New Blog Title

I've decided to change the title of my blog because I'd like to start posting on a variety of topics that have less to do with a particular edition and focus more on general D&D topics. Things like alternate takes on ability scores (such as the six I proposed earlier), the history of various game ideas, and so on. I suspect it will still be slanted a bit toward 4th edition, but rethinking my blog has inspired me to branch out into other forms (such as retroclones). Some of my further entries might be my thoughts on these other forms of D&D.

New Ability Scores for D&D

If I were given license to redesign D&D from the ground up - or if I could make my own fantasy heartbreaker - here is what I'd use for the ability scores:

Strength - I'm tempted to rename it "Might," as that just sounds more powerful to me at the moment. But the name Strength is fine enough by me.

Vigor - My replacement name for Constitution. I like it because it more immediately suggests action, and I feel it better encapsulates intangible elements of health like energy and vitality.

Cunning - This would be a measure of a character's cleverness, guile, and penchant for duplicity. I see it as combining the tricksy aspects of Charisma, the common-sense aspects of Wisdom, and quick-thinking as evidenced by 4e's take on Intelligence (where it adds to Reflex and AC).

Dexterity - Pretty much what it always has been. A character's nimbleness, grace, and speed.

Intelligence - This stat would be refluffed a bit to a character's ability to notice detail in addition to mental acuity. Thus it would cover perception and insight - indeed, I may even just change the name to "Insight." I mean, most highly intelligent people I know are able to see things I wouldn't see, so it works for me. The "book-smart but not street-smart characters could take high Int

Spirit - I also like the word "Mettle," but this would cover the force of personality aspect of Charisma. However, I would also expand it to general grit and determination, meaning it could be used to overcome injuries or hardship through sheer will.

Under this schema, Strength and Vigor would be the Fortitude defense pair, Cunning and Dexterity would be the AC/Reflex defense pair, and Intelligence and Spirit would be the Will defense pair.

4e Bullywugs

My friend and I worked on this a few month's back for a short Chaos Scar game. Here's what we based Thubulbius Graymarsh III, bullywug avenger of Corellon on:

Bullywug

RACIAL TRAITS

Average Height: 5'4" - 6'0"
Average Weight: 150 - 240

Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Strength or +2 Dexterity
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares.

Vision: Normal.
Languages: Common.

Skill Bonuses: +2 Athletics, +2 Endurance.
Aquatic Origin: Your ancestors were native to an aquatic environment, so you are considered an aquatic creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin.
Frog Legs: When you make an Athletics check to jump or swim, roll twice and use either result. When you jump you are considered to have a running start.
Rancid Air: You gain the rancid air power.
Swamp Walk: You ignore difficult terrain that is mud or shallow water.

Rancid Air Bullywug Racial Power
You assail the nostrils of your foes with a cloud of stinking vapor.
Encounter * Poison
Minor Action Close burst 1
Target: All creatures in the area.
Attack: Strength +2 vs. Fortitude, Constitution +2 vs. Fortitude, or Dexterity +2 vs. Fortitude
Increase to +4 bonus at 11th level, and to +6 bonus at 21st level.
Hit: The target is weakened until the end of its next turn.
Special: When you create this character, choose Strength, Constitution, or Dexterity as the ability score you use when making attack rolls with this power. This choice remains throughout you character's life and does not change the power's other effects.

Bullywugs are frog-like humanoids native to swampy environments. Most bullywugs are vicious, insane brutes despised by nature itself, but ages ago some of their number petitioned the primal spirits and vowed to dwell in harmony with the world. The spirits agreed, provided that these bullywugs forsook their chaotic leanings forever. Although they share many similar talents, the descendants of the repentant bullywugs are much more civilized, refined, and less constantly foul-smelling than their monstrous brethren.

Play a bullywug if you want ...

-to look like a frog
-to be at home in muddy swamps
-to struggle with and overcome negative stereotypes
-to be a member of a race that favors the assassin, battlemind, fighter, ranger, or rogue classes

Here are some sample feats in no particular order (some of these should be read in a jesting tone!):

Blasted Air
Prerequisite: Bullywug, rancid air racial power
Benefit: When you use your rancid air racial power, you can choose to make it a close blast 3 instead of a close burst 1.

Enlarged Air
Prerequisite: Bullywug, rancid air racial power
Benefit: When you use your rancid air power, you can choose to make it burst 2 instead of burst 1.

Immediate Air
Prerequisite: Bullywug, rancid air racial power
Benefit: You may use your rancid air racial power as an immediate interrupt.

Opportunity Air
Prerequisite: Bullywug, rancid air racial power
Benefit: Whenever you make an opportunity attack, instead of making the usual melee basic attack, you can use your rancid air racial power without expending it. When you do so, you ignore the power's action type, and one of your targets must be the creature that triggered the opportunity attack.

Twitcher Training
Prerequisite: Bullywug
Benefit: You gain a +2 AC bonus vs. oppertunity attacks while jumping

Toxic Affinity
Prerequisite: Bullywug
Benefit: Gain +5 poison resistance and a +2 feat bonus to saving throws vs. poison effects.

Only At-Wills and Dailies for Wizards?

When the Essentials Assassin playtest came out, one of the neat things the designers did was to give assassins a death strike ability. It's the only encounter power assassins have, and what I find particularly interesting is that an assassin's encounter power damage "budget" is rolled up into this one power. That is, while some classes at 3rd level have two encounter powers that do basically 2[W] damage each, the assassin has one power that does basically 4[W]. In the long term, the assassin has the same damage output as any other class, but it does so all at once, basically. As a result, the assassin must carefully use his death strike ability when he has an advantage.

