So where are now? I’ve acquired and read every book I feel I’m gonna need. What remains to be done? Make a list of my house rules and then email my prospective players. We’re almost there!
(I need to find a good printer though, I have a lot of things to print.)
Did it. I’m done with High Level Campaigns. Meaning that I’ve now read everything that I really wanted to read before starting. So what’s left? Basically just reviewing my notes, writing up the house rules and printing out a few things.
Oh and remember my short digression about the D&D Rules Cyclopedia? Well it turns out that my folks gave me some cash among my gifts with specific instructions to ‘spend it on something frivolous’. I was happy to oblige. I now own (again) the most complete, self-contained RPG game ever designed. (Okay, technically the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set completes it.) There’s something strangely appealing to me about the fact that I could pick up some dice and only this book and run an entire D&D campaign.
While I was at my FLGS, I took the opportunity to also pick up The Castle Guide (which was on the ‘to buy’ list but not on the ‘to read’ list) and The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings. I’m always scared of Gnomish/Halfling PCs. And Ewoks in a Star Wars games. And Malkavians. There’s something about these ‘funny characters’ that turn on my danger sense and make me uneasy. I hope I’ll be able to find some guidance in there.
You can breathe easy, this isn’t another post about speciality priests! Just in fact a quick update to tell you that while I’m falling short of the original goal (frequent posts and daily ‘doage of stuff’), I’m still on track with the project. As a matter of fact I just finished reading Combat and Tactics and about to start High Level Campaigns, which is the last one on the list. There’s still a couple of books I want to track down, but nothing that should slow down things much more than right now.
Friendly piece of advice to anyone with ’101 days of’ projects, try not to have those 101 days include the holidays, it doesn’t work so well.
I love Critical hits. Especially the system from 1st edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I don’t remember exactly what triggered one (rolling under one fifth of your skill?) but I do remember that you then took the percentile you rolled for hitting, inverted it and looked up some tables based on hit location and type of attack. Or was it that you inverted the hit roll to figure out location and then rolled again for severity? Anyways, my memory fails me but I do remember the fun we had reading and applying the various gruesome results from the charts. It’s not every game system that allows a character to explode, sending shrapnel everywhere disfiguring another one!
Combat and Tactics offers two critical hit systems.
Simple: 18 or more on a d20 and hit by a margin of 5 or more: roll double damage.
Complex: 18 or more on a d20 and hit by a margin of 5 or more: roll double damage. Plus if victim fails a save versus death, roll for location and severity and then consult charts for specific effects.
While I think the second one is possibly a little too complex, I’m willing to try it. What do you think? Do you have a favourite critical hit system?
Still reading through Combat and Tactics. Combat rules are interesting but reading them isn’t the most exciting thing in the world so it takes some time. Also added two new books to my collection recently: Monster Mythology which I got from ebay and The Complete Book of Elves from my FLGS.
I also saw a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia for about 50$. I was tempted to buy it, forget this 101 days of AD&D thing and run a game of that immediately! Granted the BECMI rules are not to everyone’s taste but having all the rules in one book is pretty attractive to me. Truth be told, when I started this project I thought I still had my copy of that laying around and I wanted to run that instead of AD&D.
But I managed to resist and we are still on track with 101 days of AD&D!
I must admit I’m a bit confused and by a simple thing: What initiative system to choose? For the last few days, I’ve been reading through Combat and Tactics and I like a lot of the stuff in there. But I still don’t know how I’m going to handle initiative rolls. Here’s a summary of the various systems and options available, from the fastest and simplest to the slowest and most complex:
Standard Initiative
Each side rolls one d10 with a some modifiers, side with the lowest score acts first, all at once.
Group Initiative
Each side rolls one d10 but each individual has different modifiers. Act in order of roll.
Individual Initiative
Each individual rolls his initiative.
Weapon Speed and Initiative
Works with Group and Individual Initiative, each individual adds his weapon speed factor to the roll.
Combat and Tactics Initiative
Each round has a Very Fast, Fast, Average, Slow and Very Slow phase. Each individual acts on a specific phase depending on action chosen and base character speed. Initiative roll is only used to determine which side goes first in a phase.
I’m pretty sure I’m gonna use Weapons Speeds and that I won’t go for the Standard Initiative. The two most interesting choices seems to me to be either Individual or the Combat and Tactics system. Individual is how I’ve been doing it in the past but I love one thing from Combat and Tactics: Some actions start on a phase and end in another. For example, if you usually act on the Average phase and you take a full move, you do half of it on the Average phase and the rest of it on the Slow phase.
However, one thing I don’t like so much is that weapon speeds and spell casting times are averaged in. For instance casting times of 1 through 3 are in the Very Fast phase, no difference between 1 and 3. It removes some randomness. Since the phases are basically 3 segments of initiative maybe I should go with d10 roll + speed factor and rule that moves occur at intervals of 3 segments?
I’m still not sure and need to give it some more thought.
As a side note, I’ve discovered something I’ve been doing ‘wrong’ for all these years: Dexterity reaction adjustment is not applied to Initiative rolls but only to Surprise rolls.
Since I’m done with Spells and Magic, and don’t expect to find new classes in Combat and Tactics and High Level Campaigns (aside from a few proficencies and options), here’s what is supposed to be the final list of available classes for players:
Warriors (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger)
Rogues (Thief, Bard)
Priests (Cleric, Crusader, Druid, Monk, Shaman, Speciality Priest)
Wizards (Mage, Specialist Wizard)
Psionicist
Today I slacked off… Watching the Dungeons & Dragons Experience Documentary on Youtube!
Again, I have been very busy in the last two days. But I managed to sneak in a few hours of reading here and there. I took a pause from going through the rules books and instead took a peek a the Greyhawk related stuff that Dave lent me. The setting is as awesome as I remember it! With the help of the big map I recently received, I’m starting to have a feel for the general geography of the Flanaess. It always helps when you know where places are in relation to each other.
Only thing I had time for today was going yet again to the post office and picking up my DM screen. It’s a bit dirtier than I thought but it fits the description on ebay and it was really cheap. It will do.
