Thieves, to d4 or to d6 that is the question

Well a new quandary has arisen. I've been swinging back and forth on the place of thieves in my campaign. First let me say that we have a small party and currently have no active thief players and no one has made it known they want to play one. Therefore this issue may make no difference in the way game sessions actually play out. They will make a difference in the way I think about the game and who I put the party up against so NYAH!

The question as the title of this post suggests pertains to the thief and their hit die to use. One edition I hold with says use the d4. Another edition of the game says use a d6. Remember I use bits and pieces from D&D (bemci) and AD&D 2nd edition. The thief is main reason I use info from 2nd edition ala the thief's variable skill tables that are standard to that edition. 2nd edition also used the d6 for the thief's hit die while D&D used the d4.  So which option should I go with?

Some context to remember is that in D&D fighters are the top dog monster stompers had a d8 for a hit die while in 2nd ed they had a d10.  Now that means simply that there is a different level of what the french call blood and guts to each edition of the game. I swing with the old D&D school and say the fighter should have a d8. Simply put if fighters have on average potential of 2 less hitpoints per level then giving the thief a potential of 2 more hit points per level makes a BIG difference in how the game world works and what role the thief plays in it.

The difference comes down to if I want my thieves to be guys who have to sneak, have to hide in shadows and have to use their backstab because if they go toe to toe with anyone for any length of time they get stomped OR do I want the thief to be the kind of rogue that can go into a room full of enemies throwing caution to the wind and take an occasional hit without losing their ass. There is a good way to sum the whole thing up. Do I want the thief character class or do I want the rogue character class?

Mind you the wife wanted to play a ranger type of character but as I was only allowing the basic classes she played a thief as a ranger using her background skills as a woodsman/woman/person (whatever) to allow for tracking, hunting and such as that. The thief skills allowed her plenty of options and the weapons fit the bill. I was going with the d4 hit die though and she adjusted her tactics to that of a ranged attacker only using mostly darts (the big foot long roman kind, think lawn darts with attitude). As far as sneaking ahead and operating separate from the group it never occurred but she never thought she was playing a thief so she never got in that mind set.

Another thing to keep in mind is how I think of hitpoints . I don't subscribe to the hitpoints are damage theory. I mostly think of hitpoints as a combination of luck, stamina and general ability to avoid serious wounds. My general game logic says that a person does not receive a "wound" until they hit zero hitpoints. Now that makes the "cure wound" series of spells a bit of a misnomer but it's what I'm going with. With that in mind do I want the thief to be more or less combat capable. Should they be rough and tumble rogues or thieves.....

Again it comes down to that sense of flavor. Do I want vanilla or chocolate.  Well that might not be the best analogy because while I love vanilla, chocolate is my weakness. To heck with it. I want the thief who sneaks and backstabs but is capable of being a swashbuckler from time to time I don't want the low end fighter with thief skills.

So d4 it is

D&D the gateway drug to miniatures gaming?

Oooohhh, I've got the urge. I've got that terrible itch, that insatiable want that only one thing can sate. Miniatures baby! I've been drooling over Otherworld's mini's for a year now but thanks to the tax return I've suddenly gone all Dennis Leary  ala "Lets get an 8 ball, it'll last all weekend"...one hour later...."LETS GET ANOTHER 8 BALL!!!!!" I seriously think that roleplaying is a the gateway dtug to miniatures gaming and I certainly spent way too much time and way too much money on that hell hobby for a guy living in a one comic book cum hobby shop southern town. I remember when the shop owner finally took the plunge and introed mini gaming to his growing up card collector customers and they all wanted to play warhammer (mind you ten years after I bought rogue trader, space marine the game and two boxes of the first space marine plastic minis ever released) that I got to play one game before having to quit out because of my summer college job. Yay....fudge.....

So here I am again, I'm playing D&D and I'm getting all ancy for minis. I've decided that the best form of this insanity is to avoid all the more numerous beasties like goblins and such and only purchase the nicer one per encounter kinda guys like beholders, hook horrors and all that sort of thing. This will limit my wasting valuable dungeon creation time painting and such while still allowing me to flog the painted dolphin as it were. Now in your best wimp lo nasal voice say it with me "But dungeon master, what about when you have us face more than one of these things?" CRAP!!! I always intended to use paper minis if I can find the right pics to paste to card stock but mixing and matching? Ech, sounds icky.

