Strange Bedfellows: Red/White, Part 1

Blue: "You know what's wrong with Blue?" says Red to White. "They don't care. All those precious lives you seek to preserve, all those higher ideals you aspire to, blue is completely apathetic towards them."

Black: "You know what's wrong with Black?" says White to Red. "They don't care about how anyone feels, including themselves. Rather than doing what feels best they hurt themselves again and again, leading miserable lives because they think that just a little more power over others is going to make them feel happy. It's insane."

Red and White can both get behind a passionate dedication to a higher cause. They believe in something so strongly that they want to fight for it.

White: "You have gone astray in your fervor; your eagerness makes you impatient. The right way to achieve your ideals is through an ordered society." White rejects the words of its forefathers thusly: "Your faith in organized systems blinds you to how they violate the ideals on which they are founded!"

Red: "You have gone astray by becoming fascinated with the abstract. You want to know the key to being happy? Doing things that are fun, rather than putting it off because you worry that something wouldn't be 'fulfilling' enough." Red rejects the words of its forefathers thusly: "Real pleasure is the kind you earn, by working hard to do what your heart tells you is right. You can't imagine what it's like, because you've never tried it yourself."

Green: "If only you two could see," muses Green. "Your heart's in the right place and you'll fight so hard, but you have so little idea of how to achieve your goal. You fight the symptoms but have no conception of the underlying issues. You want to make the world a better place through destruction, to be a martyr for your cause even though you could do so much more for it if you took the time to ensure your own survival."

(As always, feedback is most definitely welcome.)

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Magic: Strange Bedfellows (Introduction)

Though I stopped playing Magic around the time that Torment came out, I still like to keep an eye on the game. And lately my interest in game design has led me to go back and read through a big chunk of Mark Rosewater's old columns. They're awesome. Also awesome is Ravnica, which I've always intended to take a close look at. But on an oddly discordant note, I find Mark's descriptions of the opposed-color matchups rather lacking. I keep feeling like there connections between the opposed colors that are being neglected, and as a result the pairings lack a coherent, sympathetic view; like trying to blend oil and water. In particular, his description of the Red-White outlook struck me as "these two don't work together, and they're in denial about it."

Now I just want to be ABSOLUTELY clear here. What I'm about to do, I do not do as a critic. This is not my attempt to show how things "should have been done"; that would require an in-depth knowledge of how said things were done, whereas I've actually put off my research into Ravnica so as to not make any deliberate attempts to be different.

So what is this dark deed I intend? I'm going to come up with my own ideas for what the opposed-color guilds in Ravnica should be like from a fluff perspective. Because as a designer I've had some ideas and it sounds like alot of fun.

Here's the creative approach I'll be taking: an examination of each color in the pie in relation to the guild in question, in the form of an ideological debate.
-First, I'll get my basic idea of the pairing via the two colors that are friends of one of the guild's origins. See, what happened there is that the guild's other origin color leaned in and, playing devil's advocate, whispered "You know what's wrong with them?" There are tensions between two allied colors that an enemy can appreciate.
-Second, their two origin colors, and how "purists" belonging to each of those colors think their brethren in the guild have been lead astray.
-Third, the color they're both friends with. I see this as the guild's blind spot, something they've overlooked and not given much thought to when they.

In my mind the advantage of the opposed-color guilds is that they've been more open-minded and thus realized that the world is more complex than most people think. And their weakness is that they've now lost that open-mindedness, that having come up with a more complex ideal they've seized onto it as the "true" right way despite the flaws it still retains.

At this point, my intent is take whatever concept I've arrived at for each pairing and briefly run to through Mark Rosewater's set of color questions so as to better clarify their outlook. There'll also be some musings on the form the in-world guild itself would take (rather than just the views of the color pairing) and the mechanics of the pairing.

Finally, I'll take a close look at what was actually done with that color pairing, comparing and contrasting it to my own. Value judgments will generally be avoided here, since we can assume my own versions will (through some strange coincidence) perfectly match my own personal preferences.

Well, here goes!

