Underpowered: Samurai (3.5E)

Posted on 1 April, 2013 by Law

The samurai has been ranked by very smart people as perhaps the least-powerful PC class in D&D 3.5. Apparently it’s on par with the expert, the adept, and other NPC classes. I think it’s common knowledge that non-spellcasting classes are generally less powerful than spellcasting classes, but is the samurai really that bad?

Well, let’s compare it to the fighter. Both have full BAB progression. Both have good Fortitude saves. Both have d10 Hit Dice. Both have two skill points per level, and both have Craft, Intimidate, and Ride as class skills; the fighter also has Handle Animal and the mobility skills (Climb, Jump, and Swim), while the samurai has Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge (history), Knowledge (nobility and royalty), and Sense Motive. It’s clear that at its base the samurai is a fighter with a little less of a focus on adventuring and a little more on interaction.

The skills tell another story though. The fighter’s skills are Strength-based (and Handle Animal, which makes sense with Ride), and most fighters are good at Strength. The samurai’s skills are more varied, with one Charisma-based, one Wis based, two Int-based, and Concentration (which the class has no way to use, so I expect it’s only there to help samurai qualify for the kensai prestige class later in the book). This lack of focus makes it harder to really excel at skills, and a samurai will probably have to choose between interaction and knowledge.

But nobody plays fighters for the skill points, do they? The real focus is on the eleven bonus feats. Samurai also happen to have eleven abilities they gain over time. So how do they stack up?

  • Daisho proficiency: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose. All samurai get Exotic Weapon Proficiency (katana) at L1. In general, getting a bonus feat is not as good as choosing a bonus feat, since it limits character options and power. So this is a bit worse than a fighter.
  • Two swords as one: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose and it only works in certain situations, but the character gets to ignore prerequisites. That’s usually pretty balanced (and the ranger is based on it), but the restriction here is greater. So the samurai just barely loses out here.
  • Kiai smite: It’s like a paladin’s smite, which is better than a feat. But the samurai’s smite damage is drastically lower at almost every level (Cha mod vs. class level) and the samurai gets it less frequently than a paladin. We’ll call it a wash.
  • Iaijutsu master: Another bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose, and it comes with an extra restriction. Worse than a feat.
  • Staredown: +4 to Intimidate, better than a feat (Skill Focus) but the player doesn’t get to choose it. The text also says that the samurai “can demoralize an opponent”, which characters can already do. It’s like a class power that says “you can jump”. We’ll call this even again, but I’m not fully convinced.
  • Improved Initiative: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose.
  • Mass staredown: This is the first time the samurai gets something unique. This is level 10. So it’s a win, but it shouldn’t have taken this long to let one.
  • Improved two swords as one: It’s like two swords as one, above. But while a ranger gets the equivalent of this ability at L6, the samurai has to wait until L11. So this is a loss.
  • Improved staredown: The ability to reduce demoralization from a standard action to a move action, not unlike what Improved Feint does for feinting. So it’s like getting a feat, but you don’t get to choose it, but it’s also not available as a normal feat. I feel like I’m being too down on the samurai, so I’ll do it a kindness and call this “break-even.”
  • Greater two swords as one: Same as improved two swords as one, right down to getting it five levels after the ranger. Similar loss.
  • Frightful presence: The samurai’s capstone ability, this can grant a long-standing penalty (often as long as the entire fight) to every opponent in the battle. But it’s a penalty that doesn’t stack with the staredown, which is what the samurai has been doing since L6, so it’s not too ridiculous. Even though high-level NPCs and monsters are completely immune to it, we’ll say this is better.

By my reckoning, the samurai gets two abilities better than a fighter’s bonus feats, three that are about as good, and six that are worse. The ones that are better aren’t much better, so it’s looking pretty dim.

But it actually gets worse than that. All of the samurai’s staredown abilities are based on the Intimidate skill, so taking max ranks in it is as good as necessary. Without it, the samurai loses its signature ability, and with it, the samurai gets one fewer of its already-sparse skill points. A non-human samurai with Int 8 essentially gets no skill points at all. And since the paladin’s staredown, kiai smite, and frightful presence are all based on Charisma, a samurai is running low on places to put its low stat rolls.

And a note about the power of staredown. Say you’re a samurai. To make an opponent shaken for one round, your Intimidate check has to beat the opponent’s modified level check (d20 + Hit Dice + Wis mod). Let’s ignore for a second that I don’t like comparing rolls (especially d20 rolls) as a resolution mechanic. If you always fight equivalent-level NPCs, you come out slightly ahead, because your ranks in Intimidate should be three higher than the opponent’s level and your Cha should be about the same as their Wis. But monsters usually have more Hit Dice than a player and this difference increases at higher CRs, so staredown’s usability drops against them as you level. And mindless creatures are immune to it wholesale, as are any creatures immune to mind-affecting abilities or fear.

Which gives us a class that looks like a fighter, but it needs to split its ability scores more, its abilities aren’t as good as bonus feats, and its only unique ability (staredown) rarely works and isn’t synergistic with its other key ability (two-weapon fighting). Yeah, I’d call that worse than a fighter.

I actually like the samurai from Oriental Adventures better. It’s like a fighter, but with good Will saves, four skill points per level, and the ability to enhance their swords. The tradeoff (besides, I guess, shield and heavy armor proficiency) is that their bonus feats must come from a series of lists based on their clan; a crab samurai can get the Power Attack tree as bonus feats but not the Combat Expertise tree, for example. I think that if you like the samurai, that’s not a bad place to go. But it loses a lot in the fun factor. It’s basically the fighter but a little better, and all the flavor is in the feat selection (you know, like a fighter). It also doesn’t have the 3.5 samurai’s key mechanic, the staredown. So I think we can do something in between to make the samurai both powerful and interesting.

