The great gathering

I’m sure everybody is just brimming with anticipation for the start of the new 10letter posts. So let us not delay:

• j and pb’s wedding was a great success. It was, essentially, a gathering of good friends and the earth now faces the lack of yet another fine bachelor. The reception was great, with j’s personal touch (a hamburger based starter) being exceptionally well received.
• the very next day j and pb went off for undisclosed post-wedding business – while the rest of us went to f00’s place to gorge ourselves in gaming. I think it ended around 2am.
• Tuesday added a very busy party that a mutual friend, BlackOrchid, threw; which saw the gathering of a good portion of the people that attended the wedding as well.
• Tonight will have a gathering at shin’s place for the boys – to informally celebrate j’s bachelor party. I’ve been told there won’t be strippers. I’m rather disappointed about that. The girls are apparently having a movie night at Candice’s place. No doubt it’ll involve naked pillow fights and other typical girl-sleep-over traditions.
• Forecasting into the future – Saturday will include a collective viewing of Origins: Wolverine – followed by a dash at Hong’s (Thai and Sushi bar).

So rest assured – the normal 10letter days will return, but for now there is only the next hour before the next party

Quiet on the Southern Front

Tomorrow, I jet off back to South Africa to get married and PB will take her first level of my waifu GM’s wife (thus reinforcing the patriarchal view of gender held by the gaming populace). So, as each and every one of tenletter’s contributing authors are somehow involved in the event, very little new content will be posted here over the next few weeks.

In other news, f00 has safely returned to ZA from the USA. Hopefully, he’ll be able to start up on his boardgame blogging again.

In even more other news, tenletter will be celebrating its 1st birthday on the 6th of May. Yay!

- jatori

[3.5 Monk Project 2009] Levels 2 and 3

This post forms part of my redesign of the 3.5 monk project. Previous entries on this topic can be found here and here.

Today, I shall  continue the discussion on level 2 and introduce my ideas for level 3. Hopefully, after some discussion, I can develop this into a playtest 3-level class. More on that as things develop.

Additions to level 2:

Combat Style:

Swift: This style focuses on speed and agility. A monk that follows this path is infuriatingly difficult to hit in combat. A swift monk’s attacks do less damage than those of other styles, but she is able to attack far more often and far more accurately.

Favoured Qi Flows: Qi Defense

Bonus Feat List: Agile, Combat Reflexes, Deflect Arrows, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Run, Quick Draw, Spring Attack, Snatch Arrows, Stealthy, Weapon Finesse.

Balanced: A monk that follows the balanced style combines both offense and defense into a highly adaptive fighting style.

Favoured Qi Flows: ???

Bonus Feat List (A balanced style monk may use her wisdom score, instead of her intelligence score, as the prerequisite for any of the feat): Blind-Fight, Dodge, Combat Expertise , Improved Disarm, Improved Feint, Improved Disarm, Power Attack.

Level 3:

Unarmoured Speed Bonus (Ex): At level 3, a monk gets a +10ft (enhancement?) bonus to her speed.

Enhanced Qi Strike (Ex): As she gains experience, a monk learns to better control her body and qi in order to deliver powerful attacks. The type of attack depends on the monk’s combat style.

Strong: After a successful Qi Strike, a monk may make expend 1 qi point as a free action to either make a grapple or bull rush attempt against the same foe. The bull rush or grapple attempt is resolved as normal (incurring attacks of opportunity if applicable).

If you succeed with a grapple attempt, you deal extra damage equal to your wisdom modifier.

If you succeed with a bull rush attempt, you may push your opponent back an additional distance equal to your wisdom modifier, rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5 feet. When moving your opponent this extra distance, you do not have to travel with him.

Swift: After a successful Qi Strike, a monk may make expend 1 qi point as a free action to make another Qi Strike  against the same foe without having to deactive an additional Qi Flow. At level 3, you are limited to making only two Qi Strikes per round. At level x, you are limited to making only y Qi Strikes per round.

Balanced: After a successful Qi Strike, a monk may make expend 1 qi point as a free action to make either a disarm or trip attempt against the same foe. The disarm or trip attempt is resolved as normal (incurring attacks of opportunity if applicable).

You may add your wisdom modifier to your disarm attempt roll.

If your trip attempt is successful and you have the Improved Trip feat, you may add your wisdom modifier to the damage dealt to your follow up attack.

Other Notes:

After thinking about it, I think Stunning Fist is a rather silly feat. TC  made some comments about it in part 2, providing an alternative. I still need to consider this.

- jatori

Adding tragedy to your character background.

