The magic system in D&D and its derivatives has problems. What follows are some of my rationales for why I don't like D&D magic systems. The articulation may be questionable, but I hope my readers find it understandable.
Showing posts with label mechanics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mechanics. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
Distinguishing clerics, druids, and warlocks?
What is the difference between a druid and a cleric devoted to a god of nature or a warlock who made a pact with a god of nature? Aside from their game mechanics. What is the fluff and world building distinction?
The official D&D settings do not have satisfactory explanations. The world building of D&D settings in general falls apart upon inspection. So it falls to homebrew and 3pp to impose a sense of logic to the often bizarre rules of D&D and its derivatives.
Clerics, druids and warlocks are based on fantasy archetypes that predate the game itself. Clerics are originally based on vampire hunters. Druids are loosely based on the druids of the lost Celtic faith. Warlocks are originally based on witches as described in the Malleus Maleficarum. When they became classes in the game, their backstories and capabilities expanded and evolved over time.
Although their mechanics are distinct, their fluff overlaps. Perhaps the easiest way to solve this is to remove the overlap. Do not allow them to worship or make pacts with the same deity/patron (although fallen deities might be suitable as patrons). Instead of their being evil gods worshiped by clerics, there are not strictly speaking evil "gods" but archfiends and so forth. They are represented by warlocks, not clerics. (Although this requires actively defying the D&D convention of evil gods, which I don't have a problem with since I find the concept as it appears in fantasy gaming rather silly. Golarion, for example, has entire nation-states that openly worship evil gods and based their morality around being evil like the villain in a children's cartoon.)
Several campaign settings offer the explanation that clerics and druids worship the new and old gods, respectively. These settings include Scarred Lands, Kingdoms of Legend, and Points of Light. In these settings, there was an ancient war between gods loosely based on the Greek titanomachy. The druids venerate the primordial gods/spirits of the natural world, whereas the clerics venerate the new/orderly gods of mortal affairs.
As warlocks were not OGL until fifth edition, they are not integrated into most campaign settings. So no help can be found there. The existence of warlocks requires drawing a line between deities and patrons. What exactly is the cutoff point? What makes a god? The answer depends on the predilections of the world builder, so you can't simply use the one-size-fits-all approach of the rules.
An idea I had was to bring back the whole evil warlock shtick from medieval times. Gods, primal spirits, etc can freely hand out power for whatever reason. But fiends, fairies, or what have you are limited to pacts with warlocks for whatever reason. Perhaps they simply lack sufficient power, the freedom to channel power, whatever. (I suppose this sort of approach would fit better with a Eberron-esque agnostic approach to deities, which would better distinguish clerics and druids from warlocks. The logic being that deities are questionably definable whereas patrons are observably real entities, so their application as power sources would be different.)
Since demons/devils/fiends/whatever wouldn't have all that much power in the world because it has built-in defenses (you know, whatever prevents demons from just opening portals willy-nilly and invading the world), they need to rely on warlocks. They make pacts, buy the warlock's soul, grant bits of knowledge or power to allow the warlock to operate without wasting time on becoming a wizard. (There's conceptual overlap between the warlock and sorcerer due to their use of Charisma, but I'll ignore that for now.)
At this point, you'd need to world build your demons and other patrons. Again, I don't like the game's one-size-fits-all approach. For example, a lot of demons in mythology don't live in the underworld or hell; indeed, the mythological definition of demons is far less rigid than D&D's. I'd have to reserve that for another post, though.
The official D&D settings do not have satisfactory explanations. The world building of D&D settings in general falls apart upon inspection. So it falls to homebrew and 3pp to impose a sense of logic to the often bizarre rules of D&D and its derivatives.
Clerics, druids and warlocks are based on fantasy archetypes that predate the game itself. Clerics are originally based on vampire hunters. Druids are loosely based on the druids of the lost Celtic faith. Warlocks are originally based on witches as described in the Malleus Maleficarum. When they became classes in the game, their backstories and capabilities expanded and evolved over time.
Although their mechanics are distinct, their fluff overlaps. Perhaps the easiest way to solve this is to remove the overlap. Do not allow them to worship or make pacts with the same deity/patron (although fallen deities might be suitable as patrons). Instead of their being evil gods worshiped by clerics, there are not strictly speaking evil "gods" but archfiends and so forth. They are represented by warlocks, not clerics. (Although this requires actively defying the D&D convention of evil gods, which I don't have a problem with since I find the concept as it appears in fantasy gaming rather silly. Golarion, for example, has entire nation-states that openly worship evil gods and based their morality around being evil like the villain in a children's cartoon.)
Several campaign settings offer the explanation that clerics and druids worship the new and old gods, respectively. These settings include Scarred Lands, Kingdoms of Legend, and Points of Light. In these settings, there was an ancient war between gods loosely based on the Greek titanomachy. The druids venerate the primordial gods/spirits of the natural world, whereas the clerics venerate the new/orderly gods of mortal affairs.
As warlocks were not OGL until fifth edition, they are not integrated into most campaign settings. So no help can be found there. The existence of warlocks requires drawing a line between deities and patrons. What exactly is the cutoff point? What makes a god? The answer depends on the predilections of the world builder, so you can't simply use the one-size-fits-all approach of the rules.
