Non-Play Report: Upkeep and Carousing

Well, I didn't get to play D&D this weekend.  I was on Zoom, and raring to go, but none of my crew showed up.  I guess that's the trouble with trying to keep things casual for this campaign: I've said that I'm willing to be there every Saturday, but it doesn't mean I'm always going to draw a crowd.  It's depressing, but on the scale of problems I have going on right now, a week without D&D is small potatoes.  I'll just show up again next week, and hopefully some of the guys feel like playing too.  If there's a silver lining to missing a week, it's that I'll be even more prepped when the next game comes around.

As to what I did have prepped, part of that involved some new house rules I came up with for PC upkeep.  One of the bigger problems old-school D&D has is with its economy.  Giving experience points for treasure is all well and good, but it means that by the time players hit 2nd or 3rd level they're already basically rich.  They can buy pretty much anything they want from the equipment list, especially in the various forms of Basic (which is what I'm currently running in modified form).  I sometimes wonder why adventurers bother advancing to higher levels, especially thieves and fighters.  They could retire in comfort well before reaching name level.

So I'm thinking up means of divesting the PCs of their cash.  Training costs are an obvious money sink, but I feel like they go against the free-wheeling vibe of Basic D&D.  Besides, when thinking of training, the way I'd like to implement it is as a benefit rather than a necessity.  Players would still be able to level up without training, but those that did train would be at a potential advantage: better Hit Die rolls, more access to spells, that sort of thing.  To work this out I'd need to sit down and figure out the advantages for each class, and I haven't done that just yet.  And anyway, as I said, it's not something I want to do when running Basic D&D.

Another option I've seen floating around is to only award the PCs XP for gold spent.  This has potential, and would be good for encouraging that pulp-fantasy scenario where the hero strikes it rich but manages to lose everything before the next adventure.  One thing I've always wondered with this system, though, is whether this only counts for gold found through adventuring.  Could PCs work a day job and earn XP buying their daily meals?  Could a Lord just sit back after setting up his barony, and collect XP along with his taxes?  I'm inclined to say no, but then eventually you get into a situation where every PC needs to keep track of two separate treasure totals, and I'm not a huge fan of that.

Similar to the way I want to incentivise training by offering benefits, I want to do the same thing with my upkeep and carousing rules.  So I came up with the following house rules, which I was hoping to spring on my players on Saturday.  Alas, it'll have to wait until next week (hopefully).

D&D Nth EDITION UPKEEP & CAROUSING RULES

For every in-game week between game sessions, each player must decide what lifestyle their PC has been leading.  The lifestyles are as follows:

• Destitute - Costs nothing
• Poor - Costs 1 gold piece per character level per week
• Moderate - Costs 10 gold pieces per character level per week
• Wealthy - Costs 100 gold pieces per character level per week
• Extravagant - Costs 1,000 gold pieces per character level per week

I figure that a PC's expenses go up as they gain in level, as they have more equipment to maintain, and their tastes get more exotic.

Depending on what the PC choose (or are forced into due to low funds), their hit points may be affected by their lifestyle.  Each character rolls 1d20, adds their Constitution modifier, and consults the relevant table below.

Destitute:

• Roll 1-10 - Hit points unknown*
• Roll 11-20 - Hit points as normal

Poor:

• Roll 1-5 - Hit points unknown*
• Roll 6-20 - Hit points as normal

Moderate:

• No roll required.

Wealthy:

• Roll 1-2 - Hit points unknown*
• Roll 3-15 - Hit points as normal
• Roll 16-19 - Hit points as normal, plus one bonus Hit Die**
• Roll 20+ - Hit points as normal, plus one "exploding" bonus Hit Die***

Extravagant:

• Roll 1-5 - Unknown hit points*
• Roll 6-15 - Hit points as normal
• Roll 16-17 - Hit points as normal, plus one bonus Hit Die**
• Roll 18-19 - Hit points as normal, plus one "exploding" bonus Hit Die***
• Roll 20+ - Maximum possible hit points****

* Hit Points Unknown: This result means that, for whatever reason, the PC isn't feeling good.  Perhaps they're sick or undernourished (for those living poor or destitute lifestyles), or perhaps they've overindulged (for those living wealthy or extravagant lifestyles).  Whatever the reason may be, the PC is under the weather, and they begin the game not knowing how many hit points they have.  Only upon taking damage will they roll their hit point total (using their regular number of Hit Dice and Constitution modifier).  The damage they just sustained will come off the total rolled.  If the PC rolls higher than their regular hit points, they start with their regular hit point total.  (A player might try to get healing before the adventure starts, and this should be allowed, but they still don't get to roll their hit point total until they first take damage in a dangerous situation.  The healing is then added on top of that.  Also, a character can't learn their hit point total by cutting themselves with a knife or running into a wall or whatever other dumb way they come up with to circumvent the rule.)

