One Page Hacks: Equipment (B12)

Still rewriting Moldvay Basic, one page at a time.

Okay, that was harder than I expected. Moldvay's page B12 is a succinct table of equipment prices. It should be easy to streamline this. But I wanted to have all information in the same page: damage, price, weight, etc. I also added some house rules for weapons.

Not all the original weapons are included, but I've added a few of my own.

I used the silver standard instead of the traditional gold.

Click HERE for the PDF.

I really like the final result, but it is not much simpler than Moldvay's. It includes a lot more information (some of it essential, such as a distinction between fresh food and preserved food - which isn't clear in the original text), and it uses my simplified "rule of three" encumbrance system (check the link above).

My favorite part is "unifying" the price and weight of most items under "light tools". It might seem strange that all costs and weight the same, but you'll see none of the examples are really absurd. I will probably use this section in my 5e games from now on, too. I'm not a fan of tracking money except for the expensive stuff, and I certainly dislike browsing through a book to find the price (or weight) of a certain item.

In any case, let me here your opinion after you check the PDF (click the link above).

UPDATE: ultimately, my "one page rules" effort led me to publishing Dark Fantasy Basic my own homage to B/X. Check it out!

One Page Hacks: Character classes and skills (B8)

I'm still trying to rewrite Moldvay Basic, page by page.

Rewriting page B8 was a lot more challenging than I thought. I wanted to add a functional skill system, to B/X, and thought "streamlining" all skills would make it short. Well, not quite.

B8 has a LOT of good ideas in a single page (as it often happens in this book) - specially considering it has a lot of white space.

For example:

A simple rule about trying again, under "open locks" (here are some thought on the matter).

Rules for critical failures, under "pick pockets" (here are some thought on the matter).

Rules for allowing the GM to roll in secret, under "move silently" and "hide in shadows". Not my cup of tea but might be useful, so I've included it.

From these simple rules, it is possible to extrapolate a complete system, including all the stuff that is NOT on Basic but I still use in my games.

Everything is a skill now, including Combat, Turn Undead, Backstabbing, Spell-casting... Each class has its own special skill. No races here; I'll add them somewhere else.

I've had a hard time with the Thief, because it seemed he should have stealth, athletics, back-stab, perception... Ultimately I just used Thievery for everything and removed Athletics from his "mandatory" skills (he'll have Perception and Combat as secondary skills), so the only way you can have a thief-acrobat or mountebank is through some kind of feat or background.

Skills are d20+ability+skill versus DC (usually 15). I.e., it uses the same difficulty as 5e.

The coolest thing? The numbers make sense! They are not exactly like Basic, of course, but I've decide to give the thief a boost, which I think is adequate. But the percentages and progression are not that far from the original.

And you can still use one of my five or six skill systems for B/X if you don't like this one... I have posts for 1d6, 2d6, xd6, 1d20 and 1d30 skills, just look around.

Fighters, on the other hand, have nothing but combat as a mandatory skill (notice his BAB is way stronger than in Basic), so you can create rangers, thugs and paladins through skills and feats.

The XP table is unified.

Anyway, here is my version of B8.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Harder stealth (5e quick fix)

5e quick fixes are exactly what they say on the tin. Small house rules to fix D&D problems you probably don't have. One day I'll put then all in a good looking PDF and the whole will be SMALLER than the sum of the parts - that is how small they are! Use them wisely!

So, you're a ninja.

Somebody has to sneak past the town guards to steal the Jarl's scepter while he is away.

That should be easy. You check the DC, you stealth bonus... Yeah, you only fail if you roll 3 or less. Okay, you're probably not getting caught. But what if you do? Then the Jarl would find all about your ninja clan hiding at the woods!

You need to improve your chances. But how?

Wait - you have a whole clan of ninjas with you! You don't need to do the task alone! You can call your fellow ninjas - they all have a stealth bonus that are similar to yours - and you can ALL sneak past the guards at the same time!

Picture the scene - three hundred ninjas sneaking past the town's gates at night! What are the odds somebody will see any them?