An idea I had was to bring back the whole evil warlock shtick from medieval times. Gods, primal spirits, etc can freely hand out power for whatever reason. But fiends, fairies, or what have you are limited to pacts with warlocks for whatever reason. Perhaps they simply lack sufficient power, the freedom to channel power, whatever. (I suppose this sort of approach would fit better with a Eberron-esque agnostic approach to deities, which would better distinguish clerics and druids from warlocks. The logic being that deities are questionably definable whereas patrons are observably real entities, so their application as power sources would be different.)
Since demons/devils/fiends/whatever wouldn't have all that much power in the world because it has built-in defenses (you know, whatever prevents demons from just opening portals willy-nilly and invading the world), they need to rely on warlocks. They make pacts, buy the warlock's soul, grant bits of knowledge or power to allow the warlock to operate without wasting time on becoming a wizard. (There's conceptual overlap between the warlock and sorcerer due to their use of Charisma, but I'll ignore that for now.)
At this point, you'd need to world build your demons and other patrons. Again, I don't like the game's one-size-fits-all approach. For example, a lot of demons in mythology don't live in the underworld or hell; indeed, the mythological definition of demons is far less rigid than D&D's. I'd have to reserve that for another post, though.
Ability scores and magical traditions
D&D has traditionally assigned spell-casters reliance on different ability scores, typically lining up with their power source. Intelligence measures reasoning and memory. Wizards cast from Intelligence. Wisdom measures perception and insight. Clerics, Druids, and Rangers cast from Wisdom. Charisma measures force of personality. Bards, Paladins, Sorcerers, and Warlocks cast from Charisma.
Why these ability scores in particular? I don't (entirely) care if the ability scores are highly questionable mechanics in and of themselves, I just care what the internal logic is behind them being assigned in this way. D&D itself provides no reasoning for the assignments, so I have to devise my own. My working rationale is that spell-casting ability determines how a caster casts their magic regardless of its power source: Intelligence indicates the study of magical theory, Charisma indicates forcing the magic to obey your will, and Wisdom indicates passively attuning to and channeling universal power like a Jedi knight. But these rationales don't seem to hold universally true in the class mechanics and fluff.
Wizards cast from Intelligence because wizardry studies and manipulates magic like a science. When you cast a spell, you are arranging the spell using your knowledge and understanding of magical theory. That makes perfect sense.
Paladins and sorcerers cast from Charisma because they shape magic through sheer force of personality. They don't understand magical theory like the wizard, they just brute force their way to the desired outcome. This makes sense, although it requires imagining Charisma as the spiritual equivalent of Strength and Dexterity, I guess?
Bards cast from Charisma because Charisma is used for the Performance skill. Since bards cast spells by performing magical music, it therefore follows that they would use the same ability score. This makes sense from a game mechanics perspective, but Charisma being used for Performance is questionable in reality. Just because someone can play an instrument doesn't mean they are a social butterfly. In fact, playing music is heavily linked to "verbal memory, spatial reasoning and literacy skills," so it makes just as much if not more sense for Performance (and by extension bard spells) to rely on Intelligence and/or Wisdom.
Wisdom is where I hit a brick wall. As it stands, Wisdom is a weird grab bag of perception, intuition, and bits stolen from Intelligence. For the life of me I cannot reason why Wisdom would determine the efficacy of divine spells, as opposed to a Jedi's Force powers. The caster is just channeling the power of their deity to cast the spell on the caster's behalf, so their own ability score should not matter. This would make sense if Wisdom was supposed to measure how "attuned" the caster is to their deity, like a Jedi is attuned to the Force, but the fluff for divine casters is diametrically opposed to that of Jedi. Jedi are vaguely pantheistic, whereas divine casters are generally henotheistic.
Warlocks are the second brick wall. The use of Charisma would suggest they brute force their way through magic like the paladin and sorcerer, but the fluff explains they rely on study of magic like wizards. The patron mechanic confuses things further by drawing a parallel with the divine casters. What exactly is the difference between a warlock patron and whatever empowers a cleric or druid? According to anecdotes, the Warlock cast from Intelligence during playtesting but players complained that it didn't cast from Charisma like it did in third edition. (A lot of the questionable class design decisions apparently resulted from players complaining that it didn't work like third edition, even when the proposed mechanics were clearly better balanced or more logical than third edition. Druid wild shape is another example.)
As it stands, I think the key flaw of the spell-casting ability mechanic (beyond the questionable definitions of the ability scores themselves) is that it shoehorns ability scores regardless of whether it makes sense from a fluff perspective. In addition, the mechanic forces every class to rely on a fixed spell-casting ability even if it would make sense to let players choose another to customize their character. For example: maybe there could be a divine wizard counterpart who studies divine lore and casts divine spells recorded in a prayer book (e.g. Heroes of Horror's archivist class), or a divine caster who casts from Charisma to indicate that they rely on divine power from within rather than attuning themselves to a deity (e.g. Pathfinder's oracle class).
Why these ability scores in particular? I don't (entirely) care if the ability scores are highly questionable mechanics in and of themselves, I just care what the internal logic is behind them being assigned in this way. D&D itself provides no reasoning for the assignments, so I have to devise my own. My working rationale is that spell-casting ability determines how a caster casts their magic regardless of its power source: Intelligence indicates the study of magical theory, Charisma indicates forcing the magic to obey your will, and Wisdom indicates passively attuning to and channeling universal power like a Jedi knight. But these rationales don't seem to hold universally true in the class mechanics and fluff.
