More minimalist classes (OSR) - Thieves

In my endless quest for minimalist OSR systems, I've been thinking of minimalist classes lately. At the risk of repeating myself, here is how it goes:

- Mages get ONE new spell per level, and get +1 to spellcasting.

- Fighters get +1 to attack per level, but they also get extra attacks and, indirectly, more damage.

- Thieves get ONE new skill per level.

The LotFP method of using "skill points" works well, but this is even more minimalist and simple. I think I got the idea from a Brazilian YouTuber, DM Quiral.

Now, you either have a skill or you don't. If you do, you will occasionally succeed automatically. If numbers are necessary, you get a +10 bonus. But, mostly, you don't roll: you can simply be able to do ventriloquism, juggling, appraising, etc.

E.g., B/X suggests an ability check for climbing a rope (which RAW indicates the thief has better chance climbing sheer walls...). If you have "climbing", you get a +10 bonus, which often means automatic success.

If you prefer X-in-6 chances, +10 translates to +3. E.g., the thief has 4-in-6 instead of 1-in-6 chances of hearing noises.

For challenging stuff (climb "sheer walls"), the GM may require a skill check... Other PCs get a -10 penalty, but you roll your ability as usual, since your +10 bonus compensates that.

This simple system addresses some of the common problems I have with skills:

- How can a 1st-level PC be really good in a given skill.

- How non-thief characters can try to do thief stuff.

- You do not have to write a bunch of skills into every thieves' sheet, let alone other PCs.

HOWEVER it loses some of the compatibility with the original thief.

One alternative is, instead of giving ONE +10 skill, you give the thief TEN +1 skills. The usual ones: hear, climb, hide, traps, read languages, scrolls, back-stab, etc. By level 2, you get a +2 bonus and so on, until level 10.

This still leaves the thief behind the mage. Remember, the mage gets:

- More spells (i.e., variety).

- New spells that ARE BETTER.

- Old spells GET BETTER.

So, maybe the thief deserves some equivalent to "critical hits". Not only he is more likely to succeed, he succeeds BETTER than an untrained PC.

Meaning: if you succeed by 10 or more, your results are particularly impressive. Maybe you can "climb silently" or help your allies. Maybe you sneak so proficiently that you get a bonus on top of your back-stab. Etc.

Still, the thief should maybe get both more skills and better chances - especially if using the same XP table. 

Anyway, its a start.

Random Wilderness is too random

Last post, I briefly mentioned some reasons why I dislike randomly generated dungeons. I think they can be fun, just not my favorite.

I feel random wilderness is a lot worse.

Theoretically, you could run a "no prep"* hexcrawl, deciding randomly upon entering an hex if you're in a forest or desert, and if you see ruins or nothing.

BTW, "no prep" is the idea that you can run adventures with no preparation - by using random tables, improvising on the spot, using other procedures to generate adventures/situations, etc. This issue deserves a post of its own in the future, but I think this "random wilderness" idea illustrates why I think "no prep" is a bad idea if it requires random terrains.

One problem with random terrain is that even the best tables I've seen (the ones who default to a "next hex is similar to this one" rule) cannot create a simple, coherent map like this:

Now, think of how many random hexes you need to run a campaign. Sure, you could set the entire campaign in a single hex, but Outdoor Survival - the original hex map - uses more than a thousand and is representative of an area much smaller than the US.

If you draw a big mountain range, and maybe add another small mountain range, and decide for yourself which way is the ocean... you have created a map that looks more believable and saved yourself more than a thousand rolls.

There are other reasons to set the mountains and the ocean before the PCs start travelling:

- Mountains can usually be seem from several hexes away. It would be absurd to walk from a plain to a "sudden" mountain in a clear day.

- Most people in history have at least a vague idea to which way is the sea.

- Mountains and seas function as natural barriers to your sandbox - crossing them requires more preparation than walking over plains.

- Once you have mountains and seas, rivers are very easy to figure out. Draw rivers like trees, with a trunk that ends in the ocean and several branches (tributaries) towards mountains.

The red lines represent the tallest mountains: rivers do not cross them.

Notice that the presence of a second, significantly smaller mountain range to the east makes the map more interesting.

You might say that US topography is too simple, but it is like that over most of the world. 

South America is similar. Russia has basically sea to the north, mountains to the south and east. Asia has many mountains but the Himalayas can be used as the primary delimitation between various regions (and the source of many rivers). 

Etc.

