B: Bards

I'm trying hard to make Bards "not suck" in my game. Here is what I have come up with so far:

Bard

Hit Die:d8

Prime Stat: Charisma,

Light armour proficiency,

Roguish weapon proficiency,

Inspiration:

A Bard gets 1d6 Inspiration points per level + their charisma modifier each day after spending an hour practicing.

Silver-tongue:

A Bard may spend 1 Inspiration point to gain advantage on a Persuasion check.

Bardic Lore:

A Bard may spend 1 Inspiration point to attempt a wits check to recall information once heard from a legend or a bit of gossip.

Bardic Performances:

The range of all Bardic Performances is 30ft. A Performance is an action. Performances can be maintained as long as the Bard takes no other actions or reactions up to a maximum of 10 minutes per level of the caster. Creatures must be able to hear the Bard for the Performance to be effective. Bardic Performances are considered to be charm/ mind control effects and thus do not effect mindless creatures. If a Bard is injured or otherwise distracted during a performance they need to pass a DC 15 wits save or the performance ends.

Novice Performances (1 Inspiration point to begin)

Distraction: Creatures must pass a DC 10 wits save or take disadvantage on their actions this turn.

Fascination: Creatures must pass a DC 15 wits save or they lose their reaction this turn.

Courage: Friendly creatures gain advantage on saves against fear and regain 1hp (cannot be used to stabilize or heal a dying creature).

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Comments and Questions are welcome.

PC Events: BARD

Go here to check out the series I'm continuing by Grim from Beyond the Black Gate. 

Go here to check out how I'm using these charts.

PC EVENTS: BARD (1d12)

1- You have fallen into an artistic funk.  Your performances suffer until you somehow get your groove back. You are in desperate need of some inspiration.

2- You receive a mysterious package containing an expensive masterwork instrument. It is the most beautiful instrument you have ever held.

3- Some competition moves in nearby.  As much as you hate to admit it- you know in your heart that they are better than you.

4- Your popularity absolutely explodes overnight.  Everyone knows you.  I hope you don't need to lay low anytime soon...

5- Your artistic idol is coming through the area!  Maybe you can get a jam session going! You HAVE to get an autograph!

6- Someone has been spreading rumors that you are inciting rebellion with your "subversive" lyrics.  You better get to the bottom of this before you get thrown in jail for treason.

7- The church is starting to crack down on "indulgent entertainment".

8- A new and popular upstart is ripping off your songs.  Nobody else seems to notice.  Something has to be done - or are you just losing your grip on reality?

9- Another bard or important critic starts a campaign against you.

10- Your lifestyle is starting to catch up with you.  You might start to suffer from a substance addiction.

11- You have attracted a very small but hardcore group of fans. They aren't planning on leaving anytime soon. (Roll 1d4 and add your charisma modifier, that is how many groupies you get)

12- A local person of importance firmly requests you play at an event they are hosting.  This could make or break you. (the event is to be held in 2d6 days) 

Next up: BARBARIANS

Cheers!

Mettle & Brawn

In my own game I am renaming the ability score 'Strength' to 'Mettle'.
Mettle is defined as:  "Vigor and strength of spirit or temperament"
Henceforth in my games Mettle will be used to represent a character's discipline and skill in combat. It will also be used to represent a character's bravery in situations which require it.  

I think this is an appropriate change, since for characters fighting in melee combat it is not really their physical strength being tested, but rather the qualities described above. Mettle will be used in combat the same way strength used to be.



I am also renaming 'Constitution' to 'Brawn'.
Brawn is defined as: "Muscle or physical strength."
Brawn will be used to describe a character's  strength, constitution, physical power, and resilience. Brawn will be used the same way constitution used to be, for bonus hp and for saves against poison and such. Brawn will also be used for things like breaking down doors and holding up crumbling pillars.

Comments and questions are welcome. Thanks for reading. Cheers!