** Bonus Hit Die: Indulging in the good life has agreed with the PC, and they're feeling great.  They begin the game with their regular hit point total, plus an extra hit die and Constitution modifier's worth of hit points.  Once those bonus hit points have been lost, the PC can only be healed back up to their regular total.

*** "Exploding" Bonus Hit Die: The PC gets their regular hit points and a bonus Hit Die as above, but if they roll the maximum on that die they get to roll another bonus Hit Die.  If that roll is the maximum, they get to roll again, and so on as long as they keep rolling the maximum.  In any event, they can't end up with more hit points than the maximum possible for their class and level, plus one extra Hit Die.  For example, a 7th level fighter with no Constitution modifier would have a maximum possible hit point total of 8 x 10, or 80.

**** Maximum Possible Hit Points: The character has had some wild nights, and is feeling invincible.  They begin with the maximum possible hit points for their class and level (as shown above).

I'm hoping this system encourages the players to spend some of their hard-earned gold.  It does a few things that I like.  First, the Moderate option allows players to completely opt out of it.  I've seen games ruined because the DM came up with some crazy house rule that they loved, and forced it on the PCs.  I don't want to do that, and I always like to give the players the choice of just not engaging with it.

Second, it gives the players a reason to go out looking for gold, and punishes unsuccessful adventures.  If you head into the dungeon and come back with nothing, there's a good chance you won't be feeling so hot after a week or two on the skids.  Obviously, this is likely to affect low-level PCs moreso than high-level ones.

Third, there's always a risk factor to living the high life.  Sure, you could come out the other side feeling fantastic, but the chance is there that you might not.  My only misgiving is with the numbers under Wealthy: as written, a high-Constitution character is in no danger of suffering drawbacks.  I might institute a rule whereby a natural 1 always results in "Hit Points Unknown", regardless of the character's Con modifier.

I have two worries about the system.  The first is that it might make the PCs a little too powerful.  I'm not all that stressed about this one; old-school D&D characters are fragile enough, and some extra hit points now and then aren't going to make a huge difference to that.  My second and larger worry is that the potential penalties outweigh the benefits, to the point that the players will opt out of the system entirely.  I mean, there's always someone who's going to be willing to take the risk, but if in the first few games the rolls come up badly, most players will avoid it from then on.  That's what play-testing is for, I guess.  If it sucks I'll get rid of it, or try to come up with something better.

House Rules: Tinkering With Encumbrance

I've been trying to organise some quarantine D&D for the near future, because everyone being at home with nothing to do seems to me like the perfect time for some gaming.  I've never played over video chat before, so I want to run something simple and quick, and the Tom Moldvay version of Basic D&D seemed to fit the bill.  Reading it over, though, there were a number of areas that I'm not entirely satisfied with, so the inevitable red pen came out and I started house-ruling.  So much for quick and simple...

One of those areas that I've been tinkering with since forever is encumbrance.  Tracking encumbrance by coins can result in some very fiddly addition, and using pounds isn't really much better.  I've never found a system that I can keep track of at the table, or that my players can be bothered with.  What I'd like is something that uses a less granular measure of weight, and that can be gauged with a quick look at a player's character sheet.  I was playing around with it again over the weekend, and I think I might have cracked it.

Rather than using exact weights, I'm going with a system that uses encumbrance "slots", kind of like some computer RPGs.  Each character begins with a base of 15 encumbrance slots, which is modified up or down based on their Strength modifier.  For characters created using Moldvay D&D, that gives a range from 12 to 18.

