Friday, December 23, 2022

Mini-tutorial on GMing different adventure styles

Some of the most common and easiest ways to run an adventure include:

1.) "Dungeon crawls", wherein players explore a hostile environment room-by-room seeking treasure while avoiding or overcoming traps and monsters. The fun in these games comes from a mix of the thrill of discovery and the challenge of staying alive. The simplest possible dungeon crawl is to draw a maze, some monsters in the maze, and some treasure, and then let the players enter the maze while you describe the current room they're in and let them decide where to move and what to do in each room, until they find the treasure and take it out of the maze or die trying. Many DMs got their start as twelve-year-olds running simple dungeon crawls back in the 1970s and 1980s, and it's still a fun way to start DMing! 

2.) "Linear plots": stories with a mostly-fixed plot, but with open character roles and opportunities for customization. These are fairly easy to run as long as players cooperate, a bit like a movie where the players can choose who the heroes are and specifically how they overcome the villains of the story: imagine the Twelve Labors of Heracles, but you don't have to be Heracles the strong man. Instead you can be Belfry, an elf cursed with wanderlust who fights monsters by throwing playing cards with the force of shuriken and sneaking through the shadows. You'll still do the Twelve Labors and come into conflict with the Evil king, but the details of how will be different as Belfry than they were for Heracles. Unlike a dungeon crawl, this type of game is often less about challenge and winning/losing than about seeing HOW this particular hero or group of heroes will succeed, and what unique imprint they will make on the gameworld in the process.

3.) "Mysteries" are a bit like dungeon crawls in that the players move around freely seeking something, but unlike a dungeon crawl players usually don't move from room to room seeking treasure, so much as from "scene" to "scene" looking for clues. They require a bit more skill than dungeon crawls because you need to know where to start and stop scenes and how much to skip over: if players say "we go find the police chief and ask him when and where John Thorn was last seen alive," you have to decide whether to start the next scene on the road to the police station (possibly noticing some interesting clue), in the lobby of the police station looking at a police secretary, or in the middle of conversation with the police chief who's now glaring ferociously over his bushy mustache at the player characters after having just barked an answer to their question at them.

In some ways mysteries are still a little like dungeon crawls, but another difference is that in a dungeon you can usually count on players finding everything eventually, including every non-hidden door to every room in the dungeon, but in a mystery there will be many things players never realize so it's very easy to make the mystery too hard unless you build in multiple paths (clues) to every "place" (conclusion, or scene) that the players need to reach.

4.) "Hexcrawls" are like dungeon crawls on a much bigger scale. Instead of exploring a dungeon looking for monsters and treasure, you're exploring a wilderness looking for towns, dungeons, and other interesting places or events (some of which might be linear plots or dungeoncrawls or mysteries). In a dungeon you're usually careful to always describe the exits from each room so that players always know where to go next if they're not interested in the current room ("out the green door" or "through the tunnel to the south"); in a hexcrawl you describe the contents of the local "hex" (i.e. local terrain within a fixed distance such as 5 miles) and then players choose a direction to go (such as "towards the river" or "northwest").

5.) "Social" adventures focus more on personalities and interactions between them than on locations and physical problems. A social adventure has some resemblance to a mystery in how you might navigate between scenes--DM judgment is required to know how much to skip--but the goals are different. Instead of looking for clues, players might seek out conversation which elicits emotional reactions in themselves or other characters (such as confronting an adulterous parent to demand accountability, or pleading with a friend for forgiveness at your inability to get them out of jail).

As before, social adventures need not be wholly separate from other kinds of adventures--perhaps one section of a hexcrawl might be a "home base" of sorts where social situations happen frequently, and even during a dungeon crawl there might be a hidden dwarf civilization on one level where social gameplay is the primary game mode.

Other gameplay modes are possible, such as running a spelljamming spaceship where hexcrawls through interplanetary space lead to dungeon crawls and linear plots whilst managing social issues among the PCs and NPCs who crew the ship. But these five basic types should get you started: dungeon crawls, linear plots, mysteries, hexcrawls, and social adventures.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Procedures for monster objectives

Inspired by https://mindstorm.blot.im/o-a-r-combat-objectives but different.

Before combat or other conflict can occur, there must be goals. In order for dice rolling to be needed, there must be uncertainty as to whether those goals can be achieved, which is especially likely if those goals are in conflict.

Unlike mindstorm I focus less on the moment of goal achievement than on removal of uncertainty.