I'm not saying you need to establish every hill and every trade route. Maybe you can even generate vegetation randomly as you go (although forests and deserts are related to rivers and mountains). I'm just saying having a good outline is incredibly useful - and easy.

Letting PCs wander around with no preexisting terrain has other problems. For example, why there are no map in this land - and what happens when the PCs find a map in random treasure? How can there be significant rumors of goblins "in the North" if the DM doesn't know what lies in the north?

But anyway, this is about drawing maps - and I reckon the easiest way to do that is simply:

- Separate land from sea.

- Put a big range of tall mountains to a random direction.

- Add a smaller mountain range, with hills etc.

- Rivers are easy to draw once you have that.

- Most cities are near the water (rivers or seas).

Additional reading:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-mythic-underworld-controversy-and.html

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2021/08/easy-worldbuilding-with-pareto-price.html

The Mythic Underworld "controversy" and other X/Twitter debates

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong, THAT FITS IN A TWEET.

- Eric Diaz, paraphrasing H. L. Mencken and probably repeating someone else.

If you don't use Twitter/X, you might have missed this (count yourself lucky), but there has been a Mythic Underworld "controversy" lately, with people pointing out that whoever doesn't understand the concept is a fool, lacks imagination or worse.

Conversely, there might have been people who claimed the opposite - dungeons that make no sense are dumb and people are dumb to use them - although I haven't seem many.

Obliviously, I disagree with both viewpoints.

But what is "The Mythic Underworld"?

I talked briefly about this when I was discussing Darkest Dungeon:

Since the beginning of RPGs, dungeons have been built in two different (and somewhat antagonistic) structures. 

In the first, the dungeon is a dreamlike and almost inexplicable place, containing dragons bigger than the tunnels would allow and creatures that have no obvious ways to feed themselves - as if they came from a nightmare. [This is what people call "The Mythic Underworld"] 

In the second structure, the dungeon was created for a reason, and the creatures that live there are part of a (somewhat) coherent ecosystem ("Gygaxian naturalism").

In DD, the dungeons fit into the first model, but the game makes some concessions to the second, with aquatic creatures in the most flooded environments and mushroom-men living in the caverns. 

The lesson here is that even in the unexplained environments of a nightmare, having some thread of rationality is useful in giving players some chance to prepare themselves adequately to face the challenges that lie ahead. If there was no predictability, a huge part of the "preparation of resources" phase would be lost, since there is no way to choose the best tools if there is no clue as to what is to come.

As you can see, despite the tension between two ideas, both can be used in most campaigns, and there is even some middle ground to be found (maybe we could call this "thematic dungeons").

The problem with some of these X posts is people tend to repeat talking points without explanation, reflection or nuance. Sometimes I see the same user say the same thing (with different phrasing, memes, etc.) ten times in the same day rather than addressing any issues, questions or nuance.

The same reasoning applies to other twitter "controversies", BTW: Tolkien x Howard, Overprep x Zero prep, Homebrew x RAW, 1:1 time, etc. I might address some in the future, but "you can have both" or "it has pros and cons" would suit most "debates".

I believe the algorithm encourages this behavior. 

In addition, X is sub-optimal for long conversations. Any blog, forum or chat allows for more back and forth with fewer clicks.

The Mythic Underworld is not a black and white issue. It is an interesting concept/tool to build your dungeons.

One big problem nobody addresses is that many people in X use the "mythic underworld" as a justification for nonsensical dungeons that are randomly generated.

And, while there is nothing wrong with that, in my own experience I have found that random rooms with skeletons then goblins then giant bats are not "mythic" but boring and cliched. It is fine if you like them, but I don't think my preference for things a that make a little more sense - ecologically, architecturally, or at least thematically - signifies a lack of imagination.

In fact, randomly generated dungeons are a SEPARATE issue. You can certainly have "mythic underworld" dungeons that aren't generate randomly. 

In other words: why it's such a hotly debated topic lately? Only because people like to debate over X. 

My opinion? 

There are no "sides" of this issue, one can have either or both, and it is ultimately a matter of taste.

There are lot of other interesting aspects BOTH to mythic underworld and dungeon ecologies (probably deserving a much longer post in each case), and most D&D campaigns need both the explained and the unexplained to function.

Time scales: rounds, days, weeks, expeditions

"For want of a nail the kingdom was lost"

Time keeping is extremely important in D&D. 

Everyone knows that since Gary Gygax said in the AD&D 1e DMG, in all caps, that YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.