Wizards cast from Intelligence because wizardry studies and manipulates magic like a science. When you cast a spell, you are arranging the spell using your knowledge and understanding of magical theory. That makes perfect sense.
Paladins and sorcerers cast from Charisma because they shape magic through sheer force of personality. They don't understand magical theory like the wizard, they just brute force their way to the desired outcome. This makes sense, although it requires imagining Charisma as the spiritual equivalent of Strength and Dexterity, I guess?
Bards cast from Charisma because Charisma is used for the Performance skill. Since bards cast spells by performing magical music, it therefore follows that they would use the same ability score. This makes sense from a game mechanics perspective, but Charisma being used for Performance is questionable in reality. Just because someone can play an instrument doesn't mean they are a social butterfly. In fact, playing music is heavily linked to "verbal memory, spatial reasoning and literacy skills," so it makes just as much if not more sense for Performance (and by extension bard spells) to rely on Intelligence and/or Wisdom.
Wisdom is where I hit a brick wall. As it stands, Wisdom is a weird grab bag of perception, intuition, and bits stolen from Intelligence. For the life of me I cannot reason why Wisdom would determine the efficacy of divine spells, as opposed to a Jedi's Force powers. The caster is just channeling the power of their deity to cast the spell on the caster's behalf, so their own ability score should not matter. This would make sense if Wisdom was supposed to measure how "attuned" the caster is to their deity, like a Jedi is attuned to the Force, but the fluff for divine casters is diametrically opposed to that of Jedi. Jedi are vaguely pantheistic, whereas divine casters are generally henotheistic.
Warlocks are the second brick wall. The use of Charisma would suggest they brute force their way through magic like the paladin and sorcerer, but the fluff explains they rely on study of magic like wizards. The patron mechanic confuses things further by drawing a parallel with the divine casters. What exactly is the difference between a warlock patron and whatever empowers a cleric or druid? According to anecdotes, the Warlock cast from Intelligence during playtesting but players complained that it didn't cast from Charisma like it did in third edition. (A lot of the questionable class design decisions apparently resulted from players complaining that it didn't work like third edition, even when the proposed mechanics were clearly better balanced or more logical than third edition. Druid wild shape is another example.)
As it stands, I think the key flaw of the spell-casting ability mechanic (beyond the questionable definitions of the ability scores themselves) is that it shoehorns ability scores regardless of whether it makes sense from a fluff perspective. In addition, the mechanic forces every class to rely on a fixed spell-casting ability even if it would make sense to let players choose another to customize their character. For example: maybe there could be a divine wizard counterpart who studies divine lore and casts divine spells recorded in a prayer book (e.g. Heroes of Horror's archivist class), or a divine caster who casts from Charisma to indicate that they rely on divine power from within rather than attuning themselves to a deity (e.g. Pathfinder's oracle class).
Friday, August 9, 2019
Monster types in Pathfinder 2e
So the second edition Pathfinder rules have showed up on the online SRD sites. The formatting is terrible, but I was able to look past that.
Anyway, I wanted to address the monster types. Monster types are one of those rules that D&D and its derivatives have generally executed horribly. Pathfinder in particular had an atrocious type mechanic that was used to determine combat statistics. This new edition seems to have just adopted a similar mechanic as D&D5e, which has its own problems but I'll address those soon. So let's see how PF2 has revised its mechanics...
So the list of monster types is aberration, animal, astral, beast, celestial, construct, dragon, elemental, ethereal, fey, fiend, fungus, giant, humanoid, monitor, ooze, and undead. Let's not kid ourselves: this is a shameless copy of the 5e type mechanic with slight changes. Compared to 5e, PF2 subtracted the monstrosity type (good riddance!) and added the animal, astral, ethereal, fungus, and monitor types.
Unsurprisingly, PF2 hasn't learned from its mistakes so some of the types still have stupid arbitrary baggage rules attached, like elementals not needing to breathe. So an air elemental or fire elemental can survive just fine in the vacuum of space. That doesn't make any logical sense and it isn't thematic either.
PF2 divides 5e's beast type into animal and beast type, with the only distinction being that animals are limited to low intelligence. While this isn't an improvement over 5e's beast type (which covers all intelligence ranges), it is a massive improvement over PF1 which divided the same things into animals, magical beasts and vermin. Now animals may be ahistorical or have magical abilities: the ankheg and griffon are now typed as animals. Yay!
The PF2 beast type is unnecessary and nonsensical. Centaurs are typed as beasts, whereas medusae, merfolk, and minotaurs are typed as humanoids. Speaking of humanoids, the distinction between giants and humanoids is now fuzzier than ever. All giants are at least large size, but humanoids may be of at least large size too (e.g. minotaurs). So what gives?
The astral, ethereal, and monitor types were thrown in to cover corner cases. Astral creatures are from the astral plane, ethereal creatures from the ethereal plane, and monitors from the neutral planes. There isn't a type for creatures from the shadow plane or any other obscure planes, so it's up in the air what those will be typed.
So there are distinct types for good and evil (celestial and fiend), but chaotic, lawful and neutral are thrown into the monitor type. Because D&D and its clones use a stupid alignment system in which law and chaos play second fiddle to good and evil. I think that's stupid and vastly prefer 4e's origins tagging mechanic; if you need a type specifically for whatever aligned beings are supposed to be, then just add an immortal type or something.
