Things You Learn...

Quite a few people seem to spend more than a little time savaging 3rd Ed./3.5 D&D, I generally don't (saving my bile for 2nd Ed...), as I spent several years playing it and, overall, had a great time. The fact that I've grown disillusioned with it does not destroy its worth.

One of the things that I started doing in Third that I've carried on with is the rule I started calling "It's on the table". The origins of this were due to some of my Third players being far better at mechanical jiggery-poky than I am. So, in an effort to save my sanity and keep the game being fun, I told them that they could use anything their black little hearts desired... but that I could, and would, use whatever horrific monstrosity they came up with against them at some later point, they had, as I put it, "placed it on the table" and it was fair game. Conversely, I said, whatever I use as an NPC is also on the table.

So far, in my current Ravenloft 1st Ed mash-up the oddest a player wanted to start with has been a half-orc, even though I stated that I am open to whatever they'd like to play. (I wouldn't necessarily let it be powerful, but it would be at least on par with the PHB assortment of races.) This being the case, all of the oddball races (and classes) have been NPCs (now, this is, at least sort of, Ravenloft, so all of the races have been at least human-seeming, but...) and now there is a small selection of potentially interesting options.

At present, on the table are:

necromancer (my own version of such a class)
mad scientist (a class of my own creation, a sub-class of magic-user)
half-ogre
weirdling (all of the semi-humans, such as the tiefling, but exact bloodlines may vary)
drow
Gamma World mutant

And that's about it... oddly when I started the post I would have said there were more, but I've checked and it's not so... (though weirdling is pretty open-ended now that I think of it).

"There Must be Some Way Out of Here." Said the Cleric to the Thief

For our short discussion today, I wish to consider the case of the cleric and the thief in D&D.

The esteemed and respected cleric is, by all objective standards, a powerhouse. Having access to all types of armour, many weapons (none perhaps so mighty and prone to enchantment as the fighter's noble friend the long sword, but still fairly potent), good hit dice, spells (and a dizzying array of them to boot, considering the potential for bonus spells due to a high wisdom score and the fact that a cleric may prepare any of the spells on the cleric list, provided the character can cast that level of spell), a decent attack strength, and the ability to turn undead. (And, in some campaigns, specially granted divine powers above and beyond these enumerated.)

The skulking and furtive thief is rather less so. Having access to some, mostly weak, armour, a decent panopoly of weaponry (including that champion of blades, the resilient long sword), fair hit dice (sliding to poor if one uses the B/X or BECMI thief), and some special abilities. Said special abilities, however, require a fair amount of luck to use successfully at the low levels.

So, one can plainly see that the cleric is the more powerful, less 'balanced' (to slip into neo-jargon for a brief moment) of the two classes.

Yet, it has been this author's experience that many players will pick a thief but only a few will willingly play a cleric.

Something about being presured into being the party's medic, I am given to understand...

With the prologue now out of the way, I present some of my meandering thoughts regarding the re-working of the cleric and thief classes.

The cleric, it would seem, started it's fictional life as a vampire hunter and slowly transmogrified into the all-around holy man (woman, elf, insect, horrible eldritch monstorsity, etc.) that it is today. It can not be doubted that the typical party will need some, and often a bit more, healing, but should one player be "forced" into serving such a role? Should the DM be "forced" to weaken encounters because the party lacks healing? I, in my near infinite wisdom, say, "No". In my next game, the cleric is not the standard sort of priest, neither is the ecclesiast - a cleric subclass more oriented to spell-casting than armed combat, the standard priest is just that, a priest. A normal man (0 level) who can conduct the appropriate rituals, knows the history and stuggles of the faith he/she serves, and can possibly invoke a blessing if pressed. In short, members of the varied clerical subclasses are special because they can invoke miracles.

Wandering back on point for a moment, in the Cassandrian Campaign, clerics are the chosen warrior-prophets of their dieties. Primarily focused on destroying the damned who still haunt the earth (or, in the case of evil clerics, known as anti-clerics, commanding such wretched abominations into malignant service...) and warring against the enemies of their faith. As such, they have fewer spell casting powers than the "by the book" cleric.