Also just today I have seen one seriously good argument why not to use them . So here I am, I don't want to spend money on what are little more than shelf displays when those little honeys so beg to be touched and pushed around the table to every one's delight but at the same time what benefit do they really bring to the game? Other than visual stimulation I can't say then bring any benefit at all. Where else can we get that needed bit of visual stim. Well there is always the DM/'s screen....hmmm.

Part 3, Halflings and Gnomes, lets get it over with

So I've always felt that the halfling character class was a bit weak. It's a fighter with a lower hd of d6, a nice bonus to avoid giants, a decent bonus to ranged attacks and a piss poor excuse for the ability to hide. Well you should first know that I mix up a good deal of stuff from AD&D 2nd edition including spells and the values/variable thief skills with my labyrinth lord game (chocolate and peanut butter baby,sticky but great). With this in mind I've tried to offer up the class as something that rings more true when I think the word halfling. Now I did not want to steal the thief class's thunder but I felt the best way to fix the halfling class was to allow it a real ability to hide and move silently just like the thief. I also felt that climb walls made great sense and tacked on detect noise as well. I've also added a penalty of chainmail being the heaviest armor they can wear and of course the 2nd edition armor penalties apply to thief skills.  This with their already existent weapon restrictions adds up to the halfling being what I think it was always meant to be. A class meant to scout ahead and still fight effectively.

Now of course we come to the gnome. I have always been a fan of this underdog character race. I've never liked the interpretation of them being little more than skinny dwarves. I've always felt that gnomes are a much more magically inclined race and such should be reflected in their class. I decided that since we're already making the thief's skills available that the Gnome would probably benifit from such. Open Locks and Find/Remove Traps makes perfect sense to me as Gnomes are supposed to be tinkerers (and no I'm not just thinking dragonlance). Plus pick pockets makes a kind of sense considering how much gnomes enjoy pranks and tricks. Then we have read languages and this makes sense too. Gnomes are usually very well learned so they would be well versed in multiple languages. Beyond this half thief what is the gnome supposed to be. An illusionist of course ! So where the halfling is a half fighter/half thief the gnome class is a half thief/half illusionist. I've allowed them a d4 for hit die and access to four of the 8 major schools of magic from AD&D 2nd ed. Those are illusion/phantasm, conjuring, abjuration and enchantment/charm. These four schools allow the gnome to generate illusions which allow him to not sneak but to change form or go invisible and enter the midst of the enemy. The mix of spells allows a gnome character to do many of the things all wizards should without taking too much of the steam out of the magic user class by allowing his best spells to another class. Another added restriction is that the gnome class is not allowed the usual bonus spells per day I allow the magic user. Like specialist wizards in AD&D 2nd ed I allow magic users one extra spell per spell level per day. Also they have access to the cantrips spell list from 1st ed AD&D which you may have seen on the web for use with Labyrinth Lord as well. They can cast their level plus their int bonus per day in these cantrips (more on magic users later).

So there we are. The halfling is fixed to the point that I feel it's playable and we finally have the gnome as an available class in and old school game. I haven't figure out the exact xp table or save throw tables to use but I have a good idea thanks to the class creation tool from the 2nd edition DMG and once I've finished up all the details and had a chance to play test I think I'll publish the two variant classes under the open game license. Before that can happen though we've got to get a game going. All this over time is killing my still burgeoning campaign.

Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes Oh my! Part 2

So, a serious lack of thief and what to do about it... Well there are several ways to resolve this issue and I've not settled on any of them so far. First I could simply encourage the player that is up in the air about what character class to run to create a thief. Through life experience I have learned that getting other people to do what I want simply by asking and the use of a logical argument is unlikely to get anyone (especially a 20 something D&D 4ed player) to do what I would like.  Besides there are several other options all of which are more fun.