The fungus type... dear God. Do we really need a fungus type of all things? Can it really not be covered by a tag applied to some plants and oozes?
In short, the new monster types mechanic is a marked improvement over PF1 but overall much worse than 5e. How difficult is it to devise a non-hierarchical tagging mechanic with separate tags for planar origin or whatever? 4e was vastly superior but these idiot writers keep ignoring its improvements because of stupid grognards complaining about it being too similar to MMOs.
Dear God. This isn't effing rocket science!
Anyway, I wanted to address the monster types. Monster types are one of those rules that D&D and its derivatives have generally executed horribly. Pathfinder in particular had an atrocious type mechanic that was used to determine combat statistics. This new edition seems to have just adopted a similar mechanic as D&D5e, which has its own problems but I'll address those soon. So let's see how PF2 has revised its mechanics...
So the list of monster types is aberration, animal, astral, beast, celestial, construct, dragon, elemental, ethereal, fey, fiend, fungus, giant, humanoid, monitor, ooze, and undead. Let's not kid ourselves: this is a shameless copy of the 5e type mechanic with slight changes. Compared to 5e, PF2 subtracted the monstrosity type (good riddance!) and added the animal, astral, ethereal, fungus, and monitor types.
Unsurprisingly, PF2 hasn't learned from its mistakes so some of the types still have stupid arbitrary baggage rules attached, like elementals not needing to breathe. So an air elemental or fire elemental can survive just fine in the vacuum of space. That doesn't make any logical sense and it isn't thematic either.
PF2 divides 5e's beast type into animal and beast type, with the only distinction being that animals are limited to low intelligence. While this isn't an improvement over 5e's beast type (which covers all intelligence ranges), it is a massive improvement over PF1 which divided the same things into animals, magical beasts and vermin. Now animals may be ahistorical or have magical abilities: the ankheg and griffon are now typed as animals. Yay!
The PF2 beast type is unnecessary and nonsensical. Centaurs are typed as beasts, whereas medusae, merfolk, and minotaurs are typed as humanoids. Speaking of humanoids, the distinction between giants and humanoids is now fuzzier than ever. All giants are at least large size, but humanoids may be of at least large size too (e.g. minotaurs). So what gives?
The astral, ethereal, and monitor types were thrown in to cover corner cases. Astral creatures are from the astral plane, ethereal creatures from the ethereal plane, and monitors from the neutral planes. There isn't a type for creatures from the shadow plane or any other obscure planes, so it's up in the air what those will be typed.
So there are distinct types for good and evil (celestial and fiend), but chaotic, lawful and neutral are thrown into the monitor type. Because D&D and its clones use a stupid alignment system in which law and chaos play second fiddle to good and evil. I think that's stupid and vastly prefer 4e's origins tagging mechanic; if you need a type specifically for whatever aligned beings are supposed to be, then just add an immortal type or something.
The fungus type... dear God. Do we really need a fungus type of all things? Can it really not be covered by a tag applied to some plants and oozes?
In short, the new monster types mechanic is a marked improvement over PF1 but overall much worse than 5e. How difficult is it to devise a non-hierarchical tagging mechanic with separate tags for planar origin or whatever? 4e was vastly superior but these idiot writers keep ignoring its improvements because of stupid grognards complaining about it being too similar to MMOs.
Dear God. This isn't effing rocket science!
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Dragonstar races for Starfinder?
I couldn’t find any official conversions of Dragonstar to Starfinder, but I did find other person's lists and some detailed homebrew. Here is a little listing of conversions and equivalents that I could find for those races listed in the Dragonstar SRD.
The centaur, drow, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, and orc races may all be found in the d20PFSRD and/or Starjammer SRD. Some races have interchangeable equivalents: catfolk with pershala, lizardfolk with ikeshti, elem with ifrit, oread, suli, sylph, and undine. Different races may need adjustments to fit a space setting.
Conversions of the doppel, ith-kon, oruk, pevishan, sathona, soulmech and tarn idoun may be found in the Rocks Fall conversion. Conversions of the centaur, derro and eleti may be found in the "Dragonstarfinder" thread.
Half-Dragons are not suitable as a PC race in the PRDs, so I suggest trying the Dragonblood theme or Dragonkin race.
As of this writing I could not find conversions or equivalents of the quasta, siarrans, or ulb races. The quasta is reprinted (not converted) with variant for non-scifi fantasy settings in Endangered Races: Quasta by Identical Games. The closest I could find to the siarrans and ulb races were the kasatha and selamid races.
The centaur, drow, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, and orc races may all be found in the d20PFSRD and/or Starjammer SRD. Some races have interchangeable equivalents: catfolk with pershala, lizardfolk with ikeshti, elem with ifrit, oread, suli, sylph, and undine. Different races may need adjustments to fit a space setting.
Conversions of the doppel, ith-kon, oruk, pevishan, sathona, soulmech and tarn idoun may be found in the Rocks Fall conversion. Conversions of the centaur, derro and eleti may be found in the "Dragonstarfinder" thread.
Half-Dragons are not suitable as a PC race in the PRDs, so I suggest trying the Dragonblood theme or Dragonkin race.
As of this writing I could not find conversions or equivalents of the quasta, siarrans, or ulb races. The quasta is reprinted (not converted) with variant for non-scifi fantasy settings in Endangered Races: Quasta by Identical Games. The closest I could find to the siarrans and ulb races were the kasatha and selamid races.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Occult magic as wisdom-based arcane magic?