Ingenuity vs. Intelligence

My Quarantine Zone game uses 6 character attribute stats that form the acronym B.R.A.I.N.S. The 'I' used to stand for 'Intelligence' but I have decided to change it to 'Ingenuity' instead. I understand using Intelligence as an ability score in some settings and some game systems but for what I am trying to portray in Quarantine Zone it does not work as well. In a present day- post apocalyptic world featuring regular people as protagonists I think ingenuity will be a better choice than intelligence for representing a character. In Quarantine Zone I want it to be more important for a character to display: 

"The quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful."

than for that character to have a high IQ score. I would rather a successful skill test for picking a locked door be represented by an ingenious character using chewing gum and a paperclip than that character just being somehow smart enough that they know how to pick a lock.

Awwww yeah!

MOST BADASS PARTY EVAR!!1

Seriously, I want to show this video to all my players from now on whenever they are going to be stating up new characters. So many adventure ideas from this 3minute 46 second video- PLUS the music is super legit.

The song is called "Iron", it is by WOODKID

This Assassin's Creed game trailer that features the song is pretty awesome as well...

Livin the dead life

Immortality. Powerful men and women have committed some of the most atrocious acts to cheat death.  There are many methods used by the corrupt and desperate, many vile strategies passed down throughout the ages.

Warriors will arm themselves with powerful magic weapons and armor, melding their life essence with these tools of war. In death only the most horrible butchers will be able to exert their will over the souls those they massacred in life. Raising armies of slaughtered soldiers to sustain their vile existence these warriors will rise from their tombs and cairns as unholy Wights.

Wizards who seek to unnaturally extend their years will eventually become Liches. The process of becoming a Lich melds arcane science with pure evil and requires the life force of many innocents.

Evil priests who please the gods of darkness are sometimes able to continue their work beyond death. The priest is specially prepared in a ritual which turns the body of the deceased into a perfect receptacle for their spirit to live on within. Virtually immune to aging the body of the priest is wrapped in fine cloth bandages and robes and adorned with unholy vestments wrought of pure gold.    

The master thief can steal virtually anything, but immortality is elusive. A thief who hopes to steal the secrets of immortality must put aside every last shred of morality. The thief becomes an insubstantial shadow, the ultimate assassin or burglar. Able to glide through walls and stab through their victims chest to pierce the heart, without marking the skin. The Geist is sustained by its own dark personality, greed driving it forward, it covets treasure without having any mortal use for it.

 click to bigify

Black Ops Classes

Alright, so I have been playing the Xbox 360 game Call of Duty Black Ops a lot. A LOT.
It is very fun and addictive, even though I'm not great at it. One of the things that makes the online multiplayer so fun for me is the class customization.

You start off with 6 class slots you can customize. As you play you earn more points that you can use to buy new weapons and equipment as you unlock them and level up.

Here's the best picture of a class creation screen I could find.

 














So you get:

• one primary weapon 
• one secondary weapon
• a lethal option
• a tactical option
• an equipment slot
• three perk slots

The first perk slot changes your appearance, as well as gives you a powerful advantage.
'Ghost' for example makes you invisible to enemy spy planes.
The other perks don't change what you look like but still break the regular rules.
For example 'Hardened' makes your bullets penetrate deeper though walls and cover, and 'Tactical Mask' makes you immune to the effects of a Nova gas grenade.

I was wondering how well this approach to character creation would work in a pen and paper rpg. For character creation and as well as for equipment and armament purposes. The perks would turn into your class and different class archetypes or fighting styles. Instead of a encumbrance system a character would instead have 'equipment slots'.

I donno.

More on this later probably.

The Trusty Dagger

Ok, so in my last post I mentioned character 'perks' or powers, and that I wanted them to be unlocked by characters accomplishing tasks in game. Another objective of mine is to give a facelift to magic items and character equipment in general (including weapons and armor).

With these goals in mind I came up with the idea for "trusty" weapons.

If a character uses the same weapon pretty much exclusively* for an entire character level that weapon becomes "Trusty" and gets a +1 to hit bonus. This bonus represents the character attuning themselves to the weapon, learning the exact details of the weapon, and possibly infusing the weapon with martial magical energy.

The weapon becomes magical for all intents and purposes. The +1 bonus can also increase if the character uses the same Trusty weapon for another whole level, increasing by +1 for each level used. It has to be the same specific weapon- NOT the same type of weapon and each character may only have one Trusty weapon at any time. If a character starts using a different weapon the Trusty weapon becomes normal again and loses all bonuses (all bonuses for being Trusty).

A Trusty weapon can be magically enhanced further using the normal methods.

This rule is intended to give a character a reason to be attached to that weapon they start at level 1 (or 0) with as well present a meaningful choice to the player- stick with the +5 Trusty sword they have used for 5 levels or take the sword of Giant Slaying they just found.

*A character can use a bow to make a ranged shot across a chasm, or use a knife to cut their way out of a giant fish, and still keep a Trusty longsword, but the Trusty weapon should always be the preferred weapon.

Want to lvl up? pt 1

So work progresses on my very own fantasy heartbreaker - my B?X project. I am seeing more and more that B?X will have very little in common with B/X, but I'm ok with that.

One recent idea I had regards experience progression and leveling. I was thinking why not get rid of XP all together? I mean, I get it, XP works really well to let you calculate exactly how many goblins you need to kill to level up. In my experience though experience points sometimes just get in the way or are redundant. You don't need to be totaling experience to realize the 10xp a level 5 Fighter gets from a lone goblin is pretty insignificant. Another problem I have seen is some players doing stuff specifically to try to get XP, like killing hobbit children (sure we were like 13, but still). The challenge and difficulty of rising through the levels definitely needs to increase, but nowadays I'm not so sure that crunching numbers is the best way to do it.

I would rather ask my party to come up with a goal, a quest worthy goal, which is informed by their exploration of the game world. We would discuss the goal, the players and I, and try to come to an agreement about what type of goal would be suitable for the party level and their current situation.

If the party is able to achieve their goal, or make some other significant accomplishment then the entire party can level up.

In this model leveling up entails:

a hit point increase,
a increase in renown and prestige in the game world,
and possibly some incidental benefits,

NO new abilities or powers would be gained.
 
To gain new class abilities, powers, feats, or skills, the player and I would have to set a character goal relating to the desired ability.

Example: Snagg the Barbarian wants to learn how to perform a mighty cleave attack with his great axe. We decide that to learn this Snagg must strike with his great axe and roll the maximum result on the damage dice 10 times, only worthy and dangerous opponents will count (no hobbit children!).

So that's one quick example but hopefully it gets my point across.

More on this later...

B?X Magic

Yeah, I'm posting kinda light still. trying to pick it up a little.

Ok, so for the B?X project I am removing Vancian spell casting and taking a different approach.

Basically when a wizard wants to cast a spell he or she picks any single spell that he or she knows. Each spell will have a casting difficulty number.  To successfully cast the spell the wizard will have to beat the difficulty number on a d20 roll (adding intelligence modifier). If successful the spell casts. If the roll fails then the wizard will be forced to wait a number of turns equal to the spell level of the failed spell before they are able to attempt to cast another spell.

So a wizard tries to cast a lvl 1 magic missile but fails, the wizard is not allowed to cast a spell in his next turn. This makes it a lot safer for the wizard to try casting a low level spell every turn and makes trying to cast a high level spell very risky... fail a level 6 spell and the wizard will be unable to cast any further spells for his next 6 turns.

There will also be 2 types of arcane spells -

Incantations, quick "simple" spells, can be cast in combat situations.

example: fireball

&

Rituals, long complicated spells, cannot be cast in combat situations.

example: scrying

more on this later.

