Shield Usage

I've experimented with a number of ways of implementing shields in the combat system I use. The most obvious way, subtracting 5 from your Combat Penalty, just doesn't give enough of a benefit, particularly if you are a "walking tank".

I've played using a 50/50 rule. That is, for any attack roll, there is 50% chance that the attack hits the shield.
I've never been thrilled with that approach.

The one that makes the most game sense to me is to treat the shield as a weapon. That is, fighting with a shield is not unlike fighting with two weapons. However, rather than require the "Two Weapon Fighting" Feat, it requires a proficiency in shield usage. A member of the Fighter Class automatically gets proficiency in light, medium, and heavy shield use. Rogues are limited to light shield use, which requires a proficiency.
Normal non-proficiency penalties apply.

Here is a table for Shield Weights, combat values, and such.

The first column lists the weight of the shield, which is added to the user's combat penalty. The second column gives the combat value of the shield, which counters the weight. A small leather shield will give an opponent +5% to hit you because of the weight of the shield, but -10% to hit because of the combat value of the shield, resulting in a net combat value of  +5%.

The leather shield has an AC value of 8. Using the shield does not affect your attack with your weapon hand. The shield provides partial cover against ranged attacks. It offers no bonus to a Bull Rush. Using the shield as a weapon, the shield has a -15 damage modifier.

Lets go to our character Sebastiano. He had a Combat Rating of 27, and a Combat Penalty of 3. He is going to use a medium wooden shield. The 15 pounds of weight brings his Combat Penalty to 18. However, the shield has a combat value of 15, which is added to his Combat Rating. Defending with his shield gives him a Combat Rating of 27 + 15, or 42. He subtracts this from his combat Penalty, for a new Combat Penalty of -24.

When defending with a shield, any attack that "misses" the defender automatically hits the shield. The shield mitigates any damage to the defender.

Example: A Hill Giant a Combat Rating of 40 takes a swing at Sebastiano. Without a Shield, Sebastiano has a Combat Penalty of -3. The Giant would have to roll a 37 or lower to hit.

Instead, Sebastiano uses his shield, with a new Combat Penalty of -24. The Giant must now roll a 16 or less to hit.

The Giant rolls a 30, a "miss". The blow strikes the wooden shield. The Giant rolls for damage. He wields a club 2 handed, and has a +11 damage modifier. The giant rolls a d10, and gets a 5.   5 + 11 is 16. The table below is consulted, and the damage reduced accordingly.

16 damage against a wooden shield reduces the damage roll to 3. The standard damage table is consulted, as well as the hit location table. A roll of 47 indicates a hit to the upper left arm, which is protected by AC8 leather. A 3 against AC8 does 9 points of damage.

Had he not had a shield, he would have taken 19 points damage to the same location.

Alternative Combat Rules

One of the things that always bothered me was the basic combat system for d20 style and similar games.
Early on in my gaming career, I adopted Arms Law into my campaign. I thought the idea of more armor making you easier to hit, but you taking less damage, was a neat twist.

However, to me the biggest drawback was needing a separate chart for each weapon. While this was certainly cool from the standpoint of every weapon being custom designed for every armor type, I found it a bit cumbersome.

I soon took to designing my own system, inspired by the same basic principle. I have used it for many years in my campaigns, and am quite happy with it. Among other things, it encourages players to wear lighter armor, and works weal with adventures that require stealth. In addition, I find that there is a lot more control over weapon and monster design, making a monster virtually impervious to weapons, or having sneak attacks that deal dozens of points of damage on the unarmored and unaware.

I'll start by introduction the character sheet:

We have a fighter, Sebastiano, who has an impressive array of statistics. Generate stats your favorite way.

Then, indicate your d20 attribute bonus. The following column is the d100 attribute bonus. This is simply the d20 attribute bonus, x5. His Strength of 18 gives him a d20 bonus of 4, and a d100 bonus of 20.

