Old School feats - my take

In a post some while back, FrDave posted his ideas about how to spice up the use of stats in old school D&D by some "feats" for those with exceptional stats. I liked the idea of some extra ability that set just that level 2 fighter apart from the dozen next to him in line at the dungeon entrance. Stats mean very little in earlier editions, and while I think the way it works in, say 1st ed AD&D, is a a bit excessive I still think some more use could be had out of them.

Here are my lists for "old school" feats.

This is build for the B/X edition of D&D, with a +1 for 13-15, +2 for 16-17 and +3 for 18 in a stat. The reverse applies for stats lower than 8.

Fighter

• STR - 1-3 times a day, the fighter attack may stun an opponent who must make a save or dazed only defend himself.
• INT - Once a day, you can find and exploit a flaw of the opponent. Adjust his and/or your AC up or down 1-3 points.
• WIS - 1-3 times a day the fighter can feint an opponent, who then looses his next action.
• DEX - 1-3 times a day, a successful attack may disarm an opponent.
• CON - 1-3 extra HP added at character generation.
• CHA - daily an intimidate attempt may be made, and 1-3 bonus gained to one to hit roll.

Magic-User (repost from Blood of Prokopius)

• STR - 1-3 spells per day have their durations doubled.
• INT - 1-3 spells with variable effects are maximized.
• WIS - 1-3 spells may be spontaneously cast in place of memorized spell of equal or lower level.
• DEX - 1-3 spells with an area effect have it doubled.
• CON - may use 1-3 weapons or armour chosen at character generation not normally available. Leather must be the first choice and no heavier than chain.
• CHA -  1-3 spells a day require two successful saves.

Thief

• STR - thrown weapons gets +1-3 damage
• INT - 1-3 times a day the thief manoeuvre himself so to grant initiative for his side. Ignore the dice.
• WIS - daily the thief may push and shove enemies in a fight, granting +1-3 to one attack/save on a friendly side.
• DEX - 1-3 times a day, an attempt at sleight of hand will automatically succeed.
• CON - 1-3 times a day you get +1 to a save of your choice.
• CHA - you can tell 1-3 totally convincing lies each day.

Halfling

• STR - 1-3 times a day, you can re-roll a to hit or damage for one ranged attack.
• INT - 1-3 bonus once a day to find hidden things.
• WIS - once a day, your sixth sense will warn you of impending danger, on a roll of [1-3] in a six.
• DEX - one fight a day, you get 1-3 bonus to AC.
• CON - 1-3 bonus to any save, once a day.
• CHA - 1-3 times a day, you may sing a silly song gaining a 1-3 morale bonus for the whole party.

Cleric

• STR - if an opponent if of a faith directly opposing your own, you may once a day smite the unbeliever for 1-3 extra damage.
• INT - 1-3 memorized spells may be swapped out for a healing spell of equal or lower level, at will.
• WIS - once a day, turning attempts will affect 1-3 extra targets.
• DEX - 1-3 spells of variable area of effect is doubled once a day.
• CON - daily after a short prayer, the cleric will regain 1-3 HP.
• CHA - the true intentions of 1-3 individuals with whim he has conversed will be revealed by the cleric's god.

Elf

• STR - once a day, you get 1-3 bonus to a save against spells with physical effects.
• INT - 1-3 times a day, a spell cast will be retained in memory.
• WIS - on a [1-3] in 6, small woodland creatures will give you warnings of dangers and happening in the wild you are travelling through.
• DEX - 1-3 rounds a day the elf may shoot twice in combat.
• CON - 1-3 days an adventure the elf may survive without sleep/food or water.
• CHA - on a 1 in 6 the elf might know, once a day, a snippet of knowledge of greater or lesser relevance to the adventure at hand.