While reading the comparison between psionics and occult magic in Psionics Augmented: Occult, something occurred to me. Occult magic, at least as depicted by Pathfinder: Occult Adventures, feels a lot like what I would imagine a Wisdom-based arcane spell-caster would work. It simply doesn't feel different enough in theme to qualify as a third power source for magic equivalent to arcane and divine.
The occult magic system is based on the 19th century occult revival. This involved a lot of Victorian Age pseudo-science and secular magic like orgones, mesmerism, spiritualism, etc. This wasn't based on what d20 labels Intelligence ("how well your character learns and reasons"), but more on what it labels Wisdom ("willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition"). Occultists developed their craft through intuition, not respectable science. The new rules like thought and emotion components and sentimental substitution rely on qualities ascribed to Wisdom, not the qualities ascribed to Intelligence.
Furthermore, the playtest for the second edition of Pathfinder changed the bard to an occult caster as part of its reorganization of the spell lists into arcane (sorcerer/wizard), divine (cleric), occult and primal (druid). Yet, oddly enough, the occult bard still uses standard material, somatic, and verbal components and still relies on their charisma for casting spells.
Therefore, the occult magic seems like it would work just as well if not better as a Wisdom-based form of arcane magic. IMO, the psychic makes perfect sense as a new arcanist class existing somewhere between sorcerer and wizard but beholden to neither. But if I am honest, all of this is essentially arbitrary to begin with.
The occult magic system is based on the 19th century occult revival. This involved a lot of Victorian Age pseudo-science and secular magic like orgones, mesmerism, spiritualism, etc. This wasn't based on what d20 labels Intelligence ("how well your character learns and reasons"), but more on what it labels Wisdom ("willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition"). Occultists developed their craft through intuition, not respectable science. The new rules like thought and emotion components and sentimental substitution rely on qualities ascribed to Wisdom, not the qualities ascribed to Intelligence.
Furthermore, the playtest for the second edition of Pathfinder changed the bard to an occult caster as part of its reorganization of the spell lists into arcane (sorcerer/wizard), divine (cleric), occult and primal (druid). Yet, oddly enough, the occult bard still uses standard material, somatic, and verbal components and still relies on their charisma for casting spells.
Therefore, the occult magic seems like it would work just as well if not better as a Wisdom-based form of arcane magic. IMO, the psychic makes perfect sense as a new arcanist class existing somewhere between sorcerer and wizard but beholden to neither. But if I am honest, all of this is essentially arbitrary to begin with.
Friday, July 12, 2019
The christmas tree effect
So a commonly cited "problem" in fantasy gaming is that player characters eventually end up decked in a huge wardrobe of magic items. This was called the "Christmas tree effect" because the characters lit up like Christmas trees when you used detect magic on them.
You could argue that the Christmas tree effect is just an extension of how magic items always worked in fantasy. Frodo had an inherited mithril shirt, a (cursed, sentient) ring of invisibility, an inherited sword that glowed in the presence of orcs/goblins, a chameleon cloak made by elves, a vial of starlight gifted by the elf queen, and some really nourishing bread made by elves.
This makes sense as a gaming convention. The criticism arises from the fact that this usage of magic items makes them feel banal, bland, and boring when they should feel rare and fantastical. Which I guess might be a problem if you are aiming for a fantastical atmosphere. However, the game is written with the assumption that characters will have panoplies due to how the leveling works.
Writing a book with advice that magic items should be rare without changing the underlying assumptions of the system is dishonest. Getting rid of that would require overhauling the rules so that player characters would get the benefits of that panoply without actually having a physical panoply, allowing items to level up, etc.
You could argue that the Christmas tree effect is just an extension of how magic items always worked in fantasy. Frodo had an inherited mithril shirt, a (cursed, sentient) ring of invisibility, an inherited sword that glowed in the presence of orcs/goblins, a chameleon cloak made by elves, a vial of starlight gifted by the elf queen, and some really nourishing bread made by elves.
This makes sense as a gaming convention. The criticism arises from the fact that this usage of magic items makes them feel banal, bland, and boring when they should feel rare and fantastical. Which I guess might be a problem if you are aiming for a fantastical atmosphere. However, the game is written with the assumption that characters will have panoplies due to how the leveling works.
Writing a book with advice that magic items should be rare without changing the underlying assumptions of the system is dishonest. Getting rid of that would require overhauling the rules so that player characters would get the benefits of that panoply without actually having a physical panoply, allowing items to level up, etc.
Links
- http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?495816-Christmas-tree-effect
- https://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?298929-Can-someone-explain-to-me-what-Christmas-Tree-effect-means
- https://mythcreants.com/blog/5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons-hasnt-learned-from-its-mistakes/
- http://legacy.aonprd.com/unchained/magic/index.html
Thursday, April 18, 2019
The problems with psionics
Dungeons & Dragons has traditionally divided magic into three types: arcane magic, divine magic, and psionics. The third has always been something of a red-headed stepchild.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Critique of D&D's schools of magic
Dungeons & Dragons traditionally divides magic into eight "schools." While seemingly well-defined, across editions spells have often changed schools. This reveals that the definitions of the schools are too often unclear and, ultimately, arbitrary.