Thus: before a potential conflict, both sides secretly write down their objectives and give them to the referee. (If one side is run by the referee they still write down the objectives.) The referee puts the objects in one of three piles: can, cannot, maybe. If nothing is in the maybe pile then players may resolve the scene by reading all objectives and narrating an outcome which satisfies all "can" objectives and no "cannot" objectives, or they may give the objectives to the referee to do. Otherwise, "maybe" objectives must be resolved into "can" or "cannot" objectives through game procedures such as reaction checks or combat. Whenever the referee decides an objective has changed status they will immediately move the objective into the correct pile.

Example encounter:

Dungeon desecrators seek entrance to a royal pyramid via a secret tunnel full of sleeping giant mutant bats. The bats' secret objective is written by the adventure designer: wake up and kill anyone who isn't a bat.

Players write down their objective, and the party druid adds a separate objective, and then the GM looks at all three objectives: 

Bats: wake up and kill anyone who isn't a bat.

Desecrators: sneak through the area without being noticed by any bats

Druid: take control of as many bats as possible to use as minions inside the pyramid.

All three goals conflict to some extent so they all go in the maybe pile. The GM will use whatever procedures are built into the game they are playing (e.g. Stealth rolls in Dungeon Fantasy or D&D 5E; spellcasting or Control Animal rolls for the druid) to resolve uncertainty. If everyone rolls well then the GM will push the bat objective into "cannot" and the other objectives into "can" and then indicate to the players to read them all and narrate an outcome (or push the cards back to him if they prefer to remain 'in character'). If they roll poorly then combat likely begins and the desecrator objective moves to the "cannot" pile.

The written goals serve both as a motivator for the adventure writer or GM to explicitly provide motivations for monsters, and as an audit trail to help players learn more about the game world over the course of play. 

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

F# probabilities: opposed 3d6 rolls

A handy little F# script for computing odds for Dungeon Fantasy/GURPS, such as the odds of a Slow Stone affecting a dragon:

let distribution3d6 =
    [for x in 1..6 do
        for y in 1..6 do
            for z in 1..6 do
                (x+y+z), (x,y,z)]
let probabilityOfSuccess attackerSkill defenderSkill =
    let mutable n = 0
    let mutable success = 0
    for x,_ in distribution3d6 do
        for y,_ in distribution3d6 do
            n <- n + 1
            let successMargin =
                match attackerSkill - x with
                | n when n >= 0 -> Some n
                | _ -> None
            match defenderSkill - y, successMargin with
            | defenderMargin, Some attackerMargin when attackerMargin > defenderMargin ->
                success <- success + 1
            | _ -> ()
    {| attackerSkill = attackerSkill; defenderSkill = defenderSkill; n = n; success = success; successRatio = (float success/float n) |}
probabilityOfSuccess 15 15

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

RPGs: difficulty and headroom

This may interest you: http://nethack4.org/blog/strategy-headroom.html

The article defines "headroom" as  follows: if the choices a player can make in a particular situation have a wrong answer, that is a sign of low headroom, especially if a different situation would have a different right answer. 

Has some applicability to RPGs (stat roll = low headroom, point buy = high headroom) as well as general difficulty level (5E in general is very high headroom, but so is Master of Magic).


Tuesday, August 23, 2022

D&D skill checks: negotiation and adjudication

One of 5E's issues is that the canonical loop goes:

1. DM describes situation

2a. Player declares intention and approach

2b. (Optional) DM rolls dice or asks player to do so

3. DM narrates outcome

The problem is that because skills in 5E are partially overlapping, (2b) should really be a dialogue with feedback loops for player suggestions and not just a query for a number result. Example:

1. DM, "As you're having tea with the Goblin King, you suddenly notice Rincewind behind him, stealthily descending the exterior castle wall. The Goblin King might turn around and see him at any moment."

2a. Lady Sarissa: "I turn up the charm to distract the Goblin King. Smiling broadly, flirting, laughing and touching his arm, trying to keep him looking at me and not behind him."

2b. DM: "Roll a Charisma (Deception) check, DC 15."

2c. Lady Sarissa: "I am proficient in Performance. I think that means I am skilled in holding an audience's attention. May I substitute Charisma (Performance)?"

2d. DM: "Actually that works even better. DC 12 in that case."

2e. Lady Sarissa: [rolls] "11!"