He has 27 hit points, which is also his "Combat Rating", or CR. His hit points total at zero level was his Constitution or Stamina, divided by 2, giving him 9 points. He rolled a 7 at level 1, and a 5 at level 3. At each of those levels he was awarded his d20 bonus of 3.

Next, we have to pick armour. For this we need an armor weight table. Sebastian is going to wear a light plate (AC4) breastplate, bracers, and helmet. For movement and stealth purposes, he will wear leather (AC8) on his legs and upper arms. A light plate cuirass weighs 18 pounds. The helmet is 2 pounds. The bracers are 4 pounds each. His leather armor weighs a total of 5 pounds. His armor comes to a total of 33 pounds.

Next we'll pick a weapon. He is going to go with the light two handed sword (a 10 pound sword), avoiding "to hit" penalties for a heavier two handed sword, but still taking advantage of his 1.5 damage bonus modifier for his strength attribute. His damage bonus with his sword is +6.

His Combat Penalty (CP) is calculated by adding up all the weight he is carrying, and subtracting his weight allowance. His armor and weapons come to a total of 43 pounds. He is allowed a standard 20 pound weight allowance, and his strength d20 bonus gives him another 20 pounds of allowance. His CP is 3.

Calculating hit probability is quit simple. The Attacker's CR is added to the Defender's CP. So, if Sebastian was fighting himself, he would have add his CR (27) to his doppleganger's CP (3) for a "to hit" score of 30. He has not yet used his Dexterity Bonus. For simplicity, we will say his Doppleganger gets no dexterity bonus. Sebastian has 15 points to play with, which is his d100 Dexterity bonus. He has to keep it in units of 5, so he will put 5 points into defense, reducing his CP to -2, and He will put the other 10 points into offense, bringing his total to hit to 40.

If he rolls a 40 or lower on d100 he hits. His doppelganger has a CR of 27, and Sebastian has a CP of -2. His doppelganger needs a 25 or lower to hit him.

Sebastian rolls a 33, hitting the doppelganger. Now we need to know exactly where he was hit, so we can calculate damage. Rolling a d100 and consulting the Armor Hit Location table on the left of the Character sheet, we get a 62. This number is between 56 and 95, so a hit to the torso is indicated. The doppelgagner is wearing light plate on his torso.

Next, we need to calculate damage, and for that we will need the damage chart. There is only one chart required for all weapons.


All damage for all weapons is rolled using a d10. Strength and weapon modifiers are added to the roll.
Sebastian rolls a 4. His sword does not have any damage modifiers, but he gets a +6 to damage due to his strength d20 bonus (+4) and his use of a two handed weapon multiplies his bonus by 1.5

6 is added to the 4, for a total of 10. This is cross indexed with the light plate AC4 column, for a total of 6 points damage. Had the attack hit an area that was covered by AC8 leather, the damage would have been 14 points.

For each 10 points of damage dealt in a single blow, an opponent is stunned for 1 round. The opponent can not counter attack, and the attacker gets a +10 bonus against the stunned opponent. If the attacker went first in the round and the opponent loses his counter attack in the round due to the stun, the following round he loses initiative and is subject to the +10 bonus against him. If the stunning attack occurs at the end of a round, the stunned opponent is stunned for the entire following round.

That's pretty much it. I believe I've covered all the bases. To calculate damage in excess of 27 points, simply add the damage and the AC together, then multiply by the AC/10 and round .5 up to the next number. Lets say 32 points of damage were done on AC4. 32 and 4 are 36. 36 x .4 = 14.4, which is rounded down to 14.

Sebestiano vs. a housecat

One way to evaluate a combat system is to set an opponent against an average house case. Consulting the weapons chart, my housecat has a CR of 40, with a damage modifier of -19. The cat must succeed in successful claw, claw, and bite attacks to roll once for damage.

Lets say poor Sebastian is sleeping one night, and is attacked by a house cat. Seeing as the cat surprised him (+20) and he was prone (+20), the cat might get an additional +40 to hit. Rolling 3 times and getting results under 80, the cat can roll for damage.