Though I never require that my players produce a character background, or that I hardly ever produce one of any great detail when I play, I do find them to be a great asset when I come across them. While, I know that there are GMs out there that use character backgrounds to punish player characters or for easy plot hooks (Oh no! Your child/spouse/last surviving relative/sensei/puppy has been kidnapped – again!), I try to keep away from such shenanigans. I prefer to reward people for the effort they put into providing background information (which is great for fleshing out a setting).

Now, putting all the waffling of the first paragraph aside, I recently discovered Fmylife. Even though I know that these FMLs may have really happened to real people, the site still tickles my schadenfreude bone. Right now, I’m going to see if I can create an interesting NPC or two, for an upcoming game, using the random FML function. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

- jatori

Man the hell up and play the damn cleric! [Squishing Cybernetics into my RPG]

My very first pen and paper RPG character was a cleric. Why? Well, it wasn’t because I was particularly interested in the flavour or mechanics of the class. I played a cleric, because the party needed a cleric.

In my experience, many role players believe that there exists an ideal party balance or composition. Traditionally, within Dungeons and Dragons, this ideal party typically included a fighter-type, rogue-type and two magic-users (one offensive and one defensive/support). In fact, in the 4th edition of the game, party composition has been further formalised with the introduction of character combat roles as a key aspect of character creation. This idea of ideal party composition isn’t restricted solely to the Dungeons and Dragons game (just look at any World of Darkness game, or even the A-Team), but whether or not the game designers realised it, I believe that striving for a perfect team composition actually can make the game more fun.

Over the years, I’ve come across games in which everybody played a cleric, or everybody played a fighter, or a group that included only 3 of the 4 traditional roles, despite having enough players to cover all of the roles. Sure, playing like this definitely offers something different or new and may be more challenging (and therefore more fun, for some, for awhile), but I do believe, however, that it’s more difficult to maintain the fun in these games when aiming for something long-term.

Imagine that we have group A. Group A strives towards maintaining state B. Group A can employ methods C, D and E to maintain B and counter any outside forces (let’s say X, Y and Z) which try to disrupt B. C counters X, D counters Y and E counters Z. As long as group A only encounters X, Y and Z, they can easily maintain B. However, repeating the same encounters will get boring. Furthermore, if the environment decided to throw a W at the group, the group would be unable to respond adequately and B will no longer be maintained.

Let’s say that B encompasses everything your typical group of players (A) seek to achieve. C, D and E represent the options available to the party comprised of, shall we say, a fighter, two rogues and wizard. Goblins (X) are no match, nor are Orcs (Y) and Kobolds (Z) are a joke. One day, however, the GM decides to throw a zombie ambush (W) at the players. Uh oh! The animated cadavers are immune to the sneak attacks of the rogues, become more dangerous when set alight by the wizard’s favoured spells and can deal out more damage than the fighter is used to taking. A cleric would really help in this fight. Is the GM being mean in this case? Should the GM have rather chosen not to use such an encounter, effectively limiting what can be experienced in-game based on the party’s composition?

Now imagine that character-type J only has option 1 available and character-type K only has option 2 available. Yet, when J and K join forces, they have options 1 (J does it), 2 (K does it) and option 3 (J and K do it together). Then along comes character-type L with option 4. Now we have:

J alone: Option 1
K alone: Option 2
J and K: Option 3
L alone: Option 4
J and L: Option 5
J and K: Option 6
L and K: Option 7
J, K and L: Option 8

Now try adding character-type M. Increasing the variety of play options available to the party through introducing variety to the party composition allows for far more encounter types that are fun and challenging. And we all know that variety is the spice of life.

Whenever I step out from behind the GM screen and get to roll up my own character, I generally wait and see what everybody else is playing and then try to fill in any party build gaps. Increasing the options available to the party in any given situation allows a group to explore new avenues of fun and adventure. What’s the point of me playing my preferred role of fighter, when the list of fun things the group can do shrinks away? No cleric? I’ll do it!

- jatori

If you’re interested in reading more on what I base my argument, check out these wikipedia articles: cybernetics, requisite variety and complex adaptive systems.

The top 5 RPGs I’d like to play, but haven’t yet

This post is, in part, inspired by RPB Blog II’s (did I put the ’s in the correct place?) Top 25 RPGs Project. While still trying to work on my own 25, I thought I’d take the chance to list my current top 5 RPGs I’ve never played.

