D&D thoughts once again
2022-Aug-08, Monday 14:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
It seems like every few months I come back to the well. This time it's about wanting to maybe run a heavily modified game of E6, once again based on the long-dead webcomic Dark Places, which I wrote about here.
There's two main. things that prompted this post, by which I mean, two problems I have with baseline D&D that I want to change: the way combat works and the way magic works.
(Yeah, just minor changes, no problem).
The eternal and recurring problem.
Many, I might venture to say most, RPGs have armor reduce the damage the player takes. D&D does this as well, but abstractly--every roll to hit represents a short exchange of blows, and so a higher AC indicates that the target is less likely to suffer damage during that exchange. But in my experience, almost everyone treats one attack roll as one strike of a weapon, so we get questions like "why does armor make you harder to hit?" online forever. Anyway, the real reason is that I just prefer armor as DR, simple as. Admittedly, I'm also influenced by my experience playing playing Baldur's Gate II, where tanking was impossible at high levels because most attacks missed the warriors but the attacks that did hit them generally did like 5d10 damage because I was fighting demons and dragons and lichs and so on, so there was very little space to react between "100% HP" and "dead." If everyone takes more hits but each hit does less damage, there's more space for the PCs to react and realize when a battle is going against them. And vice versa, because if no one ever runs from the PCs then I venture to say you're playing D&D wrong.
Anyway, the problem with this is that it creates a ton of knock-on effects. If armor reduces damage taken, should weapons do more damage? If Dex is used in attack rolls, can monsters still hit the PCs? Some of this is ameliorated by using E6 to prevent numbers from getting too large, but I also discovered in looking online that the D20 Conan RPG has an armor as DR system already all written out, and what's better, I already own all of it because I got it for free with the Mophidius 2d20 Conan RPG I Kickstarted, so I can just borrow all the weapons and armor values from there, and use the enemies as inspiration for appropriately-statted challenges. By curating the classes and feats and so on myself, making magic rare but increasing non-magical options, I can prevent most of the degenerate gameplay.
Big talk but it worked when I ran Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom so I bet I can do it again.
I really don't like the base D&D magic system for a variety of reasons, partially written about here already, but to summarize I don't like the every wizard is Batman, with a tool for every problem, and that there's no way to determine what a wizard can do from their appearance or behavior. Recently I got my hands on a copy of the Grimoire of Lost Souls, an update to the old Secrets of Pact Magic book, about striking deals with spirits and to borrow their power in exchange for those spirits being able to experience the world through the binder's senses. Each spirit has a name, a summoning ritual, a short list of powers, and ways they affect the binder's appearance and behavior.
Take Al'kra, a former mortal who was twisted and warped by something from the Dark Between the Stars. A malefic spirit, it's easier to bind if the binder performs a blood sacrifice during the binding, or performs the binding in an abandoned building or uninhabited forest. It grants the binder the ability to inflict paranoid fear in their enemies or freeze them, make themselves visually indistinct, teleport short ranges as long as no one can see them, and deal additional damage with their attacks in combat. While Al'kra is bound, the binder has the seal of Al'kra somewhere on their body and shadowy tentacles writhe around them when any ability is used. In addition, they will be more aggressive and will find themselves thinking of ways to murder anyone they might meet. Binding Marat grants defensive powers, up to swapping places with an ally, but the binder's skin and equipment are cold to the touch and the binder spends all their free time reading.
This is great! It's simple, thematic, not overpowering and makes it easy for the PCs to come up with a counter. It's also blatantly inspired by Slenderman if you read the fluff, but hey, it works. The mechanics for this are that anyone can bind spirits, but only members of the Pactmaker class can bind more than one at once, so anyone can take on a bit of magic if they are willing to put in the effort.
My basic idea for this is a world where humans do not naturally have any magic and only gain it from external sources, most of which are inimical--necromancy, diabolism, the powers in the Dark Between the Stars, etc. Binding spirits is the most benevolent of those and even then there are edge cases. Other playable groups in the campaign would, except for dwarves, all be former or partially human and gain magic from their non-human heritage: dwarves have their runesmiths, changeling glamourweavers have illusion and enchantment inherited from the Fair Folk, dhampir cruourgists can use the power of fresh blood,tieflinghellion pyromancers can draw on infernal flames, dragonborn can bring their dragon blood to the fore, fetchling shadewrights can command shadows, that kind of thing. I can build it all with Spheres of Power so it's all internally consistent.
