Tag: house rules

A quick test to see if a class change is overpowered

If you’re thinking of making changes to a class, you’re probably concerned about doing something that makes the class too powerful – I believe the current term is “overtuned”? There’s a quick heuristic you can use in strongly class-based games like D&D.

First, pick a benchmark class – this is a class seen as one of the more powerful ones for the game, if not the most powerful. Let’s assume we’re looking at 5e, and the benchmark class is wizard.

Second, you ask these questions:

1. Is the class I’m modifying at least as powerful as the wizard before making these changes?

2. Will the change make the class I’m modifying more powerful than the wizard?

3. Am I doing anything to reduce the power of the wizard?

If the answer to all 3 of these is no, the change probably doesn’t make the class overpowered. We can’t be too certain – a change may not make a class too powerful on its own, but may do so in concert with various build choices like feats or multiclassing combinations. But this is a good first approximation.

Incidentally, this suggests that any improvement to your benchmark class is a bridge too far, at least if that class really is the most powerful class already. For 5e, that means don’t buff wizards. Well, I’m sure the designers of 5.5e already know that…

Posted on by azabaro 0

Alignment

Alignment has been the source of a lot of unnecessary arguments across D&D’s history. It’s kind of strange – if you look back at original D&D, it was just a faction marker: shirts vs. skins (or togas vs. woad if you prefer). Its only real effects were to determine what types of monsters you could recruit – a Lawful character could ride a pegasus and a Chaotic one a griffin, but not vice-versa – and which magic swords a character could use (since back then they were all intelligent enough to have their own alignments). But that was it.

Somewhere along the way alignment became a description of a creature’s morality – or more problematically, of an entire creature type’s innate moral character, regardless of their actions. Orcs who are Evil by birth; elves who are Good by nature even when they enslave each other (that’s from an actual Dragonlance module, by the way). There’s no salvaging that.

A lot of folks just discard alignment, and while I can’t blame them I feel it’s one of D&D’s more iconic contributions to popular culture – I don’t know how many 3×3 alignment grids I’ve seen for ways to close a bag of bread or whatever, and there’s even an entire subreddit for alignment charts. I think it would be a terrible mistake to throw away that mindshare if we can salvage the concept, especially if we can do something interesting with it.

My take

Alignment is the state of being mystically connected to an extradimensional reality – in traditional D&D cosmology, to one of the Outer Planes. This connection can arise in a number of ways:

  • Being composed of the substance of that reality (for example, demons being literally made of the Abyss).
  • Powerful supernatural effects like a curse, perhaps even one passed down for generations; or a Helm of Opposite Alignment.
  • Behaving in a way that supernaturally resonates with that reality via magical sympathetic principles.
    • This last is the route traditionally assumed for alignment – that a character is Chaotic because they behave chaotically.

This proposal allows for a Hellboy-style character who is by origin tied to an infernal plane despite being completely out of sync with the ideals of that place; such a character isn’t born Evil, but they are born aligned with Hell (or just Lawful Evil) regardless of their feelings in the matter. This also allows for us to have weird objects (a rock that’s so evil just touching it will turn you into fiddler crabs!) or even places (which are strong in the the Dark Side), and corresponding phenomena for other alignments.

We still need to give alignment some mechanical definition. Let’s start with the following:

  1. A character may choose whether or not to have an alignment.
    1. If the character chooses not to have an alignment, they can simply write “unaligned” in any alignment field used to describe their character. A lot of beings are unaligned, including many people.
    2. If a player chooses to have an alignment, it never forces the player or their character to make certain choices or otherwise reduces the character’s agency or the player’s control over their character’s actions.
  2. Spells and effects which deal with alignment detect and operate on the mystical connection, not on the character’s thoughts, intentions, or historical behavior.
  3. Alignment has mechanical effects. A character
    1. Gets advantage on rolls to resist being forced, coerced, or manipulated into behaving contrary to their alignment’s ethics.
    2. Gets advantage on rolls to communicate with beings who share their alignment – they’re on the same wavelength.
    3. Gains Inspiration when they behave according to the ethics of their alignment at the cost of causing themselves non-trivial trouble.
  4. Available alignments
    1. The usual assumption
      1. There are 9 alignments, each made from a combination of choices along 2 ethical axes: Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic and Good-Neutral-Evil.
      2. Under this assumption, “Neutral” is simply a lack of a commitment along that axis, so a character who is Neutral on both the Law/Chaos axis and the Good/Evil axis is effectively unaligned. This means the standard alignment choices end up as follows:
        1. Lawful Good
        2. Neutral Good
        3. Chaotic Good
        4. Lawful Neutral
        5. Neutral (aka unaligned)
        6. Chaotic Neutral
        7. Lawful Evil
        8. Neutral Evil
        9. Chaotic Evil
      3. Each choice along an axis (other than Neutral) is associated with an ethic. A character doesn’t have to believe in the ethics associated with their alignment, but they may find it easier to adhere to those ethics in the long run – what’s that bit about the Dark Side being “quicker; easier; more seductive”?
        1. Law: the ethic of law is that things matter to the degree to which they endure over time. Transient things are ephemeral, less real (though views on this can be complex, since some transient things can be seen as part of a larger enduring whole, as with the cycle of seasons). A Lawful character will tend to adhere to traditions, plans, and other commitments even in the face of adversity.
        2. Chaos: the ethic of chaos holds that things matter to the degree to which they are present in the moment; more radical takes on this ethic claim the present is the only actual reality, with the past a ghost and the future merely a dream. A Chaotic character will tend to treat traditions, plans, and other commitments of all sorts as non-binding, or at least subject to reinterpretation in the moment.
        3. Evil: Evil’s ethic prizes the self, and more precisely self-interest above the interests of others. Evil characters aren’t necessarily unfeeling – they may like or even love some people, or feel loyalty to an organization or a larger entity like a nation or ethnic identity and therefore feel it’s in their own interests to help those people or groups – but fundamentally, an Evil character will tend to act in their own self-interest without concern for the interests of others.
        4. Good: Good’s ethic is easy to outline but hard to pin down: nobody’s interests are more important than anyone else’s, and therefore it’s only right that all parties be considered when determining a course of action. There’s still lots of room for disagreement: determining how to balance various interests against each other, especially when faced with the idea of a necessary sacrifice (for example, if there isn’t enough food or other necessary resources to go around) and even figuring out if something is considered to properly have interests of its own (does a magical construct carrying out the final orders of its long-gone creator? How about a nation-state, or an insect?). Even when faced with all these complexities, a Good character will tend to look for ways to act on behalf of others and try to avoid acting on their own behalf at the expense of others.
    2. Non-standard alignments. Some campaigns may have alignments other than the standard 9 alignments. For example, a campaign or setting might:
      1. Have the notion of an alignment of Balance (sometimes called True Neutral), whose ethic would involve trying to keep any of the other standard alignments from effectively marginalizing any of the others.
      2. Remove the Good/Evil axis and only use the Law/Chaos axis
      3. Build a completely distinct set of alignments around e.g. Aristotelian elements and the medieval humors and temperaments associated with them, so a characters alignment might be Sanguine (or Airy); Choleric (or Fiery); Melancholic (or Earthy); or Phlegmatic (or Watery).
Posted on by azabaro 0

Revisiting Prepared vs Known Spells in 5E

Background

In 5E spellcasters either know spells or prepare spells.  These describe a selection of spells on the caster’s spell list which they can actually select for casting at a given time. The primary difference between these categories is how often this list of castable spells can be changed: a caster can change their prepared spells after completing a long rest, but can only change known spells when they gain a level (and in fact they can only replace one known spell per level gained). In either case, a character can only have a specific number of spells known or prepared at a given time based on their class.

There’s an exception to this: wizards (of course). Wizards prepare spells, but they do so from their spell books. Spell books act as bit like a list of spells known except there’s no limit on how many spells a wizard can have in their spellbook. In addition, while a wizard adds 2 spells to their spellbook every time they gain a level, they can also add spells they find in play.

So our models are:

  1. Spell list -> spells known -> spells cast
  2. Spell list -> spells prepare -> spells cast
  3. Spell list -> spells in spellbook -> spells prepared -> spells cast

Analysis

Models 1 and 2 each have their own problems. In model 1, spells known being difficult to change as well as very limited pushes players toward monotony, a pattern of selecting only those spells they think are optimal; those who are plugged into online communities of optimizers will be more likely to align with community lists of optimal spells. In Model 2, spells prepared being able to draw upon a class’s entire spell list can easily cause analysis paralysis or lead players to monotonous selections to avoid that issue; they’re also pone to power inflation issues as any publication which increases their class’s spell list immediately gives them more power that other characters don’t get.

I think we want to use a hybrid approach like the wizard’s for all spellcasters. This allows us to expand a class’s spell list without worrying about all those new spells instantly showing up for characters to use. Players will then have to filter the list of spells their character can use at all down to an even narrower list of those they’re ready to use in a given session. In effect, we’d make every caster have both spells they “know” (for wizards, those they have in a spellbook) and spells they have prepared.

