Max HP at 1st level.
A common rule that makes 1st level characters much more survivable.
Ascending AC.
Despite learning the game with AD&D, I’m a child of 3rd edition. I don’t want to look up a chart, I want to add modifiers to a d20 roll and match it to a target number.
The “Smoothed Attack Progression” table from Tales of the Rambling Bumbler.
This eliminates the strange jumps of +2 and +4 to-hit, making attack bonuses work more like they do in later editions.
Slot-based encumbrance of 10 + STR bonus
The semi-official OSE version of slot-based encumbrance that appears in one of the Carcass Crawler zines is more generous and a little more complicated, but I like this simple one. Really light stuff like gems and small amounts of coins go into the “bottom of the bag” section, but delicate treasures like crystal goblets take up item slots.
My own Tolkien/Iron Age Armor draft rules
Leather: +1 (can be worn under mail)
Mail: +2
Helm: +2
Shield: +2
This keeps the AC range of 10–17 from OSE, but shifts things around slightly. Shields are more valuable, and a heavily armored warrior who wants to use a two-handed weapon or carry a light source is penalized more for it. A full suite of armor occupies 4 item slots.
I wish I knew a better word for padded cloth armor than “gambeson” to replace “leather” here. Beowulf 5e uses “weaponshirt,” which is cool but kind of clunky. Wilderlands uses “cloak,” which I find both wonderfully flavorful and also kind of inappropriate (“Yet they are garments, not armour, and they will not turn shaft or blade”). Regardless, most of the time when a PC wears leather armor in my game I’m imagining a heavy quilted tunic. Some goblins, orcs, etc. also wear gambesons, while others wear thick furs that provide the same modest AC bonus.
Elves progress as Clerics but without any weapon or armor restrictions. They still get the Elf’s incidental class features and use the Magic-User’s experience chart.
I quickly adopted the Wood Elf class from Carcass Crawler issue 2, which is similar – you trade turn undead for the Halfling’s class features and attack bonus.
Since then I have adopted several more, as needs and taste dictated. Presented in roughly the order adopted:
Battle-Axes are functionally identical to longswords
For some reason OSE makes them two-handed slow weapons. I don’t see why this should be the case, so they’re one-handed d8 weapons. A two-handed axe is treated as an OSE polearm.
Critical hits roll damage with advantage
That is, a natural 20 on the attack roll is an automatic hit, and the attacker rolls the damage die twice and takes the better result. This is milder than many variants: critical hits favor the monsters more than the PCs, but players usually like them to be dramatic. Well, look at me: I am the players now.
Ignoring the mandatory rests every 6th dungeon turn
I kept meaning to do this and kept forgetting. I don’t think anything has been lost by excluding them, and my dungeon delves feel suitably careful and deliberate. Combat taking its own turn, separate from searching the bodies or interacting with a room, feels like it naturally adds those breathing spaces or moments of unprepared surprise that this rule is trying to simulate.
A Death & Dismemberment table
Save vs Death at 0 HP. On a failed save, Death occurs (hence the name of the saving throw). On a successful save, roll a d10 on the Wounds table:
Wounds
Minor Scar: no effect
Heroic Scar: +1 HP
Horrible Scar: -1 HP, -1 CHA
Lost Teeth: -1 HP, -2 CHA
Lost Ear: -1 on checks to listen, roll 1d3 for scar type
Lost Eye: -1 to ranged attack rolls, roll 1d3 for scar type
Lost Finger: -1 to checks and attack rolls using that hand. 50/50 chance for either hand. Determine handedness.
Broken Knee: reduce speed by one category
Lost Hand: unable to use that hand or anything requiring two hands. 50/50 chance for either hand. Determine handedness. If you strap a shield to your arm it only gives +1 AC.
Lost Foot: reduce speed by two categories. –4 on AC, checks requiring balance/speed, or saves made to dodge. Reduce penalties by 1 for a crutch and 2 for a peg leg (3 for both).
Cracked Skull: always lose initiative. Roll 1d3 for scar type.
Old Wound: -1d3 to a random ability score.
Determine Handedness (1d6)
1-3: right handed
4-5: left handed
6: ambidextrous
Determine Handedness, Elf (1d6)
1-2: right handed
3-4: left handed
5-6: ambidextrous
Attack rolls with the non-dominant hand are made at -4. Reduce this penalty by 1 every time you level up.
Morale rolls are made immediately
That is, the morale roll is made as soon as the first death occurs and when the NPCs are reduced to half of their numbers (solo creatures instead roll at their first wound and when reduced to half HP). This may or may not be a house rule, depending on whether you go by the Combat Sequence Per Round, which suggests that the roll is made at the start of the next round, or the When To Check Morale section, which reads like it plays the way I do it. Regardless, I think this makes morale feel more dramatic and immediate, since it can change the course of a combat round if the PCs win initiative.