First of all, they do not possess spell casting powers at first level, a cleric's spell progression starts at second level (I simply and easily "move the chart down", i.e.: read the first line as pertaining to second levl clerics and so on), these miracle-workers must prove themselves to their gods. Secondly, a high wisdom score does not grant any bonus spells. Such powers must be earned, and as a result of this decision, I no longer need to worry about the players of magic-users complaining that they should get bonus spells for a high intelligence score... Thirdly, a cleric (including the ecclesiast and the shaman, but excluding the druid) must retain a prayer book detailing the varied miracles that they are able to invoke. Analogous to a magic-user's spell book, this prayer book (in the case of the shaman, this is usually a collection of fetishes, inscribed bracelets, or the like) allows the cleric to prepare their spells. This limits the cleric to a select number of spells, allowing the customisation of different faiths but avoiding the creation of thousands of different spell lists. These three things limit the spell-casting power of the cleric, but also free them from the burden of having to be the healer as the DM may not alot any healing spells to them.

The thief is a rather different problem. One that I am, as yet, unsure of the correct course of action. I do not want to strengthen their combat abilities as they strike me as less of a direct combatant than any other class. I am tempted to improve the chances of success at thieving abilities at lower levels, but what then? What is there for high level thieves? And yet, I like the class and want it to thrive in its odd little niche...

More thoughts later.

Rules Philosophising, Part I

In this series of posts, I plan on warbling forth regarding various and sundry elements of the rules of A/D&D.

Though done to near death by many thousands of others, I can, no doubt, provide a startling level of illumination and clarity to the many facets I plan on babbling about. After all, my insight is matched only by my brevity and simple vocabulary.

Today's topic is the attribute bonus. Not those applied to the attribute, but those derived from it (i.e.: the to hit and damage modifier gained from a high strength score). Perusing the earliest versions of this great game, we can see that attribute bonuses are a tad thin on the ground. A high prime requisite would provide a bonus to earned experience points, a high constitution a minimal bonus to hit points, high dexterity an equally microscopic bonus to hit with missles, and our old and dear friend charisma determined the amount and loyalty of hirelings and whether or not a witch, upon capturing the PC, would turn him into a swine, or keep him enchanted as a lover. Not, perhaps, always vital to know, but something that should have been retained if only to prevent the concept of 'charisma is the dump stat'.

Flipping forward a half dozen odd years, to the Moldvay Basic set, we find a plethora of bonuses, many of them quite substantial. The PC's prime requisite still gives a bonus to earned experience points, but now virtually all attributes provide some other perk to the character. Whether it be additional languages, bonuses to hit, bonuses to saving throws, what-have-you. And these are no mere +1, but +1, +2, and +3! Only poor, abused, charisma is left in the cold, with only the amount and loyalty of retainers and a 'reaction modifier' left to it. And the words of old are gone, leaving us fearfully aware of a probable porcine fate.

AD&D's attribute bonuses are of much the same nature as the Moldvay rules, a tad higher in some cases, with better bells and whistles (save, once more, shivering and arthritic charisma) and the desire for higher and higher attributes (and their accompanying bonuses) was well founded at this point. Second edition, with the addition of the "Skills and Powers" books, fed the desire, enabling players to 'split' attributes, concentrating on the 'half' of the statistic that provided better bonuses (or, at least, so I saw).

And in the Third Edition bonuses are enshrined, not as mild perks, the rewards of good fortune with the dice, but as a needed part of how good a character is in her class (especially in regards to the spell-casting classes). Gone is the bonus to earned experience points (though given Third's advancement scheme, this makes no difference), but the remains are titantic in their importance to a PCs success. (Witness thus the abundance of "stat raisers" and such items.) Charisma, it must be said, is given a slight boost, but only for certain "builds", for most it remains even less useful than before as henchmen/hirelings/retainers seem excised from the rules (replaced by the feat-generated cohort).

So, where then, does this leave us?

I am, I fear, unsure. I would like to recapture the spirit, it seems, of the original rules and ratchet down the power of and perceived need for bonuses, but I am uncertain as to how to best go about this task.

A multiplicity of options will eventually be posted here.

Until then,

Good gaming.