Sarah Darkmagic

After Geek Girl Con, I spent a week hanging out with my friends in Seattle and was able to get in 3 games while out there, The One Ring, 4e, and Pathfinder. Both The One Ring and Pathfinder games had a higher danger threshold than the 4e game and most of the 4e games I've been in in general. In particular, both had their share of save rolls. I know this is something that used to be a bigger part of D&D but my experiences over the week left me feeling a bit mixed on them.

The One Ring

In The One Ring, I played a wood elf. We were chasing down some dwarves and the trail led to a pool's edge where the tracks mysteriously stopped. A bell began to ring and my character fell victim to its enchantments. Down into the pool she went.

This is the first time I've played a character that was compelled to do something. Since this was a one shot for me and I trust the GM completely (Hi Chris!), it really wasn't a big deal. Out into the hallway we went and he quickly described what was happening. I had a few choices to make, do I wait for my party (not knowing if they would come rescue me, I was a new character after all)? Do I try to swim out of there the way I came in? Or do I open the dark door I found down there? None of these choices are an obvious "right" choice but at least the one I chose, wait for the rest of the party, wasn't an instant death sentence, although some of the players in the room thought my character might be dead already.

Now, if my failed save had led to instant character death, I'm not sure how happy I would have been. I mean, there are times where I wouldn't really care and sometimes games with instant death can be fun. A fair number of video games have that type of behavior, where the fun of the game is more in mastering it than playing through an awesome story. But in this case, there wasn't anything that was obvious to me about what I should do. It would have felt arbitrary and unfulfilling. I guess what I mean is that the setback was nice, but being able to recover from it, even if it meant fighting more monsters, was even better.

Pathfinder

My host Stephen was nice enough to run a Pathfinder dungeon crawl/delve for me during my stay at his house. While I hadn't played Pathfinder before, I had been in a few sessions of a 3/3.5 house-ruled game. However, my character really hadn't had to deal with many save situations and definitely none that involved conditions like paralysis or blindness. The Fellowship of the Tweet had dealt with paralysis (and my cleric's inability to Turn Undead versus some ghouls) but I'm still a little scarred by that encounter.

If I'm being honest, I found the save situations in that game a bit more frustrating. Our barbarian became blinded for an hour after he failed his saving throw versus the blindheim and another character got sucked into a gelatinous cube at one point. While I think I can see what the mechanics were trying to model/accomplish and there is nothing inherently wrong about them, they just aren't my preferred way of doing it.

That said, I did see how they encouraged more creative play (although it's not the first time I've noticed it). Particularly in the case of the blindheim, where you have some options to overcome its gaze attack (which in 4e terms can be used both as an aura and as a ranged at-will). Although the dice weren't in my favor, Stephen said yes to my idea of trying to cover the blindheim's eyes with my cloak, which would have helped my party kill it faster.

I wouldn't mind making it clearer in 4e that DMs could allow creative solutions like that in their games, perhaps even in the monster's statblock. We already have this to a degree. For instance, the wraith loses its insubstantial trait until the start of its next turn whenever it takes radiant damage. This might encourage a divine character to choose a less powerful attack with the radiant keyword to give the party a better chance of hitting and killing the creature. However, we could expand this even more and make it more like a trap or hazard where the PCs can take countermeasures to avoid a particularly damaging attack or stop a buff. Spend a standard action and one part of the monster's special powers goes away for a turn.

This might also give space for the people who like to play helper characters. Instead of making certain classes be helpers, individual players can decide how to play out those classes. And while not everyone can necessarily help with every monster, helping isn't limited to a particular class type. This might be more fun and rewarding than the existing aid another rules.

So how would this work? Let's take the blindheim as an example. In 4e, I would make its gaze attack into an aura. Entering or starting your turn in the aura causes you to grant combat advantage and provides a -2 to attack rolls since the creature's gaze is so distracting. If you end the turn in the aura, you have to make a saving throw against becoming blind. (Alternatively, we could do this when you start or enter, with a successful saving throw meaning you grant CA and have the -2 penalty instead of being blinded.)

Since Gaze attacks can't be done while the creature is blinded, players could find ways to blind the creature. Perhaps they have a power that causes blindness or they decide to put a cloth over the creature's eyes. The type of action required (standard or minor) should be determined by the benefit they gain from the action. In the terms of this aura, I'd say they were gaining a pretty big benefit on success, and would require a standard action, since not only would they as an individual benefit but the whole party as well.

