 30.2% chance for no hit and a 69.8% chance for at least one hit. So instead of a +1, the character should get a +4 or +5 attack bonus for attacking with two weapons.

In summary, all these bonuses are seriously flawed approximations. I'd contend that you can still use them, but you should be aware that you're paying for the convenience of rolling fewer dice with (overall) much lower chances for a successful attack. Or the other way around (for the min-maxers out there): If you can get an actual second attack, you should almost always take it instead of taking a constant bonus.