But I think few RPGs - and maybe not even AD&D - has got this exactly right.

One concern I've shared here before is how spellcasters recover all of their spells OVERNIGHT. This becomes a problem because fighter can take up to four weeks to recover lost HP. And, while spells must be chosen every day, equipment is usually chosen once per expedition.

These things are operating in different time scales.

- Losing some HP may "cost" you a month (resurrection also costs you a few weeks).

- Losing all your rations might ruin your entire expedition*.

- Losing spell slots costs you a day at most.

(*An "expedition" is the travel from a safe city to a nearby dungeon or other challenge. In other genres, we could have a "job", "mission", "heist", etc).

If you have spells that produce HP or rations, the rhythm of the HP and ration recovery is broken. Which is not a problem "per se", if you are conscious of the effects.

For example, if a PC takes weeks to recover HP, this could encourage players to "rotate" between multiple characters. A cleric with "cure light wounds" can basically avoid this process, except when there is need for resurrection.

There is a certain rhythm to D&D - each RPG has its own.

In Pendragon, there are "time skips" that take years, and rule for how you can play with your heirs. Likewise (IIRC), wounds can take a lot of time to heal.

In DCC RPG, there are lasting consequences for magic - you can get mutations, spell mishaps, etc. Some of these are permanent (IIRC). This is not a problem, but I think other classes should also be subject to permanent consequences - say, scars and losing limbs (which is a thing in DCC, IIRC, but not usually in D&D).

Runequest suggests "one adventure per season" and - AFAICT - this interacts with income and experience rules.

In 4e D&D, there are daily, encounter and "at will" powers for ALL classes, so everybody in playing in the same tempo. It might have been too radical, making classes feel a bit "samey".

In 5e D&D, there are few consequences that can last more than a day. All spell slots are recovered, yes, but so are all HP and other powers. Even "raise dead" only takes four days to recover. There are also "short rests" that allow you to recover some HP, slots, etc. during the day.

The tricky part in 5e is keeping the short rest:long rest ratio. 

You see, some classes are better with long rests, others with short rests. If you mess up the ratio, 5e's supposed "balance" goes out the window. That is why 5e attracts bizarre concepts such as "seven encounters per day", which sounds good in a dungeon but silly in the wilderness, city, etc.

Old school D&D has a similar problem (well, like all RPGs).

First, there is this wilderness/dungeon divide. B/X recommends at one encounter check per day in the wilderness. But even if you're making three or four (which is optional), it is unlikely that will lead to more than a couple of actual combats if you're using the reaction table and evasion rules. 

But in the dungeon you check for encounters every TWENTY MINUTES. This changes the game completely. Now spell slots are precious few - at least for the first few levels.

However, PCs are not supposed to go to the wilderness until level 4. By level 5, a MU might have a 5d6 fireball that can destroy many wilderness encounters. 

On the other hand, if you "nerf" the MU too much, he is helpless in the dungeon after casting a couple of spells.

I think this is why a first level MU feels too weak and a 10th-level one feels too strong. Nerfing the MU requires giving him cantrips or at least a sword to compensate.

AD&D has aging rules. Unless you get cursed by a spell, these do not really matter, because no game mechanic interacts meaningfully with "years" (unless, maybe, building a castle or similar). Similarly, weapons have different speeds, which can interact with spell interruption and so on.

Then we have rounds, turns, hours, days, etc. Torches burn for an hour, which is 6 turns, or 360 rounds. Running out of torches might force you to spend days to go back to town, or, worse, can leave you lost in the dark.

I'm not suggesting a simple fix; instead, I'm encouraging you to reflect about which time scale your games are about, and how scales interact.

And, of course, keep strict time records and let your players know about it. 

The "5 minute workday" problem happens because there is no cost to wasting a day. If there is also no cost to wasting a few weeks, the PCs will start every encounter fully rested and healed regardless of healing spells and potions. And so on.

I have to reflect on how to implement this myself. In my current campaign, the PCs decided to leave a mission against certain goblin tribes that were harassing a nearby village. 

What happens when then go back? 

The answer should certainly be affected by how long they take to go back. If I just hand-wave time, we go back to "time railroading" and decisions about time become meaningless.

I've said before that "Time seems to be the glue that holds many rules together: Healing, researching, building, random encounters, searching, torches, diseases, etc. 

Once you ignore it, everything seems to come crashing down. Maybe this is one of the fundamental ideas of old school play."

