The Thylian Ranger

*note: image presneted here without permission from Serrated Soul.

The Ranger underwent some odd, and annoying, changes between incarnations, not just between the AD&D and D20 versions, but between AD&D 1ed and 2ed. I suppose if I were unkind, I could attribute the change between AD&D editions to that execrable character Drizz't and legions upon legions of fanboys who wanted a character just like him, but that's probably more than a little unkind and out of order. Still, hard to deny.

In the Gary's PHB, rangers were stout men and women who went into the wild "kicking ass and taking names" to be blunt, and were particularly effective in clearing out humanoids and giants, pushing the wilderness back from civilization and protecting civilians from Nature. Essentially, the Chuck Norris of the AD&D world. If you crossed him, the ranger would hunt you down no matter where you went using his awesome tracking abilities and take you apart piece by piece. On top of that, when he reached higher levels, he developed a following of contacts throughout the wilderness and world (for that is what they were originally, contacts not just hangers on).

By the time 2nd edition rolled around and Drizzlemania was in full swing and the Forgotten Realms became the all purpose dumping ground and universal setting for all TSR product, the ranger, if you'll excuse my cynicism, was a sissified and hippified version of himself. Gone was the damage bonus against giant class monsters and in its place we have . . . favored enemy? Ok, I get the concept that gives us the option of a ranger choosing his foe based on what happens to be plaguing the region he hails form, but seriously, the ability is effectively useless by about 4th level. Fifth if we're being generous. So our ranger has been castrated, and it seems that the designers realized this, so they handed him the ability to fight with two weapons at once without penalty. I have yet, after all my years of gaming, to figure out what dual wielding weapons has to do at all with being a ranger other than hopping onto the fan wave of immitating the aforementioned drow. An army of them, in fact.

It doesn't end there, though. The followers list was torn apart and they were turned into tagalongs and pets. It also seems that the focus of the class shifted from a man protecting civilization from nature and the horrors of the wild, to a man who just didn't like cities and so took up a life in the forest to be left alone. Now, rather than gaining some proficiency in magical and druidic spells as added survival tools, the ranger is confined to plant based clerical spells. A tree hugging hippie. Ugh

It's not all bad, really. I do like that the tracking ability was changed to a non-weapon proficiency in which the class is the only one not taking a massive penalty. That, to me, is a significant enough improvement to not entirely discount the class whole cloth.

The less said about what happened to the ranger in third edition the better. Suffice to say I'm still confused by the idiocy that went into the willful misinterpretation of the word "Ranger" to mean "he who attacks with a ranged weapon" and yet still somehow manages to dual wield scimitars pointlessly.

Instead, for my game (assuming I can generate the time and players interested), I plan on merging Gary Gygax's ranger with the 2nd edition ranger. The 2nd edition ranger will serve as the platform, the architecture so to speak. Dual wielding weapons and "favored enemy" will be chicked out summarily and replaced with the damage bonus form the 1st edition ranger. Moving silently and hiding in shadows will be handled per 2nd edition PHB, or perhaps mocking up a system similar to how thieves function (assigning percentage boosts each level).

The followers list in the 2nd edition PHB will be chucked in favor of the 1st edition followers list, and instead of having followers show up at 9th level in a lump, followers will be spread out across levels, showing up periodically according to their abilities. A wolf follower might show up early on at 2nd or 3rd level, while human followers would show up a little after that, and a dragon or other powerful fantastic creatures might not appear until well after. And further, the ranger would have to "earn" his followers. They aren't added class benefits, they're as much NPC's as the mayor of the local village and need to be treated as such.

I want the ranger, in Thylia, to be taken back to its roots with a little mechanical update for the AD&D 2nd edition and to toss out the foolishness that seems to be inbred into the class in later generations.

Doing in the Wizard?

I've been pondering, of late, what "Low Magic" really means. Yes, the easy answer is to say "Look at D20 3.x edition and cut that by 75%." It's also a bit tounge-in-cheek, I suppose, and irreverent, but whatever, it's fun to mock games that we don't like and don't play. So my answer has always been that I like a low magic gaming experience, or at the very least, a game in which remains magical, whatever that means.

It's not just as simple as a single scale with D20 gonzo magic on the one hand and a completely mundane world on the other. It's not just the amount of magic, but the level of magic seen, how flashy it is, how spectacular it is versus how subtle it is. Another aspect of the issue in my mind is the cost. The typical fantasy game - or at least the modern day and age where we feel we are entitled to anything we want without consequence - have trained us to look at magic as "just another tool to be used" and that there are few if any downsides. The endless arguments recently online among the younger gamers who look at Vancian magic as some sort of cheat and that a wizard just isn't being wizardly unless he's throwing spells every single round as if he were carrying some sort of Star Trek phaser that only runs out of power when it's convenient to the plot.

