November update

Still running twice weekly games and having a good time.  Roll20 is working well for this kind of campaign and the sheets are working as is keeping various maps in play for overland travel, dungeon exploration and managing handouts.

In the playtest some players are starting to hit level 4 as they explore and fight their way across the wilds.  I think that the rate of advancement is about perfect, combats are averaging about 3-4 encounters and around 250-300XP per six player session and they are spending a good amount of treasure to top up to next level when they return to town.  It will be interesting to see how this shapes up as they hit the mid levels 5-7 and see if it still seems to track.  

The overland map is expanding outward as they explore and looks like this now:

The northern wilds

Using the VTT features in roll20 is great although I wish I could use a tablet or something to do the live drawing part since using a mouse with their tools is very obtuse.  The players are able to add annotations to the maps and I am using copy/paste to lay out the terrain icons which works well.  In Roll20 the DM needs to manage the map I think although I would love if the players did take on more mapping and notetaking.

I'm currently working on the 7.4 rule update which is a bunch of minor tweaks and fixes more than any big changes.  Still slowly updating the spell descriptions to make them more skill facing and still working on more challenging monsters.  One player bought a bunch of war dogs and we quickly realized that adding 2HD for trained animals was too much, so that buff got scaled back to 1HD.

I'm tightening up the language around combat round actions a bit, each round you get an attack action and a maneuver or two maneuvers.  

Attack actions are: 

• weapon attacks;
• aiming;
• casting spells;
• defense.  

I specifically listed Aim as an attack action since PCs with multiple attacks could then use an attack to take aim if they wanted.  I also called out the Defense action here which makes it more clear how that works to provide AC bonus.   

Maneuver actions are: 

• movement of various kinds;
• manipulating items;
• swapping gear;
• assist;
• or other miscellaneous actions.  

The assist action is new here and I see this as a replacement for things like flanking or other ways to give another player advantage and still leverage the initiative system.  The way announcing actions and movement happens it is too hard for players to rely on combat positions for bonuses so having this action will mitigate that I hope.  It also lets other players set up surprise attacks for rogues which would let them act sooner in the round than if they had to set themselves up.  These are not really changes so much as clarifications to existing mechanics and hopefully its all a lot more clear for those reading the rules now.

I also formalized overland travel and rest around the 4 hour "watch" period, generally rolling for an encounter and giving a travel description for each 4 hour period.  I standardized the journey encounter rolls to a d6 where 1 is an encounter on the relevant table and 6 is a 'character moment' where a PC will give some information about themselves either in a story or in interaction.  I like that idea since it gives some sense of time and getting to know one another on overland treks.  Players were kind of hesitant at first but since they know its coming up they are starting to warm to the idea and prepare things for it.  I like it a lot, especially since its an exploration game and I am discouraging long backstories at character creation.  I also added a petite rest because I noticed when they are resting players fall into the idea of first and second watch pretty quickly but it was a bit hard on PCs who only had minor wounds as they usually got tapped to keep watch.  I decided to give PCs who only rest for 4 hours a small HP recovery equal to their level.  I also want to make sure that PCs who didn't get at least 4 hours rest in a day would have disadvantage until they did.

No firm date on when I push this latest update out, but it will be soon.

Big Scary Monsters

Still running playtests and getting a lot of good feedback from the players.  The fixed weapon damage seems to be going well although I have toyed with having monsters roll damage vs having them do half HD damage on regular hits and full damage on critical hits.  Having the monsters do fixed damage seems to take away some of the excitement but that might be my baggage talking.  When a HD12 skeleton hits with 6 or 12 point of damage every time it really changes the tone of the encounter.

I have been thinking about monsters in general.  A problem in Beacon (and in d20 systems generally) is that big bad monsters are usually not as effective as bunches of smaller monsters.  Players will quickly gang up on a big monster and quickly chip it down with their attacks or lock it up so it can’t attack.  TO deal with this for your big nasty monsters you either have to make them so powerful that if they connect they wreck the PCs, or you have to make them so hard to kill they become a slog.  This isn’t ideal from a narrative perspective.  I've had multiple instances already where the party will take out a Orge or an Ettin with minimal fuss but be totally overwhelmed by 3-4 small creatures with high AC.

For a while now I have used the monster HD for their initiative and one the surface it seems like a good idea, bigger monsters are usually slower and it fits well in many cases.  One place it doesn’t fit is when you want a powerful monster to be fast.  You could make it have a small HD type but with lots of dice, like 5d4.  You could also just override the HD for initiative for that particular monster.  Both those ideas would work I think, but I think there’s another way to do this that might take care of the other problem of players dogpiling your set piece monster.

Why not have monsters with multiple HD?  The idea comes from this post by AngryGM which posits making big monsters with multiple stat blocks so they function more like a group of creatures.  It’s a pretty interesting idea and honestly we were already giving monsters multiple attacks in a round so giving them additional HD associated to that doesn’t seem out of line.  This would also be useful for initiative since you could have a monster with a fast and a slow attack.

You can do this two ways; either have a monster with two HD types use both at the same time, e.g. a creature with a body and a tail attacking each round, or you can have the monster evolve/devolve so that it uses up an initial HD first and when this is gone the second HD kicks in.  The idea of having a big nasty monster with multiple ‘parts’ that can attack and be targeted independently seems to solve a lot of problems.  First it’s tactically interesting if you have a dragon with a head and a tail and claws and the Wizard immobilizes the tail with a web.  Also if the monster has sequential HD and two HP pools you can have it start out quick with small HD initiative then once that pool is gone it becomes slower with larger HD giving bigger damage and slower initiative.  Or reverse that and that a ponderous monster become quicker and more desperate when it’s D12 pool is gone and now it’s rolling D4s.  You can even do the 'Hydra' idea where you lop off a head and the monster grows new ones which increase in HD each turn.  This whole component monster concept bakes in some flavour as well which is very nice.

You might say why even tie HD to so many monster mechanics if your going to do something like this?
Well, the idea of basing all the mechanics off HD still simplifies a lot of things and for most monsters it works well.  All we are doing here is breaking a mighty monster into easily manageable smaller parts.  In fact the rules say monsters shouldn’t just be stat blocks and should be unique monster-y things and so mashing some simple monsters together into a big monster seems to fit that design philosophy.