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d20 Rethought: Damage Done Different

I've talked alot about taking damage on this blog, but I really ought to also describe mention the differences in d20 Rethought regarding how damage is dealt. There have been some changes made here too, again in the name of streamlining character creation and ensuring that once an aspect of a character is optimized, it *stays* optimized.

-All damage is done through dice. In other words, to calculate damage you might roll 3d6 or 4d6+2d8 but never 3d6+1 or 3d6+5. The potential drawback with this decision is that rolling large handfuls of dice can slow down play, but this change paves the way for several other rules.
-The die caliber used depends on the source of the damage. A character might use a trick that grants him "2d sneak attack damage" or "+3d spell damage"; you inflict extra weapon damage dice on melee attacks equal to your brawn score.
-"Damage Resistance" minimizes the result of a die roll, while "Damage Vulnerability" maximizes it. A feat's tactic might give you Sneak Attack Resistance 2, a werewolf might have Total Silver Vulnerability (all dice are maximized), a red dragon might have a Fire Resistance and Cold Vulnerability of 5 each. . .of course, there are still some creatures that are flat-out immune to a certain type of damage.

And the single most vital alteration, the one that has some very far-reaching repercussions on the strategy of the game:
-The maximum number of damage dice you can inflict is equal to your attack roll minus the opponent's defense (minimum 1). Let's say I'm making an attack that deals 4d8 damage against an opponent with a defense of 15. If I roll a 15 or 16 on the attack check I inflict 1d8 damage; if I roll a 17 I inflict 2d8, if I roll an 18 I inflict 3d8 and if I get a result of 19 or higher I roll all 4d8 dice.

To help make said repercussions a little easier to understand, I'll toss in another big rule about d20 Rethought that I've only mentioned in passing until now:
-You can spend X vitality and X resolve to get a +X action bonus on your next skill check. (Action bonuses are applied after the result cap.) This can be done in or out of combat. It represents a moment of intense focus on your characters part; the sort of thing where afterwards you often slump back, take a deep breath and wipe the sweat from your brow.

Those are the big, obvious changes from a player's perspective. Read on for an exploration of these mechanic's potential and an explanation of how this business with dice ties into the underlying math of the system.

How this helps character optimization:
It lets damage scale smoothly as your character goes up in level and/or becomes more optimized in that area. Think about it- abilities that improve your damage are going to do so in one of two ways, either by granting more damage dice or improving the die caliber. Thanks to the "attack check-defense" limitation, the former improvement is only useful when your character scores a solid hit on the opponent (more on that below). The latter, meanwhile, is a permanent improvement! In this system, tricks can grant anyone sneak attack dice; a backstab-happy character just picks up more of these tricks, in combination with talents that improve the caliber of his sneak attack die to a d6 and then a d8. A straightforward melee fighter, meanwhile, might have tricks that grant him more weapon damage dice and improve his weapon die caliber via a Weapon Focus talent.

How this helps gameplay:
It's the same idea as the chance to augment your critical hits- the player has a choice, to play it safe or gamble by spending a resource for the chance to hit the enemy even harder. For every 1 point of damage prevention (physical and mental) you sacrifice, you'll potentially be inflicting another die of damage- unless you roll so high that you're already using all your damage dice, or you roll so low that you still don't hit at all.

This in turn makes Defense checks (Spending a move action to roll your defense, and using that result if it's higher that the normal "taking 10" score) a hell of a lot more important when fighting powerful opponents- an average of +5 to defense doesn't just mean an additional 25% of the rolls will miss, it means that your opponent will still potentially be rolling 5 less damage dice if they do hit.

I can take the number of damage dice inflicted, add that to their attack check and compare that against the victim's relevant passive skill check for an attack's secondary effects. In other words, whenever you've got a special trick that pins someone to their wall with their clothing or gouges them so painfully they're stunned for a second or just plain knocks them on their ass. . .the better the attack roll, the better it works.

In a similar fashion, when the players are fighting mooks/minions/minor npcs, the victims can simply make damage saves (DC 10+dice inflicted+1/2 largest die size) rather than the players actually having to roll damage.

My prediction/hope- and this is something that will require heavy playtesting for me to gauge whether I've been successful- is that combat will be a tense affair that can potentially be settled in just a few blows, while still being dramatic, fun, and in practice quite survivable by the player character.