3. DM: "Laughing heartily at one of your jokes, the Goblin King accidentally knocks over a glass of water on the table between you. 'Excuse me,' he murmurs, and turns to call the steward to clean it up... which Rincewind right into his field of vision.'

4a. DM: "Rincewind, make an Wisdom (Stealth) check please to see if your ghillie suit camouflage is good enough."

4b. Rincewind: "Can I do Dexterity (Stealth) instead?"

4c. DM: "Not in this case because you're in plain sight. If your camouflage is good enough it's possible to be mistaken for a section of plants, and I'll waive the Dexterity (Stealth) check because all you have to do is hold still, but if your camouflage is faulty then you'll be obviously not a plant."

4d. Rincewind: "I made the ghillie suit with Woodsman's Tools, and Sprocket helped me look for any flaws in it. Can I use his Wisdom with my Woodsman's Tools proficiency?"

4e. DM: [thinks] "Sure."

4f. Rincewind: [rolls] 19.

5. DM: "Sarissa, the Goblin King waves the steward over. The steward wipes up the mess while the Goblin King continues enjoying your company. He doesn't seem to have noticed anything."

Friday, June 3, 2022

Thieves in AD&D: variant rule


Most of the criticisms of the Thief that I've read aren't conceptual, but mechanical: it's not that sneaking and finding traps aren't cool or worthwhile, it's that (O/A)D&D Thieves are *bad* at these things, especially at low level.

Intuition tells me that the root of the problem is using % dice for thief skills, in conjunction with low starting values for all the skills.

I wonder whether a dice pool mechanic might not be a better way to model expertise. Something like the following five Thief skills, each starting at one die (d6):

Camouflage: exist/sneak without your presence being detected

Forgery: create documents, uniforms, etc. that look like the real thing

Hands: delicate manipulations such as pickpocketing, card magic, lockpicking, disarming fine traps

Perceive: notice large traps, hear clues, oppose Camouflage

Savvy: predict NPC actions, detect social manipulators, have already prepared for a given situation.

(Maybe a Climb Walls skill somehow too, or is that just Hands?)

I'm imagining that you get one extra die per level to add to one of these skills, or maybe two at high level. Tools might give you additional dice or subtract dice if they're substandard.

Example usage:

Picking a crude lock jury-rigged out of iron by a goblin blacksmith requires Hands 1:5 (read: at least one 5-6 in your dice pool). A thief who chose to specialize in Hands (2 dice) and has decent tools (no penalty, no bonus) would roll two d6s. If either is 5+ (55% probability) he picks the lock, otherwise that lock is beyond him until the situation changes (such as gaining more Hands skill or consulting a mentor about goblin locks). At 2nd level, he could bump Hands to 3d6 (70% chance of success on the crude lock) or invest in a different skill.

A lock in town might be harder, 2:5. A really impressive tamper-resistant lock might need higher rolls, such as 2:6 or even 3:6.A Hands 3:6 lock is impossible for a novice thief to pick, and tricky even for a master thief with Hands 10d6.

Similarly, forging a simple travel permit within the Hobgoblin Empire might be Forgery 1:5 (easy for anyone who's ever seen one) while access to a classified military location might require Forgery 3:6 documents.

If the PCs get thrown in a jail during a heist, "I've already bribed this guard with money. He's supposed to drop a copy of the key on the floor" might require a Savvy 3:5 check, but if the DM decides that this guard isn't corrupt, and money won't work, he could say "roll Savvy 5:5 instead" and on success, tell the player, "You found that this guard isn't corrupt and won't take money, but he's desperate to find his missing daughter [adventure hook]. You promised to help with that if he helps you. He drops the key on the floor just as you had planned."

I imagine that instead of various races getting +/- 5% to Hide In Shadows, etc., elves might get * or ** to Camouflage while halflings get * to Perceive, where each * means "you can add +1 to a die of your choice". Thus, Camouflage 2d6* might roll 4, 5, which you can use to satisfy Camouflage 1:6 (4, 6) or Camouflage 2:5 (5,5).

I think by boosting the low-level success rate and reorganizing the skills, Thieves would have a unique niche that isn't easily duplicated by a wizard with Knock and Invisibility. Having a Thief in the party would feel less like a tax begrudgingly paid (or ignored in favor of another priest to offset trap damage) and more like a role that brings an actual benefit to the party and is fun playing.

At any rate, this is about what it would take to get *me* to want to play a Thief sometimes.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Easter Sunday

Jesus is alive today, and because of him we will all one day live again after we die. I know that to be true both with my mind and by the witness of the Holy Ghost, and I know that you have the right to know it too, through study and prayer.