Here is another stormtrooper

by Feng Zhu

http://www.fengzhudesign.com/

Charlie Sheen in D&D

Oh Charlie; You lovable scamp.

It occurred to me today that Charlie Sheen is becoming a pretty good example of what I was talking about here.  He has recently claimed during interviews that he has "Adonis DNA" as well as "Tiger Blood" and that he himself is a "Warlock". Yeah really, Charlie Sheen is a Warlock. 

Without going too far into diagnosing Charlies current problems I feel confident in saying if he were a D&D character he would have 20+ in at least two of the ability scores; Constitution and Charisma.

Good luck Charlie.

Superhuman Ability Scores

Something I noticed in the MouseGuard rpg rules recently struck a chord with me. In MouseGuard one of the attributes frequently used is called Nature, every creature has a Nature score. Nature represents the strength of the creatures innate abilities and is different for every type of creature.  For example an Owl's Natutre encompasses being silent, having excellent hearing, flying, and being a predator; a Mouses Nature encompasses escaping, climbing, hiding and foraging. Nature is ranked from 0-7, a high rank means the creature is very faithful to its nature, a low score means the creature acts in a way untypical for its kind.  There are ways to both gain and loose nature in MouseGuard but that isn't my current interest. What really got my thinking was that in MouseGuard your character has to stay in that 1-6 range, if your Nature drops to 0 or exceeds 6 there are possibly dire consequences for your character, Nature 0 means your character become completely unmouselike, unable to view the world in the way that his fellow mice do, you might even lose your character to the GM. Nature 7 means your character has become too focused on acting mouselike and starts losing his heroic traits.

Anyway, how does this relate to D&D? well a trend I've noticed in my own games is the eagerness of characters to improve their ability scores which is something I'm not particularly keen about. Although the methods of improving ability scores are rare and difficult I would like to take some of the emphasis off better scores and focus it more into story and character goals. To that end I propose a cap on the limits of character ability.

If a character's ability score exceeds 20 then something begins to break in their mind, eventually taking a self-destructive turn.

Strength: You are stronger than any mere mortal and you know it, you become obsessed with pushing your physical limit and proving your strength. 

Dexterity: You find it impossible to focus, you always need to be moving. Additionaly you develop a paranoia and flinch constantly without provocation.


Constitution: You begin to over-indulge in many things and refuse to take care of yourself.  You become overconfident in your bodies ability to endure the ravages you inflict upon it.

Intelligence: Your mind withdraws into itself and into a realm of pure intellect, eventually leaving the physical world behind.  Your body becomes an empty shell.

Wisdom: You increasingly become certain of radical and dangerous convictions. You are willing to die and kill to prove your beliefs. 

Charisma: You either develop multiple personalities, become a raving megalomaniac, or both.

If a characters score exceeds 20 they being to suffer from the above problems. Eventually they will either die or become NPC's as the problems worsen. The better a player acts out the characters spiral into madness the longer I will let them keep control of the character. If the player doesn't acknowledge the affliction in game then the character will become an NPC much faster.

I haven't used it yet but I really like this idea in theory. I can have exceptional villains and also explain why they are so crazy and evil.  Any thoughts?

Picking Pockets - part the second

 Continued from part1: http://therustydagger.blogspot.com/2011/01/picking-pockets.html

Why does my pickpocket table has an entry for a result of 21+ which I labeled Finery? This is because I add a modifier to the roll in certain situations as follows:

If the location doesn't suggest a particular tendency toward either high or low class NPCs I leave the roll unmodified (a marketplace with both beggars and wealthy merchants).

If the location is slightly more likely to contain a particular social class I add or subract by 2 (+2 for a high end nightclub or -2 for a labour district).

If the location is particularly likely to contain a certain social class I add or subtract by 5 (+5 for the Royal Ball, -5 for the city slums). This method is intended to separate the two extremes while maintaining a wide degree of variety in the middle range.  Additionally I modify the dice result by +1 for every two levels or HD of the target, if any.