Friday, October 5, 2018
Undead rejuvenation
A number of undead monsters have a trait often named "rejuvenation." When re-killed, they will not stay dead but will instead rejuvenate after a period of time unless special conditions are met. This makes them particularly difficult to deal with...
The undead that typically rejuvenate in the SRD/PRD are the death knights/graveknights, ghosts/revenants, liches, mummy lords, and vampires. Death knights, liches, mummy lords and vampires are tied to particular anchors (e.g. panoply, phylactery, canopic jars, coffin) and typically will not stay dead until said anchor is destroyed. Ghosts and revenants will not stay down unless their unfinished business is solved.
This is further extended in various third party products. For example, the Unhallowed from Creature Collection Revised cannot be destroyed until confronted with their crimes on hallowed ground.
In Polyhedron #150, the Shadow Chasers mini-campaign setting extended this to all undead creatures. The example in the sample adventure were bog-standard skeletons that would keep rejuvenating unless coins were placed in their eye sockets. Mercifully, this was dropped when the setting was republished in d20 Modern.
The undead that typically rejuvenate in the SRD/PRD are the death knights/graveknights, ghosts/revenants, liches, mummy lords, and vampires. Death knights, liches, mummy lords and vampires are tied to particular anchors (e.g. panoply, phylactery, canopic jars, coffin) and typically will not stay dead until said anchor is destroyed. Ghosts and revenants will not stay down unless their unfinished business is solved.
This is further extended in various third party products. For example, the Unhallowed from Creature Collection Revised cannot be destroyed until confronted with their crimes on hallowed ground.
In Polyhedron #150, the Shadow Chasers mini-campaign setting extended this to all undead creatures. The example in the sample adventure were bog-standard skeletons that would keep rejuvenating unless coins were placed in their eye sockets. Mercifully, this was dropped when the setting was republished in d20 Modern.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Aligned weapons
In the 3.x era, aligned weaponry raised some logical questions since it meant that when angels and demons fought their damage reduction did not work against each other, yet when demons and devils fought their damage reduction did work against each other.
5e has dropped 3.x's convoluted damage reduction mechanic in favor of a unified mechanic for damage vulnerability, resistance and immunity. Aligned damage no longer exists, although some effects deal damage to particular types: an arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage to dragons and otherwise harmless holy water inflicts radiant damage to fiends and undead.
I feel that removing the concept of aligned damage was unnecessary if alignment's place in the rules has essentially been replaced by types, and some monsters like vampires and werewolves still resist non-silvered weapons. Furthermore, the mechanic of extra damage makes it easy to derive different degrees of harm to provide more granularity and avoid logic gaps.
For example: fiends might be resistant or immune to damage from mortal weapons but not fiendish weapons, whereas celestial weapons not only ignore their resistance or immunity but deal extra radiant damage. In practice, this means that a fight between demons and devils would deal damage normally to both, but a fight between angels and demons would result in even greater damage to both.
So you can both use your xibalban blade to cut an otherwise invulnerable demon as well as splash it with holy water or brush it with a blessed dagger to cause burns.
5e has dropped 3.x's convoluted damage reduction mechanic in favor of a unified mechanic for damage vulnerability, resistance and immunity. Aligned damage no longer exists, although some effects deal damage to particular types: an arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage to dragons and otherwise harmless holy water inflicts radiant damage to fiends and undead.
I feel that removing the concept of aligned damage was unnecessary if alignment's place in the rules has essentially been replaced by types, and some monsters like vampires and werewolves still resist non-silvered weapons. Furthermore, the mechanic of extra damage makes it easy to derive different degrees of harm to provide more granularity and avoid logic gaps.
For example: fiends might be resistant or immune to damage from mortal weapons but not fiendish weapons, whereas celestial weapons not only ignore their resistance or immunity but deal extra radiant damage. In practice, this means that a fight between demons and devils would deal damage normally to both, but a fight between angels and demons would result in even greater damage to both.
So you can both use your xibalban blade to cut an otherwise invulnerable demon as well as splash it with holy water or brush it with a blessed dagger to cause burns.
Disease as a spirit
I have been considering switching to Mythras and Classic Fantasy (a variant of RuneQuest) for some time, since I feel it is a better fit for my campaign setting than the idiosyncrasies of D&D. Among other things, Mythras is based on the premise that the fantasy world has fantasy physics as opposed to D&D operating on the premise that the fantasy world operates like modern science describes the real world with magic crudely tacked on. For example, Mythras treats disease as a spirit rather than a pathogen. More information below the break.
Poison as an element
D&D has a weird relationship with real science. The D&D world is based on the premise that it works like modern science describes the real world to work, and then tacks on magic to explain any deviations from real physics. The problem with this is that the rules get real physics wrong: for example, D&D portrays poison in a way contradictory to reality. More information below the break.
Fantastical languages
As part of the nature and magic dichotomy, fantasy roleplaying divides speech into mundane languages and spells which let you talk to animals and inanimate objects. As part of removing the magic/nature divide, languages will become more fantastical and interesting. Here are some examples of new magical languages.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Converting monster types from 3.x to 5e
Aberrations
The definition of aberration has changed between 3.x and 5e. As of 5e, it only refers to monsters from the realms of chaos (e.g. Limbo, Far Realm). So any aberration that is literally an alien remains an aberration. Those which are merely strange are placed into another type: e.g. will-o-wisps are undead and naga are monstrosities. (Although I hate the monstrosity type, so in my house rules naga become dragons instead.)