Here's my crazy idea - what if wizards had no encounter powers and relied primarily on *dailies*? Of course, the wizard would still have a few basic attack spells (perhaps magic missile plus two other at-wills, like what the Essentials mage has) that allow him to manipulate the battlefield on a round-by-round basis. However, a first level wizard might have no encounter attack spells but be able to cast two or three daily attack spells per day (if there are normally about four encounters per day, then I figure 4 encounter powers are roughly equivalent to two or three dailies).

Why would I want to do this? Well, Essentials has gotten me to think about how things were in earlier editions. One of the hallmarks of pre-4e wizards/mages/magic-users was that they only had a few powerful abilities, but those abilities had the potential to be real game changers. The way earlier editions "balanced" this was to make wizards very weak at low levels but very strong at high levels. I agree with 4e's general disapproval of those kinds of balancing mechanisms, but I think that skillful management and application of power is what makes wizards "tick."

I feel a focus on dailies would do that for wizards. And, in a manner like the Essentials assassins, as long as the wizard's damage "budget" per day is roughly the same as other classes it should be kosher.

The biggest problem I see is that a wizard might horde his dailies and "blow his load" for the most important encounters. To minimize this temptation, I'd like skillful wizard players to recognize that hording dailies can be inefficient (allowing monsters to deal more damage, etc.). I'm also wondering if it might be worthwhile to make wizard dailies more costly to use, such as costing a healing surge.

But there you have it. Comments?

My First Essentials Character

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I'm playing a level 6 human knight in our group's weekly game. The other PCs are an elf thief (also an Essentials character), goblin assassin (pre-Essentials version), goblin bard, wilden seeker, and gnome wizard (pre-Essentials version). We are hunting down a tiefling necromancer seeking some strange artifact (the DM is adapting a Dungeon Delve adventure for this, I think).

We had one combat with a bunch of undead. The room was originally pitch black, but the wizard cast Light and illuminated pretty much the whole area (I never really realized how useful light was until then ...). We rolled crap for initiative and were bottle-necked in the entryway, which sucked when the undead unleashed blasts and burst powers. I actually took over 100 hp of damage (max is 65) in that battle - I'm glad I opted for an Endurance based knight!

In any case, the combat went without a hitch rules-wise. I really liked not having any dailies - in the previous campaign, I played a warlock from level 1 to 3 and hardly used my daily (Flames of Phlegethos). I liked having enhanced basic attacks, as I could do cool things on OAs - I took Hammer Hands for the pushing, and Hold (Defend?) the Line for the slow effect. I know some people are concerned about the fighter being too simplistic, but I had to make important choices about which stance to adopt during my turn and when my turn ended.

I really liked Defender's Aura (although I wish it had a more evocative name, like Defender's Vigilance or something like that). Fluff-wise it felt more "realistic," and mechanics-wise I felt pretty effective at locking down a group of enemies. Ironically, although we were bottle-necked at the opening, my close proximity to a large number of enemies was a big help! I also had the opportunity to see how the knight worked with a traditional mark, because the bard has the Misdirected Mark spell. It also went fine, and I liked not having to worry about the goblin overwriting my mark.

When my first turn came up (I was dead last in the initiative order!), the undead had the entryway pretty much covered. Only one square was open to allow PCs through, which meant a lot of OAs. When I finally went, I adopted Hammer Hands stance, moved forward and attacked. I rolled a 16 total, which the DM said wasn't enough to hit. So I mock-heroically shouted "Heroic Effort!" and asked if a 20 hit. He said yes! I pushed the skeleton back, then moved into a space adjacent to it where I covered 3 undead. That freed up some moving space and felt awesome.

I think the rogue's player had a good time, too - he mostly used Ambush Trick and got CA most of the time. While it was cool that the rogue could use Sneak Attack once per turn, he wasn't often in position to do an OA so it didn't matter much. He also liked being able to use a shortbow.

In sum I think both the rogue's player and me were quite happy with our characters. We could do lots of interesting things, but I don't think we overshadowed the traditional PCs. Our group is pretty much a hack and slash group, so I should be able to get a better idea about how things work out on the combat end as we continue to play.

XP House Rules

Having played a lot of D&D over the past couple of years, I've come around to the idea of awarding xp only when objectives or goals are completed. In essence, this is basically exclusive use of quest xp, which is hardly a new idea. However, I feel this would have subtle, far-reaching changes on play. Not the least of which is that combat wouldn't always be the first option (and, given how combat can drag, it might be one of the last options PCs consider).

Furthermore, I'm thinking of only awarding xp when characters engage in certain behaviors. These could be training exercises, prayers, studying dusty tomes, or carousing. I think this would go a long way in cementing PCs' relationship to the game world.

I'll have to come back with another post detailing such a system. But I think it has a lot of promise.

Player-created Elements of the World

A couple of weekends ago, our group encountered a ghost guarding a sword. I thought it was just going to be another monster, but after that session my DM emailed me with an "assignment": write up some details on Lady Dholbruar, the aforementioned ghost. I think he was mostly looking for a pitch on where to go for future adventures, but I thought it would be cool to have her inhabit the sword. She was a champion of Bane in life, so I told the DM she might have transgressed in some way and was bound to the sword against her will. I'm looking forward to the various twists my DM might throw with this one.

He's allowed players to create other bits of the world as well. For example, in my character's history I said I stole a deep black gem from a merchant. I was intending the gem to be obviously magical, and as a result of this weekend's game I'm thinking there might be some shadow magic involved with it.

The main point is that I really like how the DM is incorporating player ideas into the world. This is pretty common during character creation, like with my character's stolen gem, but I haven't seen it as much during play (like with the spirit-haunted sword). It's definitely something I was to try out when I next DM a game - I just hope I have players who will buy into it!