Now on to the random result tables (1d6)

Beggar odds and ends:
1 = Moldy breadcrust
2= Small carved charm
3= Flint/steel
4=Spoon
5=Rusty shiv
6= Roll twice more- ignore further 6s

Poor odds and ends
1=Stale piece of bread
2=Small wooden holy symbol
3=Small metal tin, possibly chewing tobbaco
4=Needle and spool of thread
5=Knife
6=Roll twice more- ignore further 6s

Commoner odds and ends
1=Apple/cheese
2=Tool
3=Dagger
4=Pipe, tobbaco
5=Candle/matches
6=Roll on Middle class chart

Middle class odds and ends
1=Small book
2=Key
3=Cards/dice
4=Flute/harmonica
5=Cigarettes
6=Roll on High class chart

High class odds and ends
1=Roll on Middle class chart but item is masterwork
2=Fine handkerchief or gloves
3=Pocket watch /Picture locket
4=Small bottle or flask (check contents bellow)
5=Wallet or purse (check contents bellow)
6=Roll on Finery chart

Small bottle or flask
1=Alcohol
2=Perfume/cologne 
3=Holy water
4=Sanitizer
5=Beverage
6=Potion or medicine

Wallet (2d6 gold plus roll once bellow)
1=Receipt/ticket
2=Paper (check content bellow)
3=Wallet is made of expensive leather
4=Cigarette case
5=Reward for return note
6=Key or embarrassing object (up to you)

Purse (2d6 gold plus roll once bellow)
1=Makeup
2=Paper (check content bellow) 
3=Candy
4=Cigarette case
5=Mirror
6=Key or embarrassing object (up to you)

Paper
1=Document
2=Note
3=Map
4=Letter (possibly romantic)
5=Schedual
6=Picture

Finery
1=Expensive hat/hairpin
2=Drug or special substance
3=Monocle/opera glasses
4=Walking stick/cane
5=Jewelery (roll on jewelery chart)
6=Minor magic item (up to you)

Jewelry
1=Medallion/broach/chain/necklace
2=Ring
3=Cuff links/buttons
4=Earings or other accessible piercings
5=Watch or bracelet
6=Roll again but jewelry is masterwork

So there it is, I think its a pretty good system, not too complicated and can be alot of fun (especially those embarrassing items and ``other accessible piercings``)  If anyone reads this I encourage you to give it a try and tell me how it worked out.

Picking Pockets

I've never really been satisfied with any games take on handling picking someones pocket, so I developed this method recently which I've used in play a few times now.

Alright, if a thief PC wants to pick a pocket in most cases its just for some random coin and not for targeting a specific NPC. So in most of these regular cases I stipulate that the PC has to be in some sort of group or social situation like a crowded market or tavern.  Then I have the PC roll a perception check to case the crowd for the likeliest victim, A success means the thief finds a good target, a failure means the thief doesn't see any good opportunity, a bad failure means that people have noticed the character checking them out and makes further attemps ethier more difficult or even impossible.

Once the PC has found a good mark I roll on the table bellow and give them a description of the target as well as any visible loot. At this point the PC has the option of going through with the steal if they still want, if so they have to make a stealth/dexterity check opposed by the targets perception- If successful the thief gets the item undetected, If not the target could get hostile and things could get messy.

D20 Roll
1=Nothing of value
2=Beggars odds and ends
3-4=1d6 copper
5=Poor odds and ends
6-7=2d6 copper
8-9=1d6 silver
10=Commoner odds and ends
11-12=2d6 silver
13-14=1d6gold
15=Middle class odds and ends
16-17=3d6 gold
18=Highclass odds and ends
19-20=Minor jewlery
21+ Finery

In the next post I will explain this table a bit and give several more tables to cover the results.

Part 2: http://therustydagger.blogspot.com/2011/01/picking-pockets-part-second.html