Happy Resurrection Day!

-Max

Greek values and the morality of infanticide

From https://wng.org/opinions/protect-the-children-1650019354 ...The rise of Christianity created moral intuitions we now take for granted: Children are uniquely vulnerable, and we must physically protect them and work to preserve their innocence.
Don't take my word for it. The essential text here is When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity by the Norwegian theologian O.M. Bakke. Before Christ, Bakke observes, the ancient Greeks essentially created a societal hierarchy around their notions of "logos" or reason. Free male citizens were said to possess the most capacity for reason. Women and older men had less capacity, and children possessed even less rational capacity. Therefore, they were valued even less.
Indeed, unwanted children were frequently abandoned in the ancient world for trivial reasons, such as the desire to have a son instead of a daughter or in response to political or economic instability. The practice was known as expositio, where infants were simply left outside to die of thirst, exposure, or animal attacks...
Ohhhhh! Suddenly those old Greek myths about babies like Oedipus and Paris being abandoned to wild animals suddenly has a context: the Greeks' moral system didn't consider children to have moral value because babies aren't intellectually impressive! They were wrong of course but no wonder it was a part of their stories.
-Max
 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

George Lucas on happiness

I think this is a good definition of joy. "Joy is something you can recall." That matches scriptural usages of "joy".

I've discovered along the way that happiness--you live in two worlds here. Happiness is pleasure, and happiness is joy. You know, it can be either one. You add them up and it sort of falls under the uber category of happiness. Pleasure is short-lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month, and it peaks and then goes down--it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. You know, it's like drugs--you have to keep doing because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether it's shopping, whether you're engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it. On the other hand is joy, and joy is the thing that doesn't go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction, but it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall. Pleasure you can't. So the secret is that even though it's not as intense as the pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer, and people who get the pleasure, they keep saying, "Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars..." You'll NEVER relive the moment you got your first car. That's it. That's the highest peak. Yes, you can get three Ferraris and a new Gulfstream Jet, but you have to keep going, and eventually you run out. It doesn't work. So if you're trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you're doomed.

Pleasure's fun. It's great. But you can't keep it going forever. Just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe again it'll come back, and you'll get to do it again.

Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about YOUR pleasure. It's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion that's created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else, and it's a kind of thing that is in its subtlety and lowness much more powerful than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure, you're doomed. If you pursue joy, you will find everlasting... happiness.

-George Lucas

Source: https://youtu.be/sCP2SGTIz28?t=503

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Joseph in Egypt

*snip*

...Joseph is an interesting (and admirable) example to us all. I was just reflecting how interesting it is that Joseph's story is one of the only stories even in scripture where we are motivated to think of being given lots of work as a blessing. Not that we have a problem with work, I mean, but when the people of Alma are taken prisoners by Amulon and the armies of the Lamanites, we usually focus on the persecution and eventual deliverance. We don't typically say, "Alma and his people were so trustworthy that soon the Lamanites were having them do ALL the work!" And yet, with Joseph, that's essentially what we do. Joseph gets enslaved and he's so good at work that he eventually gets put in charge of all the work in Potiphar's household. He gets thrown in prison and soon he's the overseer of all the work in prison. He talks to Pharaoh and Pharaoh decides to make Joseph in charge of getting all the work done to keep the whole kingdom fed throughout the years of famine.

I do think it's a really healthy perspective to have, and one we should keep in mind often. It just struck me that this is one of the few places even in scripture where this perspective is readily visible. It dovetails well though with the Savior's teachings on "...and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."

-Max

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Thursday, January 6, 2022

House Rules for 5E

Why a house rule document?

So that players can know what rule changes might affect them up front. Player-facing rules go in this document, which gets given out to new players so they know what rules in the PHB don't apply. There are some DM-facing rules which don't go in this doc, including changes to monsters and procedures for running mysteries and dungeon crawls, and of course ad hoc rulings for a unique situation which don't get written down anywhere although I will try to be consistent if the unique situation recurs. This document exists so that players can make good decisions about things the characters would logically already know from experience.

House rules for my campaign

Simple changes

1.) On ability checks only, an odd score gives an extra +1. So Str 19 means you have +4 to Strength-based attacks and saves, but +5 to Strength checks.

2.) You can use both your move and your action in a Readied action, and can maintain a readied action from round to round.