I think I'm going to winnow down the Beacon monster list and remove the larger and more complex monsters, and putting in  a few examples of these complex monsters instead. Maybe I'll add a short section on designing more interesting larger monsters along with that.  I've also decided to pare down the sections on Poison and Disease and just have a few examples instead.  As with the monsters its better to have an idea of how it could work and how to customize it for your adventure than to have a large list of easily derived items.

Initiative and Damage Changes

So the play testing has been going very well and the players seem to agree that the new initiative system is very good and makes for some interesting and dynamic combats.  Using the Mike Mearls "Greyhawk" system of declaring actions and using that to roll lowest on different dice creates interesting scenarios where players weigh their need to act faster or take more time to move into advantage.  Having initiative every round makes the combats more dynamic and players are reacting to the events rather than just waiting out their turns.  Monsters have fled battle and been caught fleeing or fled successfully based on their initiative rolls over a couple rounds.  Its all been pretty good.

There are a couple things I want to add to lean into this concept even more.  I want to add a rule that if you are holding your action you can REACT to an opponents attack if they are later in initiative order.  You roll a 3 to cast a spell and the opposing wizard rolls a 6, you can cast your spell and hope to stop them or you can hold your action and try to counter their spell.  This is a more interesting choice I think.  Same as blocking, if your quick enough you can move to intercept an opponents attack and block it, saving the poor halfling rogue from being impaled on the bad guys spear.

The block and counter-spell actions have been in the Beacon rules since the beginning but are rarely used.  I think because they required you state your intention at the start of the round and forgo your attack, players thought they were both less fun and harder to execute.  In any system where you have to choose to attack or try some mitigating action, you are usually going to attack since its the simpler option and it has a net effect of taking out your opponents and ending the combat.  However in a specific instance it may be better to react to mitigate damage and so when you see those situations and can react to them its pretty fun.  You are now PLAYING the game.  I think it much more likely you will choose a block or counter-spell to interrupt an opponents action than it would be to declare that as your action at start of a round.  It also means that blocking or countering a spell cannot happen unless you have initiative, which I think is a good limiter to those actions and so they can be a bit more powerful than they might otherwise be if they were just regular actions.  I might look for other reactions to add as well, things to make the combat flow more fun, it seems to be a natural fit for this initiative system to have these type of reactions.

However not all is sweet in our delicious candy-land.  The other side of this initiative system is that it means that you are rolling three times in combat for every attack and this is causing things to go slower.  Rolling lots of dice is fun but also slows down the game.  Picking out dice and adding up the results is slow and so usually games will try to get rid of as many rolls as possible.  They usually start with initiative and I get that, but I think that's the wrong approach since initiative is such a great tool for modeling combat.  Why get rid of the good and interesting rolls where luck really does play a huge part?  I would rather get rid of the other side of things and get rid of the damage rolls, and in fact that's what I'm going to do.  

Beacon already has simplified damage for weapons, based on if they are light or heavy, and I think its time to go even further and just set the damage for those weapon types.  My initial thought is you would take the middle number and say its 3 points for light weapon and 4 for a heavy weapon and critical hits will always do double that, so 6 and 8 respectively (and +1 for two handed heavy weapons).  This takes out a whole roll and makes things resolve faster, and you still add all the STR and fighter damage bonuses etc. so the numbers will work out the same as they do now.  I'm not sure what to do with monsters at this point, although the obvious thing is to take half their HD type as the base damage amount.  Monsters in combat need some other attention in any case.

I might in the future look at trying some kind of system where I'd lower the amount of set damage and use the value on the to-hit roll to determine how much damage is done.  For example you roll 3 points higher than the target AC so you would do 3 with a light weapon and 3+1 with a heavy weapon (plus all the other damage bonuses).  This might work but it would need some thought to model that out without breaking the game, since you can roll a LOT higher than the required to hit in some cases, and that number goes up the higher the character levels so it would have a real scaling effect.  It would also really impact low AC monsters (and PCs) disproportionately which would be bad.  Also it would be a lot of adding stuff up which is doable, but again takes time.  If you know your hit is going to do 3+2 damage unless you crit that's easy to keep track of.  If you need to ask the GM the specific AC and calculate it multiple times in a fight, or Hermes for-fend, make the poor GM do all the damage calculations for the combat, then obviously not so much joy.

So just the fixed damage for now.

Four Against the North

So the first play-test went pretty well and we managed to get characters rolled up and a quick romp into the woods.  I'm choosing to run the game as a West-Marches style campaign where there is a safe town the adventurers sally froth from and there is the wild wilderness full of all manor of encounters to be met and dealt with.  I expect lots of death and seat of the pants escapes.

Rolling up the characters was fairly fast with more time spent getting the book downloaded then actually making the characters.  The rolling was quick and then some time was spent explaining the classes and races but it went pretty quickly. Then we rolled for staring money and players equipped their characters.  It all went off with little issue, although there was some initial confusion about the skills, especially how crafting would work.  I chalk that up to the word being used so much in video games, but it did bring up a good point related to if crafting could be used to make potions.  

I have highlighted Potions as something I wanted to look into in the next release since up till now they were just the Divine version of scrolls, a way to make temporary magic items from spells, and not too thought out.  I am leaning toward the idea of making potions recipe based instead

The town

of spell based which would be another thing crafting could be useful for.  In the past I've really only used a handful of potions, like healing, invisibility, resistance etc and those don't really map directly to any one spell so treating them like a magic item instead of like a liquid scroll seems like a good move.  I would put a few recipes in the rules, made up of monster and rare plant components as well as having spells cast on them and so forth.  I think that would be good fun.

Anyway once characters were made I dumped them into a wagon heading into town (hehe) and had the driver explain that only crazy people came here to make their fortunes.  He also said that there was a river to the north and everything over that river was the wild lands.  They talked to some local people to find out some basic information and then they headed out.  Pretty quickly they had an encounter with 3 wolves (2 HD d6 AC14) and we got to test the new initiative rules.  I thought they worked pretty well, in the first round the wolves attacked first (D6) and the party did not roll very well I was worried that the wolves might have been too powerful for them.  Next round the wolves went last and the Druid managed to get off an entanglement spell that dropped their AC from 14 to 8 and the others got in a few good licks.  Again the wolves rolled poorly for initiative and the party was able to finish them off.  The last round saw a critical hit and a very solid damage roll so the battle ended on a high note although the party was down quite a few HP.  It was getting late and so they returned to town to recover.