Every item takes up a number of slots.  Most items take up one slot, some take up two, and there are smaller items that take up a third of a slot.  Armour takes up a number of slots based on its bonus to AC.  I'm still tinkering with these numbers, but here's a summary of what I have so far:

• 7 slots: Plate Mail Armour
• 5 slots: Chain Mail Armour
• 4 slots: Pole Arm
• 3 slots: Leather Armour, Two-Handed Sword, 10' Pole
• 2 slots: Battle Axe, Long Bow, Crossbow, Spear, Long Sword, Standard Rations
• 1 slot: Shield, Hand Axe, Short Bow, Quiver, Quarrel Case, Club, Mace, Sling and Stones, Short Sword, War Hammer, Backpack, Crowbar, Grappling Hook, Hammer, 12 Iron Spikes, Lantern, Mirror, Iron Rations, Rope, Large Sack, Thieves Tools, Tinderbox, Torches (6), Waterskin
• 1/3 slot: Dagger, Oil Flask, Holy Water, Small Sack

Very small items, such as rings, gems, cloves of garlic, etc. don't count towards encumbrance in this system.  Neither does clothing, or pretty much anything else a character is wearing aside from armour.

Backpacks are a special case: a backpack has six slots of its own, but only counts as 1 slot towards a character's encumbrance.  Obviously, only one backpack can be used in this way at a time.

Coins are also a special case.  Every 100 coins take up a slot, so theoretically an average character can carry up to 1,500 coins.  In practice, I assume that any character wearing clothes has enough pockets and pouches to hold 100 coins.  Beyond that, coins can't be carried unless you have a container, such as a sack or a backpack.  Coins placed in your primary backpack won't contribute to your encumbrance beyond the 1 slot for the backpack, but coins in sacks or a second backpack take up slots as normal - I figure dragging around a sack of coins will weigh someone down pretty quickly.  This allows me to properly try to run some logistical D&D; I really want to play one of those game where the players have to make hard decisions about what treasure they carry out of the dungeon.

(Sacks are one of the problem areas I'm still figuring out. I'm thinking of making them weigh nothing, or perhaps only having their weight count when there's nothing in them.)

The character's movement rate is based on the following chart:

Encumbrance Slots	Movement Rate:	12	9	6	3	1
12 (Str 3)		1-3	4-6	7-9	10-11	12
13 (Str 4-5)		1-3	4-6	7-10	11-12	13
14 (Str 6-8)		1-3	4-7	8-10	11-13	14
15 (Str 9-12)		1-4	5-7	8-11	12-14	15
16 (Str 13-15)		1-4	5-8	9-12	13-15	16
17 (Str-16-17)		1-4	5-8	9-13	14-16	17
18 (Str 18)		1-4	5-9	10-13	14-17	18

The encumbrance slots are on the left, and movement rates are along the top.  The cross-referenced number show how many encumbrance slots span that movement rate.  For example, a character with a 13 Strength (a +1 modifier) would have 16 encumbrance slots.  Assuming their inventory is filled completely with items that weigh one slot, they have a movement rate of 12 when carrying 1-4 items, 9 when carrying 5-8 items, 6 when carrying 9-12 items, 3 when carrying 13-15 items, and 1 when carrying 16 items.

Writing out like this feels a little complicated, so let's take a sample character with an average Strength and buy some equipment.  Rothgar the fighter has a Strength of 11, which gives him 15 encumbrance slots.  With his 110gp, he buys the following gear: a longsword, chain mail armour, a shield, a backpack, a lantern, 3 flasks of oil, some rope, a week's worth of iron rations, a waterskin, some garlic, and a large sack.  That costs 101gp in total.  Written down, it would look something like this:

So by this system, a character with an average strength and a fairly standard equipment load would have a movement rate of 6 (or 60' per turn).  The coins would normally contribute to encumbrance, but there are so few that for now they're in the section for items of negligible weight.  Rothgar could carry 100 coins in clothes pockets and pouches, and another 600 in his sack, but doing so would reduce his movement rate to 1, which is probably not desirable.

As an option, I'm thinking of making magic armour weigh less, with each "plus" taking off one encumbrance slot.  That makes magic armour desirable for much more than its protective value.  Elven chain I will probably have take up a mere 1 slot.

This system might be a little complicated to set up at the start, but it looks as though it does everything I'm looking for,  The measurements are bigger, the character's Strength is a factor, it looks like it'll be easy to use at the table, and you can see what the character's movement rate is at a glance.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays over the weekend.