• Number 5: Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire – Two things about this game have piqued my interest, namely the setting (superheroes in World War 2) and the One-Roll Engine. Despite my fascination with superheroes, I’ve never actually played a superhero game and I think I’d prefer my introduction to the genre to follow a grittier approach, which Godlike seems to offer. Plus, I’d get to fiddle with a new mechanic (for me) and if I don’t like the mechanic, Godlike comes bundled with rules to port it over to d20.
• Number 4: Traveller – Yet another genre I haven’t touched before: Space Opera. Even though part of me is adamant that the name should contain one less L, Traveller is a game that keeps on popping up in conversations, geek (aut0)biographies and top n lists. I’d really like to get a chance to see what I’ve been missing all this time.
• Number 3: Savage Worlds – I’m not too sure where I first heard about Savage Worlds, but it intrigued me enough to buy the core book. After reading through it, I think I would enjoy playing and tinkering around with the system. However, since I’ve gotten the book, I haven’t been able to stay put in one particular town long enough to get something going. It kinda bugs me that I own the game and haven’t had a chance to play yet. I wonder how many of us, those that haven’t had a chance to play all the games they own, are out there. Is there a support group?
• Number 2: Dungeonslayers – I first heard about this through Stargazer’s World, and since I have a soft spot for anything using creative commons, I’ve lurked around the forums and wiki, following the game’s progress. I’m not too sure why I’m as interested in the game as I am, but I definitely want to try this one out soon… maybe after the cyberpunk rules get released.
• Number 1: FUDGE – Though I’ve known about the Free Universal Do-It-Yourself Game Engine for years, I’ve never really taken the time to take a proper look at it – well, at least until yesterday (motivated by the tweets and blogging of – at the risk of sounding like a fanboy – Stargazer’s World and Drop the Dice). It’s free and that’s a huge plus in my book. It also just happens to seem like a very simple, yet very fun game. I’m most interested in the DIY aspect of the game, which allows you to tailor the feel and complexity of the game to your own specifications. I’m currently plotting out a game I’d like to run using FUDGE, but the details on that will have to wait until next time.

- jatori

[EDIT] I have since discovered that this post is about 10 days late as the topic has already been covered here. And I thought I was being so original [:P]. Oh well, more things to look at!

[3.5 Monk Project 2009] Level 2

I am once again attempting to redesign the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Monk class. This post continues the project. See here for the design goals.

~~~

Just to let you know, I shall be compiling everything I’ve written about the monk (and the various comments and inputs from others) into one central place. I shall let you know when that’s done. For now, though, let’s have a look at the class skill list and my ideas for level 2.

A monk gets [(6 + intelligence modifier) * 4] skill points at level 1. A monk gets 6 + intelligence modifier skill points at each additional level. The following skills count as class skills for the monk:

Balance, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Heal, Hide, Jump, Knowledge (Arcana, History and Religion), Listen, Move Silently, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, Swim, Tumble and Use Rope.

In addition a monk may choose one of the following to add to her skill list: Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate.

Now for level 2:

Evasion (Ex)

At 2nd level or higher if a monk makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, she instead takes no damage. Evasion can be used only if a monk is wearing light armor or no armor. A helpless monk does not gain the benefit of evasion.

Combat Style (Ex)

At 2nd level a monk chooses to follow a particular approach to her martial arts training and development. Each style has a list of preferred Qi Flows. A monk may add +1 to her wisdom modifier when calculating the benefit gained from a favoured Qi Flow. A monk’s combat style also determines the list of feats from which she can choose bonus feats. A monk can choose from the following styles:

Strong: This style focuses on delivering individually powerful and damaging attacks.

Favoured Qi Flows: Qi Body; Qi Offense.

Bonus Feat List: Athletic, Cleave, Diehard, Endurance, Great Cleave, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Critical, Improved Grapple, Improved Overrun, Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Stunning Fist, Toughness, and Weapon Focus.

Swift: (still under development)

Balanced: (still under development)

Bonus Feat: At 2nd level, a monk gains a bonus feat from the list provided by her combat style. She still needs to meet all the prerequisites for the feat.

~~~

OK, this was missing from part one, but unless otherwise specified all class abilities are to be considered extraordinary.

I’m still unsure of how to incorporate Stunning Fist.

Comments/suggestions?

- jatori

I have a dream (or let me tell you about my characters again)

I was going to entitle this post ‘I have a meme’, as today’s post is my response to PB’s dream team meme . This time, I have to list some of the PCs, which I’ve encountered over the years, that would form my dream party (cabal, pack, crew of intergalactic space pirates, rock band, or other suitable RP collective noun). The list is heavily biased towards 3.x, as that’s the system in which I participated more often as a player (rather than GM) than I did in other systems.

Talmiir – Greatest adventurer ever .