I know that a lot of people will get worried about rolling initiative every round and thnk it takes too long, but I really enjoy the dynamic nature of these combats as fortunes do change and players are reacting to that as opposed to knowing which order they will act in for the whole combat.   The extra benefit of using the Mike Mearles idea of action based initiative was people caught on right away instead of the old phased combat approach which was always a bit hard to explain to players.  I did come across an issue of omission that its not always clear if monsters are using heavy or light weapons in melee attacks and I think that I might just have monsters use their HD as their initiative roll, so the larger, more powerful they are the slower they are to react.  I like the idea of a wolf using a d6 but an Ogre using a d10 for their initiative roll.  I'll have to see how that works in practice.

So all in all a good session, looking forward to more to come.

Twelve

I believe that I'm going to cap the Beacon advancement at level 12. I'm not going to do any drastic changes to the level progression or realign spells to levels or anything else that might really change the game simply because, well, it would really change the game.  I do think that capping the rule book tables and charts at level 12 will simplify everything however.  If people want to run past that level they can figure out the progression and extrapolate but I don't think I would want to play a level 15-16 character in Beacon anyway, I think things tend to break down by that point. I might have liked to make things even simpler with an even 10 levels but there's no real good reason to do that. By level 12 all classes have had a chance to get a couple bumps to their attack bonus, a few class based skill bumps and access to level 6 spells so I think it's the natural place to stop. This way I won't have to consider adding in level 7 or 8 spells, or worry about characters with triple digit hitpoints.

I'm also experimenting with replacing the attack bonus with an attack dice, ala Dungeon Crawl Classics.  I'm not going to go so far as to introduce zocchi dice or anything, however I think that with the basic d4-d12 you can get a pretty decent progression.  I'm mainly looking at how this impacts the fighter at the moment as they get the full range of the bonus and if it works for them, it will be easy to make it work for the other classes.

Here's the current attack bonus chart:

And here's an example of how that progression would map as an attack bonus roll:

	L1	L2	L3	L4	L5	L6
Dice(av)	d2(1.5)	d4(2.5)	d6(3.5)	d8(4.5)	2d4(5)	d12(6.5)
Low-Hi	1-2	1-4	1-6	1-8	2-8	1-12
	L7	L8	L9	L10	L11	L12
Dice(av)	2d6(7)	3d4(7.5)	3d6(10.5)	2d10(11)	2d12(13)	3d8(13.5)
Low-Hi	2-12	3-12	3-18	2-20	2-24	3-24

with magic users topping out at d8 and the other classes topping out at d12 

I tried to keep the average equivalent to existing values, but still the first thing that you will notice is that the high and low values are pretty wild, a possible +3 or +24 to hit at level 12.   I don't think that is a deal breaker, but it is pretty jarring, and I can see players not liking that much randomness.  I really don't like it very much so I've also considered doing this with more smaller dice in order to curb those outliers.  Also there's something cool about rolling a handful of dice and having more dice in that roll would model the reliability that comes from experience.  Doing this would expose more gaps in the progression but it would work out across the 12 levels and I'd have to jigger level 1 and 2 a bit so it would probably* look something like this:

	L1	L2	L4	L6	L8	L10	L12
Dice(av)	+1	d3(2)	d4(2.5)	2d4(5)	3d4(7.5)	4d4(10)	5d4(12.5)
Low-Hi	+1	1-3	1-4	2-8	3-12	4-16	5-20

 In this case magic users would top out at d4 and the other classes at 2d4

That is a lot more reasonable for my taste although the magic users get screwed.  I'd have to adjust that I think.  Also it is a new arbitrary mechanic with a lookup table to reference and it does nothing to address all the other mechanics that rely on incremental bonuses, like skill and magic rolls.  That means it's more complicated than what was there before and I'm not sure it adds a co-responding value to the game.  I'll have to think about this some more.



*yes I know

Ready weapon

I'm not one to complain when players automagically pull out a potion or other similar item from their backpack in the middle of a fight.  I don't want to make people describe how they stored their potion so it wouldn't break, how they reach around to their back while fending off goblins with their free hand or how they dig the item out of their backpack without unpacking the damn thing.  Its a game and this little fudge keeps things simple and really doesn't hurt the balance of things.  I do however want to make sure that weapons are not handled so automagically since that does impact some in game mechanics.  So In Beacon you have to ready a weapon before you can use it.  I'll let players ready a weapon in advance of combat if they are in a situation where it would be reasonable - like entering a dark cave, or when a wolf howls.  But I don't want players travelling down the forest path to have their weapons always at the ready for hours at a time.

Ready?

Combat in Beacon is broken into two phases - the reason for this is I didn't like the more complicated major/minor/utility action breakdown of a combat round - and I also found the single action combat round to be too open to abuse.  You can read up on why I went with two phases here and here- the point is - I wanted a simple breakdown that had the fewest rules required to achieve a decent level of tactics.  I also wanted to make sure that characters dropping/breaking or switching their weapons in combat would be impacted, but not penalized so heavily that it would be a problem when this happened.  Breaking a weapon and grabbing a replacement needs to add tension and excitement to the combat narrative, but it shouldn't be punitive.

So, assuming you aren't surprised, a consequence of this is that the Missile phase of the first round of combat often has players readying their weapons.  This isn't a real problem for people using melee weapons because they will get to ready their weapon (and move) then attack in the upcoming melee phase.  However folks using ranged weapons are a bit S.O.L in this situation.  If you ready your crossbow you will miss firing it in the missile phase and have to wait out the melee phase.  Well you can move both phases (up to 120 feet/yards if you move in both phases) anyway to get out of the fray and line up a shot.  I don't have a problem with this either I'm certain dedicated bowmen will deal with this as part of their tactics - but I'm pretty sure it will discourage the more casual use of things like throwing daggers, darts and hand axes.