The cat can roll anywhere from 1 to 10, so his modified roll is anywhere from -18 to -9. Looking at the armor chart on against AC10, the cat actually has to roll a 10 to do 1 point of damage. Anything lower than 10, and there is no damage. It is impossible for the cat to harm someone wearing any type of armor on the area of attack.

More examples soon. Feel free to play around with the concept, altering numbers as you see fit. Generally, for each +5 a weapon gets to hit, it gets -1 to damage, and vice versa. Some weapons are worse, but making a weapon too much better creates a super weapon.

Finally, here's a blank character sheet for your use:

Place names in Shatterworld

A reader contacted me, asking why I chose the name "Calabria", as Calabria is a real world region of southern Italy. He was very familiar with Calabria, as that is where is father is from. Here is my response to the inquiry:

I'm of Italian (Sicilian) ancestry myself, and my grandmother's sister married a "Calabrese".

I think that is where the name struck me. I was aware that is was an actual place, but one of my goals is to give the setting "real world" sounding place names, as opposed to everything being some exotic name. My design goal is that the place names sort of "ground" the setting, making the "fantastic" elements of it really seem unusual. (BTW, Calabria has a hard "C", as in Kal-á-bree-ah)

As for other place names, Freehold is a town in New Jersey where my aunt lives, and Woodbury Forest is the neighborhood my parents lived in for 20 years in Charlotte, NC.

The Dwarven stronghold will be named Stonehaven, another neighborhood in Charlotte.

The main paved road winding through Calabria is based on the Appian Way, or Via Appia. I've decided to keep use of the Latin, and go with the Imperial Way, or Via Imperium.

For the northern city of Birg Nor, I wanted it to have Nordic Influence, because the Dwarves live in the mountain range across the Northren Sea. Birg is derivative of Berg, or "mountain", in German. Burg in German is "city" (hence, Burgermesiter, master of the city, and Iceberg, "ice mountain"). "Nor" is my abbreviation of "north" or "nordic".

Pitkin and Carín sound mundane enough, but I wanted the "Rome" of the country to have something a little bit exotic sounding, and sort of romance languagey. (like that term?). So Len Draal came to mind.

Wyvern's Point is the only place name that to me feels "gamey" sounding, but I can live with it because I've made wyrms, wyverns, and gryphons sort of "mundane" creatures, with true "D&D" dragons being much more exotic. To me, this emulates actual real world heraldry, so sort of feels right.

I find coming up with appropriate name places to be a very difficult process requiring much thought to establish the kind of feel I want for the campaign world. I want it to feel like a real place you might have read about somewhere, rather than some bizarre place out of World of Warcraft or Everquest where up is down and down is up, and magic is as common as a cup of Starbucks.

-A

What races are in your campaign, and what can players play?

In the original rules for D&D, there was a big advantage to being human. The idea was that the world was mostly human, with demi-humans being hidden and mysterious and things of myth. In many campaigns, it is hard to find a straight up human player. With all the non-humans running around, the GM has to create rational for this in the campaign. Like magic, non-humans can become ubiquitous and mundane. If "diversity" spreads to ever small village and hamlet, where lies the awe in discovering the heart of Elvinkind? The mountain stronghold of the Dwarves?

Players and GMs should consider the overall feel of the world they want to play in. IMO, there should be plenty of room left for mystery. If a player portrays a character of a non human race, the GM has to give them much information about how that race fits into the campaign. This is information much better revealed through gameplay, rather than character creation. There can only be so many orphans left on doorsteps who have no knowledge of their heritage.

How prevalent are monsters? Is the campaign like something out of a wild west movie, with orcs in the place of indians and full pitched battles happening on a regular basis? Or do the monsters lurk in shadow, and only interact with humans when they are forced to by unusual forces?

Does the sight of a dragon flying overhead fill a typical villager with dread, or it is a ho-hum event like us seeing an airliner.