Come to think of it, this is much bigger than "old school play" - or even RPGs. 

The interaction between different time scales is an existential question.

If I eat a chocolate now, I will feel good for seconds, and it might take weeks of chocolate to get fat, and months to lose that fat.

To write a book, I have to put an effort for hours and days, and then I'll have it forever (or until the next revision).

A kind word to a loved one might make little difference now, but every moment can eventually add up to me looking differently to the past twenty years.

And ultimately, maybe we have to consider time scales that include more than a lifetime. Maybe PC death is necessary for PC lives to be meaningful; if everything (i.e., the campaign) ends because of a TPK, what difference did the PCs make?

But that is probably a subject for another post.

INSANE MAGE NERF - one spell per day!

In my endless quest to nerf B/X magic-users, this might be my most radical idea:

Magic-users (MU) and clerics get to memorize ONE spell per day.

A 10-th level MU 10 still has 14 spells or so, but it takes a couple of weeks to memorize all.

This makes spell slots a more "time sensitive" resource like HP, rations, and everything else.

When the party is planning an expedition, spell choice becomes part of the planning - do we have enough torches? Should I memorize "light" instead? What about cure potions and "cure light wounds"? We are not taking the thief this time... should we get "Knock"? Etc.

BTW, CHANGING your selection of spell has the same cost. You cannot rewrite your selection of spells overnight.

If that's too harsh, let the MU recover a number of spell levels equal to their level (e.g., a 10th level MU can recover 3 fireballs and 1 magic missile) or any other solution you find adequate. 

I'm tempted to say "one day per spell level" so you'd need three days to recover fireball. 

Again, it sounds too harsh - but the fireball causes at least 5d6 damage. A fighter would need one to two weeks to recover from one.

MUs would need to be more careful about their spells, which I like. OTOH, they need to be able to do something else while hoarding spells, so I'd probably let them have swords, cantrips, or something similar.

In practice, this is just a random idea - I don't really use spell slots in my games.

But I've seem this happen again and again in my BXish games: the fighter needs at least a week to recover, while the cleric and MU just recover all the spells overnight. Fortunately, the cleric can just cure everyone in a day, which makes him an obligatory character in any party.

I think I'm always nerfing the spellcasters because most of my campaigns happen in the wilderness - on average, there is less than one combat encounter per day and the MU fireballs everything. 

Dungeons help, but PCs fall into the "5 minutes workday" pattern, which is a whole issue...

Same XP for all classes (B/X)

Despite being inspired mostly by B/X, I prefer using the same XP for all classes in my games. This is how Dark Fantasy Basic works, for example.

I heard some arguments to the contrary - that different XP tracks are important. I think there's some merit to this idea, but for now I prefer doing things my way. 

In theory, I wanted a 10th-level Fighter (or "F10") to be roughly as powerful as a 10th-level Magic-User (M10). Which is hard to do.

In B/X, you might be tempted to think the idea is that a F10 is close in power to a MU9, since the XP requirements are somewhat similar. 

I think this is doubtful, at best. 

But if that was true... could we still have B/X with same XP for all classes? 

I have read many attempts to " reverse engineer" B/X classes. I do not think they were as engineered as one might think, but I like playing with that idea. 

Today, I'll be referencing BX Options: Class Builder, which looks very cool (I've only read the first few pages).

The idea is that you can create a stronger Fighter or Thief by requiring more XP. So, giving the thief better saving throws (as a fighter) would "cost" 300 XP. Could we make everyone share the same XP to get to level 2, for, example? Let's try. 

Fighter: Leave it at 2,000 XP for now. Let's try to make other classes the same.

Magic-user: We'd have to bring the MU down to reach the fighter. There is no easy way to do that without giving him even more restrictions. 

The class builder suggests one could get extra spells for 100 to 200 XP. Maybe we could do the opposite, giving the MU fewer spells - at most one per level. 

Notice the MU starts getting more than one spell per level only by level 7. If we change that, the starting MU is not any weaker (good!) but at level 10 he is significantly less powerful (also good), especially because he can never get three fireballs.

This gives the game a somewhat more S&S/low-magic vibe, which I like.