There are two ways to handle this that I can see.

one way to handle it

The first is to make a distinction between ranged weapons like bows and thrown melee weapons like daggers.  In this case I change the Missile Phase to Ranged Phase and indicate which weapons are Ranged.  I somewhat like this idea, but it does introduce the issue of missiles flying in all  the phases and I can see confusion arising from that.  I also can see another problem that if a party is surprised and miss out on the Ranged Phase they will still have to spend a phase readying daggers and darts and won't get to use them until next melee round.

The second, and I believe better, way to do this is to make some weapons available instantly.  No need to ready that dagger - just throw it.  This appeals to my sense of narrative because - hey there's a dagger in your throat - and it would give a good reason for characters to carry certain weapons for these situations.  It also fits with the idea of unarmed combat - there is no way to justify making players miss a round of melee because they didn't ready their fists.  Making the cestus (your basic steel belted or spiked mittens) available for attack without being readied* only makes sense, why not just extend this to daggers, darts, staves and spears** as well.



* when you are wearing them, and you better not try wearing them 24/7 and eating your dinner or hanging out at the bar with them on however.
**well if you are carrying them like a walking stick maybe?

Another Suprise Attack

So not exactly a rousing success so far for the rogue special surprise attack rules.  I thought that it was a good rule because it allowed the rogue to sneak up or otherwise prepare themselves and then get an attack benefit for being tricky.  In practice it has not proved to be as good as the idea however.  I think the rule basically works as intended, but it does have some problems which are becoming apparent.

I think the main reason it has proved to be problematic in play is because a player has to make two separate rolls in order to pull the manoeuvre off, which is OK if they succeed but very not OK if they fail.  At the table the rogue player may be happy to make the stealth check and then miss the attack roll which not only is a bummer, but also may place the character in a bad position. Some of the suggestions from around the table were to just automatically add in the extra damage on a 'first strike' or to add the subterfuge bonus to the attack roll but I think both those approaches don't scale very well, especially at the low end.

Since last session where it was very obvious there was some kind of issue, I've been trying to think of a solution.  My initial thought is to simply have the rogue player announce their sneak attack or ranged double strike and then roll two d20 and if they get one success then it succeeds as a normal attack, however if both rolls are successful then the rogue has accomplished the special attack as they stated.  I like this because it's simple but I realize that it doesn't reward stealth except as a damage bonus.  It does however factor in AC which is supposed to fold in all those kind of abstractions that would be relevant such as target reflexes, situational awareness and toughness.  It doesn't mean an automatic success (although it does give a big bonus to the basic attack success) but it scales up well as the character's attack bonuses increase and when opponents are tougher as well.  It also kind of fits nicely with the missile double strike portion of the ability.  I haven't thought of anything else that I like better yet either.  Perhaps the there is a better way to organize the stealth roll and to hit roll in the existing rule so that the problem doesn't arise, but that doesn't mess with the statistics as much as this double roll mechanic will.  But I'll take elegant over minor probability changes in most cases.

Also, back to problems with the original rule, what I meant by 'combat engagement' in the original text is not obvious.  The intent was that once per opponent per combat the rogue would have one chance to pull off a surprising move that would confuse their foe.  It was a way to bake in the tricky but make sure that in the long run it wasn't going to usurp the fighter role of going toe to toe.  A rogue in combat with a number of foes could only surprise each particular opponent once.  It should also encourage rogues to change targets.

This then might be a better rule for the section on surprise attack in the rogue description.

In combat a Rogue may attempt to perform a 'surprise attack' by rolling two d20 for their initial attack on an unsuspecting foe.  If one die roll is successful then they succeed in their attack as normal, but if the second is also successful, they may either add their Subterfuge skill to the damage of their melee attack or perform an additional strike with a ranged weapon (provided they have an additional one available).

I would like to put in something more concrete about the attack being novel or unseen or otherwise unexpected but I don't know how to do that without getting back to the problematic skill check.  Also, how this interacts with the rules for critical hits and fumbles I leave up to your imagination for the moment.

Shields and DEX

Rolling up some pre-generated characters for next week's CampCon with the family and I noticed that I'm not happy with the way shields modify DEX.  It's too fiddly and it sucks.  The intent was to make shields a little bit less attractive but really that is stupid.  The real reason not to use a shield is so you can use two handed weapons (and get the +1 and full strength bonus to damage.).  Also magic users can't use them while casting and further limiting them is dumb so who cares if the rogue carries a shield?  Rogue is a lot more general now than it was in the beginning anyway and can just as easily be a tricky swashbuckler as a sneaky footpad.

Also DEX is not a purely physical attribute - it also doubles for reaction time and other things and it shouldn't be linked so heavily to having one arm occupied. Bad design.  I think I'll just take the DEX modifier right out because I don't like how it makes you have to keep two sets of stat calculations on hand since you can go from shield to no shield and vice-versa pretty quickly. Maybe I'll put in a Minimum Strength value to separate the large shields form the small.

Taking it out next update - you can pretty easily choose to ignore it in the current rules too.

While you were sleeping

I want to add something to the HP rules because it makes sense and is a logical extension of my HP rules.  However I'm worried it might have unintended repercussions to game play.  The HP rules state that if a character's HP drops to 0 they are unconscious and all further damage applies directly to their stats.  When any stat falls to 0 they are in an unresponsive coma and if their STR stat falls to 0 they are dead.  The line I want to change in here is this:

If a character's HP drops to 0 they are unconscious.  When a character is unconscious, sleeping or otherwise unable to react, all damage taken applies directly to their stats.

Your HP are your ability to avoid damage and you can't avoid damage when you are unconscious or unable to react. This doesn't mean just being tied up because you can move and struggle and be tricky even when tied up. In the same vein it wouldn't mean most forms of magical holding or charm because you should be able to resist that. This also wouldn't apply to surprise or things you don't know about, as in a surprise missile attack which you might somehow sense just before it occurs.  But if you are actually unable to react (including mentally cause, hey magic hero fate here!) you maybe shouldn't have hit points apply to the damage.

I think this makes total sense and would avoid the temptation for any weird coup de grâce rules tacked onto the game via in house rules or à la the SRD.  I'm sure someone will use this to beat me over the head with at some point however.