What Do You Think?

So, let's say you were faced with a creature like the blindheim. How would you overcome its special powers? How far can we push this while still keeping the rules fairly light? Would you allow someone to spend their standard action, no check, to try to blind the blindheim?

It's easy to dismiss concerns or criticism about rules changes, proposed or implemented, as being a grognard, especially in D&D. "You don't like it because it's different," they'll say, "but you'll just buy it in the end." But my understanding is that with the current state of things, and particular with the Legends & Lore articles, we're supposed to talk about it. It's their way of getting community feedback, good or bad, on what they are working on.

Now I reacted pretty strongly to the most recent Legends & Lore article, Magic and Mystery. Twitter can be great about many things but a nuanced discussion of the issues is often difficult in the space of 140 or so characters, especially when having a discussion with particular people, meaning you have to put their twitter handles in with whatever you're trying to say.

So, now that I have a bit more room, let me first say that I'm in favor of the idea of removing magic items from character advancement. I fully acknowledge that the 4e system made it more difficult to run particular types of campaigns. It's also an issue I've discussed before. I love the inherent bonus system, although it doesn't fix this completely, and just felt we needed more guidance on how to use it properly. I also love the new rarity system on magic items to give a DM guidelines about what might be available and what might not be. Again, it's not perfect, but it does attempt to address some of the issues with the current magic system.

However, whatever rule system we put in place, I would love it if more guidance was provided, especially for newer DMs. When I started DMing, I didn't realize that the 4e system required magic items as part of advancement. Given the story and the group, this meant I didn't hand out as many magic items as I should have. While we didn't advance far enough for this problem to become apparent, it wasn't a big deal. But it would have been nice if things were stated a bit more explicitly.

So, it's not the suggested rule change that made me react strongly. I'm in favor, and have been in favor of it for over a year. It's the larger context of the article that made me wonder if I was being trolled by a well-known and well-loved D&D designer and whether or not I should continue to read the articles.

Instead of laying out the issues, the article states that players want a particular type of magic experience from D&D, one in which magic is mysterious. It then goes on to propose that the reason magic is no longer mysterious is that items can no longer do wild and crazy things, in part because they are part of character advancement and also because they are available to players in the form of lists.

Missing from the discussion are the reasons why the system evolved that way. Prior editions where magic wasn't as well codified as 4e had their issues as well. DMs, maybe as a way to bribe their players or under the mistaken impression that adding more cool factor always makes games cooler, frequently gave more magic items than they really should have. They then would try to take those items away from the players, who by that point, thought the DM was playing with them. Trust eroded and the game would become less fun. I personally know of one group that TPK'ed their characters because the game ceased to be fun. (See Monty Haul)

In addition, the old way required DMs to know about the magic items available and put pressure on them to keep up with the books. One of the things I loved about 4e is that each player could tell me what he or she might like and I could keep an eye out for the items that I thought they might want to have. I didn't invest in the Adventurer's Vault series because as a DM, I had enough other stuff to do. I don't want to spend my valuable planning time keeping up with every magic item out there. I just don't. It doesn't mean other DMs don't enjoy it. It just means that there are arguments for allowing players to know what magic items exist and that there isn't one default experience or desire in this area.

Furthermore, there are other just as likely reasons why magic is no longer mysterious that are never explored in the article. After 30 years of playing with magic getting by and large the same treatment, how can it be mysterious for that player? Who is to say that it's not mysterious to the new player who came to the game for the first time within the past two or three years. Maybe there are parts of the magic system that we want to be mysterious and crazy, like the aftereffects of the spell plague in the Forgotten Realms or an artifact lost to the world for thousands of years, but other items, like common spells and prayers should be, well, known.

Rather than seduce us with nostalgia or bash on players for, gods forbid, salivating over an item that perfectly fits their character concept, perhaps we should explore these issues. Also, I find it a bit difficult to talk about solutions to the magic problem only with people who primarily DM. Regardless of which book the magic items end up in, they will have to know about them in the sort of intimate detail that makes mysterious harder if not impossible. Anyway, that's where I'm coming from.