Another possibility is to allow the players to simply avoid or jam all traps that they know are there and to do so by having at least one of them in the lead using the ubiquitous 10' ft pole. That person would walk slightly ahead of the party pressing said pole onto the ground like the equivalent of a dungeoneering blind man looking for those little pockets of DM haha known as traps. When one is encountered there would be a possible chance of setting it off with the pole or simply seeing the triggering mechanism give slightly and knowing that the trap is there if not the nature. They could then investigate it knowing the whole time that it could go off in their faces and then attempt to jam the mechanism or avoid it altogether still not knowing if they're successful until they have to walk over the deadly little pretty.

 Beyond that they could carry a hammer/ram/crowbar to take out locked doors. They could use the magic users sage like ability to read languages (hmm that requires some development). They could then rely on their own pitiful chances of hiding in shadows, moving silently, picking pockets and hearing noises all to the DM's delight. But....while the whole bit about having them look for and disarm traps sound rather entertaining for me and them and while the busting of doors is a time honored tradition among the fighter class the continuous failures at trying to sneak past those 10 or more guards to get the key off their leader's belt and hearing if they're noticed and given chase are going to get annoying if not downright sucky.

Well why not just kill off said party of orcs and take what they have. Simply put I'm the kind of DM that believes in stocking a level of dungeon with far more than what the party can take out. I think that the most fun about playing this game is not rolling some dice and doing math until one side loses but instead having the players up against it and coming up with clever ways of figuring out how the heck they're going to not only survive but come out successful and richer for it.

So what the heck does all this have to do with the titular Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes. Well if you don't already know the older (basic) editions of D&D and most of the retro clones handle demihumans not as race to be applied to classes but as racial classes. In other words you do not play a dwarf fighter or a halfling thief etc etc but instead you play the class of Dwarf or Halfling or Elf. Each has some special ability and some cross over ability from one or more of the 4 human classes (Fighter, Cleric Thief and Magic User).

The Elf is a Magic User/Fighter. They've got all the abilities of both classes with a slightly lower hit die of d6 than the fighter, full selection of weapons and full use of armor. They do though have to come up with a great deal of xp to go up a level though (the highest per level in the game) and this limits their number of hit die/HP a great deal. I've also applied a couple more restrictions. Elves do not get the bonus spells per day I allow magic users (one per level as per specialist wizards) or have access to nearly as much learning as do magic users (MU in my campaign are very well learned and are essentially travelling sages to an extent). This means they have to learn whatever spells they can find for the most part and simply will never research or create any spells on their own. Also I will not likely allow them to enchant items either though this decision is up in the air.

The Dwarf is best compared to the human fighter class. He has access to all weapons and all armors. He has the same hit die of d8 and he has a very good table of saving throws especially versus poisons and wands. This makes the dwarf seem a bit simple but he is in fact a very hardy and classical type of character class. Also the dwarf has infravision a nice addition to any character that only he and the elf have. Lastly the Dwarf has one final ability which is his as I call it "tunnel sense". This is the ability of a Dwarf who has been raised and lived his whole life in Dwarf made tunnels to sense/detect things like new versus old construction, sliding (hidden?) doors and the occasional trap. This makes the dwarf a valuable addition to any party especially one that is thief poor.

Well time to get ready for work. It looks like this two parter is going to be a trilogy. More to come

Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Oh my! Part 1

Well if you don't know already I am running a Labyrinth Lord Campaign. It is what is known as a retro clone of OD&D. Specifically I'm shooting for a close recreation of the 1984 red box game which eschews skills, feats and the bucketfuls of modifiers one can get in newer editions for a simple and slim game. On your character sheet you will find 6 attributes, saving throws , a to hit table, equipment , class, AC, HP and name. You can find a very good example of such 'here'. I usually just put this whole thing on the front and back of one slip of 6x9 steno book paper.

Simply put I'm looking for a fun exciting game where the players (that includes me as the GM) are not worried about what modifiers we should apply but are instead worried about what that troll is about to do to our characters. I want an experience where my players walk away from the table not talking about how to best build their characters stat blocks to take on the next adventure but instead excitedly chatting about how the one character did this or that which was clever, exciting or crazy. That is why I have made the choice to use with Labyrinth Lord and well a mish mash of other editions of D&D (more on this later).