Thoughts on Weapon Specialization

Someone, I think it was Beedo, (ah yes it was) was talking about weapon specialization and I was reminded of why I went with simple fixed weapon damage.  I didn't want everyone to pick a longsword or a rapier.  Especially in a game where there were no real class limitations for weapon types, I didn't want everyone taking the weapon that did the most damage for the least money or whatever.  I like the idea of weapon being something that identifies a character - like a crazy rogue with daggers, daggers and more daggers, or a dangerous spear man.  Yes, I did settle on light and heavy weapons so as to complicate things a bit and account for pure smashing mass, but I think it is a good compromise having 1d6 and 1d8 as the two base weapon damages.  I do realize that some people might just game it and buy the cheapest weapon all the time, or even just pick up stuff off the battlefield and use that.  Where does that get you you crazy game designer - all your weapon prices are now moot - Ha Ha!  Well yes and no.  I guess people can do that but players like to spend money and so I expect it won't be a big issue, and characters with some cash will still fork out for a nice longsword if it makes them look good.

choose your specializations wisely...

I did have an idea about weapon specialization however.  Basically weapon specialization encourages use of a particular type of weapon instead of using many types.  The benefit I see coming from this is that it would reinforce character identity and it would somewhat discourage use of found weapons and weapon swapping. It would also add some spice to dropped weapons and magic weapons as treasure. Game wise it really doesn't matter in Beacon if you are using a war axe or a two handed sword since they both do 1d8 (and full STR bonus for two handedness), however it could matter if you dropped your weapon or when switching from ranged to melee weapons.  It also could matter when you stumble across an armory with many fine spears in a dungeon.  So I'm thinking a mechanic for encouraging characters to stick with certain weapons is worthwhile. It could be done as specialization and have the rules allow players to simply declare which weapon(s) they have specialized in, but then the question arises as to how many weapons a character can specialize in.  Maybe fighters could have two, is that enough?  Should it increase over time?  

Another way I'm thinking is more of weapon familiarity instead of weapon specialization.  You could make it simple by saying that a character is at -1 to hit and -1 damage with any weapon they are not familiar with.  Tada, they will pick weapons to be familiar with and try to use them.  For fighters, they get a pretty good attack bonus progression so it's not the end of the work if they break a sword and have to grab up an axe.  They are good at killing with anything.  For other classes it becomes a bit more of an issue so the druid may not be as eager to try something new when his pointed stick breaks.  I'm not sure what constitutes familiarity but it could be as simple as completing x combats with that weapon or leveling up with it or something.  Will this add value to the game?  Maybe.  I guess I should put this thought back in the roaster to simmer for a bit.

Giant fightin plugin

Suddenly, from the bushes springs... a giant plug!

This fellow Christopher Wood posted D20 compatible rules for fighting giant creatures!  He's totally right too, you can't just whack away at huge things, you need to scale up their hides and stab them in the goodies.  You see this all the time in movies but rarely do you see it in RPG play.  If a monster has HP and AC then you can go toe to toe.  Well that makes no sense.  I will sooo be using these rules when I'm running Beacon games and because it's all based on AC/DC you can too.  There's no pain involved, you can just plug them right into your Beacon combats and go.  Awesome sauce.  Thanks Christopher.


Marauders of Ig: Can You Catch Him with a Fishhook?

Surprise Attack

I thought it would be a good thing to talk about the changes I made to beef up the rogue, specifically the surprise attack.  Here's the rule:

Once per combat engagement Rogues may attempt to perform a 'surprise attack' (usually subterfuge or survival+DEX, based on their description of the action). If this is successful, they may either add their Subterfuge skill to the damage of their initial attack or perform an additional attack with a ranged weapon.

So you are a Rogue and you are going to be in a fight - how does this work for you?  Surprise is not a sneak attack, it's no longer a backstab analogue to be used once per combat.  It means when you choose to engage someone in combat, you get a chance to pull some cool move out your ass and trip them up with it.  It might be throwing sand in their eyes and then stabbing them, it might be pulling a dagger out of your boot and flipping it into their face, it might be shouting 'Oh my god is that Flint Fireforge over there?".  It might even mean you slide into a shadow and backstab someone - or take two shots with your bow from the tree you were hiding in.  It's a very big bump in attack power for the Rogue because you can try it once per engagement - so if you are fighting a bunch of guards you might sneak up and dispatch one and then while your fellows are brawling dive under another and stab him in the goolies.  At low levels this attack is on par or better than what a fighter could do but I don't think it unbalances the two classes because you have to make an additional roll to pull off the move, and you only get to try it on the first attack.  Once you are engaged you go back to your regular attacks and can't just run off without being subject to a free attack.  I still think it's cool though, you are the hare to the fighter's tortoise.

Combat experiment revisited

OK, here's another idea that's more streamlined but keeps a bit of the flavor of the first attempt:  Two phase combat.  In this method, like the last one, you would still have the GM call phases and both sides would do actions in order of initiative but there would just be the two phases, Missile and Melee. Both phases would have a move option so if you moved in missile phase you could close with an enemy or run away.  You could also move for both phases if you didn't attack.  Also changing/picking up a weapon would take a move - Actually even simpler than that - instead of having major and minor actions and all that I think you can just have two phases in which to do one of those minor things like pulling out potions, readying weapons or tipping tables over.  Casting, which still takes a full turn, would have to be stated* in phase 1 and would go off in phase 2 (again initiative order).  So combat would look something like this:

Surprise roll or determination.
Roll for initiative.
All sides do the following each phase in initiative order:

1. Prepare spell/missile attacks/move/change weapon/etc...
2. Cast spell/melee attacks/move/change weapon/etc...

So there would be the same fight as the previous example under this design:

Two groups meet on the road.  Each consists of a mage, a hunter and a fighter.  I determine there is no surprise (no free attack).  Assume they had weapons ready...

Round 1: Group A wins initiative.

Missile Phase:

1. Hunter A fires two arrows at Fighter B (misses, hits), 
2. Mage A declares a spell, mage B declares a spell, 
3. Fighter A closes with Hunter B,
4. Hunter B throws 2 daggers at Mage A (miss, miss).
5. Fighter B closes with Fighter A

Melee phase:  

1. Fighter A attacks Hunter B (hit), 
2. Mage A does counter spell, 
3. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit), 
4. Mage B spell is countered,
5. Hunter B switches to short sword and shield.