Research

Spells known/prepared by class (approximate):

  • Bard: Level + 2
  • Cleric: Level + Wisdom modifier
  • Druid: Level + Wisdom modifier
  • Paladin: 1/2 Level + Charisma modifier
  • Ranger: 1/2 Level (rounded up) + 1
  • Sorcerer: Level +1, eventually slowing way down after 12th level
  • Warlock: Level  + 1 through 9th level; + 1/2 Warlock level beyond 9th level
  • Wizard:
    • Prepared: Level + Intelligence modifier
    • “In spellbook” (i.e. known): at least 6 + 2/level. Also any spells found in play

The number of spells prepared seems to be fairly standardized at spellcaster level + modifier for spellcasting attribute; Paladin uses 1/2 level because they’re a half-caster (that is, their access to new higher levels of spells happens at 1/2 the rate of full casters like Clerics, Wizards, and Bards. We can take that as our general formula, though ideally we’d express it in a way that doesn’t require learning weird exceptions for some classes. 

A wizard starts off knowing about 50% more spells than they can have prepared, and automatically gains spells known at twice the rate the number of spells they can prepare increases. Taking the wizard as a guideline, we should have characters know about twice as many spells as they can have prepared. The wizard’s ability to exceed this limit with spells found in play and transcribed intro their spellbook can be treated as a distinguishing feature of the class.

Proposed solution

Let’s add the following definitions:

  • Casters cast spells from those they have prepared 
  • A caster can prepare a number of spells for a class equal to their caster level in that class + the class’s casting attribute modifier. They prepare those spells from the list of spells they know for that class. They can change the spells they have prepared after a long rest. 
  • A caster can know a number of spells for a class equal to twice the number of spells they can prepare for that class. They can only know spells from the class’s spell list, and only those of a level up to 1/2 their caster level in the class, rounded up.
    • A character’s known spells for a class only change when the character gains caster levels in that class – a Paladin gaining Warlock levels can’t make any changes to the Paladin spells known. When a character gains a caster level, they can:
      • Learn 2 spells from the class’s spell list of a level they can know for that class
      • Change 1 spell already known from the class’s spell list to another spell known from the same list of a level they can know for that class.
    • In place of known spells, Wizards have spells recorded in their spellbooks. These are the same as known spells, except:
      • A wizard can’t replace a spell in their spellbooks when they gain a level.
      • A wizard has no maximum number of spells recorded in their spellbooks (though any one spellbook of the wizard’s might not be able to contain all their spells; they may need to have multiple spellbooks).
      • A wizard can add spells to their spellbooks without gaining additional wizard levels; assuming they have a source for a wizard spell not already in one of their spellbooks (e.g. a scroll of wizard spells, another wizard’s spellbook another wizard willing to teach them the spell) they can add the spell to their spellbook in play or during downtime.
  • A character’s caster level is defined for a specific class. Their caster level in a class equals:
    • Class level for Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard, or any other class which can cast up to 9th level spells
    • 1/2 class level (rounded down) for Paladin, Ranger or any other class which can cast up to 5th level spells but not 6th or higher level spells
    • 1/3 class level (rounded down) for Eldritch Knight, Spellthief, or any other class which can cast up to 4th level spells but not 5th level or higher level spells
Posted on by azabaro 0

Break the Build Process part 2

Builds center around predictability. Last time, I considered a way to break up the predictable acquisition of ability score increases and feats. This time I want to think about another big factor in pre-planned character builds: selecting classes when a character gains a level.

This doesn’t require a heavy-handed approach – I don’t see any problem with characters continuing to level up in a single class, or even just continuing with whatever classes they already have. Pushing back on pre-planned character builds is probably as simple as making the acquisition of new character classes a bit unpredictable, enough so that players can’t guarantee their PCs are built according to an optimal distribution of levels. I can see a couple possible approaches here.

The simplest is probably to say: when a character levels up, they can automatically take a level in a class they already have. However, if they want to gain a level in a class they don’t yet have they need to roll a number higher than the classes they already have on 1d4. If they don’t make this roll, they have to take a level in a class they already have.

This is pretty lightweight, and it doesn’t outright prevent anything except for taking characters with 5 or more classes. It just means that when a player is trying to add a 2nd class they may have to wait a level longer than they intended, and adding a 3rd class may well require another 1-2 levels in their original classes. This should be enough to make multiclassing optimization tricky, especially if the character is gaining levels through play.

A more complex option is to require the character to take a feat in order to multiclass. Specifically, I propose that this should be a half-feat, which grants a +1 in one of the attributes listed as a “multiclassing prerequisite for the class” (so a Warlock would get a +1 Charisma, a Monk could choose a +1 to Dexterity or Wisdom, etc.) – my suggested write-up is below.