3.) Class tweaks:

For Champion:

Improved Critical: you crit on a 19-20. Furthermore, when you inflict a critical hit, roll damage once and then double the total damage (including any bonuses from Strength/magic weapons/etc.), instead of just rolling twice the normal number of dice.

Furthermore, Remarkable Athlete now stacks with proficiency. So a Str 18 Champion 9 with Athletics proficiency would have +4+4+2=+10 to Strength (Athletics) checks, not just +8.

For Arcane Archer:

You have three shots per short rest instead of two.

For Battlemaster:

You can temporarily regain expended superiority dice, up to your normal maximum, by studying enemies for weaknesses. For every Attack you forgo during the Attack action, you regain one expended superiority die, which is usable only against creatures you can see at the time you regain the die. This temporary die expires after one minute if it has not already been used, as do any temp HP gained from Rally with it.

For Berserker:

When you end a Frenzy rage, if you pass a DC 15 Con save you do not suffer any exhaustion.

4.) Everyone uses spell points instead of spell slots. A player can opt for DMG spell points or use the rules here: https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/12/spell-points-by-formula-5e-variant-rule.html. Must decide when spellcasting is first learned; cannot change.

5.) An attacker unseen by his target has advantage only on melee attack rolls, not ranged attack rolls; however, he does qualify for sneak attack damage at range if unseen despite not having advantage.

6.) Anyone with any weapon can attack vital areas at -5 to-hit for +5 to damage. GWM and Sharpshooter feats merely increase the bonus when you are using those weapons.

7.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell triggers an opportunity attack from any enemies in melee range, unless you have the Warcaster feat. (This replaces the third benefit of Warcaster, about reaction spellcasting.) This attack occurs after the spell is cast but before it takes effect (e.g. can still hit someone Dimension Dooring away, can disrupt a concentrations spell and prevent it from taking effect). If the attacker is a Mage Slayer, they can force a concentration save to potentially disrupt even non-concentration spells.

8.) Casting a non-bonus-action/non-reaction spell while moving at more than half speed, riding a horse or on a moving ship forces a concentration save every round even if it's not a concentration spell (Fireball) or it fizzles. Fizzling does not cost spell points but does waste your action to no effect.

9.) There is no Disengage. Opportunity attacks occur when you move at full speed away from an enemy (turning your back), or whenever you are paralyzed/unconscious. You can back away at half speed without turning your back. Creatures like beholders and black puddings have no backs to turn and can move at full speed in any direction without provoking opportunity attacks.

Remark: Dashing while moving backwards replaces and is equivalent to Disengage. You move half speed ('15), but you do it twice because you Dashed, so you move 30' without provoking opportunity attacks--that's why Disengage does not exist, because it's redundant.

10.) Falling damage doubles for every size category over Medium, and halves for every size category under Small. For example, an Ogre falling 100' would take 20d6 HP of damage, not 10d6, because it is Large; and a Fire Giant falling the same distance would take 40d6 damage because it is Huge; but a housecat would take only 5d6 because it is Tiny, and a rat would take 2d6 because it is Tiny II.

11.) Abilities which recharge on "rolling initiative" instead recharge after five minutes. Specifically the following:

I. Relentless [Battlemaster 15th IIRC]: five minutes after you expend your last superiority die, you regain one die.
II. Perfect Self [Monk 20]: whenever you've had less than four ki for five minutes and haven't spent ki during that time, you regain enough ki to have four ki remaining.
III. Superior Inspiration [Bard 20]: five minutes after you expend your last use of Bardic Inspiration, you regain one use of Bardic Inspiration.

12.) While you are incapacitated/stunned/paralyzed/unconscious (but not grappled/restrained), your Dex is 0. Won't affect PCs in heavy armor, but that swashbuckling rogue is in deep trouble if he ever gets paralyzed by a monster or put to sleep, even briefly.

13.) You do not heal to full health automatically on a long rest. Hit Dice can normally only be gained or spent on a long rest, instead of a short rest, and on any given rest you can spend HD or regain half of your HD but not both. However, Bardic Song of Healing now also allows you to spend one HD during a short rest.