Round 2: Group B wins initiative.

Missile Phase:  

1. Mage B prepares a spell,
2. Hunter A fires at Fighter B (hit, miss),
3. Mage A readies a crossbow

Melee Phase:

1. Hunter B attacks Fighter A (miss),
2. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit),
3. Mage B casts Spell (magic Missile) Hunter A,
4. Fighter A attacks Hunter B (hit - Hunter B dead)

Round 3:  Group B wins initiative

Missile Phase:

1. Mage B prepares spell
2. Fighter B runs over to Mage B
3. Mage A fires bolt at Mage B (miss)
4. Hunter A fires at Fighter B (hit)
5. Fighter A closes with Fighter B

Melee Phase:

1. Mage B casts Mage Armour on Fighter B
2. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit)
3. Fighter A attacks Fighter B (miss)

And so on.

So how is this better?  Well it has less phases and it's easier to track movement, if you moved that phase you can't attack that phase.  You still get the distinction between missile and melee attacks which makes things more fun, and it mixes up the combat so you don't have one side just rolling over the other. Your 5 brawlers aren't going to kill all the bowmen before they get a shot off just because you got initiative.  And you have less moving parts than the old one attack/2 moves or 3 minor actions.  It's almost as simple as the glorious 'you get to do one thing' but it incorporates full/partial movement, minor actions and all that into it.  Maybe tomorrow I'll find a problem with it but I think it might viable for now.




*to be real clear - in both this example and the one from the last post you wouldn't have to say which spell you were casting, just that you were going to be casting a spell.  Assume all spells have a similar prep action - like cracking your knuckles and humming a scale.

Combat experiment

First off I'm going to say I wrote much of this up last week and I thought I had a great idea...It was even working out that there were a spate of posts on the OSR blogs about how the combat rounds sorted themselves out, which kind of fed the idea.  I was going to post this, but I thought I should think about it more.  Well a week later and I'm now trying to think of better* way and not considering this idea as much, but I thought I should post this anyway since it is a design blog and this is how I design.  Who knows I might figure out a way to make this work in the end.  So with that preface, here goes:

Following on the heels of my desire to make the combat 'round' more better, there is a good breakdown of the different versions of D&D and how they resolve combat by Arkhein at Rather Gamey.

And look, AD&D has missiles before movement even.  I knew there was something to having missile actions before movement - probably something left over in my mind from AD&D - the system I learned first.  In any case I want combat to be fast (which is why we dropped d20 initiative) but I also want it to be fun - and fun for me means a dash of tactics.  I don't want to have all actions declared before initiative roll - that seems like it would take all the momentum out of things.  I do however think that I should be able to call out a phase and everyone doing that type of action will then have to do it at that time.  So one proposal I've been thinking of for resolving combat is 3 Phase combat: Missile, Movement, Melee.  It would look something like this:

Surprise roll or determination:
Roll for initiative:
Then all sides do each following phase in initiative order:

1. Missile attacks / prepare spell 
2. Movement /weapon changes 
3. Melee, 'minor' actions, spells 

I haven't been doing spell declaration, but I think I should be doing it.

So a combat would look like this:
Two groups meet on the road.  Each consists of an mage, a hunter and a fighter,  I determine there is no surprise (so no free attack).
Round 1: Group A wins initiative.

Missile Phase:

1. Hunter A fires two arrows at Fighter B (misses, hits), 
2. Mage A declares a spell, mage B declares a spell, 
3. Hunter B throws 2 daggers at Mage A (miss, miss).

Movement Phase:

1. Fighter A closes with Hunter B, 
2. Fighter B closes with Fighter A
3. Hunter B switches to short sword and shield.

Melee phase:  

1. Fighter A attacks Hunter B (hit), 
2. Mage A does counter spell, 
3. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit), 
4. Mage B spell is countered

Round 2: Group B wins initiative.

Missile Phase:  

1. Mage B prepares a spell
2. Hunter A fires at Fighter B (hit, miss)

Movement Phase:

1. Mage A readies a crossbow

Melee Phase:

1. Hunter B attacks Fighter A (miss)
2. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit)
3. Mage B casts Spell (magic Missile) Hunter A
4. Fighter A attacks Hunter B (hit - Hunter B dead)

Round 3:  Group B wins initiative

Missile Phase:

1. Mage B prepares spell
2. Hunter A fires at Fighter B (hit)
3. Mage A fires at Mage B (miss)

Movement Phase:

1. Fighter B runs over to Mage B
2. Fighter A closes with Fighter B

Melee Phase:

1. Mage B casts Mage Armour on Fighter B
2. Fighter B attacks Fighter A (hit)
3. Fighter A attacks Fighter B (miss) 

And so on.

It looks complicated but really if the GM is calling out each phase name it shouldn't be too hard to keep the pace up.  The benefits I see are that it makes ranged combat more interesting of a choice and it would certainly be more dynamic if you were using miniatures.  It's also a bit more interesting to me than having the  side who wins initiative getting to do everything and possibly wiping the other side out before they get any actions, or at even simply taking out their mage or archer with an alpha strike.

The problems I see with it are: loosing initiative is probably better in some cases - like magic users if they want to counter-spell, or for movement.  Well that might not be a problem actually...   Also it might be hard to keep track of which actions have been done that preclude other actions - like firing a missile precludes a melee attack so you have to wait to get hit - or if you are closing with someone and changing a weapon you wouldn't be able to hit them.  I think it would also be hard when you are breaking up player actions this way to keep everything straight if you aren't using minis.  I also didn't have the mages make any kind of check to cast their spells after they got hit in this example.  I'd have to figure out if that should happen and how it would be implemented.  Maybe it's not so different than regular combat however - if you got initiative you would beat the opposition melee attack and get your spell off so really it's only archers you would be worried about (missile shield anyone...).

Now, I did think of another option which I'll try to post tomorrow.

* a better way would have to be a simpler way I think.