 Dwarf

• STR - 1-3 attacks a day will not only harm, but also stun the target into loosing their next action.
• INT - may identify the make and/or source of gems and precious metals, on a [1-3] roll in six once a day.
• WIS - once a day 1-3 spells of the dwarfs level or lower will not affect him.
• DEX - when an enemy falls for your axe, you may 1-3 times a day immediately roll to also attack the closest enemy.
• CON - 1-3 days a week, the dwarf may drink any amount of alcohol without passing out.
• CHA - once a day, saves against any fear effect will get a 1-3 bonus for everyone within 10' of the steady dwarf. 

So what say you? I think these can be used to great effect to make that character of yours stand out a bit from the rest, without degenerating into super heroics of a kind not fitting for B/X.

Game giveaway

Now I have rearranged stuff on my selves, and some of the stuff I have put aside to one day put up on eBay have showed up. I'm sick of them.

The first person(s) who send me an email (i.e. the one that ends up higher in my sorted inbox) and agree to pay shipping costs (from Sweden) gets these for nuthin.

1. Rippers - the horror wars : It's a minis game based on Savage Worlds
2. Tales of the Reaching Moon #13 : a great Glorantha fanzine, this issue is a special about the West. I already have a copy.

Email away.

A lack of commenting ability

It seems like whatever I do, I can't comment on blogs that use blogger, and have a comment box beneath the comments. Like mine. It seems like I can't use my google account, only OpenID. Very annoying. If anyone have any hints, feel free to suggest them! I am using Firefox v10 and it was the same with v9. I would have stayed with 3.6 sites had not started bug me about upgrading. Not your business, bud! Anyway, I can tried clearing a cookies and restarting to no effect. *sigh*

Gaming in the slow lane

Now I have sent off my first letter in a De Profundis game. This will be interesting. I have tried gaming by forum and that is too slow to be fun. I wonder how physical letters will feel?

Interesting.

A new take of the gold economy

As all of you probably know, the economy in most fantasy worlds i a bit wonky. No, really! What I mean is that even though there are more precious metals than just gold, all the prices are in gold and it is what everything is compared to.

Those who like to get away from the gold inflation usually turn to a silver standard instead. But, I think this just postpones the problem. After a bit longer you will once again find that rich enough adventurers just ignore those piles of silver and copper and whatnot. Weight compared to value is not good enough.

I remember when I played D&D 4, that I felt that when we got the spoils in gold, it was always a bit of a let down. Somehow the sword and sorcery trained mind of me wanted heaps of gold and fistfuls of jewels, to be squandered on wine and women until the next adventure, of course.

Could you maybe have both?

How about you bring back the rule that gaining a level takes training? I mean the kind you have to pay for. In gold.

So what? Well, bear with me. Imagine a silver standard. Now, imagine the idea that nobody do silver for gold exchange.

Why? Well. I haven't figured that out yet. But, imagine you finding a chest filled with thousands of silvers. Back in town you repair your armour (you do use the rules for ablative armour, don't you?) and throw a feast for everyone in the tavern. Fun is had by everyone. Next time you go on adventuring you are broke, but manage to find a few ancient coins in gold. Now you can actually train and use those XP you have gotten on your last three hauls bringing up thousands of silvers, spent on carousing (you do use Jeff Rients carousing table, don't you?).

If you figure out a in world rationale for the set up above, let me know. I like the idea, though.

How to make combat interesting - two suggestions

Go read Zak's great post on the subject from a short while back, and check out Dan Bayn's series on actio scenes on big purple.

Why don't I remember all that cool shit when behind the screen?

I really don't care

...about D&D 5th ed.

The last hurrah of the Ronin Wars - Battletech

Today I played in the last battle of our narrative arch of the Ronin Wars. In the setting plot for the Battletech universe, that was a rebellion by old hardliners when the stellar empire of house Kurita let some worlds seced to form a new stellar state. I played the old guard, and this was the last fight as the war was lost.

I knew I wanted to try some of the combined arms aspects of Battletech, so on my side I had once light lance and one company of mechanized infantry. Add to that some buildings, and you have quite a mouthful of new rules if you've only played mech against mech before.