Cameron – Cameron was a 3.5 totemist from the Magic of Incarnum source book. Incarnum happens to be my favourite 3.5 book and I’d recommend it to anybody wanting to add a bit of something new into their 3.x game. Cameron was a grappler (despite the awkwardness of the rules) and managed to wrestle almost everything she faced into submission.

Jaina – Jaina was a paladin/wilder/elocator, coming straight out of my second favourite 3.5 book, the Expanded Psionic Handbook. She adventured in the same world as Talmiir, before he was even a set of unassigned attributes. She ran her own mercenary army, had a dwarven defender cohort and filled the role of mobile light infantry and party teleporter. Unfortunately, cross-gender role playing issues amongst the play group led to me retiring her into NPC-hood. Perhaps she would have stayed around longer if everybody knew that Talmiir would be replacing her.

Zeneofa – Played by Zeneofa . Zeneofa (the character) was a druid that focused on wild shape and abuse of polymorph-related rules and mechanics. Zeneofa (the player) was also at times guilty of a bit of power gaming, so many high fives between he and I at the table as we marvelled at our awesome. Zeneofa (the character) adventured with Talmiir and, therefore, Zen could be considered awesome by proxy and nearly as cool as Talmiir. Though a bit of a fence-sitter and the owner of an emo backstory, Zen can bring a lot to the party, including material wealth (he had a lot) and wild shaped based espionage and combat muscle.

Lee Knux – Played by TrashCondor. Nearly as awesome as Talmiir. His story can be found here .

Honourable Mention:

The Peasant Butcher – Played by PB. I can’t include PB in the dream team, as everybody else listed can be trusted to behave responsibly around the popular peoples of the peasant class. However, this halfling-chainsaw hybrid is always great to have around when needing to mow through hordes of evil-doers (both peasant and non-peasant). Just don’t trust her to disarm traps that only affect the tall people.

Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.

In fantasy literature, the hero’s sword often features prominently in the tale of the hero’s journey. Belgarion and the Sword of the Rivan King; Aragorn and Narsil (later reforged, of course); and Lion-O and the Sword Omens are all examples. However, within role playing games, the idea of the hero’s one sword doesn’t always translate well into the rules, especially when game balance, power levels, wealth per level tables and so forth are critical to the game’s rules system running smoothly. In these games (I’ll use Dungeons and Dragons as my primary example), characters often have to discard their older equipment (no matter the sentimental value) for better, sharper and more magical equipment. In doing so, magic items lose their quality of ’specialness’, as the +1s are discarded as soon as the +2 comes along. This is a relatively old and well recognised problem, but discussion about it has recently popped up again.

One of the oldest fixes for this issue invloves the growth of the hero’s weapon alongside her own growth, or the ability of the hero to unlock more power from her weapon as she, herself, gains in power. I have often used this in my own games, with moderate levels of success. Today, however, I’d like to introduce two other ideas which may help put back the magic into magic weapons.

Idea 1: Change the world in which the heroes find themselves.

Make it easier for the hero to enhance or upgrade his own weapon. Over the years, WotC has releasesd several (prestige) class ideas that did just this. However, I would suggest that you wouldn’t need such classes if we made the ability to enhance your own equipment more easily acceptable to all classes. Perhaps in your game world, cultural restrictions (or enablers) may make owning and maintaining your one sword more attractive.

In our example game world, it’s culturally unacceptable to use or trade in stolen (or looted) weaponry. It is instead passed on to the owner’s beneficiaries, or buried with her, if no beneficiary can be found. Paying somebody else to forge or maintain your weapon is considered poor taste and reserved for the socially detatched nobles. Instead, the recipes and rituals required to enhance the weapon are acquired through ancient, hidden-away scrolls or are unlocked once a hero gains wisdom through experience and is better able to understand the artform of maintaining and using her weapon.

Idea 2: It is not the sword; it is the swordsman.

Once, long ago, I remember reading (can’t remember the source though) that character X could treat any weapon he wields as a magical weapon with properties A, B and C. I believe the article was trying to place  a non-WotC-copyrighted heroic figure into the DnD ruleset. The author realised that for the character to still be effective in the DnD game, he needed to have kickass magical equipment. However, in the original works, the character got away with just using a barstool or some broken masonry. So, instead of relying on an external source of power, it all came from one internal source – the hero.

So, consider giving your player characters such abilities, especially for high fantasy, high action games. Perhaps you could balance it through cost of training or ritual, if you so desire. Tie some personal attachment to grandpa’s rusty old blade and you’re ready to play.

- jatori

Awesome begins with ‘M’ and ends in ‘onk’.