What about "dungeon clearing"? When a lair of monsters IS discovered, is the goal to go in and slay every last one of them? Or are their numbers so awe inspiring, their survival instinct so honed, that merely being discovered by them spells doom.This story to me, demonstrates what the result should be of being discovered in any lair:

HOW NUTH WOULD HAVE PRACTISED HIS ART UPON THE GNOLES

by Lord Dunsany

http://www.sff.net/pe...

A sojourn to a lair should have a specific goal. Not a "search and destroy", but a rescue, a specific treasure, or some information. Any deviation from the plan to achieve that goal should be very costly. Traipsing around in full suits of armor should spell the early death of a party. Provide ample opportunity for stealth to be rewarded.

Create monsters that are feared, rather than just a means to get XP

What Place Does Magic Play?

It is easy for a campaign to get out of control, magic wise. Take "light", a first level wizards spell. It lasts one hour per level of the wizard. (In original rules, it lasted until it was put out). With enough wizards running around in your campaign world, every single town could have streetlights lit all night long with light spells. At this point, is magic really magical? Make something common enough, and it isn't magic at all. It is simply mundane.

What about flying? The most interesting, well planed out architectural challenges can be thwarted by a flying character. And adventure that could last an entire evening can be circumvented by one annoying fly spell. Oh sure, you can embed the structure with all sorts of counter magic, making it impossible to fly. But it becomes an arms war... upping the magic ante to make basic things feel basic.

Teleportation? Again, a bane of well planned adventure design. Simple common spells that force a GM to think several steps ahead and up the ante, making magic so ubiquitous that all feeling of mystery and antiquation is lost. 

Think hard about what spells you allow in your campaign. You may get some harsh protests, but limiting the spells your players have access to can create a much richer experience for all.


How common are magic items?

Is there a "magic shop" in every village, littering the landscape like Starbucks? Or are magic items mystical, mysterious, and rare. Sure there are a lot of creatures that require a magic items to be struck, but a little rule bending (and reliance on traditional folklore) and that item could be made of a specific mundane material.

Vampires and werewolves have an aversion to silver. Many fae creatures abhor iron. A nice silver backup dagger, or an impromptu fireplace poker, can make a nice stand in for traditional magic items.

As for combat advantage, nothing wrong with having quality weapons that afford a +1 or +2 without being magical.
Keeps everyone on their toes, and makes finding the right weapon for the right foe part of the adventure.

What about wands, rings, etc...
Lets get back to that "light" spell. How about a type of rock, a material component for the spell, that is required. So you can't just make anything light up. It has to be a specific element, perhaps only found in a certain part of the campaign world. Lets say rose quartz for the heck of it. So you have one rock, non magical, the size of an orange, that you can make light up with a light spell. If you lose it, you have to go adventuring. Or maybe find a lapidary in a decent sized town, or an old woman, shunned by the villagers, who deals in folk magic and lives in a hut at the end of a village.

Wands and rings, rather than having powers of their own, can magnify the powers of those using it. Want a magic wand? Go make one! One that maybe casts a couple of extra first level spells a day. YOUR spells, not spells "embedded" in the wand. Maybe that rose quartz is embedded in a ring, so that light spell can be cast from your hand.

Leave the "real" magic to adventuring. And don't be afraid to let a group get ahold of a magic item that is far more powerful than their level would seem to allow. They don't have to keep it. Let them have fun playing with items before Fate steps in and takes it away, keeping game balance in play but having the excitement of powerful magic in the world.

It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing experience. Done right, low level adventures can be very exciting, and the players don't have to be in a race to attain high levels just to have a good time and a chance at survival, and get to play with the "cool" stuff without throwing off game balance and escalating the magic arms race in a campaign world.

What Makes for a Good Campaign?

The Village of Hommlet

There was a time when I had played every single current title that TSR had published. At least monthly, I would go to the local bookstore, hoping that something new would have arrived on the racks. After playing The Village of Hommlet, there were years that went by that I would hope against hope that the legendary "T2: Temple of Elemental Evil" would actually be published. (It eventually was,  and it was NOT what I was expecting or hoping for)

Much to my chagrin, when titles did arrive, they were in no way connected to any previous titles.