So just the other day, I pulled out of my gaming closet a copy of the old Game of Thrones RPG from the defunct Guardians of Order. (Yes, he's going to talk about those novels again!) Those of us familiar with the books will know that magic is extraordinarly rare and low key, if it even exists at all most of the time. What magic we know does exist for sure is fraught with peril and exacts a terrible price for whatever boon it might grant. The game captures this motif by effectively removing magic entirely except for a vague and difficult to interpret chapter that gives a general outline of how to handle magic. Essentially, it's governed by what you want to do and what tools you have and is very symbolic, i.e., bathing a child in hot ox blood to grant him strength and courage. And it always comes with a price and a high chance of something going terribly wrong.

So, my question for whomever actually still reads this thing I can so rarely update, is this: what would the effect be if I were to "tune out" a great deal of the magic level of even a low magic game? Would I be entirely unfair if I were to consider doing this for real?

If I removed permanent items (all those lovely +1 swords, magic carpets, and cubic gates) and simply left expendable items like potions, low charged wands, and scrolls, how would everything else have to be changed? Obviously, creatures like gargoyles and others that required magic weapons to affect would be significantly more dangerous. It'd become a requirement for a wizard or priest with some appropriate spells to deal with them as even the most powerful warriors in the world wouldn't even be able to put a chip in them. OF course, I could compensate by removing the requirement for a magic weapon to hit and instituting a version of D20's Damage Reduction mechanic instead. So yes, a powerful fighter could harm a gargoyle, but it'd be tough going for him. I could create a spell or two for the wizards and priests to temporarily empower a mundane weapon with the power of magic. At this point, spellcasters become far more powerful relatively speaking, and perhaps even an integral part of life as every community would need one or three to defend them against the horrors of the wilds lurking on all sides. Every community might host a caster and travelling casters might find themselves made honored guests as locals conive to keep him there, perhaps marry him off to unwed daughters and anchor him in place.

Taking it another step, I've often thought of how the matter is handled in D20modern (yes, another D20 game, but at the moment they serve as decent models) wherin casters are "prestige classes" that cannot be taken until later in the career of an adventurer. It might be possible to follow the same kind of model with 0D&D or AD&D by adjusting the spells per level of the wizard and priest classes to decrease the number of spells and push off gaining new spells to later levels. Perhaps even limiting what spells are available. No more magic missile, fireball, and meteor strike. Instead, only lower key spells are available. Or perhaps only certain schools such as necromantic and diniation (the concept of a character reading bones or entrails to helop the party out entertains me somwhat). I'm pretty sure that at this level, even the oldest old school gamers would start objecting.

But what I'm really interested in at this point, is how people would react to the GM removing magic almost in entirety? There are no casters, no permanent magic items excpet, perhaps, for ancient holy relics that come with enough attached strings to make even the most foolhardy players think twice about picking them up. No potions, scrolls, wands, or staves. No easy access to healing and disease curing. The only magic that would be allowed would be intricate and dangerous rituals that are intended to accomplish one set aim, such as trading a life for a life to hopefully raise a needed hero from the dead to fight one last time to protect the innocent. How would this function in terms of a D&D game model? Or would the system simply not be able to handle it?

I'm curious to listen to the thoughts of others on this.

Permanent and Lasting Injury

The 2nd Edition AD&D books specifically discourage players from tracking specific injuries, which I generally agree with. After all, I'm not a kid anymore and I don't get a giggle over the fact that every hit has a 1-in-6 chance of whacking some poor shmuck in the jewels, or neck, or whatever. It's just not necessary and is, in many ways, puerile. It also adds a whole lot of "all the time" complexity that the game just doesn't need.

After all, one of the biggest draws of the D&D type systems for me is the level of abstraction. Whether or not hit points represent purely physical punishment, or a mixture of luck, near misses, and minor wounds sapping a PC's will to go on or something else entirely really isn't all that important. The system is an abstraction for the sake of gameplay and, in the end, it's a completely self-referential one. It's only there to provide a numeric system to govern when your character can no longer function. It makes no real appeals to realism except in that more physical and martial classes get more HP while more "bookish" or "crafty" type classes receive fewer. It's verisimilitude, not realism.

The same goes for the 1 minute combat rounds (of which I am still a strong supporter by the by), the class and level system in general, armor class, and much of everything else in a lot of ways. Everything there sets an acceptable (to us at least) comprimise between realism and abstraction for the sake of game flow.