Sunday, I mentioned that one of the things I love about Ascension is that for beginners it makes it easy to optimize your turn without knowing all of the rules and strategies of the game. The mechanics limit the choices a player has at any one time, in my estimation often between 2-5 options and the random element of the game dampens the effect of player knowledge on the game. Contrast that with 4e D&D where to create a character you make decisions that touch on just about every subsystem in the game (see Heroes of the Fallen Lands, p 33):

1. Choose Class - determines your powers and available skills and influences what your ability scores will be.
2. Choose Your Race - determines bonuses to ability scores which in turn affects a bunch of character build elements.
3. Determine Ability Scores - determines a number of character build elements including defenses and attack and skill modifiers. Also suggests certain feats and powers over others.
4. Choose Skills - Training gives you bonuses, but you might have no idea if they will be useful in this adventure or campaign.
5. Choose Powers - Powers provide tactical benefits but, like skills, for some it can be hard to tell if they will be useful in a particular campaign. Others are only useful depending on what other players pick. For instance, the warlord ability that gave bonuses to melee basic attacks often weren't that great pre-Essentials but were killer with certain Essentials builds.
6. Select Feats - Feats in 4e provide relatively small bonuses that might not be obvious at first.
7. Select Equipment - The limited mundane equipment lists at 1st level make things a bit easier, but then again I invested in Fine Clothing when I created my first character so there are still easy suboptimal choices.
8. Fill in the Numbers - Ok, the character builder does most of this for you.
9. Other Character Details - Alignment, god worshiped, background, personality, appearance, and languages. The DM and/or adventure determine whether or not any of these matter.

In addition, Heroes of the Fallen Lands specifically suggests looking ahead to see what the hero gains in future levels and use that as a guide for making choices now. That's great if you've already committed to playing this game for multiple levels, but what about the person giving this a try for the first time?

Level 0

When I started, this process was a bit overwhelming. I had no idea if anything I picked would actually be useful and, in fact, was disappointed when some of my choices didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Now a good DM can work around these problems, but not every group can or will start off with an experienced DM. The rules and guidance should help new DMs as much as new players. This is one of the reasons why I love the Level 0 rules detailed in the Dragon article "A Hero's First Steps".

Character creation focuses a lot more on your character's story. Then you pick a power source and gain 1 power from that. The flavor text of each power calls attention to what's unique about that source. For instance, the primal at-will mentions the spirits. They also make it clear how ability scores and powers interact. Each power has 4 riders that are triggered by the use of an experience token. These riders are tied to group roles, so during the course of play the player can try on a number of roles to see which one is the best fit for the player and the character. In my opinion, this is really important and mirrors what kids do during play anyway. Class is something the player picks when moving to first level.

After power source, the player picks the race, gaining the benefits of that race. After that is ability scores, provided as a choice between two arrays. What I love is that instead of just presenting the arrays with no other guidance, each array has a descriptive label, Promising or Prodigy. Then comes skills. The skill lists are tied to the power source and the player only picks 1 of 3. Unlike the normal skills distribution across classes, this one has little repetition. Finally, the player picks feats (if granted by the character's race) and gear which also is extremely limited.

I love how this reinforces some of the core concepts of the game such as power source and group role. It also lets them try out a bunch of different options while keeping some things static, such as the character's race. The lack of options also makes it easier to play creatively in the game, at times almost forcing one to do so because there isn't the same assumption that they are likely to succeed at this task. They aren't heroes yet after all.

Lair Assault

This ability to experiment with the PC is great, but if the adventures themselves are a moving target, it makes it a bit more difficult to see if the changes a player makes deliver the desired results. One thing I love about Lair Assault is that ability to replay the scenario is built in. I'd love to see similar scenarios aimed at newer players where they can test out their characters and with instructions to newer DMs about how to make the environment and NPCs work together to create more and more interesting encounters. Not all of these should be combat oriented either and it would be cool to have a bunch of them for different terrain types (wilderness, city, dungeon, etc) to use as random encounters.

D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters is great because it's a set day and they craft the adventures so the same group doesn't have to show up week to week. For someone who isn't quite invested yet, this can be a great setup. Sure there are problems that not everyone has a local gaming store and not everyone can make Wednesdays. But overall, the system seems to work pretty well and it allows for a more casual gaming experience, something that I think is easier to fit into the lives of the people who might want to play D&D but haven't tried it yet. It definitely echoes my experience with new players at cons like PAX East and NYCC. Those potential players have a lot options competing for their time and a longer player experience means D&D is off the table.