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief

Well, there were exceptions. There was the Against the Giants (Actually the G series), which had their moments, followed by the "D" series and culminating in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. But these publications spanned almost a three year gap in publishing. We used to eat modules for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. All summer long.

If all this sounds greek to you, it shows you how far the game of Dungeons and Dragons has come. But the salient point is, there simply was not enough material published by one company to satisfy our rate of consumption. So we'd purhcase this module from this company, that one from that one. Add in an alternate combat and spellcasting system from someone else. You get the idea... it was all very hodge podge.

The thing that kept it all together... kept all of us coming back day after day, week after week, was the campaign world. For every hour of play, I'd spend at least an equivalent hour, and would laboriously pour over these adventures, and try to weave them together with the players past experiences. Often times I would far overreach, making the stories far more complex than the players ever grasped. But the sense of richness it created was there. The world FELT real.

If you went into a village, and talked to a blacksmith, he might recognize the sigil on the hilt of your sword, and an entire night might be filled spent drinking in a tavern and learning local lore from the blacksmith and his friends. They would be aware of your past deeds, and either respect or fear you, based on things you might have even forgotten you had done.

Monsters weren't just faceless stats. They were famous. They had names, reputations. Earning the moniker "giant slayer" might either make you either a target, or grant you safe passage through the heartland of hulking beasts. A blow from a giant's club might be halted as one of your companions calls out a warning to you.

"Stealthshadow, duck!"
"'Stealfshader? The one who killt Mardok the Mountain with a single arrow? Criminy! Run!!!" (Gotta love those alternate combat systems with critical hit charts)


Where does all this take place? And why are there all these dungeons filled with treasure everywhere?

The archetypes of D&D are based in real world history, mythology, and folklore. They are also based on famous novels or movies. This presents some interesting issues. How can you have a Hobbit if you don't have a shire? How can you have a Paladin if you don't have Charlemagne? How can you have a Druid if you don't have Celts? How can you have Cathedrals if you don't have Christianity? How can you have Rangers if you don't have an Aragorn? The answers to these question result in unique campaign settings, some more satisfying than others. The closer the campaign world is to the origin of a specific class or race, the more authentic it feels for that class or race. So the campaign worlds tend to borrow, heavily from their sources.

Of course, the extreme of this is to set the campaign in a literary setting. You can campaign in Middle-earth, the Dragonlance setting, etc... While this gives the players and GMs a good familiarity with the campaign world, it can also be restricting. In a series like Dragonlance, what happens when the players do something the literary characters didn't? In Middle-earth, what happens if Frodo fails to destroy the ring?

A decent balance between disconnected episodes, and a campaign dictated by a pre-existing storyline, is exemplified in many TV shows. And honestly, the worse the show is, sometimes the better the model for a campaign world. Xena and Hercules come to mind as perfect models for campaign worlds. There's lots of action, recurring characters, and in the end, a loose progression of story.

Something like Fringe is a bit more ambitious, as it centers around an elaborate mythology. A campaign designed this way can be very rewarding, but takes a huge amount of commitment from the GM and the players. But in the end, what Fringe is really about is simple... the relationship between a Father and a Son. Don't be afraid of the big arcs... but don't forget the heart behind the story either.

Plot in RPGs

I've been reading in and partaking in lots of discussions online lately of the role of "story" in RPGs, and the merits and weaknesses of "plot" in relation to role playing. I thought I'd start out this blog by expressing some thoughts on the subject.

I'll crib from the Wikipedia entry on plot:

"Plot is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, or by coincidence."

Patterns may be developed by players or GMs. Time in an RPG is generally linear, and events tend to play out sequentially. However, it is certainly possible to present RPG's via flashbacks, or to incorporate time travel. The sequential nature of events is not a given.