14.) You can go below zero HP. Instead of the normal rules on death saves and stabilization, you die whenever you reach negative (max HP). E.g. if you have 40 max HP normally, you die at -40 HP. When you are at zero HP or below, you are either stunned or unconscious. (If you choose to make a DC 15 Con save and succeed you can be stunned, but if you fail the save or choose not to try, you are unconscious from shock.) When you are below zero HP and are not already stable, you must make a death save at the start of every round. If you succeed, you are stable unless/until you take damage again. If you fail, you take 20% of your max HP in damage, rounded UP, not down. You can be stabilized by another character's actions as usual, through the use of a healer's kit or the Wisdom (Medicine) skill or a Spare the Dying cantrip, and any amount of healing also stabilizes you, even 1 HP.

Example: if you have 40 HP normally, and you get hit twice by an Iron Golem for a total of 50 HP of damage, you're now at -10 HP (and likely unconscious, unless you made the DC 15 Con save). Since you're at -10 HP, not zero HP, you can't be restored to full activity by a simple 1 HP Word of Healing as you would under PHB rules--it takes 11 HP of healing to get you conscious again. At the start of every round, you make a death save (as usual, it is DC 10 and no attribute modifiers apply). If you succeed you stabilize at your current HP, otherwise you lose another 8 HP and must save again next round. If you ever reach -40 HP you die.

Remark: In some ways losing 20% of your HP is more generous than the default rules because it only takes one roll to stabilize, and someone who is just barely at negative HP may take five failures before they die. A wound which takes you down to -1 HP is extremely unlikely to kill you. In other ways though, it is less generous because stabilizing doesn't wipe out past failures--that requires actual healing. Furthermore, if you're deep in the negatives, a single failure will kill you, possibly before anyone else can intervene.

15.) Parry: This is a special type of attack which attacks attacks. When you Attack on your turn, you may choose to dedicate one or more of those attacks to Parrying. If an enemy attacks you with a melee weapon before your next turn, you may roll a melee weapon attack and replace your AC with your attack roll against that attack. You can do this a number of times equal to the number of attacks you dedicated to Parrying.

Example: Robilar the Mighty, an 11th level fighter, has been attacked in his bed by two assassins. Unarmed and unarmored, he snatches up a nearby log to use as an improvised club, and dedicates two of his three attacks to parrying. Robilar inflicts some damage on an assassin with his remaining attack, but then the assassins strike back. On the first assassin's attack, Robilar parries, and rolls d20+8 on his melee attack (for Strength 18 and proficiency bonus +4), getting a total of 23, which he uses instead of his normal unarmored AC of 10. The assassin rolls d20+6, gets a 15, and fails to hit AC 23! Then the second assassin strikes, and Robilar rolls d20+8 and gets a 14. The assassin rolls d20+6 and gets 17, so Robilar is hit! The assassin rolls 5d6+4 poison damage and inflicts 27 HP of damage on Robilar--Robilar is in trouble if he doesn't finish them off soon!

16.) To avoid breaking the game, Simulacrum works more like AD&D Simulacrum than PHB Simulacrum. Instead of an almost-perfect copy of the original, Simulacrum produces a dull, listless imitation of the original. If the original creature has any class levels or special abilities, the copy has only 50% of those class levels or abilities, rounded up (the player can select which ones, e.g. if you copy a dual-classed Fighter 5/Wizard 6, you can pick which feats to keep and if you want a Fighter 5/Wizard 1 or a Wizard 6).

In exchange for this nerf, Simulacrum is now not restricted to humanoids, and it may regain spell slots as normal by resting, but it never increases in power (never gains levels).


Complex changes

1.) Open-ended d20 rolls. Since skill checks and saves, unlike attack rolls, don't auto-succeed on a 20 or auto-fail on a 1, but I always want there to be some chance of failure*, on a 20 you re-roll at +10 and take the highest roll. Roll again at +20 if you roll another 20, etc. If you roll a 1, re-roll at -10 and take the lowest. If it's obvious that you've already failed or succeeded you can of course stop rolling already.

*Unless you have Reliable Talent.

2.) Concurrent multiclassing is an option. With concurrent multiclassing, you can advance in two classes or three at the same time, e.g. you could be a 10th level Battlemaster/Necromancer with the abilities of both a 10th level Battlemaster and a 10th level Necromancer. See https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/01/5e-old-school-multiclassing-rules_29.html for more details.

3.) XP awards. All characters get a share of XP proportional to their share of the total levels or CR (rounded up to 1) on their side of a combat. For example, in a party of three 9th level PCs and one 5th level PC (total of 32 levels), if they earn 2000 XP from defeating twenty orcs, the 9th level PCs will all earn 9/32 * 2000 = 562.5 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 5/32 * 2000 = 312.5 XP. But if one of the PCs casts Animate Objects and temporarily animates 10 Tiny Objects during the fight, then there are 42 total levels/CR, so the 9thl level PCs earn only 9/42 * 2000 = 428.6 XP, while the 5th level PC earns 238.1 XP.