However, one of the alures of D&D is the loosness of its framework and the ability of the players to "hang on ornaments" so to speak. That's, I think, one of the greatest and most marvelous lessons that TSR learned during the run of AD&D 2ed: that the only thing that separated the core AD&D system from being something else was ornamentation and decoration. Dark Sun, one of the wierdest settings for the game, is little more than AD&D 2ed with a few moderate rules tweaks thrown in (i.e., retooling the attributes charts to account for the concept of Survival of the Fittest run amok, everybody's got psionics, an insanely harsh environment, and so on). That's the strength of 2nd edition, in my mind, it's chameleon like ability to change on the face to

That's a long way to go, I suppose, to get to the purpose of today's post.

Thylia, though I know I've put so little of it up here owing to life going absolutely berserk of late, is at present a bit grim, dark, and gritty. Those phrases have largely lost meaning, especially in WOTC's wake of using them to apply to their new material (one imagines purely in a humerous intent). Things in that world are going badly: monsters lurk in the wilderness, petty warlords claim control over wide expanses of land or just city states, cats and dogs living together . . . But of course, whisper me the difference between that and just about any bog-standard D&D setting?

In order to reflect the darker, somewhat grittier nature of things in Thylia, I'm employing both the modifications to the Vancian spell casting rules I talked of earlier, and a minor system for lasting and permanent injuries.

Simply put, while employing the "at death's door" rule (i.e., you have until -10 hp before you actually die for good), any character or monster/NPC that is reduced to -7 HP or less must make a system shock check or be forced to roll on the chart below to determine what, if any, lasting consequences are assessed.

1. Injury to the face/head. Suffer -1 to WIS/INT/CHA (equal chance of any of them).
2. Torso/Abdomen. Suffer -1 to CON, max HP reduced by 1d20%.
3. Fore/Upper Limb (includes arms (all if multiple), wings, and any other appendage other than a head above body midline). Determine which randomly. Limb is useless unless successfull save vs. death. To-Hit and Damage are -1 with that limb. If quadraped or limb otherwise used for mobility, see Lower/Hind Limb entry below.
4. Lower/Hind Limb (includes legs and other mobility appendages, tails, etc.). Save vs. death else limb is useless. Suffer -1d4x10% loss in movement rate. Limb is -1 to-hit and DAM if appropriate. May require crutch, cane, or other assistave device at DM's discretion.

All effects persist for 1d3 weeks at the end of which the character must make a System Shock check or the effects become permanent unless powerful healing or regenerative magics are applied successfully. At DM's option, surgical arts may be attempted to repair such damage, though they obviously carry significant risks of their own.

I think this will help to bring across the brutality of combat just a little more, and leave open my options open for when truly greivous wounds need inflicting.

Example: Hamlet the fighter is snatched up by a Roc intent on making the hapless adventurer its next meal. Through pure piss and vinneager, Hamlet is able to land a few telling kicks and bites on the bird before too much altitude is gained and the beast drops him. The fall reduces the fighter to -8 HP where he is luckily discovered by a friendly band of elves who bandage his wounds before he bleeds out. Rolling on the chart above nets him a result of 3 and the DM determines that his left arm has been severely broken when Hamlet fell on it. He has failed his saving throw and so the arm is useless for anywhere from one to three weeks. If he fails a System Shock test at the end of that time, the arm is permanently lame and of no use to him at all: a dangerous vulnerability to say the least.

Opinions?

Spellcasting in Thylia: Modifications to the Vancian System

This is the biggest house rule I will ever implement, or at least the one that causes the most significant change in how the game functions. Just to come right out and say this up front, this modification to the casting system did not originate with me. The game I currently play in (for the last 5 or so years actually) put this into effect and, after 5 years, I can't really imagine playing without it. Whether that's because the rule really is that excellent of a change, or because internally, I was never satisfied with the whole Vancian thing to begin with is something open to debate. Either way, it makes for an interesting modification in my opinion.

First, wizards do not gain new spells upon leveling per the rules. The only way for a wizard to gain new spells is to discover them in "the dungeon" or to trade for or steal them from others. This makes arcane magic, at least, that much more difficult to get hold of so that the players aren't pulling magic our of their orificies at every instant.

Magic is rare and mages are jealous of each other's abilities. This is to counteract some of the change below.

Casting still functions largely as detailed in the PHB. Wizards have a certain number of spell slots per day per level based on their current character level and any specialization they pursue (i.e., a transmuter gets an extra spell slot per level that must be devoted to an alteration spell). However, wizards can, with a percent chance of failure based on their intelligence and the level of the spell, attempt to "wing it" when casting spells. That means that they can forgoe memorizing a spell (or all spells for very intelligent and powerful wizards) in order to enhance their potential versatility. Unfortunately, this comes with a good chance of failing to successfully cast their spells.