The only unambiguously good source of magic is given to paladins, because paladins are excellent adventure generators.
If you want to read the rules for Pact Magic it's all up for free here along with the aforementioned Spheres of Power.
There's two main. things that prompted this post, by which I mean, two problems I have with baseline D&D that I want to change: the way combat works and the way magic works.
(Yeah, just minor changes, no problem).
On Armor as Damage Reduction
The eternal and recurring problem.
Many, I might venture to say most, RPGs have armor reduce the damage the player takes. D&D does this as well, but abstractly--every roll to hit represents a short exchange of blows, and so a higher AC indicates that the target is less likely to suffer damage during that exchange. But in my experience, almost everyone treats one attack roll as one strike of a weapon, so we get questions like "why does armor make you harder to hit?" online forever. Anyway, the real reason is that I just prefer armor as DR, simple as. Admittedly, I'm also influenced by my experience playing playing Baldur's Gate II, where tanking was impossible at high levels because most attacks missed the warriors but the attacks that did hit them generally did like 5d10 damage because I was fighting demons and dragons and lichs and so on, so there was very little space to react between "100% HP" and "dead." If everyone takes more hits but each hit does less damage, there's more space for the PCs to react and realize when a battle is going against them. And vice versa, because if no one ever runs from the PCs then I venture to say you're playing D&D wrong.
Anyway, the problem with this is that it creates a ton of knock-on effects. If armor reduces damage taken, should weapons do more damage? If Dex is used in attack rolls, can monsters still hit the PCs? Some of this is ameliorated by using E6 to prevent numbers from getting too large, but I also discovered in looking online that the D20 Conan RPG has an armor as DR system already all written out, and what's better, I already own all of it because I got it for free with the Mophidius 2d20 Conan RPG I Kickstarted, so I can just borrow all the weapons and armor values from there, and use the enemies as inspiration for appropriately-statted challenges. By curating the classes and feats and so on myself, making magic rare but increasing non-magical options, I can prevent most of the degenerate gameplay.
Big talk but it worked when I ran Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom so I bet I can do it again.
On Destroying Magic
I really don't like the base D&D magic system for a variety of reasons, partially written about here already, but to summarize I don't like the every wizard is Batman, with a tool for every problem, and that there's no way to determine what a wizard can do from their appearance or behavior. Recently I got my hands on a copy of the Grimoire of Lost Souls, an update to the old Secrets of Pact Magic book, about striking deals with spirits and to borrow their power in exchange for those spirits being able to experience the world through the binder's senses. Each spirit has a name, a summoning ritual, a short list of powers, and ways they affect the binder's appearance and behavior.
Take Al'kra, a former mortal who was twisted and warped by something from the Dark Between the Stars. A malefic spirit, it's easier to bind if the binder performs a blood sacrifice during the binding, or performs the binding in an abandoned building or uninhabited forest. It grants the binder the ability to inflict paranoid fear in their enemies or freeze them, make themselves visually indistinct, teleport short ranges as long as no one can see them, and deal additional damage with their attacks in combat. While Al'kra is bound, the binder has the seal of Al'kra somewhere on their body and shadowy tentacles writhe around them when any ability is used. In addition, they will be more aggressive and will find themselves thinking of ways to murder anyone they might meet. Binding Marat grants defensive powers, up to swapping places with an ally, but the binder's skin and equipment are cold to the touch and the binder spends all their free time reading.
This is great! It's simple, thematic, not overpowering and makes it easy for the PCs to come up with a counter. It's also blatantly inspired by Slenderman if you read the fluff, but hey, it works. The mechanics for this are that anyone can bind spirits, but only members of the Pactmaker class can bind more than one at once, so anyone can take on a bit of magic if they are willing to put in the effort.
My basic idea for this is a world where humans do not naturally have any magic and only gain it from external sources, most of which are inimical--necromancy, diabolism, the powers in the Dark Between the Stars, etc. Binding spirits is the most benevolent of those and even then there are edge cases. Other playable groups in the campaign would, except for dwarves, all be former or partially human and gain magic from their non-human heritage: dwarves have their runesmiths, changeling glamourweavers have illusion and enchantment inherited from the Fair Folk, dhampir cruourgists can use the power of fresh blood,
The only unambiguously good source of magic is given to paladins, because paladins are excellent adventure generators.
If you want to read the rules for Pact Magic it's all up for free here along with the aforementioned Spheres of Power.