We decided my force wanted to extract three caches of information from the buildings before retreating off world. I sent in my three platoons of infantry towards the buildings and my opponent decided, without knowing, to concentrate his force of heavy mechs on just that cluster of buildings where two of my three caches were. Ouch!

The first platoon ran in, and ran out. While retreating off map they suffered serious losses. Lucky me we had no morale rules! Then they managed to escape they secured a marginal victory for me. After that my commander, in my only mech with any firepower to speak of, got hit by ten long distance missiles in the head. He died, quickly.

After that we diced a lot and my mechs became punched and shot at a lot. In the end one was mobile, but with no weapons left, one was running around with reactor hits and the torso a gaping hole and the last one had no arms and a leg that would fall off if someone looked at it angrily. The last of the infantry died on the edge of the map, gunned down by autocannon fire.

I have no idea of this was how you create a scenario by the book, since I don't own the full rules. Also, I have no idea of this was a scenario where the battlevalues matches up at all. Some guesstimates indicate my force was outgunned somewhat. It was real fun, though!

I really love to play Battletech, since the scenarios become small stories in themselves. Small epics of miserable shots, clumsy pilots and daring escapes. Great drama!

The idea of Interludes

I have been very much into the idea if running Savage Worlds for a week or so. It's a game that manages to look kind of plain when read, but everyone I've heard of who have run it have come away raving fans. We'll see if I can manage to actually try it out one of these days.

One of the things that easily makes you a Savage fan is the support Pinnacle give their games. Recently they released the Deluxe edition of SW, and guess what? They posted the major rules differences in a couple pdfs on their web pages, for free! At least it makes me want to go out and buy the new book, just because!

The thing I wanted to bring up today is the new rules for something called Interludes which is a quite neat thing I think could be imported into any game. Go check it out and see what you think. For you who like to stay around, here's when I tell you how it can be worked into any game. This is how I'd do it.

When you have any kind of pause in the action in your game, shuffle a deck of cards and have a player at random draw a card. The next time you do it, choose anyone one. Now, what the player who drew a card does, is she tells a short flashback or similar story which develops the back story and fleshes out the psychology or her character. It doesn't have to be long, but it has to show some new aspect of her personality, or an old one explained in a new light.

The suit of the card decide what the theme of the vignette is.

Hearts - some kind of love or romantic angle
Clubs - some kind of violence of physical conflict
Diamonds - some kind of relation to possessions and material riches
Spades - some kind of spiritual or religious angle

How about that? The rules from Pinnacle are slightly different, but I liked the idea enough to post my own take on it. I think this can be used just as well with pretentious new school games of the Story Game kind as well as neck beard grumpy old schooler games where you make it all up and roll some bones. Heck! Roll some dice when telling the story if it helps you decide what happened! I like the idea, any way you slice it.

RPG and card play - whimsy cards and suchlike

Those of you who have read this blog from the beginning (What? Haven't you all? Go back and read up. I'll wait here) might remember a post I did way back about whimsy cards. I've found something which brought them back to memory.

For those of you who don't know, whimsy cards was a game supplement from Lion Rampart, consisting of a set of cards you could play during the rpg session and have something out of the ordinary happen. It was an interesting way to add some player influence over things in the game, and others have used similar techniques since. Guess what I've found?

My latest find is the Adventure Cards, usable with Savage Worlds. I have not seen the pack sold for SW, but maybe they are as usable for any system as the old whimsy cards were. Anyway, if you are curious about the idea and want to take a peek at them, there is a way!

Point your browser to the Savagepedia, and the Savage Worlds fanzine Shark Bytes. Apart from lots of NPCs, adventures, extra rules and setting material, the fanzine included some extra Adventure Cards. It's all free for download on the 'pedia. Check it out! It would be cool to hear of them being used for a thing like a classic delve.