First let’s deal with the bonus feats. Instead of giving one hard-coded progression, let’s give the player a choice of progressions. They’re still hard-coded, yes, but we don’t want to take too much away from the fighter by duplicating its abilities. The clans from Oriental Adventures have some good ideas on theming, so let’s steal them wholesale. This replaces the abilities gained at the listed levels:

Clan: Each samurai is part of a clan, an association of samurai with similar training and principles. As the samurai’s fighting style improves, he gains access to new abilities.
At the levels listed in the table below, a samurai gains a bonus feat determined by his clan. If he already has the listed feat, he instead gains any other feat for which he meets the prerequisites.
Clan Crab Crane Dragon Lion Phoenix Scorpion Unicorn
1st Weapon Focus (greatclub)* Weapon Focus (longspear) Exotic Weapon Proficiency (katana) Shield Proficiency Lightning Reflexes Combat Expertise Mounted Combat
2nd Power Attack Dodge Two-Weapon Fighting Weapon Focus (longsword) Alertness Dodge Point Blank Shot
5th Cleave Mobility Quick Draw Iron Will Iron Will Improved Disarm Mounted Archery
8th Improved Sunder Improved Initiative Improved Initiative Leadership Combat Reflexes Prone Attack Zen Archery
11th Improved Toughness Spring Attack Improved Two-Weapon Fighting Improved Shield Bash Great Fortitude Improved Trip Trample
16th Great Cleave Quick Draw Greater Two-Weapon Fighting Hold the Line Blind-Fight Whirlwind Attack Improved Mounted Archery

* – Feel free to use any big scary weapon here; the greatclub is a Core placeholder. I suggest a greataxe that does bludgeoning damage (a greathammer), or a tetsubo if you want to change it to Exotic Weapon Proficiency instead.

All of these feats are either in Core or Complete Warrior. That’s intentional.

Note that the dragon clan duplicates the samurai’s old feat list. The goal isn’t to invalidate the old samurai, just give it more choices and power. If somebody really wants to play the katana-and-wakizashi samurai, they should retain that option. But also note that the feats no longer requires the katana-and-wakizashi combo. There’s no reason a dragon samurai couldn’t dual-wield hammers or picks or axes or even katanas.

Now, the staredown. The big issues I have with this are that it takes forever to get going, it relies on opposed rolls, it grants a penalty many creatures ignore, and the results only last one round. There’s nothing I can do about the opposed rolls because that’s how demoralizing works. But the rest:

Staredown (Ex): At 6th level, a samurai becomes able to strike fear into his foes by his mere presence. He gains a +4 bonus on Intimidate checks. An opponent demoralized by the samurai is shaken for one round plus one round for every five points by which the samurai’s Intimidate check beat his opponent’s modified level check.
Mass Staredown (Ex): At 10th level, the samurai has sufficient presence that he can cow multiple foes. Using an Intimidate check, the samurai can demoralize all opponents within 30 feet as a standard action. Also, the samurai can now demoralize creatures normally immune to mind-affecting effects, though he takes a −10 on his Intimidate check against such creatures.
Improved Staredown (Ex): At 14th level, even a glance from the hard eyes of a samurai is enough to give his foes pause. The samurai can demoralize opponents within 30 feet as a move action, not a standard action. He can demoralize enemies within 60 feet as a standard action. Also, the penalty for demoralizing creatures immune to mind-affecting effects is reduced to −5.

So now staredown is more meaningful at L6 than it is for other characters, something the original samurai lacked, and the penalty’s duration is potentially increased. At L10 creatures are no longer immune to the samurai’s staredown, and at L14 the usability increases further. The samurai’s unique mechanic is actually worth using, and he can try it once or twice in a fight rather than spending the whole combat maintaining his enemies’ penalties.

I also recommend increasing the skill points to 4 per level and adding Climb, Jump, Perform, and Swim to the samurai’s class list. This lets them be as mobile as the fighter and plays to the cultured flavor of samurai while giving him the skill points to spend on it. No longer is an Int 8 samurai locked out of skills altogether (I suppose an Int 4 samurai still is, but that’s the territory of Int 4 so I don’t think I’m too worried about that). I’d love to do something about kiai smite, but it can stay as it is. Don’t want to change everything.

With that, we have a class with more options, more flavor, and more power than the original samurai. I know this isn’t enough to bring it up to the level of a spellcasting class, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal is to make the samurai into a class that people want to play rather than a class that people only view to make fun of the art, and I think that’s what we did.

I’d list the whole class here or provide a link to an HTML version, but I’d rather not duplicate all that Wizards material. You print out this blog post and stick it in your (legitimate, hardcover) copy of Complete Warrior if you’re that worried about having it all in one place.

Posted in Gaming Systems, Underpowered | Tagged | 7 Comments

Players Making Failure Interesting

Posted on 26 March, 2013 by Law

So we had a TPK on Saturday.

The party came across the guardian to a gate we had to open. In the first round, the fighter won initiative, charged, and did 75 points of damage in one hit, dropping the enemy to about 20% health. The DM, seeing the writing on the wall, had an ally show up. But then the PCs went on a string of back luck: the fighter started missing, the rogue didn’t have the speed to flank with him, the wizard’s touch attacks were foiled by deflection bonuses, and the healer wasn’t at the session. In the end, the NPC fairy had to open the gate while the surviving guardian was futilely chasing the PC fairy around the room (it makes no more sense in context).

It wasn’t really anybody’s fault, just one of those things that happened. It’s hard to predict a string of bad rolls, it’s hard to work around the unexepected limitations of the characters, it’s hard to balance an encounter on the fly, and it’s hard to do anything when players aren’t available.

The thing it, the failure made the story better. The campaign has two sets of PCs: the A-Team (A for Awesome) and the B-Team (B for Bad). The A-Team is fledgling gods, the B-Team is comic relief. Ending an encounter in one hit is for awesome players, not comedy relief. It was much more appropriate and cinematic for the B-Team to muster their forces, approach a challenge, fail miserably, and get saved by somebody more competent.

There’s a lot of talk around the DM’s responsibility to make failure interesting, and it’s not inaccurate. A failure of “You jump the cliff, but drop your backpack” is more interesting than “You fail to jump the cliff and die”. Just Google the phrase “making failure interesting” for a fairly complete view of it. I think the whole idea is incomplete, short-sighted, and, unless handled by a DM far smarter than the concept expects, designed for a bad play experience. But that’s not what this post is about.

Instead, I’d like to put some of the onus on the players for making failure interesting, something that I couldn’t find any reference to in my research. It’s not solely the DM’s job to keep things fun, it’s everyone’s (Law #0 + Law #4). The DM can try to keep things interesting, but if the players are having none of it than the game won’t work at all.

Take our TPK. (Please! Ha, I kill me.) The DM was none too thrilled by it, but the players treated the whole thing like an excellent story for the PCs. It reinforces our role as the underdogs of the setting and keeps us in character. If we can slaughter our enemies, then we’re heroes, not the B-Team. If we signed up to be the campaign’s comic relief, then it’s our job to maintain that as much as it’s the DM’s.

If a DM isn’t making failure interesting, the players can. If a player fails to pick a lock and the DM decides that they don’t get through the door, I’ve seen too many DMs explicitly state that this is bad DMing. By that logic, the player who tries again, or the player who shrugs and forgets about it, is a bad player. A good player would see the failure, acknowledge it as learning, and try something else. A good player would break down the door, or use acid on the lock, or break out their magical lockpicks, or look for another way in.

Failure isn’t uninteresting in and of itself. Failure is uninteresting when it doesn’t advance the game state. If a player then uses the failure as a chance to advance the game state, then the failure is interesting. DMs are there to explain how the world reacts to the players. The players get to decide how they react to the world, and even “nothing happens” is an opportunity to react.

Posted in DMing | 1 Comment

On The Dungeon Master Experience

Posted on 21 March, 2013 by Law

Chris Perkin’s penultimate article came down last week, which bothers me. As soon as I find an article on Wizard’s site that’s worth reading, it goes away. It’s like Leverage all over again.

I was going to link to his top ten pieces of advice for DMs last week, but at the bottom of the article he posted a poll asking readers which piece was the most important, and it took a week for the poll to close:

It’s things like this that finally restore my faith in the game. After all the excitement in the comments section of these articles for racial prerequisites (“You were born wrong, so no options for you!”), campaign settings (“I’m tired of having a unique, dynamic world. I want the same one everybody else has.”) and so forth, I’m pleased to see that D&D players (or at least the ones that read this article) find these as their top priorities:

  1. Don’t be a jerk.
  2. Make it fun.
  3. Be awesome about it.
  4. Screw with the rules when the rules don’t do what you want.
  5. Have a character, not a box of stats.

Or, in other words:

  1. Law #0
  2. Law #0
  3. Law #0, but louder
  4. Law #0 mixed with Law #1
  5. Role-play more. (…that should be a law, actually)

I was actually prepared to write some vitriolic response to the poll (in the same way that I’m prepared for my players ditching the campaign story to have their characters create an underwater utopia, or losing my shoes in a tornado), so it’s nice to see that all I had to do was write an “I told you so.”

Posted in Commentary, DMing | 3 Comments

Arbitrary Attack Bonuses in 4E

Posted on 15 March, 2013 by Law

Somebody asked about the correct values for the arbitrary attack bonus that accompanies racial attack powers, item powers, and so forth. I put this together to see exactly how they stack up:

This chart assumes the following:

  • A character gets their new weapon the level after they become eligible. For example, a +1 orb at L2, a +2 at L7, etc. For every level that this is not true, adjust the chart accordingly. When a bonus like this increases, the comparison becomes worse, so shift the chart down, and vice versa.
  • A character’s weapon proficiency bonus is 2.5. If it’s +3, shift the line down .5. If it’s +2, shift it up .5.
  • A character takes their Expertise feat at L1. For every level they put it off, move the chart up 1.
  • No extra situational bonuses, like a +1 to attacking undead with a given weapon.

The exact ability scores are irrelevant because they affect all bonuses equally.

On average, the arbitrary bonus of 3/tier vs. AC lags behind weapon attack bonus by 1.8, and the arbitrary bonus of 2/tier vs. other defenses lags behind implement attack bonus by 1.3. The only times such attack bonuses are as good as implement bonuses are at L1-6, before the character gets a +2 implement, and L11, because of the discrete tier increase. The only times they’re as good as weapon bonuses are L1, L11, and L21 (that is, levels before you increase your enhancement bonus to attacks in a tier) for powers that target AC, and even then only if the character normally uses a weapon with a +2 proficiency bonus.

So if you have a paragon-tier magic item that you really want to attack at Str+5 vs Will, you’re fine. It’s still less likely to hit than any other power.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

Underpowered: Duergar (4E)

Posted on 13 March, 2013 by Law

Generally I’m not the kind of person who ranks things by power level. I tend to leave that to the experts. But I do talk with people and I see a lot of gameplay. One of the big benefits of running D&D Delve Night for a couple of years was that I got to see literally hundreds of character builds, and I’ve noticed some trends that more powerful characters follow.

As I understand it, the power level of racial powers can be ranked roughly like this:

  • The dwarf
  • Minor action encounter powers that attack enemies
  • Immediate-speed powers
  • Minor action encounter powers that affect enemies without an attack roll
  • Minor action at-will powers
  • Powers that help the character using them
  • Standard action powers

So it’s a little weird that the duergar, with a minor-action encounter power that attacks enemies, is so underpowered. But let’s compare it to two other races with similar powers that get a lot of play, one older than the duergar and one newer:

Duergar (MM2) Dragonborn (PHB) Thri-kreen (DSCS)
Stats +2 to two +2 to two (errated to +2 to one, +2 to choice) +2 to one, +2 to choice
Speed 6 6 7
Vision Darkvision Normal Low-light
Languages Three Two Two (one uncommon)
Skills +2 to one +2 to two +2 to two
Traits None Two (attack bonus, healing bonus) Three (action bonus, jump bonus, doesn’t sleep)

Without traits, the duergar’s power level is largely reliant on its racial power. And how does it measure up?

Duergar (MM2) Dragonborn (PHB) Thri-kreen (DSCS)
Range Ranged 3 Close burst 3 (5 with feat) Melee 1 (targets three creatures)
Attack Con +2/tier vs. AC Choice of ability +2/tier vs. Reflex Choice of ability +3/tier vs. AC
Damage d8/tier + Con d6/tier + Con (d10 with feat) d8/tier + choice of ability
Damage Type None Choose at character creation None
Effect -2 to attacks, ongoing poison None (various with feats) None (reliable with feat)

The racial power only targets one creature, and that creature must be within 3 squares (but not adjacent, or that’s an opportunity attack). It has an attack bonus as though it was targeting a secondary defense, but it actually targets AC. It relies on Con, which is only a primary attack stat for battleminds and certain warlocks (hint: infernal warlocks are the expected build for duergars). With all these penalties to hitting, its damage should be serious. But instead it’s just on par with other racial powers, and it deals small ongoing damage of the most-resisted damage type.

So literally the only things that the duergar has going for it are darkvision and an encounter power that usually misses but deals -2 to attack rolls (save ends) when it hits. That’s nothing to sneeze at but it’s not enough to make anybody actually want to play the race. So let’s try to make it viable.

As before, let’s look at the monsters. Interestingly, every one of them has speed 5, like the dwarves on which the race is based. As much as I hate to lower a race’s power while trying to increase it, this fits too much to ignore. But every duergar also has resistance to fire and poison. Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s add that in. PC resistances tend to be 5 + half-level and the deva has two, so that works without being too unbalanced.

We also need to update their build to be in line with current design. There are eight duergar in the MM2: two Con-primary, two Wis-primary, three Str-primary, and one Cha-primary. The Cha-primary and Con-primary have secondary Dex, and the Wis-primary have secondary Int. So Cha and Int are rare, but Con and Wis both make sense as the mandatory ability, and Str and Dex can make both strong cases as the new third stat. When monster precedent fails, I’m inclined to earn toward race precedent. Their attack power uses Con, and duergar are basically evil dwarves. So let’s use the same stat line as dwarves, and we’ll modify the power to fit. And since many of the monsters are trained in Religion (the knowledge skill that tells players about devils), we’ll use that.

These changes pretty much bring them back up to competitive, especially since fire and poison are such common damage types. But I want to give them one more trait, something small and flavorful. I’d love to give them the devil keyword, but PC don’t have keywords, so that’s out. Since they’re hardy creatures who were enslaved by devils, let’s give them something to resist the attacks of devils.

Which leaves us with:

DUERGAR
Average Height: 4′ 2″- 4′ 8″
Average Weight: 160-220 lb.

Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Strength or +2 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 5 squares
Vision: Darkvision

Languages: Common, Deep Speech, Dwarven
Skill Bonuses: +2 Dungeoneering, +2 Religion
Force of Will: You gain a +1 racial bonus to Will defenses against attacks made by immortal creatures.
Infernal Resistance: You have resistance to fire damage and poison damage equal to 5 + one-half your level.

Infernal Quills Duergar Racial Power
You tense and send the quills projecting from your body into the gaps in your foe’s armor.
Encounter ⋄ Poison
Minor Action Ranged 3
Attack: Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom vs. AC. You gain a +3 bonus to the attack roll.
Level 11: The bonus increases to +6.
Level 21: The bonus increases to +9.
Hit: 1d8 + Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom modifier damage, and the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls and ongoing 2 poison damage (save ends both).
Level 11: 2d8 + Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom modifier damage, and the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls and ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends both).
Level 21: 3d8 + Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom modifier damage, and the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls and ongoing 8 poison damage (save ends both).

How to reskin this power so that it works with Wisdom is an exercise left to the reader.

This race didn’t need to be half-rewritten like the bullywug, just updated. I tried to give it the general feel of dwarf + devil. As much as I wanted to pull in the 3E duergar and add 4E versions of invisibility and enlarger person and psionics and stuff, that’s not really what they are any more. Plenty of room there for a racial paragon path, though.

Posted in Gaming Systems, Underpowered | Tagged | 2 Comments

On the Story of 5th Edition

Posted on 7 March, 2013 by Law

Two articles appeared on Wizard’s website this week, both part of ongoing series: This week’s Legends & Lore by Mike Mearls, and this week’s The Dungeon Master Experience by Chris Perkins. They offer very different sides of D&D, as Mearls talks about the development of D&D 5th Edition (a.k.a. D&D Next, using the same naming theories as professional wrestling) and Perkins discusses a regular if busy campaign he runs. They form an interesting point/counterpoint for D&D, looking at it from the standpoint of a designer who’s trying to build or fix a system and a player who’s trying to maximize the use of the system that exists. Both are interesting reads.

The differences between the articles really hit home this week. In Mearls’ “This Week in D&D”, he says that Wizards is aiming for a smaller set of rules mechanics, instead focusing on things that make sense in common language rather than focusing on making new mechanics. The example he gives is making an “archer” rather than a character who has “Rapid Shot”, because “archer” is a more recognizable term. As long as there’s still some option in this that prevents all archers from playing exactly the same, I can get behind this. It eliminates or reduces problems with the scope creep, and it suggests that the real focus on a character will be how they act at the table and how they feel rather than what numbers are on their character sheet.

But he starts the article by saying that the development teams want to “shift [their] emphasis to story”, which says to me that we’re back to the world of pre-programming how the world works rather than trusting players and DMs to come up with their own. I’m not against having fluff in the books, and anybody who’s heard me gush over the Pathfinder bugbear can attest to this. But the story of D&D is best managed by DMs and players, not by the book that settled on the world months before any campaigns start. The more in-depth a system’s story is, the less respect I have for it.

The comments are all aflutter over this, mostly with approval, and mostly because they assume that a focus on “story” means a focus on “a default D&D campaign setting”. It looks like Greyhawk has a fanbase much larger than I thought, and I can’t really argue with what the customers want. Though it’s not escaped my notice that players want a focus on common language like “archer” but are fine with a focus on specific language like “Moradin”. It’s enough to make me think that players don’t know what they want, just that they want it.

On the opposite end of the scale, Perkins’ “Make It BIG!” explains that players and DMs best remember the events, settings, and characters that are over-the-top rather than the mundane path of a game. Though my evidence is largely anecdotal, I can agree with this. Players don’t remember the Monster Campaign because the plot was gripping, and I’m pretty sure half of the players couldn’t even tell me what it was. But they do remember the nimblewright launching a subterranean castle into the air to destroy his own airship, the myconid* dying when he tried to crawl into the mouth of a fiendish dinosaur, and the half-dragon orc getting into a toe-to-toe punch-up with an eldritch giant named Bootylicious.

The contrast between these articles is somewhat striking, as Mearls says “Let’s hold back on the rules so we can work on the story” and Perkins says “Nobody cares about the story until the players make it worthwhile”. Certainly large, interesting adventures aren’t precluded by the design aesthetic of 5E. But I think it’s a huge mistake to expect that designers can make those things happens. Just give the players the rules they need to play the characters they want, give the DM the framework he needs to build the plot the players like, and trust the customers to make their own story without a designer’s help.

I think it’s another conflict between Int-based design and Cha-based play. I’ve said before that Int-based design is a good way to lose sight of the system itself. Our situation has not improved.

* – You know, both my highlight reel and Chris Perkins’ involve myconids. Maybe, like Greyhawk, they also have a fanbase much larger than I thought.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 3 Comments

Pre-Campaign Survey

Posted on 3 March, 2013 by Law

I mentioned a campaign survey once that I used for my campaigns, but I never actually published it. You can find it here. The idea is that players fill out the survey by indicating where they want the campaign to be on seven sliding scales.

For example, a player might check off the box halfway between role-playing and roll-playing, indicating a fairly typical campaign with a mix of combat and non-combat. They might go slightly right of center on rural/urban, indicating a slight preference for being in and near civilization.

I usually fill one out myself too and take the average, though I keep in mind any outliers. It helps me plan my campaign around what the players want and expect to play, sometimes in a way that changes the campaign significantly. Here’s how my last one turned out, with a surprisingly high preference toward a campaigned, non-episodic game:

I know the rows are reversed. Not sure what happened there.

These are general guidelines. Just because the players wanted to be around PG-13 doesn’t mean I can’t have G-rated moments, and vice versa. But it does indicate that I shouldn’t be running a campaign where the players are typical people just trying to survive after the End Days (low tech, low power, dark tone).

It’s clear that this is focused toward D&D; other systems don’t have a magic level to chart (though they might have a tech level, or a spirit level or something), or they assume a certain power level, or they don’t have patience for combat as a campaign focus. It also works best if you’re making your own setting, like a grown-up; Eberron, for example, leans toward dark tone, high magic, and low power level, and the survey results should be weighted accordingly.

Treating each as a scale from 1 to 7, like my players tend to do, my baseline is something like 3/6/5/5/3/5/6. It varies based on the campaign and what media I’ve recently consumed, but this line probably isn’t terribly surprising to anybody who’s seen my influence map. There aren’t any extreme values there, and that’s to be expected. In the survey above, I asked six players (and myself) seven questions to get forty-seven values with two abstentions. Only three of those values were a 1 or 7, and two of those were me trying to skew the results to fit the setting. Players tend to want something in the middle, and when they don’t it’s the DM’s job to sit up and take notice.