Well, if you're using group checks (PHB 175), the odds are infinitesimally small.

To make a group ability check, everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds.

If you have a 15% chance of failure as a single ninja, ten ninjas have less than 2% chance of failing, and if you have a hundred ninjas you can safely add a dozen of untrained peasants to your group and you still have no chance of failing. You can add people that are worse than you (provided they have more than 50% chance of success) and still improve your chances.

It makes no sense.

Granted, this is not a 5e fix: 5e doesn't say you should use group checks for stealth. But many people seem to use this rule for sneaking around, which might be a bad idea.

I like group checks. They are fast, easy and cool. But they are obviously not a great fit for situations where having more people will actually hinder your chances.

And group checks can cause the opposite problem for incompetent PCs. If a group of people is lost in the woods and they must find a way out but each individual has less than 50% chance of succeeding, a group of a hundred has basically no chance of ever finding the way out and will all starve to death.

The idea of rolling stealth "as a group" is pretty bad in combat too. It is nice to have the thief being able to stab the Minotaur in the back while the creature only notices the loud paladin walking around in plate armor. Even better, the paladin may talk to the Minotaur and distract it while the rogue snakes around unnoticed. But in other circumstances, group checks might be useful - trying to infiltrate a place without leaving traces, for example.

If you want to use group checks for such situations, here is a quick fix (first part is from the 5e SRD, second part is my suggestion, adapted from Days of the Damned).

You'll never see them coming!

Group Checks (5e SRD)

When a number of individuals are trying to accomplish something as a group, the GM might ask for a group ability check. In such a situation, the characters who are skilled at a particular task help cover those who aren't.

To make a group ability check, everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds.


Otherwise, the group fails.

Group checks don't come up very often, and they're most useful when all the characters succeed or fail as a group. For example, when adventurers are navigating a swamp, the GM might call for a group Wisdom (Survival) check to see if the characters can avoid the quicksand, sinkholes, and other natural hazards of the environment. If at least half the group succeeds, the successful characters are able to guide their companions out of danger. Otherwise, the group stumbles into one of these hazards.

(my suggestion)

Sometimes, the fact that multiple people are attempting the same task at the same time may worsen their chances. The most common example is moving silently as a group, or trying to speak at the same time in a debate. In this case, the GM will add +1 to the roll for each character attempting the task. If there are three characters are attempting a DC 15 stealth check, for example, the DC is raised to 18.

Conversely,  if the situation is such that the task is made easier by the number of characters involved, the GM may subtract 1 from the DC for each member of the party.

Unearthed Arcana: Feats for Skill - Grappler and expertise have been fixed!

The new Unearthed Arcana is out, with feats for skills. Slowly but surely, WotC has been fixing the obvious holes in 5e's skill system. Now everybody has access to expertise (which, really, should've been a thing in the PHB), for example. This is cool for a number of reasons.

First, now anyone can specialize in a given skill, making a multitude of new character concepts possible. Second, with new feats come new possibilities - specially for fighters, that get more feats than anybody else, but not much else in some cases (the Champion, for example).

Combine these two and you get... The Grappling Fighter!

 I just googled "D&D grappling"... Thanks, Douglas!

See, the grappler feat in the PHB is a trap even for grapplers:

Grappler
The hands-down most disappointing entry in the PHB, Grappler is the ultimate trap ability. Its first ability is a worse version of the shove-to-prone combat option grapplers already have. Why invest in a feat for advantage when you can do it with basic combat actions? The second ability is what earns Grappler its green status. A restrained target suffers from disadvantage to all Dexterity saving throws, which works nicely with grapplers who use Dexterity-based spell damage. Or grapplers who have allies using that magic. This is a niche way to grapple but a fun one, so I leave it out there as an option for grapplers looking for new ways to enjoy the combat style. As for the last bullet point, it's a leftover of an earlier edition. As the PHB Errata clarifies, " Ignore the third benefit; it refers to a nonexistent rule". All told, this is the feat that should have made us tick and instead it's one of the first you'll ignore.

