House Rule: Duel Wielding

I've never liked the idea that duel-wielding gives you twice as many attacks. Having two weapons doesn't make you attack twice as quickly, and having two attacks per round is by comparison such a good option that it's almost always better than having the +1AC or whatever that a shield would have given you.

My current compromise:

When using two weapons, roll your attack as normal. If you succeed, roll the damage of each weapon. Keep the highest.

This gives a slight bonus without being ridiculously better than a two-handed weapon or shield. I'd like to incentivize using smaller weapons with this - or at least, using something like "Sword and dagger" rather than "I'm duel-wielding longswords." I'd prefer to do it without having to resort to some kind of "one weapon has to be shorter than the other" kind of rule.

Under/Over

Continuing my LotFP tinkerfest:
My biggest bugbear with the current setup is that some rolls are roll-over, others are roll-under. This bothers me, as players get confused as to which way the rolls should go.

As it stands, attack rolls and saves are roll-over. Ability rolls and skills are roll-under. I'd like to align them all in the same direction:

Option A: Roll Over

Move everything to a roll-over system. Attack rolls can stay the same (d20+AB vs AC). Saves would be the same (equal to or greater than your save number).

Ability Score would have to be roll 1d20+Ability. 21+ is success.
Skills would have to be 1d6+skill. 7 is success.

Benefits:

• Rolling high is by virtue of language and conditioning intuitively good. "Natural 20" automatically triggers something in most gamers.
• Ability Scores can be directly opposed, with each side rolling d20+Ability to determine the winner.

Drawbacks:

• Double digit+double digit math is something that will produce an "uhhhh" every time it is rolled.
• Defeats the point of recording skills in pips, as part of the charm was the visual representation on the sheet actually looking like the d6, and needing that or under.
• 21 and 7 sound arbitrary (even if they aren't), and begin to stray into TN/DC territory, which I'm not a fan of for this kind of game. The simplicity of roll-under is that what you see is what you need.
• Save numbers go down to improve instead of going up, which is slightly counter-intuitive. 

Option B: Roll Under

Attribute and Skill rolls remain as they are now. Saves are easily converted to roll-under: you just take what they are now and subtract them from 20. A sheet could have the updated saves and no one would notice the difference.

Attack Bonus would need renamed (it's no longer a bonus), but is functionally the same. If you had +2 before, it would now just be a roll-under of 2. AC would go back to TSR era "lower is better."

Your attack roll would then be a d20  with the goal of rolling under your Attack Score+EnemyAC. 

Bonuses can universally be assumed to apply to the score itself, rather than the roll, so a +1 bonus is still good.

Benefits:

• No math required anywhere except the attack roll, but that always needs math unless you want to make a chart (Note to self: consider chart). What you see is what you need.
• Pips on dice retain their charm.
• All Stats go up to improve - except for AC? Hrm.
• AC listed in other retroclones/TSR material can be used more or less as-is. 

Drawbacks:

• "Roll low to succeed" is inherently less intuitive. "Natural 1" doesn't hit the brain the same way as "Natural 20."
• Enemy AC now modifies your roll, instead of being the target you need to meet. Not sure if this is less intuitive. Could be fixed through a THAC0 style table, but that goes back into "is this more or less intuitive than the alternative? If you did go that route though, AC could be positive as well.

At present, I'm liking B more than anything, but debating whether a return to a THAC0 style chart is better or worse than weird AC mechanics.

LotFP Multiclassing/Hybrids

Last post, I was chewing on the way LotFP classes work. In the time between, I came up with the following. It needs some testing, but I like the idea:

LotFP Hybrid Classes

In addition to the four traditional classes, human characters can instead choose to play a hybrid class. Each hybrid consists of a blend of two of the core classes, gaining some of the strength of each but not the full benefits thereof.

Pick two of the following to gain your core benefits:

Cleric: Casts Cleric spells as a cleric of half their level. Cannot be combined with Magic-User.
Fighter: Gains all fighter combat options and begins with a +2 Attack Bonus, but their attack bonus never increases.
Magic-User: Casts Magic-User spells as a Magic-User of half their level. Cannot be combined with Cleric.
Specialist: Pick two skills. Each of these begin at 2 dots. One of these may increase each level.

If the character is a hybrid class that has spells, they will for all rules purposes (spells per day, learning spells, spell effects) be considered a caster of half their level. If you are a Cleric/X hybrid at level 10, you will in all ways act as though you were a level 5 cleric for the purposes of magic rules. You begin with no access to spells at level 1.

Saves will be identical to one of the parent classes. The player may choose which.

XP will be equal to the highest XP class x1.5. Thus, to get to level two a Fighter needs 3000, Cleric needs 2625, Magic-User needs 3375.

Niche protection shouldn't be an issue. Each of the core classes will always be better at their job than the hybrids. There is slightly closer competition with the demihumans but each demihuman gets a benefit that the hybrids can't and they universally have a lower xp requirement for what they are trying to do.

The applications of the above create a lot of interesting concepts. Paladins or witch-hunters could easily be fighter/clerics or even cleric/specialists.  Fighter/Specialist in particular opens up nice possibilities as a ranger or assassin. Magic-User/Specialist could even be used for a bard, god forbid.

I'll have to test this more before I decide if I like it, but it would actually handle most of the concepts I was considering making alternate classes for without deviating much from the core rules. 

Classes in Lamentations of the Flame Princess

We started a new Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign the other day. I really love the system, and it's become my go-to for OSR style play. As my players get into it though, I find the itch to tinker again. I always have the itch to tinker. Right now, my attention is on classes.

(TL;DR, skip down to "What I'm Thinking.")

What I love about LotFP Classes:

There is an extremely fine balance between the classes in the game. Each of the four human classes are good at and completely own a specific niche.

• Clerics are the only ones with access to clerical magic, which already grants them a lot of really cool stuff including the extremely important healing abilities and turn undead. 
• Fighters are the only class that gains AB as they go, as well as having access to better combat options (AC+4 on parry, Press and Defensive fighting). This is the only version of a D&D style game I've played where Fighters really feel indispensable as the fighting class.
• Magic-users get all of the eldritch goodies you'd expect, and some extremely flavorful spells.
• Specialists are the best thief variant I've seen in an OSR game. The ability to put dots where you please lets you play them as the ranger, the cat-burgler, the explorer, the assassin, or whatever else. More importantly, they are the only class who gets points to spend in increasing abilities. 

The demi-human classes are somewhat less impressive, but each feel like a hybrid of something above.

• Elves are essentially fighter-mages, as they usually are. The interesting thing is that they don't get advancing AB the way Fighters do, but they do get the extra melee options.They do however get an ascending Search die as they level.
• Dwarves are treated much the same. No advancing AB, but they get the extra melee options, a larger hit-die, and can carry around more stuff. Stonecunning takes the form of an advancing Architecture skill.
• Halflings.. uh.. are. halflings. In LotFP, they wind up with a 5-in-6 Stealth skill, an ascending Bushcraft skill, and a bonus to their dex and AC. [Edit: Raggi himself dropped a comment on my G+ for leaving out the halfling's saving throw bonuses! Woops.]

What I Hate about LotFP Classes:

Each class is indisputably the best at it's specific niche, but those niches are fairly narrowly defined. In normal B/x, it's pretty easy to add in new classes because every class already gets better at multiple things. In LotFP as written, it would be extremely hard to introduce another combat class that wouldn't step on the Fighter's toes. Giving other classes much in the way of skills winds up making the Specialist a little less.. special.

What I Want to Do:

I've got a few things I want to tinker around with but have held off because LotFP is on its own a pretty well-oiled machine. For instance - letting a character have some additional points to spend in their skills based on Intelligence modifier (Fighters wanting bushcraft is an obvious one. A dwarf in our current campaign made that exact request). I've also wanted to tinker in letting players specialize their character in one way or another - a Specialist variant that gets more offensive capabilities in exchange for reduced skill points; Paladin, Ranger, or Barbarian being Fighter variants that gain extra abilities in exchange for giving up some Fighter prowess; Variant or specialized magic users or clerics, and so on.

What I'm Thinking:

Fighter and Specialist are the two classes I'm most concerned with, as their whole value comes from being the sole class that advances in their niche. If I give another class AB, or another class skills, their relative value goes down. To solve this, I'm considering the following:

When the class in question is doing the thing they are supposed to do, they roll two dice and take the better result. Fighters would roll 2d20 on their attack rolls, keeping the higher. Specialists would get 2d6 on every skill roll, only failing if both fail.

A Paladin class then could take on Lay on Hands or a similar feature and still have advancing AB, but lose their 2d20 roll. Other classes could have skills, or an Assassin class could exist with its own features, but only get 1d6 for skill rolls. It would also make the Specialist better at whatever skill than any of the demi-humans using that same skill.

I can't decide if this is the way I want to do it. I'm not sure if it would make the classes too good by comparison, but it's definitely something I want to play around with.

Update: I have since come up with some potential solutions for all of this.

Hybrid Classes

Lateral Advancement

Multiclassing

Time Flies

Has it been a month already? Man. Right. Updates:

Grand Heresy now has two youtube channels. Barbarossa has outdone himself with setting things up and getting our whole AV situation sorted. Grand Heresy Press is going to be our core channel, and we'll be uploading things on there as we get them recorded. We'll be throwing some updates on as we get closer to 'bastards release, but it for now primarily be the home of the Grand Heresy AP Podcast. More on that in a moment. Our secondary channel is Grand Heresy Presents, which will be a place we upload stuff that isn't directly related to role-playing games, but involves us or our interests. Barbarossa already has some footage about grilling, of all things. Neither channel has proper content up yet, but Barbarossa did an excellent job on the intros. 

The Grand Heresy AP Podcast recorded some test footage. We just started a Lamentations of the Flame Princess one-shot and are basically recording our normal game footage. When we get it all situated, we'll be uploading the footage to youtube and ripping the audio as a downloadable podcast. Links to everything will eventually be up on our website.

If you didn't already know, because the group is so spread out, we're using Tabletop Simulator for our gaming. It is a huge improvement over Roll20. The mood and atmosphere are a lot better with TTS. It feels a lot more personal than the more clinical interface of Roll20, and having physical space with moving cameras lets you do a lot of things that are hard to do otherwise - using tokens to keep track of gameplay, having multiple maps or sheets out at the same time, etc. Most of all though, the dice. Roll20 has a terrible random number generator system. I have vivid memories of using it for Mordheim and deciding that it actually didn't matter what the stats of the characters were. Most d6 results were either 1 or 6, auto-fail or auto-succeed. TTS treats them as objects with a physics engine, so they roll as they should and produce the results you would expect. Even better? They make extremely satisfying noise when you shake them or clatter them across the table. I've been doing so much online gaming that I forgot how great that noise was, even through simulation.

If I had any criticisms of TTS, it's not particularly well-optimized for complex operations. It will start to tank when you have a high number of objects on the table, but for the most part it hasn't bothered me. It's also relatively early in its life-cycle, so future updates may improve this.

I've also started trying to force myself to piddle with art again. I make no claims towards professional talent, but I like to play with it. It's decent enough to render a character portrait now and then (like the above, from our LotFP group). If you're interested, I keep a tumblr for that purpose. Fair warning: I'm studying anatomy. There are naked people.

I've got some more stuff to post shortly, but that's enough for now.

Until next time,

Still Alive

Hello internet. It's been a while.

I'm still alive, fortunately. Our orc-based campaign got sidelines when the GM had his work-schedule change, and my own writing time has been compromised by my day-job, the sad reality of adulthood.

So what's new:

• Bastards is hopping along. We got out another couple teasers on the GH site, and discussions on our forums. Progress is being made on the core book for beta, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.
• Our site admin decided to start designing a game of his own, which will be later revealed under the GH brand. I won't get into details here, but it looks to be very cool. I've been consulting, but I won't be sitting down and putting words to paper until 'Bastards has gotten to publish.
• OrcQuest picked back up last week, hopefully to be a regular occurrence again.  I'll have an AP report again before long. 
• We're considering an AP podcast with our next campaign, in case you have a dire urge to listen to us ramble for hours. We'll need to figure out how we want to do it, but it sounds like a good idea on the face of it. 

That's where we're at for now. I'll have the next OrcQuest installment before long.

Carry on.

Orc Quest: Episode 7 - An Eye for Adventure

It was a day's travel to arrive before the fortified gates of Haganna. It was late evening and the guards stood in place to block their entry. It was quickly revealed that the mayor had issued a decree that orcs were forbidden to enter the city. The party wound up improvising and with the assistance of the party bard Cunnin managed to convince the guards that they were on a mission to deliver this human girl to someone inside the town. A quick bribe changed hands, and they were shown around to a side entrance, handed robes, and given the instructions to not be seen and to be gone within 24 hours.

They snuck in quickly and made their way to the market square. I basically asked if Cunnin (being a thief) could case the area and see if anything looked shady, like they were doing dirt (a fence, a fake front, etc) i.e. Someone that would do business with illegal orcs. After a bit of RP and an intelligence roll, they located just the sort.

Some brief negotiations later, they managed to unload some trade goods and spoils in exchange for hard currency and some additional supplies. We also acquired some new information:

The town guard was nervous over elven raids on the roads. We heard further rumors of an elf-queen, and that the elves weren't just robbing the travelers but kidnapping them. Only one person had managed to return alive, and he had kind of lost his mind. "Doomsday Dave," they called him. He apparently wanders around as a homeless person now.

The merchant handed over a bag of coins, but as he was turning to leave Cunnin poured them out and counted them - and found the bag short of the promised amount. Taz and Justice moved into position behind the merchant, who quickly threw his remaining coins at Cunnin and ran off.

About this time, the guards entered the market square and it became obvious that the rest of the merchants had already left. The party made themselves scarce before they were noticed - but not before Cunnin took the opportunity to nick back an item they had traded: one golden pickaxe that he had been reluctant to sell in the first place.

From there, they managed to find an Inn in the seedy side of town: The Flail and Sail.

As it turned out, the bartender was a giant of a man named Bjorn, about the size of many of the orcish party members. From a bit of conversation, he had a mercenary past and spoke a good bit of Orcish - something that has been something of an issue in this campaign, as many of the NPCs we have encountered only spoke common. [ed: this is slowly being rectified, as Cunnin is having Tuska teach Raph and Justice common while she's learning Orcish] Some drinks were had and ultimately negotiations were made for them to stay in town and stay there for the evening.

There were some friendly jabs thrown back and forth between party members as the orcs had some drinks and decided to unwind. After butting heads with Justice, Cunnin decided to retire early and went upstairs to his room with Tuska - giving the young girl further lessons in orcish and instilling in her proper tribal ethos.

Downstairs, Justice had a bit much to drink and wound up having a long heartfelt discussion with Raph. Taz watched on, nursing his own drink, somewhat bewildered by the whole thing. As the discussion heated up downstairs, Justice was spurred to action with the realization - we need to have a group meeting!

Cunnin was roused from his slumber and stumbled down the stairs. After a brief but fruitless attempt to explain to the bartender the concept of coffee, Cunnin settled down with his pipe and the strongest "you woke me up for this shit?" face he could muster.

Justice poured forth from his weary heart all of the concerns and confusions from their journey together so far. Ultimately, the discussion boiled down to: Who are we? What are we? Cast from their previous tribe, their relations were unknown. Justice was all but cast out from the original tribe, effectively an exile. Cunnin's reasons for leaving were largely unknown and Raph was just following Cunnin. Taz? We're not sure. When we met him he was having an intimiate moment with a tree he claimed was a dryad just moment's before we showed up. We're never sure about Taz. Then we have this human child. What is she to us?

Are we a group of people who just happen to be traveling together? Are we a tribe?

After some time, Cunnin finally responded with this: That in his mind, they had been a tribe since the moment they set forth - that everything he had done thus far had been about the tribe, for the tribe. And even that he counted the tiny human as part of their tribe now. She is ours. She is part of us.

Some further debate reconciled the remaining issues. Born of the priestly caste, Justice had a need for structure and hierarchy and finally appointed Cunnin Orkis Inter Pares, Ork Among Equals and defacto warboss when they were on a raid. At other times, they would settle matters via egalitarian tribal democracy, with each member of age (sorry Tuska) having a vote, decided by majority.

With those basic agreements settled upon, Taz voiced a concern about the limits of Warboss authority within an egalitarian electoral tribal leadership. If the time came and someone had to lay their life down for the tribe, would the warboss be allowed to give that order? To decide who lives and who dies?

In response, Justice rose. "I don't think you understand what's going on here. I need you to understand how important this is, the kind of sacrifice you need to be willing to give for your tribe. Cunnin. I need you to cut my eye out."

Taz did a double-take and began to argue "No, that's not necessary. That's not necessary at all."

Cunnin already had the dagger out, as though he had been half-expecting this. He got a jug of the strongest liquor Bjorn had behind the counter -- a purplish liquid that smelled like turpentine and had so many Xs on the bottle it was unclear if they were a rating of potency, or a WWII plane-style kill count. It was labeled only as The Good Stuff™. Cunnin rubbed the dagger down with the drink and then stuck it in the fire, letting it get red hot.

Meanwhile, Taz argued for reason against this course of action. Justice argued back, consumed with both determination for his tribe and religious zeal - for he would sacrifice an eye to make himself in Gruumsh's image, sealing the founding of our tribe with the Unsleeping God's blessing.

The dagger prepared, Raph was given the order to hold Justice still. Justice was given several deep drinks of The Good Stuff™ and Cunnin offered him his belt to bite down on. Taz appealed once more, now to Cunnin as Warboss but was rebuked. "This is going to happen. If you don't move, I'll take your eye out instead." Finally, Taz backed down and the deed was done. With a sizzle of flesh and a quick, deft motion, the extraneous orb was removed from its housing and Justice immediately began to shake and foam at the mouth.

We threw him down on a table and held him in place, keeping the belt in his mouth so that he couldn't swallow his tongue. After several long moments, the seizures passed and he came to.

"I h-had a vision. I know what Gruumsh wants from me now.."

And then he turned suddenly and wretched all over the table.

With that, we decided to turn in for the evening. It was now too late into the night to find Doomsday Dave before daybreak. We made arrangements with the bartender to keep our presence in the city more or less quiet and then retired to our rooms to sleep off the excitement.

[Ed: This was such a ridiculous and amazing session. I wind up having to gloss over so much of it in the write-up because it wound up being 90% in-character dialogue. What was probably meant to be a quick pit-stop in the Inn turned into three hours or so of solid role-play as intra-party conflict was played up, brought to the surface, and ultimately resolved. This is the kind of glorious scenario in which it might seem like nothing happened and barely any dice were rolled.. but the sheer quality of the role-play was brilliant. And the best part? It is developing from a premise about orcs being murder-hobos doing murder hobo things. Half of it is just a string of inside gags and out-of-genre references..and yet, I left this session more psyched than I have been from a game in a long time. This is why I play these games.]

Until next time,