Carousing: Oaths & Feasts
Using my custom rules, with the results reflavored to fit the pastoral setting.
Ability Score Improvements
Characters have the chance to improve up to three ability scores upon leveling up.
Pick two, then roll 1d6 to determine a third (you can end up rolling for the same score twice this way). For each score, roll 1d20: if the result is greater than the character’s current score, improve the ability score by 1.
I have really enjoyed this implementation of ability score adjustments. It provides a small narrative arc, it lessens the sting of 3d6-down-the-line mediocrities, and it means that weaker characters are likely to improve faster than strong ones. Most groups have an ad-hoc approach to ditching characters like Tansybell (no ability modifiers) or Old Dolf (net negative), where the PC is either re-rolled or the player tries to get their character killed fast for the chance to trade them in for a better one. Instead, my hapless dopes scrabbling and clawing their way towards their first ability score bonus feels great (although it probably helps that I get to play some better-statted characters simultaneously).
Spears and polearms have “reach”
Meaning they can be used to attack from the second rank of a formation. Many people play with this, but it isn’t actually enumerated in the OSE rules. To suit my vaguely early medieval aesthetic, the only polearm is the pole-axe / long axe / Dane axe (wildly contradicted by the inclusion of anachronistic crossbows, but they had some of those in the module).
Shooting Into Melee: Allowed
…In certain situations. I mainly do this when characters are shooting from the second rank of a shield wall into the opposing front rank, which feels reasonable to me. Most of my combats involve the PCs adopting an organized battle line or small formation, and situations where they can’t (or where the formation gets broken) are much more tense. This gives vermin like rats and bugs an outsized advantage, as they can easily swarm in to attack the weaker characters who normally enjoy the protection of the formation.
More changes to the Elf class
I had intended to remove clerics entirely and just use elves, but after rolling up some NPC clerics I decided to mess around with elves some more. Elves no longer memorize/pray for spells from the cleric spell list. They know exactly as many spells as they can cast, and can cast them innately, as an expression of their inner light. These spells are rolled randomly from a custom list (reversible spells are only available where indicated).
1st level spells:
Animal Friendship
Charm Person
Cure Light Wounds
Detect Magic
Glamour
Light
Protection from Evil
Remove Fear (Cause Fear)
Shield
Sleep
Turn Undead
Ventriloquism
2nd Level
Bless (Blight)
Blindness / Deafness
Blur
ESP
Fascinate
Find Traps
Hypnotism*
Invisibility
Knock
Obscuring Mist
Phantasmal Force
Speak With Animals
*Hypnotism affects undead when cast by Elves. All animals understand elvish.
3rd Level
Continual Light
Cure Disease
Dispel Magic
Growth of Nature
Invisibility, 10 ft radius
Locate Object
Remove Curse
Phantom Steed
Spectral Force
Striking
Suggestion*
Tree Shape
*Suggestion affects undead when cast by Elves. All animals understand elvish.
Due to their great stock of elven lore, they can use magic scrolls, wands, and so on from any class.
If I somehow end up with any 8th level elves, I’ll finish compiling the rest of the spell list.
Illusionists and Magic-Users are basically the same class
I randomly roll a free spell of the appropriate level whenever a character gains a new spell slot by leveling up, and those are still drawn from the base class. But otherwise, they’re treated as identical: Illusionists can cast Magic-User spells from scrolls or learn them through magical research, and vice-versa. Mostly I just think that the standard Wizard class should feature a lot of illusions.
Item creation rules from Holmes Basic
Spell scrolls cost 100 gp and 1 week per spell level.
Magic-users are able to make Potions of Healing for the same cost.
NPC Management
I stopped using my light hack of Errant’s abstracted dungeon exploration rules sometime around session 10, in favor of just playing the NPC explorations out like normal (effectively turning them all into “player characters,” although the distinction matters in my head). I started doing this when I knew that Ivy was going to be fighting a wight and wanted to count every blow as a potential lost level, and then found that the additional granularity from running full NPC sessions like that was fun.
I have continued using the other rules regarding morale and NPC behavior outlined in that post as a guideline, although I have overruled them in a few cases.
Ivy has morale 11 due to the ghost king in her cursed helmet, and doesn’t roll to determine whether or not she goes on an adventure.
Nogi doesn’t make morale rolls after near-death experiences because he’s sworn to seek death in battle.
Flarkin should have dropped out of the Silver Daggers from a bad morale roll after Pious Oddle died, but I decided that he’d stick around because he’s desperate to make his 2,000 gp and quit adventuring for good (he needs the money to buy in to his cousins’ business back in Toadmarket). If there were more NPC adventurers in town he could’ve joined up with then he would have quit the team.
No comments:
Post a Comment