Mages can still memorize their spells, and in fact, doing so greatly reduces the percent chance of failure.

For example:

A wizard with INT 15 has a base 65% chance to fail casting a 1st level spell while winging it. A 2nd level spell fails 70% of the time, 3rd 75% and so on. This means that our example wizard will fail 75% of the time while trying to cast a 3rd level spell without prior memorization.

If, however, the wizard in question chooses to memorize his spell in the morning, he reduces his chance for failure by 100%, thus in our example, the 3rd level spell is cast with a -25% chance of failure.

This, in actual play, does increase the utility of a wizard, but at the same time can make him somewhat unreliable. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "it's only a 10% chance of failure" right before a critical spell fizzles because the player wanted to leave the slot open "just in case."

It also has a very nice side benefit: players of wizards end up casting more of their spell selection (i.e., instead of just memorizing the same few over and over again) and there's fewer instances of "ok, we need this or that spell, but the wizard has to rest 8 hours before we can proceed, so everybody break out the bedrolls!"

A few other things to add into the pot:

For a specialist caster (transmuter, necromancer, etc), the caster receives a -10%/+10% failure chance based on whether the spell is in or out of their specialty school.

When leveling up, for every 5 successful times a spell is cast, the charcter gains a -5% chance to fail that particular spell.

At first level, and upon ataining further levels, the character gains 200% discretionary percentage points with which he can reduce any spell's failure chance, or he can hold them in reserve in anticipation of gaining new spells over the next level.

If, upon attempting to learn a new spell, the player fails the roll to learn, he can still scribe it to his book and cast it, but it suffers a +50% chance of failure. This can, and often does, raise the failure chance to above 100% making even memorized casting dodgy.

And one final bit:

A mage must still spend time every day reviewing and studying his spells. If his book is stolen or he has no access to it, he suffers an increased 5% failure chance per day without the book.

It looks a little confusing at first blush (and if I knew how to make this blog thing make tables, it'd be a might clearer) and it certainly does add a lot of book keeping to playing a wizard character or a bard (who follow the same rules, but keyed off of the average INT ahd CHA), but I find that the whole thing is definately worth it.

I like the falvor of it for Thylia, and since spells are rare, spell books cost 1000gp each, and the ink to scribe a spell costs 10gp per page written (not to mention 1 day per page/level of the spell), it's really a fair trade in my book.

Of course, I wouldn't try to port this over to Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk since I don't think it'd fit terribly well there, but in a grim and gritty setting where things are falling apart all over, it sort of fits.

Two Shield Rules

According to that AD&D rules (and the BECMI and 0D&D rules for that matter if I recall correctly), shields provide a flat +1 bonus to AC (or, -1 if you want to get technical). The only difference between shield sizes is in the size and weight of the thing, and how many attacks per round it can defend against. This is all fine and good, but I find that, in the end, it adds a level of monintoring and book keeping that drag out what would otherwise be an exciting combat: how many attacks has Bob's fighter faced this round?, and do multiple attacks from a single create (a claw/claw/bite say) count as one attack, or three? and so on. In the end, it seems to get in the way of the goal of fast and clear combat rounds and ends up dragging things out.

In that light, I propose the following two possible rules.

Option The First: Ignore the different shield sizes. There's only one shield size and it weighs X number of pounds and provides only a +1 bonus to AC. Period. It's a level of abstraction I'm willing to accept in the quest for simplex resolution even if it does bring up interesting questions about why a shield built by a halfling would be the same weight as one built by an ogre, and why a halfling wielding an ogre's shield would only receive a +1 bonus rather than benefiting from the much larger proportional coverage, but in the spirit of the rule, I can simply ignore those issues and forge on with getting to what's more interesting, the adventuring.

Option The Second: Various sized shields provide various degrees of defense:

*A small shield weighs in at 5 pounds and provides a +1 bonus to AC.
*A medium shield weighs in at 10 pounds and provides a +2 bonus to AC.
*A large/body shield weighs 15 pounds and provides a +3 bonus to AC with no special rules attached to it.

This provides a reason why somebody would carry another sized shield other than weight and eliminates the need for tracking how many attacks have been made against a particular character (or, heaven forbid, which of the 25 goblins each with his own shield has faced one attack, two, three, or four in a given round). It also, as I see it, makes carrying a shield even more desirable and the tradeoff between carrying a two-handed weapon at the cost of a single point of AC a little more interesting: do you carry that two handed sword and go through enemies like a farmer mowing wheat, or do you pick up a long sword and a large shield for that added defense?


Truth be told, I much prefer the second option. It adds just a bit of complication to the rules and strips out at the same time a needlesly complicated bit of ruling that slows things down when they need most to move quickly.