Some Preliminary Combat House Rules

I've mentioned before that it's my intention to cobble together a version of D&D that is exactly to my liking.  I've done plenty of thinking on the subject, but little concrete work.  Most of my D&D efforts of late have been going towards this blog, and the continuation of my 3rd edition campaign that will be happening ANY DAY NOW.  But I have a few spare moments right now, and some ideas I'd like to hammer out and share with my readers.

So, combat.  If there's one criticism of D&D combat, it's that it can get a little mechanical and repetitive.  A lot of the onus for that falls on the DM and the players, but it's an easy rut to fall into, especially a few hours into a long game session.  I'd like to develop something that makes the basic mechanics of D&D combat a little more dynamic, and takes it away from the endless loop of roll-to-hit/roll-damage.

The first thing I need to do is lay out the kinds of things I want to achieve.  I have three main goals here: create something concrete for critical fumbles, make critical hits a bit more interesting, and introduce the possibility of permanent injury to characters dropped below zero hit points.

The combat system I'm using as the base here is 3rd edition: the attacker rolls 1d20, adds his attack bonus, and that's the Armor Class struck.  It's simple, it works about the same mathematically as earlier editions, and above all it's dead simple to explain to new players.  I have no problem with descending ACs and THAC0, but I've played with countless people who could never figure it out.  In 3rd edition, I've never had to stop in the middle of combat to tell a player what AC he hit, and it's not an aspect of the game that I miss.

Critical Hits
The first thing I want to change from 3rd edition is the expanded critical hit range for certain weapons (i.e. a scimitar doing a critical on a roll of 18-20).  In my game, a critical hit is rolled on a natural 20.  I'm also doing away with the confirmation roll: there's little more disappointing than rolling a 20, then missing on the roll to confirm.  I will have a secondary roll, but it's going to determine some other stuff; once a critical has been hit, a critical it will remain.  (I've never been quite sure of the purpose of the confirmation roll, though I've heard it explained as getting around the problem of monsters that need a 20 to hit always doing a critical.  It's not a problem I particularly care about.)

(I may keep the expanded criticals in if I retain Feats in the game, and use the range in the equipment lists as the maximum amount that the weapon can be expanded to.  If a guy wants to burn two Feats so his scimitar can critical on a roll of 18+, he's more than welcome to do it.)

As far as damage on a critical goes, I prefer rolling extra dice rather than going for a flat multiplier.  I'm torn on whether to apply damage bonuses once, or to each die.  At the moment, I'll keep it conservative: for a standard critical you roll the weapon's damage dice twice, and add your damage bonus after.  And although I said that I was being conservative, I want to add the possibility of infinitely scaling damage: basically, if the dice roll well enough, there's no limit to the total damage that can be dealt.  Player's love doing astronomical amounts of damage, and I happen to enjoy making my players happy.  Besides, the monsters will be doing it as well, and I also love making my players sad.

And now to weapon and armour breakage.  Breaking weapons and armour in D&D is quite rare, and at least in 3rd edition it's something the player has to do in lieu of dealing damage.  I'd like it to happen in the course of regular combat, and to be honest I just like the imagery of a guy blasting through his opponent's shield and smashing the arm behind it.  That's the sort of thing that ought to happen on a critical, and I want to put it in there.  I also want the possibility of a player hitting his opponent so hard that he breaks his own weapon.  I've read accounts of ancient warriors pausing in the middle of battles to straighten their swords with their feet, and while those were bronze weapons, and the PCs will most probably be wielding iron and steel, I want to include something along those lines.

This is where the secondary roll comes in: not to "confirm the critical" as it does in 3rd edition, but to determine if the critical has any secondary effects.  Here's a preliminary table:

Roll (1d20)	Effect
1	Your own weapon breaks (if possible)
2	You are disadvantaged in the next round
3-15	Regular critical
16	You deal a debilitating wound
17	You damage your opponent's armour (if possible)
18	You damage your opponent's shield (if possible)
19	You break your opponent's weapon (if possible)
20	Add an extra dice of damage, and roll again

Note the multiple times that "if possible" appears.  This is to stop magical weapons being broken by normal ones.  Basically, normal weapons can break or be broken by normal weapons.  A +1 weapon can break any normal weapon, and another +1 weapon, but it can't be broken by a normal weapon.  And so on: a magical weapon can only be broken by a weapon of equal magic, and can only break upon armour of an equal value.  I need to do more thinking about how this system interacts with monsters that use natural weapons and armour, but that's always a problem with D&D rules focused on arms and armour.