Now, look at this new feat from UA:

Brawny
You become stronger, gaining the following benefits:
• Increase your Strength score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You gain proficiency in the Athletics skill. If you are already proficient in the skill, you add double your proficiency bonus to checks you make with it.
• You count as if you were one size larger for the purpose of determining your carrying capacity.

This is an awesome feat to every Fighter - nah, to most "warrior" classes, including Barbarians, Paladins, etc. - and it is only a half feat", i.e., you also get +1 to Strength.

With decent strength, double proficiency, and increased carrying capacity, you will be able to grapple most monsters (unless they are more than one size larger than you) with ease and drag them around freely. This is no joke - you can reliably take down a death knight, most demons and young dragons!

Grappling might still be a bit limited - you can find some options here and here - but it just got a lot stronger.

There are lots of other interesting feats there. The medicine skill finally gets some use, you get a new version of the Help Other action, you get to intimidate foes during combat, and so on. Maybe I am not the greatest fan of feats - the bloat went to far in some former editions IMO - but some of these are really good.

I know, I know, many will say there is nothing broken in D&D 5e. But I'm really glad they are fixing it!

A quick note on minimalist/maximalism (give me the awesome already!)

I just read a great post about the subject, and felt let chiming in, albeit briefly. This is not a response or comment to the original post, but some reflections inspired by it. It is also a little rant-y, so reader beware.

The problem with maximalist settings, in my view, is an excess of boring stuff. I admit I loved detail when I was younger - it made the worlds feel real. Nowadays, I just don't have the time for that. I literally have more free RPGs in my HD than I can read in the next 10 years, not to mention the hundreds I payed for.

What is boring? Once again, Joseph Manola has successfully explained it: it is the predictable ("exactly what you would expect") and the irrelevant ("the headman of this village is tall and old and cheerful").

Now, this isn't a problem with campaign setting and modules only, but it affects monster manuals, player books and whole rules systems (it might even be a problem with a sizable part of modern literature, but I won't go into that here).

Take the three monster manuals I'm reading right now: Teratic Tome, Fire on the Velvet Horizon and Volo's Guide. While the first two aim to give you the awesome in every page (even at the risk of missing the mark), Volo's alternates freely between being awesome/useful (the new monsters and races, for example) and boring me to tears. For example, Gnolls are evil because their god is evil. Giants are artists, warriors or gluttons depending on their gods. and the hierarchy between goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears are determined by each one's gods. When I got to the "Orcs: the Godsworn" section, I put the book away and haven't pick it up since.

Or consider the infinite number of retroclones/neoclones: I really like reading this stuff, but why do I have to read 80-pages of d20 copypasta before I get to that one cool idea that makes your retro-clone different from the rest? Give me the awesome already!

For me, a 20-page PDF is ten times more useful than a 200-page PDF if 90% of it is filled with the obvious, and 50 flexible spells are better than 500 spells I won't read. 10 monsters I've never heard of? I'll take that over 50 orcs any day of the week. Please do not describe what a Minotaur (or - God forbid! - a human) looks like. I already know!

Sure, there is room for stuff such as Low Fantasy Gaming, which puts a S&S twist on the familiar stuff it presents, or thematic retro-clones like Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, but unless your work is very unique, we probably don't need another retro-clone by this point.

I am aware that many people think RPGs are meant to be referenced, not read. There is a place for this stuff, too; but honestly, if your game requires me to open it upo multiple times during play, I'm probably not te target audience. Give me something cool to read, and the chances I use it rise exponentially.

This is why I like Titan, by the way. This might be nostalgia talking, but everything seemed to be focused on adventure and fun, and it frequently departed from the obvious. Orcs are evil, which might sound dated, but not because they worship evil gods. In fact...

As you encounter servants of some of the gods of Good on
your travels, you may begin to wonder why so many 'evil'
races worship them! Surely, you would say, foul creatures
like Orcs would not wish to worship a god like Galana (who
they know as the Lady of Corn and pray to for good harvests
in the few areas where they still bother to grow crops), and
in return Galana would not bestow her favours upon servants
of Evil and Chaos, even if they were also farmers? This is part
of the very nature of Goodness, it seems: the powers of Good
are such that they can forgive the creatures of Evil enough to
grant them their blessing when they need it.