Posted in DMing, House Rules | Comments Off on Pre-Campaign Survey

Underpowered: Bullywug (4E)

Posted on 28 February, 2013 by Law

D&D has lots of options, and it’s fairly obvious that they’re not all equally powerful. I’ve ranted about this, but over time I’ve also been doing something about it. Rarely, it’s a house rule to limit to power of a given option. More often it’s a house rule to power up something that’s fun or flavorful but isn’t as good as a more common, powerful option. Every once in a while I like to look at one of these options and see if I can tweak it so that players who go for it aren’t taking a hit for their characters.

I know that working on game balance doesn’t really fit with a free-form, DMing-with-Charisma style. But I believe that one of the points of a system like D&D is the ability to let players play just about anything. If a player sees something they want to play (especially after spending forever looking for it) and find out that it isn’t fun, there’s a problem. Not everything can be perfectly-balanced all the time, but if a player has their heart set on a specific character, the system shouldn’t be working against them.

Races in 4th Edition have a very simple, consistent formula. Each race (now) gets a +2 bonus to one ability score and a +2 bonus to a choice of two others, a speed of 5 through 7 (except for the pixie, who flies at 6 but walks at 4), two languages, a +2 bonus to two skills, two to four racial traits (except for shifters, who get none, and eladrin, who get five because shut up), and some racial power. There’s little variance from this formula for PC races.

Monster races, however, aren’t so lucky. Included at the end of the Monster Manual and Monster Manual 2 (and the occasional other weird place), monster races are seriously underpowered compared to PC races in the Player’s Handbook series. They have fewer racial traits, occasionally lack powers, and weren’t given the same treatment that PC races were when Wizards shifted from the two-stat-bonus system for ability scores to the one-and-a-choice system.

It makes me wonder if they were never meant to be played, which in turn makes me wonder why they were published. I expect that the authors expected somebody to play them. After all, the big taboo in playing monsters is that they’re, well, monstrous. They’re not supposed to fit in with PCs. But PHB2 introduced playable lycanthropes and reincarnated spirits, and PHB3 gave us minotaurs (formerly a monstrous race) and psychic crystal robots. At this point, “monstrous” is kind of a loose term. Dark Sun gave us bugs. So I don’t see any reason that the monstrous races shouldn’t be treated the same as PC races, given that there’s no strong reason to differentiate them.

There’s a lot of work to do in putting all races on a (more) level playing field. But I think the best way to start is with the most obvious outlier, from the Monster Manual 2:

BULLYWUG
Average Height: 5′ 4″- 6′ 0″
Average Weight: 150-240 lb.

Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Dexterity
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares (swamp walk)
Vision: Normal

Languages: Common, Primordial
Skill Bonuses: +2 Athletics
Rancid Air (Poison) aura 2: Any enemy that spends a healing surge within the aura is weakened until the end of its next turn.

Bullywugs, as far as I can tell*, are still on the two-stat-bonus system for ability scores. They’re one of only seven races that don’t get +2 to two skills (shardminds get three, humans and orcs get none, and bladelings, duergar, and githyanki get one; note that five of these seven are monstrous). They have no racial power. They only have one racial trait, and it only triggers when an enemy spends a healing surge, something that fewer than a dozen monsters do, most of which are in the MM1. Only one monster in MM2 allows allies to spend healing surges so Wizards knew when the bullywug was printed that its only trait was a rare corner case. And it also uses the Poison keyword, so any enemy immune to poison (the most common immunity) ignores the aura. So the only thing they can expect to use in any given campaign is swamp walk, a trait reliant on the DM’s kindness in determining the setting.

The lore of the race almost supports this, but not enough. The whole point of bullywugs is that the natural world hates them, more than aberrations, undead, evil gods, and everything else with stats. Clearly this included the designers. But they’re adorable in a Ninja-Tutrle-esque way, so let’s see if we can save them from their creators.

There are four bullywugs in the Monster Manual 2 as actual monsters, and all of them have good Dex. So let’s keep Dex as their mandatory ability score. Since Con is already included in the race, that’s going to be one of their optional ability scores. We need to determine the other. Of the four monsters, one is Str-primary, one is Wis-primary, one is Con-primary, and the fourth is Dex-primary. The Con- and Dex- primary monsters both have Str and Wis high and tied. We can make a case for either Str or Wis here. But since the half-orc is already Dex/Str,Con, doing the same with the bullywug wouldn’t add anything interesting to the race list. Let’s make them Dex/Con,Wis, a unique set.

Their speed, vision, and languages are fine. Of the forty-four published races, thirty-seven have speed 6 (and the pixie should count, so thirty-eight). The monster bullywugs have normal vision, so that fits. And the monsters only speak Primordial, so that’s a given as their second language.

Let’s determine their other skill bonus. Athletics is good because it’s already there and all of the monsters have it (Athletics determines jumping distance, and bullywugs are frogs, so draw conclusions accordingly). But three of the monsters only have Athletics. The fourth, a shaman has Nature. Athletics/Nature isn’t exactly new or special, but it fits for a race that lives in swamps, so we’ll take it.

The racial traits and powers are harder, because we’re largely free-forming it. The aura can stay, but since it’s so rarely useful it won’t factor into our balance considerations. Swamp walk is also a good choice for a trait. But we still need two mid-level traits and one power to bring them up to a PC race. The only power that all bullywugs share is one that heals any creature who hits them with a critical hit, something that’s neither fun nor helpful. I thought I was going to have to start making thing up wholesale, until I saw this:

Bullywugs say they were created by the original primordials, not by the gods…By amassing legacies of savagery, the curliest bullywugs imagine that they will one day be reborn as slaads.

So the race was created by primordials and aim to become paragons of chaos? Now we have something interesting. Slaads also don’t have any consistent powers or traits save that most of the have a teleport speed, which is too powerful for a low-level PC. But just the idea of chaos as an origin and goal is helpful. So let’s try building them some racial traits that leverage this drive toward chaos:

Mutable Physiology: Whenever you spend a healing surge or complete a short or extended rest, roll a d10 to determine a damage type. You gain resist 5 to that damage type until you spend another healing surge. The resistance increases to 10 at 11th level and 15 at 21st level.

1 – acid
3 – fire
5 – lightning
7 – poison
9 – radiant 		2 – cold
4 – force
6 – necrotic
8 – psychic
10 – thunder

The idea is that the bullywug is changing frequently and randomly. It’s like the resistance offered by the shardmind but less powerful than the resistance offered by the diva or vryloka. Interestingly, it tends to go away just when you need it; if you’re in a fight where resist 10 fire is really helpful, you have a good chance of losing it if you take too much damage and need healing. It might make sense to drop this to a d8 and take away psychic and force, or to a d6 and also take away radiant and necrotic. A paragon path could also modify it. I know most races use resist 5 + half-level rather than 5/tier, but I’m toning this one down a bit because…reasons. I could be convinced to change it.

Yes, it duplicates the wild sorcerer trait. I’d actually forgotten about that one until I started looking up the correct language for the mechanics. But I’m not really bothered by the chaos race having ties to the chaos class, especially since bullywugs don’t gain a bonus to Charisma. A bullywug wild sorcerer would be underpowered but awesome, which I’ll allow.

Primoridal Origin: Your ancestors were native to the Elemental Chaos, so you are considered an elemental creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin.
Deicidal: You gain a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls against immortals.

Primordials (elementals) and gods (immortals) fought a massive war deep in the lore of 4th Edition. Since bullywugs consider themselves fledgling primodials, this makes sense to me. It’s more flavor than anything that can really be expanded by feats or such. But attack bonuses are rare and cherished, so I think we’re done with racial traits. Now we need a power.

What makes a monstrous bullywug different from a PC bullywug? Since the race version doesn’t have the trait that heals enemies, maybe the PC version has gotten over this, to the point where nature doesn’t think the PC is quite as abhorrent as its brethren. But what if it was instead able to harness this “wrongness” and turn it into a strength?

Nature’s Revenge Bullywug Racial Power
As you feel nature shifting to thank your enemy for dealing a mortal blow, you use your mastery of chaos to pervert the reward.
Encounter
Immediate Reaction Close burst 20
Trigger: An enemy scores a critical hit against you.
Target: The triggering creature.
Effect: The target is weakened until the end of your next turn.

It it powerful? No, not really, unless you’re knocking a bunch of damage off a brute or solo’s next turn. It would be much stronger as an interrupt rather than a reaction. But for a power available for free at level 1, it fits, and it’s a rare racial power that affects an opponent without an attack roll. Again, it can be modified by feats to perhaps inflict ongoing poison or other ailments.

So we end up with this:

BULLYWUG
Average Height: 5′ 4″- 6′ 0″
Average Weight: 150-240 lb.

Ability Scores: +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution or +2 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares (swamp walk)
Vision: Normal

Languages: Common, Primordial
Skill Bonuses: +2 Athletics +2 Nature
Deicidal: You gain a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls against immortal creatures.
Mutable Physiology: Whenever you spend a healing surge or complete a short or extended rest, roll a d10 to determine a damage type. You gain resist 5 to that damage type until you spend another healing surge. The resistance increases to 10 at 11th level and 15 at 21st level.

1 – acid
3 – fire
5 – lightning
7 – poison
9 – radiant 		2 – cold
4 – force
6 – necrotic
8 – psychic
10 – thunder

Primoridal Origin: Your ancestors were native to the Elemental Chaos, so you are considered an elemental creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin.
Rancid Air (Poison) aura 2: Any enemy that spends a healing surge within the aura is weakened until the end of its next turn.
Nature’s Revenge: You have the nature’s revenge power.

A lot more complicated, isn’t it? But it’s also a lot more balanced, and we’ve taken the worst published race in 4th Edition much closer to something playable. It’s not the only bad race (the whole point of the races in Monster Manual 2 seemed to be to make the already-lousy races in the Monster Manual look almost decent by comparison), but it’s a start.

* – A lot of the monstrous races have gotten updates via the D&D Insider subscriber system. Since I’m not a member, I hear about them third-hand, so I’m not real clear on what has and hasn’t been updated. In general I treat them the same way I treat an obscure rule book that none of my players own–if I can’t read it, it doesn’t exist.

Posted in Gaming Systems, Underpowered | Tagged | 2 Comments

Live GameScreen

Posted on 25 February, 2013 by Law

I have to give props to Live GameScreen, and not just because I invented it. It’s the tool I’ve been using at the table for almost three years now, and along with MapTool (for online gaming) it’s the only software I need or want for managing play. I’m not sure how many people reading this aren’t aware of it, but it’s worth checking out, especially now that it’s approaching v1.

I may need to log an enhancement for boss fights if I’m going to use it in the Awesome Campaign, though.

…you know, between this post and OpenOffice, I’m stating to think that my CamelCase software names outnumber my normal names. It’s really just Firefox and Minecraft, isn’t it?

Edit: Live GameScreen is now available for download from this very site. You can find more information about it in the top menu.

Posted in DMing, Gaming Systems | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

System Depth and Published Material

Posted on 23 February, 2013 by Law

When a player is building a character, I generally go through the same steps with them every time, or suggest that they go through the steps on their own if they’re sufficiently well-versed in the system:

  1. Decide what character they want to play. This includes personality, general role in a group, some backstory, and so forth.
  2. If the description from step (1) contains any in-game terms like the character’s class, feats, skills, etc., repeat step (1) until it doesn’t.
  3. Open a rulebook and start using D&D to build the character.

New players (that is, players new to D&D) don’t have a problem with this. They aren’t weighed down by in-game terms, information about what classes are good at what, predispositions toward how a certain class should act or which character ideas are powerful, and all that other stuff that gets in the way of building a character. Instead they just get an idea for what they want because they aren’t stuck with their concepts of what D&D can and can’t do.

Experienced players are actually just as good. They know what D&D is capable of, namely almost anything. They don’t mind playing a sub-par class, because that’s the class that fits the character they want and they trust the DM to not hammer them for their choice. They don’t think of characters as class-first (or, in the case of Monte Cook’s terrible, terrible opinion, race-first) because all classes have enough variance for plenty of character, especially once they start reskinning.

It’s the players in the middle that are the problem. They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. They know that certain classes are good and others are not, usually favoring casters. They know what energy types they should use, what monsters they can expect, what powers are good, what position they should occupy in a party and on the battlefield, and so forth. They tend to think of characters as bundles of stats first and personalities second, and they have a hard time building characters without divorcing them from the rules that make them work. *

So what causes this? I think there’s an inherent need to look at a set of options and find a “best”, an option you can pick for maximum benefit and minimum hassle. We look for the best apartment in a town, for the best brand of mustard, for the best car to fit our lifestyle. This (I’m convinced) is why the Yankees have so many fans outside of New York, because it feels good to cheer a team you know is going to win more often than not. People gravitate to the “best” options, and it’s hard to consciously separate from that.

This gets harder and harder as more choices appear. It’s usually not that hard to pick Brand A or Brand B cola when they’re both offered at once, but when Brands C through J join the mix it’s much harder to narrow things down to a single option. It’s much quicker if you can reject half of them out of hand for one reason or another. If you can cut out Brands F through J because they’re diet colas, you’ve gone from ten choices to five and life is much easier.

It was kind of a roundabout way of getting here, but I think that one of D&D’s advantages is also one of its problems, that there’s so much information and so many choices. When presented with twenty classes, the player who can immediately reject the twelve weakest is left with eight options that are slightly above the curve of the game. When presented with a hundred feats, a player can get themselves a much smaller list by merely rejecting twenty that are duplicated or improved by a better feat.

To an experienced player, the amount of information isn’t a problem. More options is just that, more ways to build the character you want. But to new players it’s a bit intimidating to see the sheer volume of published information at their disposal, and intermediate players drop most of it almost subconsciously because it doesn’t result in the bundle of stats they want.

This gets back to the idea of the article I referenced last time, that long-running series are big time sinks for anybody who wants to get into them. People are becoming more and more accepting of marathon media consumption, but we’re still not at the point where the average gamer can look at ten rulebooks on a shelf and process them all in an afternoon. Reading a single rulebook cover-to-cover is too daunting a task for many players, much less retaining it at will for actual gameplay.

The 4th Edition Player’s Handbook has 198,243 words (I counted). That’s sixteen more words than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Reading, processing, and retaining the PHB1 isn’t simple, and that’s just the first third of the Core Rulebooks for one edition. Even the smaller, post-Essentials books come close to 100K words (longer than Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). That’s a lot of information to process for somebody at any experience level.

Perhaps in response to this, I’ve seen some games that fit entirely inside one rulebook. Sometimes this works, but more for shorter diversions than for a long-term campaign. A small system that can be extended to a big game tends to be somewhat hands-off about it, relying on the GM and players to do the extension. In the hands of a good group, this works great. With a…less good group or a sufficiently bad leader, the gaps in the system become clear, characters and NPCs end up all looking the same, and the players effectively become unpaid designers trying to write additions to the system that fit the game they want to play.

There’s no universal solution for this. Designers like writing new material, companies like releasing new material, and players like reading new material. GMs who ignore big systems in favor of smaller systems miss out on just as much as GMs who do the opposite, perhaps more if local players are only interested in the big names. Players who ignore half of the system, looking for only the best options, miss out on some great opportunities, but players who try to use it all end up lost in the sheer number of options presented.

The best idea I have is to talk with your players. If it looks like they’re in that intermediate mode where their characters are powerful but lack personality, suggest that they intentionally try something less powerful next time. If they’re avoiding a certain complicated mechanic, offer to go over it with them so you all learn it. If they want to play a new campaign, propose that you try a different, simpler system. And encourage them to ask question if they don’t understand something, in the same way that you should ask them if they’re doing something you don’t understand. No single person can be expected to consume and retain the rules for an entire system, but the answer isn’t to ignore half the game out of hand.

* — I realized after writing this paragraph that it sounded a little like a GNS analysis. That is, new players are narrativists who just make a character, intermediate players are stats-first gamists who play to win, and experienced players are simulationists who can make the system fit any character or world. That’s not even a little true. I’ve seen plenty of gamists who build a character based entirely around a powerful character idea, but I’ve seen plenty more who think of the character they want before they even consider their role in a party much less their class or feat tree. Players of all types fall into this general progression of experience.

Posted in DMing | 4 Comments