Let's say:  

			Spells
MU level	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	1
2	2
3	2	1
4	2	2	1
5	2	2	2
6	2	2	2
7	2	2	2	1
8	2	2	2	2
9	2	2	2	2	1
10	2	2	2	2	2
11	2	2	2	2	2	1
12	2	2	2	2	2	2
13	3	2	2	2	2	2
14	3	3	2	2	2	2

Cleric: I do not think the cleric deserves any further boost. They are very powerful, in my experience. I'd just require 2000 XP like the fighter. The spells and turn undead makes up for the difference. Please let me know in the comments if you disagree.

Thief: this is my main concern because it is a class that I find very weak, despite the low XP requirements (1,200 XP to level 2). The thief deserves 1d6 HP IMO, plus better saving throws (let's say the sneaky thief is as elusive as the strong fighter). This brings him to 1,700 XP. 

There is not much more to give a thief. Infravision or a couple of extra skills could work to get him to 2,000 XP, or maybe give him fighting capabilities similar to the fighter - when you compare the B/X thief with similar XP as a fighter, the attack bonus is not that different.

I wont include elves, halflings and dwarves because I don't use race-as-class.

Is this worth the effort? I'm not sure. Tweaking classes like that assumes there is some balance to begin with, which might not be the case. 

As I've mentioned in my last post, I'd prefer starting with very simple classes and then adding some feats as you go. 

Spell-less classes would get more feats than spellcasters, to improve their versatility, since they don't get to choose spells.

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The mage gap

One problem that I've seen in my D&D games is what people usually call the "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" problem.

"The mage gap" is shorter - and, as we'll see, it is also a problem that affects thieves and other non-spell classes, not only fighters.

I've noticed this in B/X and 5e, and not in 4e. It was a very common issue in the 3e era, but I haven't played much 3e. I'll discuss this from a B/X perspective.

There are multiple descriptions of this problem, but for me the issue is:

Fighters are good at hitting stuff. As they level up, they get BETTER at hitting stuff.

Wizards are good at spells. As they level up, they get:

- BETTER at casting THE SAME spells (e.g., a 10th level mage casts a 10d6 fireball).

- BETTER SPELLS (e.g., fireball is more powerful than magic-missile).

- MORE spells (e.g., cast fireball more times per day).

- OTHER spells (e.g., they can pick fireball and fly, that are useful in very different situations).

On this last point, we notice mages have lots of options starting on level 1. Fighters can maybe choose weapons, but a shortsword is not significantly different from a mace (and both serve he exact same function), while "charm", "sleep", and "read languages" create completely different 1st level mages.

I've discussed several fixes for fighters before. 

At the bare minimum, I think fighters deserve extra attacks so their attacks are not only better but also more numerable (and more effective due to extra damage).

We can give fighters several advantages (HP, better saves, etc.) and even make them "balanced" with wizards, but it is difficult to give them the same variety a wizard enjoys.

(Notice that thieves suffer a similar problem: they get better at skills, but their skills do not have better effects, nor do they get extra skills as they level up).

The most common "fix" for this is magic weapons. In B/X, there are swords that cast spells (or spell-like effects) such as light, charm person, locate objects and even wish.

Which is fine but mostly turns the fighter into a type of spell-caster.

I don't think you can do much better if you stick to the simplicity of the "fighter" concept. But if you expand it to include rangers, barbarians, paladins, etc., it becomes more interesting - now a "fighter" might be able to find food, sneak around, ride a horse with expertise, etc.

In skill-based system, this is easy to do. In D&D, I think the mere existence of rangers, etc., limit the fighter to one single role (hitting things). That is one of the reasons I prefer the Old School Feats approach of keeping the basic classes but giving fighters more options.

However, in my own games I've also been trying to limit wizards somewhat. This is not only because I prefer sword & sorcery and dark fantasy to high fantasy, but also because I feel wizards become too complex as they level up.

In Dark Fantasy Basic, mages get better at casting spells as they level up, but they don't automatically gain new spells. Instead, each new spell comes at the cost of a feat.

And, while it is possible they cast stronger spells as they level up, this is not automatic; a 10d6 fireball is harder to pull off than a 3d6 fireball.

DFB was published in 2017 and I know it requires a big update. The more I play RPGs - any RPGs, including B/X - the more I want to change them. On the other hand, the more I play, the more ideas I get, which causes me some analysis paralysis.

But anyway, I think it was a step in the right direction. Nowadays, I'm leaning towards something like:

- Mages get ONE new spell per level, and get +1 to spellcasting.

- Fighters get +1 to attack per level, but they also get extra attacks and, indirectly, more damage.

- And, while we're at it, thieves get new skills as they level up, in addition to becoming better at some skills.