Combat tweaks

During Beacon play test there were a few things about combat that came up that I'd like to deal with in the rules.  A lot of stuff didn't come up, or if it did come up seemed to work out. Grappling came up one time and it appeared to work OK.  Some other stuff came up and either had to be dealt with or was just hand waved.   I want combat to be fast as possible but I still want a bit more tactical combat than the simple 'you can do one thing per turn'.  Two things I'd like to discuss are initiative and changing/dropping weapons in a fight.

Initiative
Beedo over on Dreams in the Lich House was playing Adventurer Conqueror King and wrote about his experience.  I find this interesting, specifically this part:

"One thing I found interesting - Individual Initiative!  Okay, I know this has been an optional rule in many variants (and LOTFP used a version of it), but I've used the Moldvay BX style of Initiative by Side for as long as I can remember, with different combat actions happening in sequence - movement, missile, magic and melee, and then the other side goes."

I'm coming from the opposite side of the revelation here.  When I started working over Beacon I figured it was a D20 system and I should use D20 style initiative - otherwise known as individual initiative with DEX bonuses.  Man after about three games we cut that shit out because it was taking longer to do the initiative rolls than most of the rest of the combat.  We switched back to D6 per side - where side was determined by me, but usually 2 of them.  That's how I did it back in the olden times and it's working out pretty well for us now too.  I didn't think of having a "movement, missile, magic and melee" sequence however, that's something I didn't recall from the olden times.  Looking at it now I think it would be a good idea to try this.  Putting these phases in might solve some of my issues with not using minis and keeping track of where folks are at.  It also means player would have to decide what they were doing before they acted and that might be fun.  You want to move - well you have to do it now, no you don't know if Thedric is going to take out that archer, you will have to chance it.  Well maybe not so much what they were doing but what type of thing they were doing.

I play a board game called Game of Thrones by Fantasy Flight games.  It's very much like the game Diplomacy in that you give orders to all your armies ahead of time and then afterwards you carry out all the orders.  Unlike Diplomacy the orders in Thrones are not specific but simply a type of action; movement, support, raid, etc.  When the time comes to resolve these orders you can carry them out in which ever way you think best at the time - which direction to move the army - which territory to raid - but you must carry out that order with that army.  It simulates planning but allows for the effects of actual situations to be processed.  Best of both worlds I think.

I had the idea I might put Missile attacks before Movement as that seems more appropriate and might solve some of the issue I have with characters dancing around and firing off missile weapons in close combat.  Before I do this I'll have think a bit more - no point changing an old standard without due consideration.


Replacing a weapon

Crap!

Over the course of playing, there were quite a few times where a weapon needed to be changed or replaced in combat.  The Critical fumble table causes dropped or broken weapons, and in other cases the players were expressing their desire to maim something more by going for a bigger weapon.  It was mostly hand-waved or counted as a minor action, but I do want to have a more chewy rule for it.  I want this to have an impact - but not make the players miss a whole attack.


What I'd like to do is to make drawing, changing out or picking up a dropped weapon the same as a move in turn.  Since you get one move in a turn or two if you forgo combat, you would have to use one up to change out your weapon or pick it up.  If you had to change or replace a weapon you wouldn't be able to do a full turn move, and you wouldn't be able to move and attack.  Right now drawing a weapon is a minor action and that doesn't seem to be enough.  I want to reward folks who ready their daggers before opening a door.

Weapon types

I was reading this blog post and I realized what a great idea this is.  Have different weapon types do something different in combat.  Ya, this post is from back in June and I remember reading the post on B/X Blackrazor that he references back then too, but I wasn't in the same frame of mind as I am now.  I like the simple weapon damage we're using now in Beacon (actually Blackrazor pushed me in that direction as well).  Maybe I glossed over it because I didn't want to mess with the mechanics I had for tho handed damage bonuses and duel wielding.  Anyway I like non-variable weapon damage in Beacon - mainly because it leaves little to memorize and players can grab up any old thing and start whacking away.  It lends itself to narrative weapon choices over optimization.  No more maxing out the statistics and figuring on which is the best weapon to use, more just figuring out what would be cool.  As mentioned in these fine posts, where it falls down is when players are buying weapons - why buy a nicely worked sword when a rusty crowbar will do the same damage?  Well prestige I suppose.  However, if each type of weapon had a special benefit or applicability then it would be a good reason for players to have different weapons, even carry and use different weapons at different times.  I already have pole-arms doing attack at range - I just need to figure out what the other weapons bring to the table.
Off the top of my head I can think of the following 'perks' for each type of weapon.

• Only swords can be used to block as per the blocking rules.
• Axes/hammers/clubs add full STR bonus as damage like two handed weapons do.
• Pole-arms get the distance thing and first strike against rushes.

Very simple and they don't add any new mechanics to the rules, just spread the wealth a bit - both pluses in my book.  Strong guys are going to want to use the bashing weapons to get that strength bonus but might possibly carry around a sword to use in case they are fighting skilled opponents so they can increase their defense.

Damage

In the last game session Henril, the fighter was physically wounded.  He was at -5 STR specifically.  Now this didn't have an effect on his hit points once he had rested up, and since he was strong to begin with it didn't slow him down too much aside from his bonuses in combat.  I like the idea of hit points being fatigue and stat damage being actual physical damage, I think it's working out well.  However it was brought up that by automatically having damage move from HP to STR the system might be singling out Fighters and that even a pretty severe wound wouldn't really slow down some characters.
The suggestion was that Rogues or Hunters who were wounded wouldn't really be impacted since they don't rely on STR but can leverage DEX for their bonuses.  As for the other classes, well they aside from being closer to death, it really didn't impact them if they weren't doing melee anyway.  It was remarked (and not just by the player playing the fighter!) that maybe once you hit 0 hp the damage should translate to all the stats, a general -1 à la Savage Worlds, or maybe both the 'physical' stats DEX and STR should be impacted.  I can see the logic in this and really if you have a broken rib you might not be at your best at the annual goose juggling competition either.  I can see it impacting the other stats as well really - pain is distracting and it lowers your ability to be either pleasant or intimidating.  The only problem I see for this is that if you are tracking more than one stat this way which one is going to indicate when you snuff it.  If you have a 16 STR but a 7 DEX will you die at -7 or -16?