This requires the character to have the feat before they take levels in the new class, which means players probably want to be using the randomized attribute increase/feat determination I described in part 1, or standard rules will require them to take a level in an existing class and spend an Ability Score Increase on a half-feat they can’t benefit from until the next time they take a level.

Multiclassed (feat)

Normally, you can only gain levels in classes you already have. When you take multiclassed, you gain the following benefits:

  • Select a class you don’t already have levels in. You can now gain levels in that class.
  • You get +1 to an attribute associated with the class you selected
    • Barbarian: Strength
    • Bard: Charisma
    • Cleric: Wisdom
    • Druid: Wisdom
    • Fighter: Strength or Dexterity
    • Monk: Dexterity or Wisdom
    • Paladin: Strength or Charisma
    • Ranger: Dexterity or Wisdom
    • Rogue: Dexterity
    • Sorcerer: Charisma
    • Warlock: Charisma
    • Wizard: Intelligence

You can select this feat multiple times. Each time you do so, you must choose a different class.

Posted on by azabaro 0

Breaking the Build Process part 1

Modern D&D has a big focus on character building – pre-choosing all the options in character advancement to maximize power or effectiveness for some sort of imagined play experience. This isn’t something the book comes out and advocates, but the way the rules have been structured since 3rd edition seem to have really inculcated the practice in players, and new players seem to pick it up up.

I hate it. I realize D&D isn’t about to go back to handing out character power very heavily based on actions taken in play (looting magical items, recruiting henchmen, etc.), but I don’t want a character’s life basically pre-scripted. I bet minor rules changes can sap some of the energy behind the obsession with builds.

Let’s start with something simple: randomizing ability score increases and feat acquisition.

  1. Whenever you gain a level, roll 1d6. The indicated attribute increases by 1.
    • 1: Strength
    • 2: Dexterity
    • 3: Constitution
    • 4: Intelligence
    • 5: Wisdom
    • 6: Charisma
  2. If this increases the attribute to an odd number, choose a half-feat (a feat that grants +1 to an attribute in addition to other benefits, e.g. Resilient or Observant).
    1. The half-feat you choose must be one that gives an ability score boost which could match the one you got – for example, if you got a +1 to Strength you could choose Resilient (which can give a +1 to any attribute), but not Observant (which can only give a +1 to Intelligence).
    2. You don’t gain the +1 attribute from the feat (in effect, you already got it from the roll), but you do get the other “half” of the feat.
  3. At levels where you would normally get an Ability Score Increase, roll for two attribute increases. If they both increase attributes to odd values, you can take two half-feats, or one regular feat. This is the only way to get regular feats under this system.
  4. If you aren’t using feats, then in place of a half-feat you can learn two normal languages, one exotic language, or any one proficiency (weapon, armor, tool, skill, or saving throw) of your choice.

Under this system, a character will gain 24 attribute points on the way to 20th level. However, those will be randomly distributed, increasing each ability score by 4 points on average. Since players don’t control how these increases are allocated, you won’t see characters of a given class looking identical even if their initial approaches to building their characters are very similar. As a side benefit, you can try dropping the cap on PC attributes – go ahead and let them exceed 20. Since the increases aren’t under player control, they aren’t likely to actually pass that limit, and for those who do their characters will be all the more distinctive, since their accomplishments won’t be readily copied by others.

24 attribute increases will average out to 12 times when an attribute increases to an odd value. This should be expected to result in around 10 half-feats and 1 full feat on the way to 20th level. That may sound like a lot, but how many groups actually go all the way to 20th level, or even get particularly close? I’m pretty sure most groups stop somewhere around 10th level, and in that case we’re looking at 11 attribute increases, which means about 5-6 half feats, and about a 1/3 chance of a full feat. If that still feels like too much – and despite all pretense of analysis in game design, how things feel is a much better guide to group satisfaction – then there’s an easy fix: just give out 2 randomly-rolled increases at the levels ASIs (Ability Score Increases) are noted in each class description, and 1 randomly-rolled increase at all other even-numbered levels. This will result in 16 attribute increases on the way to 20th level, with about 7 half-feats and 1 full feat over that period.

Posted on by azabaro 0

Quicker short rests with some controls

In 5E, short rests take a full hour. That’s long enough to discourage some players and entire groups from relying on them – a real problem, since a number of classes are built around the idea of getting short rests, specifically around 2 short rests per 1 long rest.

We can resolve this by saying that a short rest requires only a few minutes – perhaps 5 or 10 – but also requires the character to spend at least half their maximum Hit Dice (rounded down) on healing. This would allow characters to take 2 short rests per long rest, although there are some breakpoints: at 1st level they can take an unlimited number of short rests (but there aren’t likely to be a lot of possible abuses at that point), and at 3rd level they can take 3 short rests per 1 long. I think that’s less of an issue than short rests which are too long to get used.