Creatures such as the Life-Stealers, who worship Sukh, are
considered servants of Evil because they live by violence and
killing, which they seem to do in the name of their god. In
such matters, religion breaks down a little, it must be said,
and priests have argued with one another for centuries over
such points. In the case of Sukh, it is generally agreed that
Life-Stealers kill their victims only because that is the way
they are. Certainly, no one seems to argue much when
humans slaughter Orcs or Goblins, though most servants of
Good would agree that killing is – at least in principle –always
an act of Evil.

When I was a teenager, I wrote a "kitchen sink" setting with all the stuff I wanted to have in a D&Dish world. I took a completionist approach to it: everything had to make sense and have a detailed explanation, down to the percentage of people that spoke a given language in a given country. I eventually gave up on it because this kind of detail became uninteresting even to my players.

Recently, I tried rewriting it, with two rules in mind: everything must be either awesome or short. Which, in my opinion, is the cure for predictable and irrelevant. Yes, you need some irrelevant stuff to make sense of a setting ("the king is called Damocles the Third..."), but if you make it short you leave the spotlight to the cool stuff - and save everyone's time.

There is a lot more to be said on the matter, but making this too long would miss the point, right? So, rant over. See you soon!

Specific backgrounds (5e quick fix)

5e quick fixes are exactly what they say on the tin. Small house rules to fix problems you probably don't have. One day I'll put then all in a good looking PDF and the whole will be SMALLER than the sum of the parts - that is how small they are! Use them wisely!

Does it bother you that the wizard in the party knows more about religion than your cleric? Or that the forester/outlander barbarian knows so little about nature and survival, even though he can easily find hidden sources of water in the hot savanna after being raised in snowy mountains in the neverending cold of the frozen North?

Do you think Acolyte and Outlander are boring backgrounds? Would you prefer to be a Former Cultist of the Great Old Ones or a Savage Barbarian of the Icy Peaks?

Do traditional backgrounds leave you cold? Do you prefer your characters to be special snowflakes? Are you reading this after all these puns?

If the answer is yes for any of those questions, try this.

A samurai background is easier to do than a samurai class (art: copyright WotC)

From now on, all backgrounds must be specific. No "Acolyte", but "Former Cultist of the Great Old Ones", etc. You still get the same skills and tools, but now you also get advantage (or expertise, if you prefer) when dealing with your specific background. You're proficient in religion - which applies to all religions - but when you roll to see if you know something obscure about your own religion, you roll with advantage.

This is not new, of course; compare the Uthgardt tribe member from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide with the PHB's Outlander and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Also, since the PHB doesn't mention it explicitly, let me suggest that you use these backgrounds as sources of advantage. For example, let the Acolyte of the GOO (or Sorcerer, for that matter) get advantage not only in his religion rolls, but also when trying to intimidate the superstitious. Give the Outlander advantage when persuading other tribes that share a similar culture. And so on. Don't get too crazy, though: them sorcerer does NOT get advantage in all her intimidation rolls because he can cast a cantrip.

By the way, that is also how backgrounds work in my Days of the Damned game, as I mentioned it in this post about 13th Age. Click the link for other examples and a discussion of some pitfalls this technique may cause.

Want a downside to go with it? Your background feature also become specific, if it isn't already. So the GM may rule that your Outlander character must roll the dice to find food in the savanna. He rolls with advantage, of course, since the feature is still included in the background. If you think this is too harsh, let the Outlander use the feature as written after a few successes in the savanna. Same idea can be applied to a pirate's reputation; let her make some intimation rolls at least until she gets a reputation in her new home.

Many backgrounds are already quite specific, so no need to change those. And, of course, don't make the players roll for stuff that should be obvious! Of course the Acolyte of Cthulhu knows it waits dreaming in R'lyeh!