Purpose: this rule does not exist to punish you, it exists to keep the game interesting, so that you have a good excuse NOT to make the game too easy by flooding every fight with animated dead, purchased mastiffs, and summoned creatures unless you genuinely need them to survive and beat a tough enemy.

4.) Different initiative variant, WE-GO instead of IGO-UGO, and is designed to enhance player engagement and teamwork by reducing the amount of time players spend waiting for their turn to interact with the DM, while also making more intelligent characters and monsters seem more intelligent.

Procedure: DM secretly decides all monster actions while players consult each other and declare everyone's actions for the round together. Then actions are resolved in an order determined by the DM's best judgment of realism and convenience (e.g. arrows are faster than human feet so an arrow attack may happen before a move-and-melee-attack; but the DM might also resolve them both at the same time if the order isn't likely to change any outcomes), with initiative contests when the DM calls for one to decide potential ties.

Once you've declared an action or movement usage for this round you are committed and can't change it except how you initially specified (e.g. you can declare "I'm charging the goblins (moving towards them and Dashing if necessary) and attacking whoever gets within range if I didn't need to Dash"), but you can delay action declaration (or explicitly declare Delay). At any time before the round ends, you can declare an action or movement usage that you haven't used yet (e.g. "I'm standing up" after someone knocks you down, if you have enough movement left, or "I take cover") but then you automatically lose any initiative contests the DM calls for against those who declared actions before you. When the round ends, the DM will pause briefly for additional declarations, and if none are made (e.g. if a Mexican standoff occurs), any unused actions or movements are lost and a new round begins.

During initial action declaration for the round, faster thinking (a tighter OODA loop) is represented by letting highly intelligent creatures gain extra knowledge about other's actions before acting. A character (or monster) who wishes to observe other creatures before declaring an action may take a penalty of N on any initiative contests this round. If so, that character or monster may learn the action declarations of any characters or monsters with intelligence less than or equal to [character's own Int] - 10 + N, before declaring their own action. Example: if Erac the Mage (Int 17) does Observe 4, Erac's player may ask the DM what any monster with Int 11 or less is doing (which could be Delaying) before Erac has to declare his own action. If Erac chooses to Fireball because a group of goblins is preparing to scatter in all directions, and if the DM decides that an initiative contest is needed to see if the goblins scatter before the Fireball detonates, Erac will have -4 on that initiative contest because he paused to study the goblins before acting.

True surprise is rare and occurs only when an unwary target has effectively declared a non-combat action such as "read a book" at the same time a hidden attacker is preparing to attack them. If a target is wary (e.g. an adventurer in a dangerous dungeon) but unaware of a specific threat (the goblin aiming a crossbow at his back), at the start of combat the attacker will declare an action, and the target will be treated as having implicitly Delayed and will get to declare an action after the attacker's action is resolved.

Ask DM for details (or consult brief writeup at https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/01/simultaneous-initiative-in-5e.html).

5.) Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance works differently--requires a reaction and can dispel a spell it's affected by, regardless of whether or not it has a save. Details here: https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/03/5e-magic-resistance-variant-rule.html Fundamentally, instead of advantage on saves, it's now like Dispel Magic as a reaction whenever a spell would directly or indirectly affect the monster.

If a creature attempts to use its magic resistance against a given spell and fails, that represents being unable to resist this casting of that spell unless its magic resistance improves--any retries will result in failure. E.g. if you've got a demon bound with Planar Binding, the demon gets only one chance to resist that Planar Binding. (But a crafty demon may not test the Planar Binding right away so be on your guard.)

If magic resistance fails due to temporary circumstances like Hex or Cutting Words, that represents a temporary failure which can be overcome if the creature retries without the hindance. In this rare circumstance, the DM may record the original d20 roll prior to the temporary modifiers, and re-use it on the subsequent attempts. (Or the DM may choose another equivalent method with the same probability curve.) Ditto for temporary improvements: a demon which rolls a 7 (failure) on its MR check against Planar Binding, but then receives Enhance Ability (Charisma) and tests the spell again, would roll one new die, compare it to the previous 7, and take the higher result.
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I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.