Play test: On Skills

The play test is still going and it's a lot of fun for me (hopefully fun for the players as well - he he) as I'm getting the old kinks worked out and trying to find my GM voice again.  The party is still all first level after three sessions but I don't think that's necessarily bad since it is a gritty game I'm running and I'm getting a good vibe from the experience calculator as written.*  The party has encountered a small gang of bandits, slain a handful of hobgoblins, been attacked by some huge scorpions and smashed up a dozen or so goblins and they are getting close to second level.  Aside from the issues of the first session the rules as written seem to be working out pretty well and I'm also enjoying the simple random encounter tables I whipped up for travel in the forest, swamp, hills and road around Milham.  I do have some thoughts about playing however, or more specifically notes about how skills are being played.

I have here a bunch of guys who have played a lot of games.  These guys have played a lot of d&d of various types and a lot of other systems as well.  They are good at following not just the rules, but the spirit of the rules and aren't trying to 'game' the system over a typo.  Which is why I am having such a dilemma when they are telling me stuff like "I use my survival skill to sneak up on the goblin" and "I'm going to use knowledge to try to find the hidden entrance".  I probably will tell them to use those skills in those situations (as opposed to subterfuge, because of the context they are giving), but I know that if they are doing this then some people will probably be doing it EVEN MORE.  Especially those coming from more modern D&D.

It's a natural tendency for players to want to use the skills they are good at and that's all well and good but I think it does lead down a road where you have people trying to justify using their best skills for everything - and that will probably break the system.  As a GM you can't just say no all the time because that will also break the system.  The Beacon/Microlite skills are purposefully vague so that they can be combined in interesting and entertaining ways and the last thing I want to do is get into the situation where someone says "I can't tie the rope, I don't have that skill".  That is the real enemy right there, that way of thinking.  Meditating on this for a while now and what I think must be done is to crack down on this in the rules by very explicitly stating the following:

Players describe their actions without using any skill or stat references, then the GM assigns the DC and the skills/stats to use.  

I think this is one of those rare play-style rules that can't just be mentioned, it needs to be emphasized and entrenched in the system as a procedure. Sure you can appeal the GM's decision and make your case and all that if you think you are getting the shaft because you wanted to use your 7 knowledge to punch someone**, but that has to be after the fact because otherwise it is just too easy for players to fall into the old way of thinking a skill for an action as opposed to DESCRIBING THEIR ACTIONS and thus metagaming their way out of a lot of fun.  Also if the GM is shafting people or the players are arguing skill checks all the time then you probably need a more structured game than Beacon anyway.  Ya play your game your way and all that, but sometimes rules really set a tone.  It kind of reminds me of the suggestion in the card game Dominion to verbalize your action and buy status as you play your cards - following that style simply makes the game better for everyone.



*basic rate = (HD type * HD number )*10, for example a goblin with 1d6 would be worth 60xp, where a 4d8 monster would be worth 320.  Add some extra for special abilities.

** "But I have studied anatomy tomes and I know where to punch them better!"

The buckler

One minor question came up when the folks were equipping their characters.  Can I use a buckler and two weapons?  I guess in a lot of systems a buckler is strapped on to the arm and leaves the hand free.  That's not what I thought a buckler was, but I can see where the idea comes from.  Here's what I was thinking when I put the buckler in the rules.

by an unknown master

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckler

It's held in the fist and can only be used to block (it's useless as passive defense).  I thought it was a good way to utilize the beacon blocking rules.

Instead of attacking in a round, a character may try to block an attack.  When blocking, apply a character’s STR bonus + Shield bonus to their AC.
A Block can only happen if you have a shield or a melee weapon equipped (primary or an offhand weapon). 

So a buckler is great for that.  It's light and cheap and if it doesn't give you any AC bonus, neither does it give you any duel weild penalties. And you use it when you need to block a hit.  I like the picture in the article too.  Those dudes are not just trading hats!

Level Drain and Finger of Death.

While I am working over monsters to use variable Hit Dice types and looking at higher level spells I keep bumping into two issues that I want to put more thought into, level drain and 'instant' death spells.  After mulling these things over in the back of my mind for a while now I thought it might help me to write a post about them.

First let me say that I like the idea of level drain.  I also think that it is a horrible game mechanic and I always used to try to avoid using because it brought the game to a screeching halt.  Level drain is awesome because it is a game mechanic that manages to capture the feeling of the in game effect.  Players are terrified of loosing levels almost as much as their characters would be terrified of loosing life-force.  This makes those monsters that drain levels a very good monster class to trot out because it ups the game.  However once a character actually undergoes level drain then all that excellent is thrown away as you immediately get into the mechanics of character generation and those are some of the least immersive and most tedious game mechanics.  Level drain works well only in very simple games like OD&D.  Even in AD&D it was a massive pain to drop levels and almost impossible to do without bringing the game to a stop*.  However the anticipation of a level drain is such a great mechanic that it deserves some leeway and some attempt at saving.
One thing I have been thinking of is substituting stat loss for level, this has a few things to recommend it, one being that stats are more dear than hit points and so some of that sense of dread is retained.  I immediately thought of Strength loss but then I started thinking how cool it would be to have it be Charisma instead.  This kind of tied in with my idea that Charisma is a will power analogue.  Charisma could be a good indicator of your vitality and a case could be made to say that as it dropped a character became less and less animated and more suggestible until they were a walking husk.  As cool as that might be on paper, I don't know if it would strike that same level of fear into the hearts of the players.

The other issue I've been dwelling on is the spells that cause instant death. Well instant death if you fail a saving throw.  There is a good discussion of dealing with save or die mechanics over at the Alexandrian so I'm not going to go into the whys of it here.  Funny thing is that he proposes using stat loss for this as well.  I'm not one to shy away from using stat loss as a mechanic - just look at the rules for damage or the critical hit table in Beacon.  I think that I will probably be including more stat loss effects in spells and creature abilities to represent more drastic damage than HP damage (I probably already have).  However the problem with this is that it is hard to translate those type of mechanics to when characters are targeting monsters - even if you use simple HD derived stats for the monsters it's more to keep track of.  I guess you can expect to see some of those save vs death spells to remain and some to be converted to stat busters.


*update note:  apparently the concept of negative levels was developed in 3rd edition D&D to deal with this, it seems like a reasonable compromise and once again shows me that you can't ever keep up with all this RPG crap.