Magical beast and monstrous humanoid
The magical beast and monstrous humanoid types have been deprecated. You might think they have been replaced by the monstrosity type, but this is not the case. Although many are placed in monstrosity, several magical beasts and monstrous humanoids from 3.x have been classified as other types: e.g. stirge, blood hawk and giant eagle are beasts; pegasus and unicorn are celestial; fire snake and gargoyle are elemental; blink dog and hag are fey; aarakocra, grimlock, kuo-toa, jackalwere, sahuagin, thri-kreen, and quaggoth are humanoid. The new type should be determined on a case-by-case basis. (I personally hate the monstrosity type as a catchall because that encourages lazy design.)
Outsiders
The outsider type has been deprecated as of 5e and replaced with more clearly defined types including aberration, celestial, construct, elemental, fey, fiend and so forth. Sometimes the new type is easy to determine: demons, devils, rakshasa, etc are fiends, angels, archons, couatls, etc are celestials, proteans are aberrations, genies are elementals, etc. Note that some of the subtypes may need to be dropped, e.g. archons no longer exist in 5e being replaced by angels. Other types the type may be different that you expect because of changes in 5e cosmology: e.g. the eladrins/azatas and guardinals/agathions are now typed as fey.
Sometimes the new type is not easy to determine or there may not be a good equivalent. For example, the only type that seems applicable to kami would be fey. In another example, aeons and psychopomps seemingly have no appropriate type so the only choice would seem to be "monstrosity" because it exists to hold monsters that cannot fit into other types (which I think is stupid and indicates the type mechanic is broken and needs fixing). However, if you are using a simple Moorcockian chaos/order/balance alignment system rather than the retarded good/evil/whatever system, then aeons and psychopomps make sense as celestials since they defend the balance (which is good in Moorcockian cosmology, whereas law and chaos are evil).
Friday, August 24, 2018
The idiosyncracies of vampire killing
Vampires are difficult to kill because they do not stay dead due to special traits variously known as "misty escape" and "rejuvenation." When killed in combat they transform into mist and retreat to their coffin to recover. However, if you interpret the rules too rigidly you get a number of strange possibilities...
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Filler monsters and races, or, making demikind more colorful?
Game bestiaries commonly suffer from filler. Filler monsters exist to pad out the book and most of them never get used. There are loads and loads of humanoids, making the fantasy world seem crowded with a village of yet another unique race dotting the land every few miles. Many monsters are also redundant, such as the countless varieties of catfolk, ratfolk, birdfolk, and other beastfolk. Most undead are just a variation of other undead, such as a half-dozen different types of ghosts who drowned or burned, and do not really deserve separate statblocks. Ideally, things like beastfolk and undead should be constructed using a toolkit.
Filler monsters are particularly prevalent in Pathfinder. Rather than providing options to customize existing monsters, the Pathfinder Bestiaries add loads and loads of monsters that exist to fulfill niche concepts that could have been adequately covered by variants of the existing monsters. Rather than making the chromatic and metallic dragons more diverse through additional options, we got loads and loads of wholly separate families of dragons like "imperial", "forest", "void", "occult", etc. Rather than making the existing demons and devils more diverse, we got loads and loads of wholly new families of fiend to fulfill random niche concepts like "hindu", "japanese", "fear demon", etc.
There are fairly simple historical reasons for this. Earlier editions of the game lacked CR or class levels for monsters, so the designers filled out the challenge ladder by inventing new monsters. Furthermore, monsters were not subject to customization and the writers were OCD, so whenever a new idea was needed they made up a whole new monster for it rather than a variant. The game also conflates race with culture and decided to split races into sub-races with different outlooks rather than have one race with different cultures. Again, earlier editions condensed race into class, and only later editions separated the two. The label of "demi-human" to the other PC races speaks volumes.
This leads to another problem: humans are the only race with ethnic diversity. Other races too often feel like funny looking humans. Too often whole races are pigeonholed into a single monolithic culture. Humans feel redundant when fantasy races steal all of their cultural uniqueness. Every member of the party acts exactly the same regardless of their race or implied culture.
With the monsters it is simple to condense them into families which include representatives at every CR, whether due to class levels or other monster building choices. The Fantasycraft game has a novel mechanic for scaling the same monsters at all levels. With the races we have our work cut out for us. We need to make fantasy races more culturally diverse within a single race without resorting to making up sub-races (or maybe separate racial and cultural traits into distinct packages), and we need to make fantasy races psychologically distinct from humans to justify them not being human or else devise some kind of explanation why everyone has human psychology.
With regard to demikind all having the same psychology, I have entertained the idea that they are all distantly descended from fey who became mortal or something. Alternately, maybe humans are distinguished by their mental flexibility compared to other demikind (that and their bizarre cross-species fecundity) and that explains why non-human cultures separated by great distances in time and space have changed little since their original division.
Filler monsters are particularly prevalent in Pathfinder. Rather than providing options to customize existing monsters, the Pathfinder Bestiaries add loads and loads of monsters that exist to fulfill niche concepts that could have been adequately covered by variants of the existing monsters. Rather than making the chromatic and metallic dragons more diverse through additional options, we got loads and loads of wholly separate families of dragons like "imperial", "forest", "void", "occult", etc. Rather than making the existing demons and devils more diverse, we got loads and loads of wholly new families of fiend to fulfill random niche concepts like "hindu", "japanese", "fear demon", etc.
There are fairly simple historical reasons for this. Earlier editions of the game lacked CR or class levels for monsters, so the designers filled out the challenge ladder by inventing new monsters. Furthermore, monsters were not subject to customization and the writers were OCD, so whenever a new idea was needed they made up a whole new monster for it rather than a variant. The game also conflates race with culture and decided to split races into sub-races with different outlooks rather than have one race with different cultures. Again, earlier editions condensed race into class, and only later editions separated the two. The label of "demi-human" to the other PC races speaks volumes.
This leads to another problem: humans are the only race with ethnic diversity. Other races too often feel like funny looking humans. Too often whole races are pigeonholed into a single monolithic culture. Humans feel redundant when fantasy races steal all of their cultural uniqueness. Every member of the party acts exactly the same regardless of their race or implied culture.
With the monsters it is simple to condense them into families which include representatives at every CR, whether due to class levels or other monster building choices. The Fantasycraft game has a novel mechanic for scaling the same monsters at all levels. With the races we have our work cut out for us. We need to make fantasy races more culturally diverse within a single race without resorting to making up sub-races (or maybe separate racial and cultural traits into distinct packages), and we need to make fantasy races psychologically distinct from humans to justify them not being human or else devise some kind of explanation why everyone has human psychology.
With regard to demikind all having the same psychology, I have entertained the idea that they are all distantly descended from fey who became mortal or something. Alternately, maybe humans are distinguished by their mental flexibility compared to other demikind (that and their bizarre cross-species fecundity) and that explains why non-human cultures separated by great distances in time and space have changed little since their original division.
Critique of demikind
"Demikind" is a term for humans and near-human races in D&D, like elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings. The core races, basically. "Demihuman" was the term prior to 3rd edition, and remains the case in OSR. I have seen a few major criticisms of the core races:- Race is cosmetic. "Everyone plays their character the same way regardless of race. They all speak the same language (common), they all share the same morals and beliefs, they all eat the same food and they usually share the same motives."
- Humans are boring. Humans "contribute nothing to the game-world." They are "the race that doesn’t really have anything particularly strange or unique about it; the one that doesn’t really seem to have a niche or anything they’re particularly good at."
- Cultures are monolithic. "When you pick a race in D&D, you’re also getting a pre-packaged culture with that choice. This happens because all races in D&D that are not human have a single monoculture that is assumed to be true and consistent across both space and time."
Relevant links:
- http://dungeonsmaster.com/2010/02/one-race/
- https://comicsverse.com/stop-putting-humans-in-rpgs/
- https://mthrisho.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/cultural-depth/
- http://obsidianadventures.com/dailyencounter/?p=2154
- https://raceindnd.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/nerd-nite-presentation-november-18th-2008/
- https://cartographyofdreams.wordpress.com/category/fantasy-races/
- http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Spring2010/c_ritter_050410.pdf
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreWhite
- https://www.elidupree.com/blog/how-to-make-your-fantasy-setting-less-racist
- http://keepontheheathlands.com/2017/07/06/presentation-tropes-monster-races-fantasy-games/
- http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-platonic-dwarf.html
- https://mikemonaco.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/other-races-in-dd/
- http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/10/everyone-hates-halflings.html
- http://nagorascorner.blogspot.com/2012/05/ad-races-elves.html
- http://unfrozencavemandicechucker.blogspot.de/2012/11/monstrous-taxonomy-demi-humans_13.html
- http://halflingsluck.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-limits-of-fading-folk.html
- http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2012/03/where-are-halflings.html
- http://mythlands-erce.blogspot.com/search/label/humanoids
- https://fluerdemal.wordpress.com/tag/humanoids/
- https://mikemonaco.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/other-races-in-dd-part-two-some-crunch/
- http://mythlands-erce.blogspot.com/2016/05/giving-humanoids-raison-detre.html
- http://starwarsdakota.blogspot.com/2011/09/tuesday-tangent-humanoids.html
- http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2011/03/creating-another-bandwagon.html
- https://screamingstoryteller.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-sankarjin-furry-race.html
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Pathfinder 2nd edition is confirmed
Long ago I switched to 5e because 3e had too many issues I did not like. Lo and behold, Pathfinder 2nd edition is trying to compete with 5e. This is not that surprising, considering that Unchained and Starfinder were previously used as testing beds for this exact sort of thing. Hopefully it will fix the issues I had with 3e, which are many, but at this point I am cautiously optimistic. I might switch over, but only if the new edition fixes the problems I had with it, or is easy to house rule, or if my favorite 3pp (e.g. the alternate martial and magic systems by Dreamscarred and Drop Dead) are converted to it.
Friday, February 2, 2018
"Legendary" monsters are just video game bosses
Legendary monsters, like the epic/divine/mythic rules, are a mechanic that sounds neat in theory but proves less than interesting in practice.
Friday, January 19, 2018
Sources for 5e conversions
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/dicefreaks/kain-s-5e-monstrous-manual-t561.html
http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/print/Syh7y7EHW
http://tomeofhorrors.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/7nfe9n/5e_epic_monster_updates_v9/
http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/print/Syh7y7EHW
http://tomeofhorrors.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/7nfe9n/5e_epic_monster_updates_v9/
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