Being "disadvantaged" above means that you may have gotten your weapon stuck, or overbalanced yourself.  I would play it as the PC being able to make half the usual number of actions in the next round, and suffering a penalty to hit and AC (perhaps a simple -1, or maybe the Disadvantage rule from 5th edition, which involves the player rolling twice and taking the lesser value.)

A debilitating wound is something that makes it harder for the victim to fight: blood in the eyes perhaps, or an injured leg.  I'd simply play it as a penalty on all actions (-1 to all rolls, or 5e disadvantage as described above).

Damage to armour and shields would probably result in destruction in the case of a shield, and the reduction of AC bonus by 1 in the case of armour.

Critical Fumbles
My players always ask me to describe some misfortune that befalls them when they roll a natural 1 to attack.  3rd edition, at least in the core game, has no system for this, so I usually just toss something out that has no actual effect on gameplay.  I'm going to create a chart, like the one above, to throw in some effects.

Roll (1d20)	Effect
1	You break weapon your own weapon (if possible)
2	You drop your weapon
3	You are disadvantaged next round
4	You deal yourself some damage
5	You damage an ally (if possible)
6-20	No effect

There's nothing too startling there, just the usual things that players expect on a fumble.  Being "disadvantaged" here means much the same as it did in the critical hit chart above.  Dealing damage to yourself is a possibility I've included, but I certainly won't have it as a full damage roll from your own weapon, or anything so ridiculous.  It might just be a flat die roll of 1d4, to represent a sprained ankle or something similar.  Damaging an ally is always fun, but I've added the "if possible" stipulation to head off particularly silly instances.  I've also left a substantial range for No effect, because I don't want to be dealing with this stuff every single time someone fumbles.  Sometimes an automatic miss can be penalty enough.

Permanent Wounds
Characters spend a lot of time in D&D being hit with swords, but outside of death they rarely suffer any negative side-effects.  I want to introduce the possibility for a character to receive a permanent injury when reduced to negative hit points.  It won't happen every time: I will probably have it as a percentage chance based on how far below 0 the character went when felled.  If he goes to -1, there's a 5% chance, at -2 a 10% chance, and so on.

Roll (1d20)	Effect
1-10	Extra bleeding (character loses 2 hp per round while bleeding)
11-15	Extra bleeding (character loses 3 hp per round while bleeding)
16	Severed hand or foot (75% chance hand, 25% chance foot)
17	Severed limb (25% chance each arm, 25% chance each leg)
18	Broken bone (arm, leg, ribs, cracked skull)
19	Impressive scar
20	Disfiguring scar

You may have gathered that this one is really in the preliminary stages, as I haven't worked out the mechanical effects of severed body parts and broken bones (besides the obvious ones). Receiving an impressive or disfiguring scar will influence how NPCs react to the character in certain situations, and either could be detrimental or beneficial.

One thing I don't want this system to produce, though, is a party of permanently crippled characters. I need to figure out which spells can heal these effects. The extra bleeding effects will be healed by a simple cure light wounds spell, or even by bandaging. A severed hand or foot I would allow to be reattached with a cure serious wounds, provided that said extremity is available to press to the stump. I'd let the same spell fix broken bones. A severed limb I might make more difficult to deal with: maybe cure critical wounds? The scars I would have completely healed by any cure spell; those would only come into effect in the case of natural healing.

Gutting It Out
Finally, I want rules for PCs who just refuse to go down. At the player's option, I will allow any PC to make an attempt to keep fighting by making a Will save of DC 15 + the number of hp below 0 that the character currently has. For example, a character at -1 would have a save DC of 16, and a character at -9 would have a save DC of 24. This save must be made every round, using the character's current hit point total, and as soon as it is failed he will fall unconscious. Once unconscious, no further attempts can be made.

Any character attempting to "gut it out" has to check for the possibility of permanent wounds first. That character will bleed at twice the normal rate: 2 hp/round for most characters, but as much as 4 or 6 per round if they get an extra bleeding result as a permanent wound.

In addition to bleeding faster, there's one obvious danger: a character who is still in the fight has a greater risk of being targeted by opponents. It's one thing to be lying on the ground bleeding, but another thing to be bleeding out while also under attack. I like this rule a lot; it gives players in a desperate situation an extra chance to help their comrades, but at greater risk to their own mortality, and it leaves that choice in the hands of the player.