Posted on by azabaro 0

Zeno’s Bow

Any arrow fired from this bow will fly in a straight line to the first target it hits; its range is unlimited (but remember that unlike normal arrows, it flies in a straight line, unaffected by gravity – the bow can’t be used to fire arrows in a parabolic arc over obstacles). An arrow thus fired cannot hit a target who was moving away from the bow  when it was fired until the target ceases such movement. This may allow the target a chance to take cover behind an object which will take the arrow hit for them – the bow doesn’t provide perfect aim, after all.

Posted on by azabaro 0

Giving Sorcerers an Identity

Sorcerers were introduced to D&D in 3rd edition. At the time they could be best described as “Wizards, except they use Charisma instead of Intelligence, and they use spell slots to dynamically cast spells from a small static pool, rather than casting from from pre-defined loadout of spells from an indefinitely large pool”. Oh, there was some noise about where they got their apparently-innate magical ability – something about possibly being descended from dragons – but if so that didn’t seem to make any difference to their abilities – they were still learning and casting the exact same set of spells as Wizards.

Continue reading →

Posted on by azabaro 0

Odd Attribute Modifiers in d20 games

When Wizards of the Coast published the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons (and thus set down the foundation for d20 games) they adopted a new, standardized, open-ended schedule of attribute modifiers (as compared to the fixed-range and sometimes attribute-specific schedules from earlier editions). In order to be open-ended the modifiers had to be defined by a formula – mathematically it’s

Floor(attribute/2) – 5

In plainer language, it’s +1 for every 2 points above 10, -1 for every 2 points below 11. Simple enough, but there’s a drawback: the “every 2 points” bit (necessary to keep attribute modifiers from becoming completely overwhelming differences between characters, overriding most other differences in ability) means that odd-valued attributes are basically useless – a 13 is worth exactly as much as a 12, a 5 is just as bad as a 4. These values seem like vestigial bits from prior editions, and while the designers of 3E tried to ameliorate that by giving them some utility (defining attribute requirements for feats in terms of odd numbers) they weren’t very successful – for example, substandard attribute values don’t end up differentiated, and feats a player wasn’t considering can’t make their character’s odd attribute values meaningful.

To fix this without upsetting the apple cart (all the other design work in 3E/d20), we’d really like to give these odd attribute values a modifier that’s halfway between that of the even values that bookend them, so for example, a 12 => +1 and a 14 => +2, so a 13 => +1.5. Fine, except what does that mean? How do you add half a point to a roll? You can say something about using it as a tie-breaker, but that won’t come up very often, and even when it does there’s no guarantee the opposition won’t have an odd attribute and the accompanying tie-breaking modifier on their end of things.

How about this: let’s get to that “.5” modifier statistically. That is, instead of adding half a point to a bunch of rolls, let’s add 1 point about half the time. We don’t even need to do any extra work for this – the rule could be

When your die roll is an odd number, add 1 to it for every odd-valued attribute that would modify the roll.

As an example let’s look at a Paladin making a Fortitude save. They have a Con of 13 (+1) and a Charisma of 15 (+2), and because they’re a Paladin their Charisma bonus applies to all their saves. When they roll a Fortitude save, they’ll add +3 when their roll is even, and +5 when the number they roll is odd. On a roll based on Charisma alone (Diplomacy, perhaps) the Paladin’s attribute bonus will be +2 half the time and +3 the other half, averaging out to +2.5. This makes their 15 Charisma worth exactly half the difference between a Charisma of 16 and a Charisma of 14, and doesn’t require us to rewrite the rest of the game.

Posted on by azabaro 0

Basic magic item creation rules

D&D 3rd edition introduced a well-defined process for creating magic items. It seemed like a good idea – lots of folks wanted something beyond the ask-your-DM-and-prepare-to-quest-like-crazy-to-make-a-shield+3 guidelines of 1st and 2nd edition, and I was certainly among them. Too bad none of us – players or designers – anticipated the effects of the standardized system we wanted or got: magic items being taken for granted (because they could almost all be produced reliably), severe disruptions to the way people played the game (because certain items could be produced quite cheaply, thus altering assumptions about the power available to characters, parties, and NPCs), and mundane wealth being devalued (because both could be acquired with gold, any mundane object was just some fraction of a more powerful or directly useful magic item). So we probably want to dump the 3E item creation rules. But that still leaves us wanting some sort of replacement. What form should that take?

Continue reading →

Posted on by azabaro 0