It’s been almost a year since I last posted on my attempts at redesigning the 3.5 monk. Recently, I’ve been reinspired to once again tackle this task. If you’re interested in seeing what was discussed last year, you can review the following posts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

No need to read through all of the above though, because here’s a list of updated design goals:

• Reduce the MAD (multiple attribute dependancy)! A monk needs a good strength, dexterity, constitution and wisdom score to perform adequately. A fighter could get away with just a good strength and constituion; a rogue can fulfill  most of her expected duties with dexterity alone; and a wizard can get away with just a good intelligence score.
• Make the class unique! The 3.5  monk is a horrible mix of various effects that can be easily duplicated by other classes or magical items.
• Stick to the theme of unarmoured, martial artist.
• Wisdom still needs to be the defining attribute of the class.
• Rethink flurry of blows as it directly conflicts with the increased speed and mobility of the class.
• Keep the design simple, but allow for complex builds (not complicated) that can accurately portray a large variety of fighting styles.
• Remove the silly alignment and multiclassing restrictions.

I did have one problem with the direction that my design was heading towards last year: Many of the ideas I had started to show a strong resemblance to ideas found within Tome of Battle (DnD 3.75) and 4e. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d rather see if there are other design options available within the 3.5 ruleset, if possible.

And now, here is the 1st level of my 2009 design:

Hit Die: d8

Base Attack: 0.75 (progression as a cleric)

Saves: All good.

Armour Proficiencies: A monk is not proficient with any armour and wearing armour restricts or prevents the monk from using some of her class abilities.

Weapon Proficiencies: A monk is proficient with all simple weapons and all martial weapons.

Bonus Feat: At level 1, a monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat.

Chosen Weapons: At level 1, a monk chooses any three weapons from her list of weapon proficiencies. A monk specialises in the use of these weapons and many of the monk’s special attacks can only be performed when she uses one of her chosen weapons as part of the attack. A monk may change her list of chosen weapons (replacing one weapon with another, including weapon proficiencies gained by later taking the appropriate feats) whenever she has the time to refocus and retrain herself, but she may never have more than 3 chosen weapons. A monk may choose unarmed strike as one of her chosen weapons.

ChosenWeapon Damage: A monk does increased damage with her chosen weapons. Whenever a monk deals damage with her chosen weapons, she may choose to roll damage using either the  weapon’s standard damage die or the damage die from the following list:

• Monk level 1 – 3: d6
• Monk level 4 – 7: d8
• Monk level8 -11: d10
• Monk level12 – 15: 2d6
• Monk level16 – 19: 2d8
• Monk level20: 2d10

For example, a level 4 monk, using a short sword could choose to use the standard weapon die of a d6 or  rather the d8 granted from this ability, when determining damage.

Qi Pool: A monk has the ability to channel her qi, which allows her to perform acts far beyond the abilities of the average human. A monk’s qi pool is equal to her class level + her wisdom modifier. A monk may only spend a number of qi points per round equal to her class level.

Qi Flow:At level 1, as long as a monk has 1 point remaining in her qi pool, she may have any one of the following qi flow abilities active. As long as a monk has 3 points remaining in her qi pool, she may have any two of the following abilities active. As long as a monk has x points remaining in her qi pool, she may have any y of the following abilities active. A monk uses a swift action to activate a qi flow. When activating a qi flow, if a monk does not have enough qi points remaining to maintain the additional qi flow, she can deactivate one of her other qi flows as part of the same action.

Qi Body: A monk may add her wisdom modifier to her constitution modifier when determining her hit point total.

Qi Defense: A monk may add her wisdom modifier to her dexterity modifier when determining her dexterity bonus to AC. A monk may not use this ability while wearing armour or wielding a shield. If a monk is denied her dexterity bonus to AC, she also loses the bonus granted by qi defense.

Qi Offense: A monk may add her wisdom modifier to her strength modifier when determining the strength bonus to any damage roll.

Qi Mage: A monk may add her wisdom modifier to the effective spellcasting level of one of her spellcasting classes. Her effective spellcasting level cannot exceed her character level.

Qi Soul: A monk may add her wisdom modifier to all of her saves.

Qi Skin: A monk of level x, or higher, gains damage reduction equal to her (wisdom modifier)/-. This ability counts as maintaining 2 qi flows.

Qi Strike: As a swift action, a monk may end any one qi flow she has active and spend 1 qi point to perform a basic attack, using her full base attack bonus, but with a -x penalty. A monk may not use this ability while wearing armour or wielding a shield.

Of course, not all the maths has been worked out yet (hence the x and y variables). I’m also considering applying only half the wisdom modifier bonus to certain qi flows (for example qi offense) until a higher level.

- jatori