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d20 Rethought: Skill Training

Today I'll be explaining how skill proficiencies work in d20 Rethought. I've mentioned before that skills work in a similar fashion to the Saga edition of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (and thus to 4E as well). However, there's a little more to the story than that.

I've mentioned before that every d20 roll in the game will either be a skill check or an ability check (With one exception, but that's not relevant here). That ties into the first thing you need to know: Every type of skill check in d20 Rethought has a Proficiency Rank of one, two or three. This is roughly the equivalent of the "untrained" and "trained-only" labels in 3.X, with a middle ground:

-Proficiency Rank I applications of a skill are the "normal" skill checks, and can benefit from all relevant bonuses.

-Proficiency Rank II applications of a skill are made as ability checks, meaning they can only benefit from the character's ability score, an expenditure of Action Points (kinda-sorta, that's something else I haven't gotten into) and/or any relevant circumstance bonuses.

-Proficiency Rank III means your character is incapable of making this type of skill check.

Training can reduce a check's effective proficiency rank, making it usable. The d20 Rethought equivalent of becoming "trained" in a skill is handled entirely via three feats:

Basic Training (skillname) gives me a +2 bonus on all applications of a skill and lets me treat PR II and III checks as being one proficiency rank lower.

Specialized Training (skillname) gives me a +4 bonus on *one* application of a skill and lets me treat it as PR I.

Advanced Training (skillname), which requires one of the above feats (but not both), replaces these benefits with a +4 bonus on *all* application of a skill while letting me treat them all as PR I.

Make sense? I'll try to have an example up soon.

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EN Rethought: Skill List

Here is an alpha list of the d20 Rethought skills for the Elysium Nebula campaign setting. The majority of these skills would be reused in roughly the same fashion for a d20 Rethought writeup of different setting.

Active
-Acrobatics

-Alertness
-Endurance
-Stealth
-Vehicle Group
--[Hover]
--[Personal]
--[Ship Crew]
--[Spacecraft]
--[Surface]

Combat
-Grapple

-Reflexes

-Takedown
-Weapon Group
--[Assault]
--[Long Arms]
--[Melee]
--[Melee]
--[Unarmed]

Eldritch
-Ley Lines
--[Entropy]
--[Force]
--[Growth]
--[Heat]
--[Machine]
--[Matter]
--[Mind]
--[Space]
--[Sense]
--[Void]

Social

-Deception

-Manipulation

-Perception

-Presence

-Therapy

Technical
-Computers

-Cultures
--[ICHA]
--[URE]
--[Fringe Humans]
--[Drow]
--[Duruki]
--etc.

-Investigation

-Mechanics
--[Computers]
--[Eldritch Devices]
--[Robots]
--[Technical Devices]
--[Vehicles]
--[Weapons]

-Sciences
--[Astronomy]
--[Biology]
--[Forensics]
--[Linguistics]
--[Medicine]
--etc.

-Survival

-Tradecraft
--[Starship Engineer]
--[Gambler]
--[Construction Worker]
--[Musician]
--etc.

-Treat Injury

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D&D 3.5: Statistics for Guts from Berserk

An old classic I did a year ago for the /tg/ board on 4chan: A conversion of Guts and his equipment to the D&D rules. (If you don't know who this man is, he's the protagonist of an incredible manga series called Berserk that I highly recommend. Graphic sex and violence are involved, but they have roles in the story rather than being pointless titillation.) These stats are meant to represent him immediately prior to the battle to escape Vritanis. Against a normal D&D party, I'd say his dearth of magic items makes him about CR 17.

Guts
Male Human
Alignment Chaotic Good
Fighter 12/Barbarian 7/Frenzied Berzerker 5

Str 24 (+2 prodigy, +1 4th, 8th, 16th, 20th)
Dex 16
Con 18 (+1 12th)
Int 14
Wis 13 (-1 armor)
Cha 12

Hit Points 233, Current 233
AC 23 (10+3 dex+9 armor+1 shield), Touch 13, Flat 20
Init +3
BAB +22/17/12/7, Grap +??
Speed 30 (base 40, load 0/33, medium armor)
Fort +22, Ref +10, Will +9

+34 Melee, Dragonslayer, 3d6+14, 17-20/x2
+30 Melee, Dagger, 1d6+7, 19-20/x2
+30 Melee, Prosthetic Hand, 1d6+7, 20/x2
+26 Ranged, Repeating Crossbow, 1d10, 19-20/x2, 60’ r
+26 Ranged, Darts, 1d4+7, 20/x2, 20’ r
+26 Ranged, Dagger, 1d6+7, 20/x2, 10’ r
+21 Ranged, Arm Cannon, 6d6, 20/x2, 10’r
+25 Ranged Tough, Fire Bombs, 3d6/1d6 splash, 20/x2, 10’ r

Rage:
+48 hp, AC 21, Will +11
+36 Melee, Dragonslayer, 3d6+17, 17-20/x2

Frenzy:
2 lethal damage per round, AC 22, Ref +12
+40/40/35/30/25 Melee, Dragonslayer, 3d6+23, 17-20/x2

Rage and Frenzy:
+48 hp, 2 lethal damage per round, AC 20, Ref +12, Will +11
+42/42/37/32/27 Melee, Dragonslayer, 3d6+26, 17-20/x2

Skills:
+1 Balance (0+2 synergy-4 acp)
+21 Climb (10+4 prodigy)
+6 Diplomacy (10cc)
+28 Intimidate (27)
+35 Jump (26+4 prodigy+2 synergy-4 acp)
+9 Ride (10-4 acp)
+9 Spot (16cc)
+11 Survival (10)
+13 Swim (10+4 prodigy-8 acp)
+14 Tumble (26cc+2 synergy-4 acp)

Feats:
-Weapon Focus (Greatsword) (H)
-Power Attack (F1)
-Cleave (F2)
-Destructive Rage (3) (CW)
-Weapon Specialization (F4)
-Intimidating Rage (6) (CW)
-Great Cleave (F6)
-Monkey Grip (9) (CW)
-Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Repeating Crossbow) (F8)
-Endurance (12)
-Diehard (FB 1)
-Iron Will (18)
-Indomitable Soul (21) (PHBII)
-Improved Critical (Greatsword) (F10)
-Greater Weapon Focus (24)
-Epic Weapon Focus (Greatsword) (F12) (ELH)

Human Traits
-Bonus Skill
-Bonus Feat

Barbarian Class Features
-Fast Movement
-Rage 2/day (9 rounds)
-Improved Uncanny Dodge
-Trap Sense +2
-Damage Reduction 1/-

Frenzied Berzerker Class Features (CW)
-Frenzy 3/day (7 rounds)
-Supreme Cleave
-Deathless Frenzy
-Improved Power Attack

Special Qualities:
-Prodigy (Strength): Guts gets +2 to strength and an additional +4 on all strength-based skill and ability checks. (DMG II)
-Sacrifice: Guts has been branded with the symbol of sacrifice. Evil outsiders and undead can sense his presence and general direction as long as they are within five hundred feet. Additionally, whenever an evil outsider or undead comes within a hundred feet of Guts for the first time that day, the brand gives off a sharp pain and bleeds profusely, causing him to lose one hit point for every four hit dice the creature possesses (rounding down).

Equipment:
• The Dragonslayer, Mastercraft Large Greatsword .
•• The Dragonslayer is treated as a Holy Ghost Touch weapon for the purposes of bypassing DR and determining whether an attack hits. This is an extraordinary ability.
•• The Dragonslayer’s size provides a wielder of medium size with a +2 bonus to AC when they fight defensively and cover in the direction of their choice when they take a total defense action.

• Berserker Armor, +1 Mithral Full Plate
•• While wearing the berserker armor, a wielder with the ability to enter a frenzy must make a will save to avoid doing so every round in which they engage in melee combat, even if they take no damage. In addition, they may not enter a rage unless already in a frenzy.
•• While the wielder is in a frenzy, the berserker armor is treated as a +2 Mithral Full Plate of Medium Fortification that cannot be removed by normal means. The wielder themself gains an additional +6 to strength and dexterity as a well as an immunity to fear, stun, nausea and death from massive damage. However, the damage they take every round is lethal instead of nonlethal, and the frenzy does not end normally as long as there are living or animate creatures within the vicinity. At the end of a frenzy, the wielder takes 1 permanent wisdom damage.
•• If the wielder has the deathless frenzy ability and would die at the end of a frenzy due to hit point loss, they instead heal to -9 hp and stabilize while permanently reducing their maximum number of hit points by the same amount.

• Prosthetic Arm
•• When equipped, the prosthetic arm can be used to hold metal items or help wield two-handed weapons. It also functions as a mastercraft gauntlet.
•• Arm Cannon, Exotic Medium Ranged Weapon (10’ range, 3d6 fire and 3d6 bludgeoning damage, 20/x2)
••• The arm cannon is a concealed weapon, requiring a DC 25 Spot or Search check to detect. If an opponent is not aware of the arm cannon, they are treated as flat-footed for the purpose of the wielder’s attack.
••• Reloading the arm cannon requires two full-round actions, each provoking an attack of opportunity
••• While in a grapple, the wielder may make a grapple check to attack with the arm cannon. If the attack hits, it automatically threatens a critical hit.

• Ammunition and Gunpowder for ten shots.

• 10 Fire Bombs, Splash Weapons (10’ range, 3d6 fire damage/1d6 splash, 20/x2)

• Rickert’s Repeating Crossbow
•• This crossbow functions as a mastercraft light repeating crossbow with two exceptions: The range is halved, and the magazines hold ten shots instead of five.

• 60 Bolts

• 5 Mastercraft Darts

• Mastercraft Dagger

• Flint and Steel

• 4 day’s trail rations

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d20 Rethought: What is Min-Maxing?

I'm not sure whether this will strike people as staggering or just staggeringly obvious, but I'll just come out and say my thoughts on the matter:

Min-maxing is gameplay.

Just as coming up with a character's personality and background is a creative endeavor in the same sense as roleplaying, the act of character optimization is as much a part of "playing" D&D, Shadowrun, etc. as the combat is.

And when I look at the process of min-maxing in 3.X as a type of gameplay, it lets me come to a few conclusions.

-Character optimization needs to be easy. Or rather, foolproof- damn hard to do wrong. A beginning player should ideally be able to create a viable character, one that won't automatically be overshadowed by the creation of an experienced min-maxer so long as said min-maxer isn't deliberately trying to break the system (i.e. exploiting poor wordings and other "bugs" the game designers failed to catch).

-Character optimization needs to be less important. The question the game designer has to face is: How much importance do they want to lend to the act of character optimization? To what degree should character optimization be the key to victory? I would say 3.5 D&D is an example of a game that goes too far- beyond a spellcaster's ability to choose which spells to prepare and come up with creative uses for them, the *only* major key to victory is a characters underlying bonuses paired with sets of maneuvers that were planned out before the game ever began. And one thing that will be necessary to fix that:

-There need to be more significant in-game tactical decisions. It's only natural; for decisions made *prior* to the game to be less important the mechanics will have to make player decisions *during* the game.

Having had a chance to look over 4th Edition, it's interesting to see how it accomplishes these goals (I'll bet they didn't phrase them the same way I did, but it seems like they worked along similar lines). Character optimization is made easy by presenting you with a pair of probably-can't-go-wrong choices (race and class) and then having ensuing choices be based on those two initial ones. (You're a dwarven paladin? Well, here are the racial feats, here are the class feats, here are the paragon paths, and if you want some of what he's having there's a feat chain that will provide it in a way designed to not screw you over optimization-wise.)

Powers, meanwhile, are used to place an emphasis on "in-game" play via abilities whose uses are flavorful, conditional and/or otherwise limited in use- you have to pay attention and plan out when and where you're going to use them. The limited number of powers works from a gameplay perspective. . .it's just that the kind of gameplay it provides doesn't quite jive with me.

We're now dealing with two major subjects here- "in-game" gameplay and character optimization. The next two posts will delve into how these aspects of 3.5 were deconstructed while developing d20 Rethought. It'll take alot of playtesting before I can offer any definitive opinion with regards to the results of my approaches vs. those taken by the 4th Edition design team, but it's interesting to compare and contrast what's been done.

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