Overall Recommendations

• Let players start the game making fewer, more focused choices like in the Level 0 rules. Focus those choices on learning some of the basics ideas of the game and make sure the game world is accessible to them. Give tips to DMs on how to convert some related genres and stories, like Harry Potter and Avatar the Last Airbender, to a D&D setting.
• Come up with some quick and easy scenarios that new DMs can drop into their game and serve to educate and entertain both player and DM. Try to make them easy to replay as well.
• Keep the games shorter and more casual but at a set time. Allow players to come and go within the group.

Monte talked a bit more about his skill system in the new Legends & Lore column, Very Perceptive. Here's an extended example of how I think the proposed word-rank system would work. For this example, I'm assuming a D&D game that only has 10 levels and is a bit more "gritty." This means the difficulty to perform certain tasks might be higher than what we currently expect from a game such as 4e.

Diceless Skill Challenge

Background: The adventurers are trying to take a shortcut into the dungeon they heard about from a kobold they interrogated.

Scene: The smell hits you before you see the tunnel's exit. The sickly sweet smell of decaying garbage and bodies attacks your nostrils. As you exit the tunnel, you notice the object of your search, the door the kobold told you about, the one that gives you access to the secret passageways around the dungeon. Between you and it however, are 30' of vertical rock, made smooth and slick by generations of garbage dumping, and a few other creatures who wouldn't mind a nice helping of fresh meat.

Challenges:
Sheer wall: Expert Athletics
Monsters: Trying to climb the wall while the monsters are about adds a rank to any attempt to get to the door.

Example Solution:
The party decides to deal with the monsters first. They don't have to kill them. If they can put them to sleep or otherwise make them stop fighting, that works too. That reduces the climbing challenge back down to Expert Athletics.

The fighter in the party has an Expert level Athletics skill. He climbs the wall, using the rope and pitons to make it easier for the others to climb. That reduces the Athletics rank down to Journeyman.

The cleric and thief both have Athletics trained at a Journeyman level. They would just climb up the rope but the wizard is only at Novice level. The thief decides to craft a harness for the wizard. Once they all reach the top, they can lift him up. This reduces the climb to Novice level for the wizard. Everyone makes it to the top and no dice were rolled. Just as importantly, no one had to play a game of read the DM's mind to find out there was a secret door or an invisible staircase if you did just the right thing.

If I wrote this system or used it at my table, I would say that whenever the group came upon the same or very similar challenge, they would automatically succeed. As Dean, pointed out on Twitter, Mouse Guard has a similar mechanic.

What do the ranks mean in DC terms?

I find it easier to think of the ranks on a d100 level rather than a d20. We have five ranks: novice, journeyman, expert, master and grandmaster. There's also impossible but that's supposed to be like going to 110%. So if we spread the ranks out evenly, novice is 1-19, journeyman is 20-39, etc. If we use the system Mearls discussed, meaning you had to roll a 15 to succeed on a check of your rank, then to roll a check for the level above yours would be 15 + 20 or 35. It would be pretty rare for someone to have enough modifiers in their current level to make that check and it would result in us adding large numbers together on a pretty consistent basis. Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but that's what I think Monte's system is supposed to reflect.

Reintroducing Rolls

While I happen to prefer less dice rolling, I understand it's not for everyone. However, we could introduce dice rolling back in. My suggestion would be the following. Keep the DC 15 number for checks of your level. Add 5 skill slots to each skill. Have your primary and secondary score, class, and maybe race automatically fill in one slot each rank associated with that item, such as rogues get 1 for thievery. Magic items, rewards from quests or particular challenges, and the like provide other training. Each slot corresponds to a +3 modifier to a check of the same level. When all 5 slots in a skill are filled, you increase your training in that skill by one rank. You lose the bonuses provided by magic items and the like, but keep inherent bonuses. (A downside would be trying to deal with rapid increases in one skill.) If you want to try for one level higher than your current skill, you have to roll a 19 without any modifiers, giving you a 10% chance.

Other Ways to Reward Skill Training

Let's say the group wants to search through the garbage before they continue on to see if they find any treasure. We could create a random table of stuff, let's say using a d20.

For each rank you have in a skill, you get 1 roll of the d20. The results can be cumulative, meaning you get each item you roll for or the rolls could create a list from which you may pick 1 item. I'm not sure which is better and this might be a place where the DM gets to change depending on the situation.