Now with simplicity comes some issues. I was going to avoid elves, dwarfs and halflings altogether and for the first couple of games I did only allowing human player classes. This is due to campaign issue and simply a limited number of players. The party needed a fighter, a mage, a cleric and a thief. Without those four bases covered we would simply not be playing the game I wanted to play. Now though we're up to 4 players. It would have been 5 but the wife simply cannot sit still for several hours at a time (preggers ya know).

Unfortunately with her leaving the game that takes our thief character out. I'm already running the cleric as an NPC and for reasons of campaign flavor I don't want him replaced or played by a player who doesn't know the secrets of my dark powers of campaign verisimilitude MUAHAHAHA. So now I have a problem of what to do with a party that currently contains one NPC cleric, one magic user, one fighter, one elf (fighter/mage) and one player who is currently playing a fighter but will probably want to switch up as this was his intro character for one game and he did not have a great deal of time to create it.

You may notice that I've already allowed an elf in the group but simply put this is the one elf and that is that. There are no elves on this side of the campaign world without there being a very good reason and even though the players don't know it yet there is a very good reason. Heck, the other characters don't even know he's an elf yet. He's just a short mysterious fellow in a cloak to them.

Now that still leaves us short of a character that can open locks, sneak about and back stab. So what to do what to do. Well off to get ready for work and slog away behind the man's desk. More later on demihuman classes and the possible resolution of a serious lack o thief.

OMG I FOUND IT! or Thank you god's of backup files

Well like so may good weekend's I woke up very early. Apparently  my beautiful muse of a wife thought I was taking up to much of her side of the bed and let me know about it with a fist in the spine (Love ya darlin :-)) This sort of early rising provides me with wonderful opportunities. I have had a great deal of time to myself to reflect and surf the web for inspiration (aka filching ideas). I was and have been in the mood to watch the 1984 edition of Dune. I have not been able to do so of course because the large, metal boxed, collector's edition DVD I bought was turned into a pair of skates by my daughter :-/ (Love ya puddin :-)). So I spent the morning smegging about listening to the soundtrack or what I could find on youtube and reading some of the history of the film on wiki. Check it out for some interesting facts on the first attempt at a movie. So, to make a long story short (TOO LATE!) I saw a great deal of people poopooing Dune ala 1984. People complained about the gore. People complained about the lack of cohesion and the bad editing.  People complained about the style. I'm certain people have numerous complaints about the over all story too. To all those people I have one response. Get over it and watch the movie. It's not about any one part of the movie  but the whole thing over all. It's about the full, immersive quality of such a foreign/alien world. It's a story where a young man's family is torn apart by vile enemies and he it cast into the deadly wilderness to survive. He then finds in himself the man he will become through introspection and growth in life experience. Mind you it's a life of adventure and war on a vast unforgiving world, halfway across the galaxy that will eat you alive and leave a dry corpse to be worn down by hunderd mile an hour sand storms in a matter of minutes. But still it's a story about people and the thing's people do.  So to all the poopooers out there I say this, get over it and watch the movie. Crack a beer, get a bowl of snackies, sit down and shut up. That's my opinion about a bunch of other people's opinions. In other word's "My horse's shit is way better than your's". So Pfft, Plop and Thank you for your support.

So.... I had a fantastic post that was introspective and great and wonderful. I mean it was like liquid sex rendered into ink and put on paper. I would have let this post have my children. I would have made this post my legal guardian. I would have given this post my power of attorney. I trusted this post and loved it like I loved nothing ever before or probably ever after. And just as I was putting the finishing touches on it the fricking web page timed out and like that....it was gone. Now that bitch of a muse has left me with no home and nothing to my name but my clothes and the mental equivalent of alimony. SHIT!

I'll just sum up what I was going to say. Dune movie 1984 Rocks. I mean it rocks in a way that Oedipus rocked his mom's ass. It rocks and everything else can eat a dick. Get over it, crack a beer and watch the fricking movie about some wicked awesomeness. Check out the wiki of the film for some interesting facts about the original attempt at a movie starring Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali.