Key Our Cars

I’m going to be trying some different processing techniques on the current podcast in production.  For one thing I’ve tried to remove silence gaps that are longer than a 5′ish seconds.  This cuts down on the time you have to listen to ‘nothing’ and file size etc.  Although I don’t have any bandwidth restrictions on my hosting I do have a finite amount of drive space.   At some point I’ll probably have to whack older podcasts but that shouldn’t be for awhile.

I’ve also run volume equalization on the sound files such that everyone should be the same volume regardless of where they are in relation to the mic.  This may have a detrimental effect of enhancing background chatter in some locations but we’ll see how it goes.

The podcast files are ready, I just need to schedule some time with my announcer to do the recap and lead in for me and then put some public domain back beat under her.

My molding efforts are steadily showing fruition.  I’ve run easily 20-30 moldings, with Laura’s help, of the ones I own and the bags of pieces are growing at a steady rate.  Since I really want all the pieces to be color matching I’m not going to even consider painting until I have way more than I need for what I want to do with them.

I may start considering my basing options though in the near future.  I am going to be going with low walls for viewing purposes which will also help with the obvious (to me) seaming issues with the fieldstone.  I may try to come up with a technique to help minimize that as well using some kind of filler materials here and there to break up the horizontal seams.  I’m also going with a more modular approach than the one posted on Hirst’s web site for flexibility’s sake at the cost of set up time.

In regards to the painting, I’ve been perusing various other people’s efforts in painting and IMO too many of them are following Hirst’s color schemes to the letter and as a result they all look identical.  And, again my opinion only, those colors are hard to get realistic especially if they’re the only coloring you apply.  The color values are too separated and garish and too bright.  Part of the problem is I believe that the molds overly emphasize the texture. I do though realize that roughness to scale would be invisible at standard viewing ranges much like it is now if you stand and look at a brick wall from 100 feet away but I think a more subtle color scheme would work better and then use washes to highlight the texture could look better.

I aspire to this kind of coloring/shading (images pulled from this thread where you should go look if you have any artistic appreciation.  Absolutely gorgeous game board in the making for HeroQuest):

Not this (Image from Hirst Arts) :

In other news I see I’ve surpassed a quarter million unique visitors since this site initially went live with this inaugural post on April 21st, 2007.

Well I borrowed mold #85, an accessories mold from a co-worker and tried my hand at adding it to my molding rotation.  I’ve found that 2 cups (58 grams of water + 186 grams of plaster x 2) of material will just fill 3 deeper molds and one floor tile mold with very little waste and I was able to salvage most of the small waste material and fill in three or four holes in a fifth mold.

Mold 85 has some hard pieces to get to come out correctly.   A lot of very narrow parts, especially the small bucket is giving me problems in getting the mold filled and a couple of other pieces are also inconsistent in their turn out.   But it gives them character and helps reduce the ‘clone’ effect.  I guess.

Mold 71 has a couple of problem pieces, some fiddly curved bits that are for window moldings I think that if I’m not extremely careful unmolding snap in half.  I could wait longer I suppose for the plaster to harden more but I’ll just have to be more careful I think.  I’ve probably only gotten 4 or 5 of these pieces intact out of last nights work and should have 10 at this point.

Molds 70, 75 and 201 don’t give me any problems, easy to fill, scrape and demold.

My piles of pieces are building slowly but surely.  I’ve run about 10 moldings of 3 to 4 molds at a time and the bits and pieces are starting to pile up.  There’s going to be an ass load of excess pieces though that I probably will never use.   The tiny triangles and such on the floor mold springs to mind as well as some of the more esoteric curvy bits.

Image Copyright Hirst Arts

[D'oh.  There is a similar kind of thing that you can find here by GreyScott.  Different from mine but the spirit is the same.  I like mine better but then I like my kids a lot more than other people's kids so that's not unexpected.]

Barring dungeon crawls I don’t really do trivial encounters, that long progression of ‘gimmie’ fights that a DM puts a party through to do a slow drain on their resources to soften them up for the BBEG encounter at the end of the work day.  I certainly run multiple fights in one work day but typically they’re not quantified as ‘trivial’.  Each one has a chance to result in death for someone other than the NPC’s.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us have limited play time and expending that playtime in fights that are ‘gimmies’ seems wasteful.  Many of these single type encounters can be done using Narrative rather than combat.  But there are times that you do need to show the wear and tear on the group as they go through a long series of encounters but breaking out the mini’s for each one just eats horribly into the time you have to play.

Lately I’ve been using skill challenges to drain surges from the group to simulate small but pointless fights as they flee pursuit through the swamps or try to hide from the hobgoblin tribes while making their way home.   But those seem rather flat.

So I’m considering something more combat encounter based and let the party use their combat values against some defensive value, kind of an abstract combat.

The key question is how, I like the 3 rounds and you’re out system I use for skill challenges (duh or I wouldn’t use it right?) rather than the three strikes and you’re out that is the official system. And right now three rounds of combat are close to typical for the group at the level it’s at and seems like a good place to start.

So primarily how to abstract something as tactical as 4th Edition combat is the big question.  I need to work in a way for the players to gain some benefit from the various level of powers, at-wills, encounters and dailies with the understanding that a daily used during an abstract combat encounter is a daily they will not have during that work day.  And we need a simplistic way to simulate buffage.

So my thinking is on any of the three rounds the players can elect to use an At-Will (base), Encounter (bonus), Daily (bigger bonus).  They will take their Attack value for that power, added the bonus for encounter/daily, and then roll against an abstract defense of their opponents.  This isn’t so much to abstract their ability to hit as it is to abstract their ability to do damage.  Encounters and Dailies = more damage output.

Enough failures and they will be forced to expend a surge for each round.   So the most they can cost themselves is 3(4) surges per A.C.E. which isn’t out of line with a trivial encounter.

But we also need a way to more equitably spread out the surges lost.  As we all know barring really hard fights it’s typical for some (defenders) to go through an asston of surges while classes that can remain out of harms way might spend none.

So as a first draft let’s see how this flies -

Abstract Combat Encounter System or ACES

Purpose:

To simulate resource drain for a fight the party is expected to win without much risk but without having to take the time to move to a tactical simulation.

Procedure:

The party will negotiate 3 rounds of abstract combat.  In each round each member of the party will pick one of the following, At-Will, Encounter, or Daily.  They will roll a d20, compute their attack roll and compare it to the appropriate DC for the encounter using the AC/F/R/W values as set by the DM.

On any round that there failed rolls are equal to or less than successes the members of the party will lose one surge.

On any encounter that the party does not garner at least one success they will be penalized an additional surge.

Details:

Characters /Attacks -

During each of the ACES rounds each member of the party will choose one of their powers to use.  If the power is an attack power that targets a defense, the character must roll against the appropriate DC/Defense as set by the DM.

If the power also enhances another member of the party then the player may grant/add a +2 bonus to another character’s roll using the Aid Other rules.  If the power does not make an attack against an AC/F/R/W attack but it grants a benefit to another character then the player rolls against a DC+encounter level.  If they succeed then it counts as a success and grants a +2 bonus to the other character’s roll.  [NOTE: Yes this grants higher 'value' to non-strikers in general but what the hell let's give them a time to shine.]

If the power is not an At-Will the character receives the following bonuses where appropriate:

• Encounter +5 to attack roll / Additional +2 bonus Aid Other.
• Daily +10 to attack roll / Additional +4 bonus Aid Other.

Monsters / Defenses / DCs –

The DM will determine the defenses / DC’s of the encounter using the average AC, Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower of the encounter creatures.  You can also use the following values as an overall average across all monster types

• AC = 14+Encounter Level
• F/R/W = 12+Encounter Level

All encounters are assumed to be at the Easy level.  If you wish to simulate a normal or harder fight then add +2 per increase in difficulty that you wish to portray.

Experience / Loot-

The party will earn loot for the encounter just like they would have if it had been played out tactically.

They will earn full experience of the encounter divided by 3 multiplied by the number of rounds they succeeded at with a minimum of 33%, even failure teaches us something.  i.e. if they only succeeded on two rounds then they get 2*33% or 66%.

If they win two out of three rounds they’ll also typically earn some mundane items of value.  By winnign three out of three rounds they’ll also earn some items of higher value or items of a magical nature.

Sacrifice –

One per encounter a character can elect to sacrifice a surge and take one for another member.   More than one character can sacrifice for a member but each character can only sacrifice once per encounter.

Major Failure / Death-

If the group fails all three rounds then one player determined randomly is assigned a Death Strike which counts toward their three death strikes for the day and as such can only be removed after an extended rest.

Long Term Usage / Wave Attacks -

Sometimes you might want to simulate a lot of minor attacks, wave situations for instance where the party might have to face 5-10-20… etc trivial fights.

In this case you could instead of each encounter being three rounds, you just decide how many rounds per wave you want simulate.   Each round rather than once per encounter a player may sacrifice a surge for another player.

If a character runs out of surges they’re considered out of the combat and the remaining characters incur a cumulative -2 penalty per out of commission character on their die rolls to simulate them being forced to ‘take up the slack’.  If all characters are reduced to 0 surges the encounter is considered lost.

High Level Example: Goblin Warrens for Level 1 Party

Setup: The party has been tasked with cleaning out a goblin warren on one of the caravan trails.  The creatures have been causing issues with the caravans, stealing things at night from the strong ones, attack and pillaging smaller ones after driving off or killing the guards.

Attacks against the goblins have proven of little use with only a few killed.  But now the location of the warren where they’re holed up has been found and the party has been sent to insure that one way or another the raids stop.

It’s assumed that trying to deal diplomatically has failed and there’s no point in talking to anyone but the leader of the goblins and the outside chaff won’t talk.

So the DM figures it’ll take 3 minor encounters to get to the inner sanctum of the goblins.  He chooses to do this with ACES to leave time for the big boss fight whether that turns tactical or roleplay.

The first two encounters are truly easy so the DC’s for those are going to be AC: 15, F/R/W 13 as they’re level 1 encounters.  The third one will see the goblin boss throwing in some of his personal bodyguards so he’s going to crank that difficulty up one notch and that fight will be at DC’s of AC: 17, F/R/W 15.

The final boss battle will be played out normally.

Encounter 1 – Party of 5:

• Round 1 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 3 – Only two success – Result: 1 lost surge

Total: 1 surge lost.  The paladin elects to sacrifice a surge for the cleric and loses two and the cleric loses none.  Experience gained equals 66% of the total.

Encounter 2:

1. Round 1 – 3 successes – Result: No loss
2. Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
3. Round 3 – 5 successes – Result: No loss

Total: No additonal surges lost. Full experience gained.

Encounter 3:

1. Round 1 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
2. Round 2 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
3. Round 3 – 3 successes – Result : No Loss

Total: 2 additional lost surges per party member.  The fighter sacrifices for the wizard and loses three surges while the wizard only loses 1.  The paladin does the same for the cleric losing three surges and the cleric loses 1.   Only 33% of the encounter experience gained.

ACES results –

• Wizard – Down 2 surges
• Paladin – Down 5 surges
• Fighter – Down 4 surges
• Cleric – Down 1 surge
• Ranger – Down 3 surges

Comments? Thoughts?

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Found this post and it’s one of the better alternates for adding guns to a fantasy world that I’ve come across, not OP like many or just horrible implementations like some [the one that every shot creates a cloud of smoke cover, I'm looking in your direction, as well as the ones with a random chance to blow up, yeah you too].

Given I’ve got an artificer and they’re going to be searching for artificer type things something like this might actually find a way into their hands.  Given the secrets of the powder manufacture is currently lost it’s a automatically self limited resource.

Obviously the superior ones would require a feat for all to pick up and use well and the martial ones would require a feat for most.

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Original idea presented by DMEric on the official WOTC forums -

The goal of my firearms was to make ones that had a historical basis, but presented an interesting option to players as opposed to either an overpowered “must have” item or a slow loading piece of junk outclassed by bows. The martial level of items represent what, stat wise, amounts to a martial level crossbow. The superior level ones are essentially a superior version of the Repeating Crossbow.

Blackpowder is a rare and “expensive” item from the perspective of a peasant(or lord trying to outfit an entire army), but still trivial to any adventurer past the earliest levels, or very well funded mercenaries, pirates, etc.

My firearms come in two varieties, Martial and Superior. I haven’t designed feats yet, but I think in all likelihood they will just share feats with crossbows, since they are used in a similar manner.

Martial Firearms use breech loading mechanisms (they are loaded from the rear- either from the side sort of like a bolt action rifle or from behind like an old style shotgun), and they use paper cartridges with minnie balls. A minnie ball is a special type of bullet that when fired expands slightly to grip the rifling, allowing one to load the weapon at the speed of a musket, but fire with the accuracy of a rifle. (Historically, the difference was that rifles had “rifling”, tiny ridges that spin the bullet, inside the barrel, while muskets were smoothbore. However, rifles took a much longer time to load than muskets since the bullet had to be very carefully seated inside the barrel w/ a rifle, while muskets could use paper cartridges and just be quickly jammed in.)

• • Pistol  +2  d8 5/10   50gp   2lbs Firearm  Load Minor/High Crit
  • Musket  +2 d10 15/30  75gp 4lbs Firearms Load Minor/High Crit

Superior Firearms are special weapons based on the designs of the famed artificer,Vicento Leorezzi. These weapons, while using a smaller bullet, utilize magazines preloaded with primer, cartridge, and shot, allowing the user to reload the weapon from the magazine by way of the weapon’s finely tuned internal clockwork mechanism. In addition, the improved barrel design alows for accurate fire at longer ranges than conventional firearms. Each magazine holds ten shots, costs 3gp, and requires a standard action to remove the spent magazine and load the fresh one.

• • Clockwork Pistol +2 d6 10/20 80gp 2lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit
  • Clockwork Rifle +2 d8 20/40 105gp 4lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit

It’s been brought home to me recently again just how much better your custom content can be if you spend just a little time each day between sessions thinking about what you have going on in the world, past, present and future.
I can’t stress enough really that if you’re going to be creating your own content you really don’t ignore it until game day.

As much as everyone gives lip service to a ’sandbox’ world, “OMG you’re railroading them!”, etc. as a DM you, IMO, HAVE to railroad to some extent in order to give them the best possible gaming experience you can.  Mature, complex, interesting campaigns have a hard time finding fertile ground in a sandbox.  Sand just isn’t conducive to growth.

A sandbox is “Hey peasant, where’s the nearest dungeon?  No we already cleared that one, where’s the next one.” typically.  Or out of character, “Okay guys I have three modules for your level, which one do you want to do?”.  These can certainly be entertaining at the player level, social dynamics, the mechanics of the fights etc. But they’re hard to engage the characters.

I can improv aka play in a sandbox as good as many, better than most I think but I can certainly tell a difference in the quality of experience I can give the players by just spending a few minutes each day thinking on how things are going in the world.

By devoting a few minutes going over current events (assuming you’re doing more than dungeon crawling, a fine past time in and of itself) and putting yourself in the shoes of your NPC’s and their interactions with the PC’s you can come up with some pretty cool stuff I believe.   As an example, Biminey has transcribed details of their trip through Darkmith and sold it to the Temple of Eris (god of knowledge). As I was documenting his payment (125gold for the curious) on the campaign sheet for Biminey’s character I thought about one of the high priests reading these descriptions and realized from my one line personality note I’d scribbled out on him weeks ago that this could have a profound effect on the man.   And that effect is now going to flavor and color multiple interactions  that deal with the PC’s in specific and the NPC’s in general that might be affected.  And flavor and color add a LOT to a session.  No one likes bland white toast all the time.

Your own content also really really has to be flexible. Case in point the group in our last session derailed my story arc by getting captured. [Through all fault of their own. ]

Luckily this happened at the end of our session or it might have either resulted in less interesting events than I think it will now or I’d of had two options. Either called a time out while I rapidly regrouped or improv out the remainder of the session, the first has the advantage of better results, the later of keeping the flow of the game going.

Drastic events like the party getting captured by the bad guys when you’re not expecting it can certainly throw a kink in things. Or perhaps you have one key character in the group that your story arc is founded upon and that character dies. Do you have a backup plan to keep the story on track? Or do you toss out what you have and work out another arc? Do you sink to the level of “A wandering healer comes across the scene and agrees to resurrect the poor man if only you’ll go fetch him 10 belts from the orc tribes in the next canyon.”?

You have to consider these things when you’re working on your storylines. And you cannot possibly consider everything that a group of players might do or things they might simply not figure out, or figure out wrong and be unable to see other clues as result of their wrong conclusion.  But by taking the time to build up this gestalt image of your world between sessions you have a much better stronger tapestry that you can reweave around snags in the thread that might occur.

That’s not to say though that as a DM you don’t have to be prepared to lose work, some things you’ve worked so hard for just can’t be salvaged after the party goes off on a tangent. And that’s okay. There’ll be other times, other places, other campaigns if needed for those events to happen.

Look at every side trek, every derail not as an issue, but as  an opportunity to weave a stronger storyline that integrates the characters’ actions into your world. And integration is something that will involve your players.  This issue with the players being captured in my personal campaign is going to I think really expand some NPC’s in an interesting way, create at least a couple of memorable encounters and has sparked an idea that will have a domino effect that might see wrack and ruin in the region from yet another possible source than those already planned and that might actually cause a redirection of a regional force into a force of while not good, at least not evil.

All this because the players split up like so many chickens with a weasel dropped in their midst during a fight and got taken out by a group they should have been able to beat.  Players definitely get a ‘we always win’ complex and as a result not really take tactics or even thought into consideration.  It’s nice to throw them a curve like this and drive home the fact that they’re not always going to win and there are going to be consequences to losing even if it was unintentional.   In this case they’ve lost 1000’s of golds worth of magical gear, not to mention their basic gear that will have to be replaced from very limited funds.

Improving though with 4th edition can be hard, especially if you lack experience with the system in specific or gamemastering in general. With older editions it was pretty easy to ‘fake it’ with monsters you had to add at a certain point. You just needed a to hit number, a defense and some damage. Monsters were boring, the vast majority of them simply swung, bit or clawed at the players for ex damage in a Flinstones Boxing methodology (aka stand there taking turns swinging till someone died) And those were very easily faked, especially if you had any experience with older editions as faking things is mandatory for a DM as the math was so broken overall.

But 4th edition improv is harder. Sure you can come up with a basic creature fairly easily, just use the basic monster value formulas and you’ll have balanced monsters quickly. They’ll just be a bit boring until you have enough experience under your belt to knock them out.  And remember battles that contain a single creature type can also contribute to boring battles so you have to knock out, print out, look up several creatures per battle.

As a result of the more interesting monsters in 4th, it helps if you have some basic creatures printed out of an appropriate level range for you group, pick a couple of of each type, then just ‘reskin’ them as needed. A level 3 orc can just as easily be a level 3 guard, a war dog, an undead abomination, whatever. Just print out a few in preparation just in case.

So to wrap this up, remember, think about your campaign when you’re not playing it, just a few minutes a day can work wonders.  Think about your NPC’s and what they might want and their reactions to the actions of the PC’s.  And be flexible, be prepared for the party to jump the tracks by having a good idea of the world in general and being prepared with materials as filler/stop gap to give you time to work the derailment into your campaign and make it stronger as a result.

A derailment doesn’t always have to mean a train wreck….

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[Warning this is a rambling post that doesn't stay on topic very well or at all really...]

I was explaining my style of DM’ing to someone and thought it might be something that someone else might get some usage out of.  Or might just rile them up if they think differently but I’ve been riled up by the ‘wrong’ way that other people play only to eventually make a change in the way I play. [Ramble Alert!] As a prime example, I had a long discourse with someone about when to grant experience in Neverwinter Nights modules.  I was still very much in the ‘per monster killed’ mindset.  You kill a monster, you get experience.  His was you awarded experience when the players reached a certain point in the game.  Eventually, not then because he was being an ass about it but eventually, I decided that made a lot more sense to me as a DM.  It takes away the [True Story Alert] meta-gaming aspect of XP “I only need 10 exp to level?  I lean out the window and throw a dagger at someone on the street.” and makes it easier to balance things out if you have any kind of branching encounters planned.  If there’s no way the players are going to be anything but 5th level by the time they make it to the Sacred Tombs you can build the Sacred Tombs way in advance and not risk them being 3rd level or 7th level.

I really don’t do trivial encounters; even back under older editions I stopped pretty early.  I lean heavily toward combats that mean someone might get really hurt. (And yet I’ve killed fewer characters in 3 decades of GM’ing than I have fingers).  My harshness is I make the players work for their victories and I enjoy the reputation I have as being harsh and deadly in spite of the fact that in reality I rarely kill anyone.  I just make them know they were in a fight.  You do have to kill someone every now and then though just to show them that they’re not immortal…

4th Edition really lets me go to town in this regard.  Since the players are back to full after each fight and with limited options for them to spend their ‘working resources’ aka Healing Surges this means a) their work day is long enough that sleeping periods fall naturally rather than being forced by lack of resources and b) they can keep going typically for a few encounters even at the level+3, 4, 5’s that I toss at them.

Granted I haven’t really used a ‘dungeon crawl’ yet with 4th edition.  Where there are encounter after encounter after encounter.  But I have problems with those anyway.  I’m as guilty as the next person early on in my career of having a series of rooms connected by passageways with essentially random monsters tossed into each one.  Each battle very sandboxed, you fought these creatures and the ones just down the hall ignored the fight and patiently waited their turn to be slaughtered.  Part of that was definitely a bit of “Oooh the party hasn’t fought one of these before, or this, or this, or this.” and I’d munge them all together.

Then I started doing themed dungeons, waaaaay back in the day when even the commercial modules were still very much a list of encounters built by rolling percentiles.  The Swamps of [Clare] Grogan (Scottish actress that I thought was hot and I thought the name was very dungeony) which was a swamp themed dungeon, lizardmen (and women), giant snakes, crocodiles that went down for like 5 levels.  The Lair of the Eternal Trickster, a dungeon comprised of probably 50% traps combined with creatures.  Party would find or trigger a trap that alerted mechanical guardians or undead, creatures that could be ‘realistically’ parked in an alcove to wait for their queue and didn’t have any intelligence or programming that would allow them to respond to anything other than their set queues.

It was about this time that I started making dungeons smaller in terms of overall population and larger in terms of encounter population.   Or I’d do the ‘obvious’ and stream the bad guys in as a seemingly never ending fight.  Attack the guards in the front room and the guards down the hall would take a round or two to wake up, grab their gear and charge up, yelling for help which would get the guys in the next room up etc and so on.

I find myself now with fourth edition expanding further on this.  Fewer encounters but more meaningful encounters.  Perhaps I’m merely playing to my thoughts or the inclinations of my group but a series of trivial, everyone is down a surge or the cleric used up a couple of CLW’s fights bore me and I presume/assume they bore the players if there’s no story arc reason for the fight.

With 4th Edition I can fairly safely assume that the party will have a full set of hit points after each fight, when they reach the point they don’t then they’ll rest and recover them.  Sure they might be down a Daily power or out of their Action Points but numerically Dailies just aren’t that big a deal, sure they can cut a round or two out of a fight or if everyone burns them on one boss cut that fight out of the day in short order.  But they’re not a valid excuse to have a 5 minute work day.  The only real valid reason to extended rest IMO is when you’re out of surges, not because everyone’s burned their daily powers.

But I digress. [Hence the disclaimer at the top of the article now]

To get back on point, I don’t personally see a need for trivial encounters.  They spend valuable limited game time on something that is a foregone conclusion that the players will win and win without threat.   The only time I plan on using trivial encounters, trivial meaning anything that’s not on the Moderate difficulty scale at least, is when they’re strung together as a series of encounters without a break or when they forward the storyline or add another element to the story.

Case in point, the [I've Got Crabs] encounter in session 2 of this encounter (yes I give my encounters goofy names in my notes), it was a fairly trivial encounter, the party was never in any real danger.  But their focus on dealing with the crabs charging them rather than the crabs menacing the other huddled survivors of the slave ship on the beach cost one of those NPC’s their life.  Perhaps a point lost on the group but still a point that I wanted to make an effort put out there and try to broaden their scope and awareness.  Did it work?  Doubtful.  But I feel better for making the effort.

In my upcoming session I’ve got a skill challenge among others where the characters will try to escape the city.  If they fail on any of the three rounds (I use my own skill challenge design) then it triggers an encounter or two with the ferals of the city.  But these will be narrated out and the party will simply start the next round of the challenge a couple of surges lower.  This will continue throughout the skill challenge.   The only times I have planned to break out the miniatures is when it’s a fight worth playing through tactically.   There will be days in their overland trek that will have them facing encounters but these are again just narrated out, “Over the last three days the lands have changed from tundra to low hills as you continue your homeward bound journey.  Through the use of your skills you’ve managed to avoid most of the dangers of the lands although dusk of one night found you battling for you lives against a wolf pack lead by a strange black eyed wolf with boney spikes protruding from its joints.  They were fought off through the use of your talents and the black wolf seemed to really fear the Torel’s abilities that were infused by the power of his god.” [Just made that part up but now I'll use it Saturday.]

In this particular instance the success or failure of the challenge will cost them surges that they won’t have for the next round.  And of course, obviously?, there will be a tactical encounter at the end of the skill challenge and their success or failure at the challenge will have a direct impact on that encounter.  (in more ways than one but I won’t spoil that right now in case they read this before Saturday).

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After 30 a lot years of this whole roleplaying thing.  Every time I type that I have images of french maid outfits.  Anyway I was thinking of the ways I’ve started new campaigns over the years which lead me to the whole, how would I do it now question.

I’ve literally done the a wizard has called you to the tavern to discuss a proposition with you approach but that was decades ago before it became a trope and number 1 on the “Ways you should never start a campaign.”

Another time I had the players start a campaign dead.  That was fun writing their charater background stories.  I can be vicious when I need to be.  Actually I should post those campaign background stories here.  It might be interesting to someone.

Let’s see, I’ve had the town attacked by some kind of attacking attacker and the members of the party were the best of what’s left to go rescue the captives.

They’re all strangers to each other in a caravan heading to somewhere and it’s attacked and they’re the only survivors and band together for strength in numbers.

They’re strangers or acquantances that are pastsies for a regicide and are forced to band together to clear their name.  Oh and escape very painful deaths at the hands of prince’s torturers.

They already are a adventuring band although that obviously takes pretty much no thought or planning.  “Okay you’ve all been adventuring for awhile now.”

Hmmm in all these years I guess I haven’t really started too many campaigns.  But then it wasn’t unknown for my campaigns to last 18 months of 4-6 sessions a month.   Long sessions, like 12-16 hours.  Long gone are those days though.  That kind of thing is for the younger ones without lives filled with outside demands.  Sometimes I miss those days.

I believe a campaing should have a good start, something unique, tailored to the characters and the players, a strong middle point that perks up the players after they’re starting to get blase about things and a very memorable ending that the players will be talking about 2o years later.

As a DM / GM that’s your job really.  To provide the framework that the players build on.  And a shoddy foundation is no way to build anything although with enough mortar and duct tape you can certainly add support to a shaky start.

If and that’s a damn big IF, if you can get it from your players, try to get them give you some idea of what they think their characters are like prior to starting on the heroic path.  Some event that occured during their characters life that is a high or low point.  Honestly it takes just a few minutes for a player that’s truly interested in their character to come up with this kind of thing.  And your campaign should be the better for it.

Have an idea where you’re campaign is going.  I know players tend to ‘miss the island’ and a campaign can definitely derail into another direction you didn’t expect at all but if you start with an idea where the players are going to be about midway through the campaign you’ll end up with a better one.  If you’re good at improv you can improv the whole thing but having the luxury of time to work on the midgame gives you a better campaign.

And definitely have an ending to it.  Whether they get their own castle, save the world, recover Vecna’s left testicle, whatever, have an ending to the campaign.  Don’t drag it out past your’s and the players’ enthusiasm.  Things need to have an ending or all the struggles along the way are pointless except for the purposes of survival.  And just surviving isn’t really all that interesting on a global scale.

Anyway, lacking anything better to post about, I thought I’d share this. As always it’s personal opinion and your opinion could and probably will and honestly should vary to some extent.  Don’t be a sheep after all.  If they spark an idea for you awesome.  If it wasted your time reading it, well not much I can do there.

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Made a prototype of a smaller dice tower.  Things to note there’s a cut out for the tower to sit in when it’s upright, makes it less like to tip over.   This piece was made out of leftover scraps hence the odd grooves in places.

I really REALLY wanted to make a folding dice tower but it seems impossible to make one that both folds and hinges in the open position the way I want it and closes the way I want.  You can’t get here from there so to speak.

So I made it turtle style which isn’t too bad I suppose.  It actually ends up taller turtled than the bigger one because of the way  I had to put it together to make sure that my large casino d6’s would roll well through it.

Also the pegs run at a 90 degree angle compared to the larger ones.  With a more production style build I’d stain the tower black and keep the pegs white or viceversa for contrast’s sake.

The idea is a more portable dice tower in case I ever get to make trips to the FLGS to recruit new players (aka steal them from other DM’s. )

I’m listening to a podcast and the group has an obvious new player into a group that’s been together for awhile.  Their character is playing essentially an ass.  This leads what are obvious to me listening to certain gaffes and reactions from players that match their characters and becomes almost painful to hear at times.   They can be asses to each other because they have long running familiarity and friendship with each other.  Someone for all intents and purposes they do not know who’s an ass to them is going to strike irritation which doesn’t make for a good time.

Listening to this has me pondering my own experiences.  Frankly even with long term gamers I’ve never found intra-party conflict to be viable. It’s just a lot better, in my experience, for the characters to get along so the player’s get along.

Having characters that are argumentative to other characters seems to be very dangerous territory because it invariably seems to lead to players that are argumentative to other players.

While it could be said I suppose that such parties are self correcting in that eventually the majority of the party that does get along will split off, arrange for the ass to die in some fashion or otherwise deal with it, this can lead to the group self destructing.

I know I’m likely to get comments about the “We had an assassin and a paladin and they hated each other and we played around it and it was a blast.”  But for every time that it works I wonder just how many times it doesn’t and groups split or break up.

I think most people tend to reflect their character, if someone’s being an ass to their character then it’s hard for them to disengage the player from the character and not take affront.

As a very strong warning sign if it devolves into one player rolling dice and going “would that hit them?” then you know you’re approaching the saturation point where character emotion becomes player emotion.

So I’d like to offer the thought for consideration, that as a player you maybe not play the lone dark elf with a chip on their should to everyone including your party and instead perhaps treat the other members of your party like the people that are literally going to save your ass.

On a related note, from a DM’s perspective, at least this DM, don’t be a ass to the NPC’s.  I have to either ignore it, or do the realistic thing and have the powers that be take care of the problem.  You don’t have to be nice to NPC’s but at least be realistic in your behavior.   Because NPC’s have feelings too and they might just have some pretty powerful friends.  And a knife in the back is pretty easy to arrange in a crowded street.  And since I use this house rule, it might mean a little more than 1d4+3 damage.

Of course your group may thrive on conflict but if it does I would wager a small bet that it’s a long term group.  For you new players to a group, I’ll offer this advice, ease into the group dynamics, let them get to know you, much like you’d ease up to a dog.  Until you know if it’s going to bite or not, why take chances and yell at it and hit it with a stick?

Anyway, just wanted to put it out there that in my opinion, a party that gets along with other and is civil to NPC’s is much more likely to be a long term group on average.

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Saw a tweet that lead me to a post that re-acquainted me with a netbook for 4th edition. I have a much earlier copy but the current version has no less than 500+ pages of community created content for 4th edition, classes, feats, paragon paths, monsters, gear and phat lewtz and all that.

Highly recommended for any DM to peruse for use at their table.

There is considerable overlap in some areas with official content, now anyway, but when it was written it was just users filling in the gaps of the original 3 core books.

So while I’m rehashing other news (nothing new there right?) I would like to ensure that this does reach as wide an audience as possible as there’s a lot of work here that deserves to be seen.

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SPOILER ALERT!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T LISTENED TO THE 10/16/09 #8 PA PODCAST AND PLAN TO –

Edit: i have since learned that was in fact the end of this series of podcasts so Aoefel’s death isn’t nearly as gruntling to me.

I will make a prediction that Aoefel will return as a warforged. The ambershards will take his remains from the acid and convert him to a warforged revenant. That’s what I’d do and it makes perfect plausible sense.

I listened to the latest episode of the Penny Arcade Podcasts last night. I thought it was pretty funny in a lot of ways, quite possibly to me the most LOL episode yet. My wife and I have been listening to DnD podcasts a few times a week for a little bit after putting the kids to bed and before going to sleep and all in all it’s pretty enjoyable way to spend an hour or so.

I was talking to her last night about Al’s death and thought it would make a reasonable blog post. Frankly I didn’t like it for a number of reasons and I’m harsh, note the byline of this site for goodness sake. I strongly believe that killing Al in that fashion, unrecoverable, hearkens me back to losing a corpse in EQ due to bugs with lava flows and losing a corpse in EQ meant you lost all your gear.

I would like to state up front that I could be wrong in my “What was he thinking?!” in regards to Chris Perkin’s because obviously we don’t know what happens next. So bear in mind I’m only basing my reaction on what I know happened so far.

When Whil aka Aeofel rolled that 18 to climb out of the pit I would have immediately retcon’ed the DC of the pit to a 15. No one knew what it was and it would have made for a good story. That would have been a instant reaction / no brainer move on my part. If he’d of rolled a crap roll, I’d of had him roll a Perception roll with a non-announced DC of 1 for him to notice where the acid was shallow due to bones or rocks or whatever and given him a place to stand and given him quarter or half damage per round rather than 12 damage per round. For a character that apparently has only 26 hit points (???) that was already wounded to inflict 12 points a round…??? That would have made for a good story too, the avenger trapped with his feet and calves slowly dissolving in the acid as his friends struggled to break someone free to go rescue him while the remaining two finished up the bad guys? Epic storyline.

And I would have done that as a reward for his roleplaying. An Avenger is a single target focused class. They pick a single enemy and attack it until it’s dead. Hell without buying a feat they can’t even shift the target of their Oath of Enmity which is their very schtick. The character was behaving exactly as it should have been doing, any other actions would have been OOC. You don’t punish that kind of play.

In addition I’m a very strong believer in not letting the dice force the story. Random is too random for a good story. Certainly the dice influence, flavor and nudge the stories I try to tell as a DM, most certainly they do. But I never let the dice dictate the story. And making a character’s permanent death hinge on a single die roll at fairly bad odds? I would guess he had less than a 25% chance at making that roll. That should have never happened.

Other reasons I’d of worked some way around it -

Aeofel is a very well developed, enjoyable and obviously loved character of the player. You don’t permadeath that kind of character. With the exception to fit storyline reasons at the end of a campaign storyline. That last I have done, several times.

The conditions of their play time/session time. The players and DM have all traveled to some central location to play this game which is a one off game with months between sessions. You don’t kill off one of the characters after 4 hours of game play in such a session by letting a single random die roll do it.

The permanency of the death. His corpse was dissolved by acid in the middle of a bad guy infested stronghold. There’s simply no plausible way to get that corpse back for a raise dead ritual before it’s dissolved into its component parts.

Now if Chris has some plan in mind, maybe he wanted Aoefel dead so he can bring him back in some fashion, perhaps a cyborg undead given the obvious artificer nature of the bad guy? Then I can forgive him some of this although a cyborg Aeofel would be directly ripping me off. Been there and done.

I would like to say in closing that I really like Chris Perkin’s. I think he’s a very good DM especially after he’s gotten used to his players, even in the first PA podcasts with complete unknown’s he was good and now with the third podcast they really gel as a group. I also want to say that it’s not Aoefel’s death that I strenuously object too (although killing a player in the middle of a game session under these session circumstances is bad), it’s the apparent permanency of it that bothers.

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I had a random thought, where exactly does an Epic level (30th) character spend 3.125 million gold for a 30th level item?  That’s 31.25 TONS of gold. That’s  a cube of 24k gold almost 4 FEET on each side. (roughly).  So you could easily put that in a wagon.  But a wagon that can hold 31 tons? Good luck with that. You’re going to need a treasure train of 32 wagons to haul it to the vendor.

And why even bother buying that level 30 magic item when you can save 2 million and buy a level 28 magic item and hire several kingdoms worth of armies to keep the riff raff away.

I’ve always thought the economies of any system where you can live fairly well for about 20 gold a month and very well for 100 gold a month cannot easily absorb the influx of wealth that occurs because of treasure seekers.

Even if the merchants have two pricing schemes, one for normal people and one for adventurer’s they themselves will swiftly gain money to the point where other merchants will charge those merchants adventurer’s pricing and then so on.

A classic real world example is the issues of the U.S.’s Gold Rush in the 1800’s where gold miners (read: adventurers) brought in a lot of gold and destroyed local economies, towns sprang up just to deal with the miners at crazy prices.

A classic semi-real modern example that a lot of people might be familiar with is World of Warcraft.  I quit back during the Burning Crusade expansion and even then I could farm someplace like Shadowfang Keep for Assassin’s Blades and get two to three hundred gold for them for level 19 twinks.  Why?  Because the economy was screwed due to the influx of gold from long established characters raking it in at the high levels.  Low level gear was crazy priced to the point that new players couldn’t afford anything ‘cool’.

That same thing would happen across any fantasy world as adventurer’s hammered the local economies with gold without such modern miracles as global banking institutions.

Is there a solution?  Of course, hand wave it out the window and ignore the real world issues in buying and selling of things that cost more than a kingdom might have in total coinage.

Is there a solution that fits a fantasy setting?  Separate magic from gold completely.  Have your dragon hordes with 100’s OR 1000’s of golds, not 100’s of thousands.  Put in place rituals that let the characters power up their swords and turn them into something that grows with them or use any of the ideas to remove magic bonuses from items and give them to the characters innately and the magic items become flavor gear with bonus abilities.   The character has a flaming sword, not a flaming sword +1.  I understand the DMG2 has some guidelines on this now as well as the community stuff.

Anyway, that was my random thought about something to post today.

Updated and sorted my miniatures list into one and organized them a fractional bit -

560        Total Miniatures

10        Goblin Archer   
4        Goblin Adept   
6        Goblin Picador   
6        Goblin Runner   
6        Lolthbound Goblin   
4        Goblin Sharpshooters   
Read the rest of this entry »

Just realized through a very roundabout way that I don’t have any mention of Masterplan on here.  (I was looking for the link to see if there was a recent update and my search came up empty on my site.  There is an update BTW).

Anyway it’s a campaign planner, has DDI integration, map maker and you can run combats in it and it has the ability to display maps to the players on a second monitor that are not filled in like the DM’s maps. What’s not to like?

And it’s free.  So what do you have to lose?  Go check it out.

Okay I ran this playtest this afternoon with my wife running the characters.  The party was 6th level and comprised of a Assassin, Fighter, Warlock, Invoker and Bard.  None of the characters were ‘character op’ped’.  I quick built them in the Character Builder then went in and tweaked them where they needed it to make them realistically built.  Things like invalid weapon focuses or powers that didn’t work well with the stat builds and that kind of thing.   I also gave each one a ‘reasonable’ weapon and armour or implement and each one got some minor item that added to their combat effectiveness or recovery.

The set up was the party had been hired by a lord to track down and destroy a band of raiders that were destroying small villages with the usual results.  The lord had lost members of his family to this band and the PC’s were the fastest way to get after them while he raised a real fighting force to deal with them.

The party was closing in but at each village they trailed the raiders to they lost time searching for survivors and when they found them they had to deal with them.  This was the third such village they’d come to and they entered it to check for if there was anyone hurt but still alive.  Several huts were still burning or had collapsed into a pile of glowing embers.  Bodies were scattered everywhere, a large pile of them in the center of town where wagons and small stands cluttered up the area.  The town well’s walls had been collapsed into it and bodies thrown in.  It was not a pretty sight.  The smell of burning flesh filled the area as did a pall of choking smoke from the fires.

The ravens had already arrived and were pecking at some of the corpses, watching the party as they entered the town.   Some of the villagers had been strung up from the rafters gutted and left to die slowly.

As the fighter and bard led the group into the village they spotted movement among the pile of dead in the center and approached it, prepared to help or put out misery whoever was still alive.

Drawing closer they stopped as one of the prone figures stood and then turned to face them,  a woman, eyes put out and a jagged gash across her throat, her front covered with her blood.  She stared at the approaching party with sightless eyes and a savage rage filled expression contorted her face and she screamed, the sound a punishing blast of force that blasted the party backwards, hammering them with sound and knocking them down.

At the horrible cry bodies all around the village rose to their feet, hungry dead eyes lusting for revenge, fueled by rage and as one their heads swiveled toward the party.

The backstory is that the girl’s death, a warlock in life, turned her into a demi-lich of some kind and now she’s driven to protect the village against intruders, any intruders and has brought the other bodies back to un-life to help protect it.

Surprise round over we roll initiative and the combat is on.

The combatants included the five pc’s and one Tortured Remains, 2 x Steel Thewed Zombies, 2 x Hanged Ones and 20 x Pyre Dead.   This is obviously a seriously harsh encounter.  As a result I kept a fairly careful eye on things and the undead didn’t always use their most efficient abilities.  That’s part of my job as the DM, to keep things in check that way.  I would rather dump in an extra 10 minions at the start and finesse their combat output of the encounter as a whole and have them if I need them rather than run ‘light’ and have a boring fight.  Under normal circumstances this would have been a day ender anyway without a couple or three minor skirmishes leading up to with raider stragglers or wild life or some other natural hazard of the area.

The house rules that were in force consisted of these -

• -1/2 level to attack rolls and defenses and skills on both sides.
• +1/2 level in damage to one target of an attack and normal damage for the rest in the case of multiple targets
• +1/2 level to healing abilities like healing words, second winds and healing potions.
• +2 flat bonus to attack rolls
• And to try and reduce the impact of randomness, all attacks did average damage.
• PC’s at dying used the Mostly Dying rule (which came into effect once)

To cut to the chase, the end results were within acceptable ranges and added to the game IMO.  Yours might be different of course.

The fight went well, various AOE’s dealt well with the minions over the course of the adventure which I fully expected which is why I was about to dump 20 minions into this fight.  The Assassin’s Heart of Dust worked VERY well when used against the Tortured Remains which was surrounded by minions.  When the dot procc’ed it killed 5 minions.  Add in the Invoker’s Rebuke Undead and other multiple target attacks from the various characters and the poor minions died in droves the way they’re supposed to.   I did get more than a few hits on the player using the minions which worked well.  The 7 damage a pop slowly ate away at their resources.

All the characters bloodied and most were brought to single digits at least once, all of them used their Second Winds and 2 used Healing Potions, each character was assumed to have one.  The Bard used both his Majestic Words which since he had the Improved feat also granted 5 Temp HP’s.

The Tortured Remains was able to keep various characters controlled, either dazed, weakened or immobilized, but the players never really lost their full turn.  Even when the Invoker went down to 0 health she was able to use the Mostly Dying rule on her next turn to trigger her Second Wind and the turn after that was able to get back into the fight.   Without that rule in effect that character would most likely be dead.   The bard was trapped on the other side of the battlefield and would have most likely died from OA’s trying to get to her and since both his Majestic Word’s had been used the best he could have done was a Healing check to stabilize.

The Steel Thewed Zombies grab attack was successful a few times where they held a PC and granted CA for some of the other monsters and the Bard was tossed down the well once as a result.  The assassin was also thrown into the well from the Tortured Remains burst with push attack which was funny, at least to me.

The assassin knocked the last of the minions down into the well as well with a pushing power which was only fair I suppose. The Assassin as a whole wasn’t too impacting with the battle, he missed a lot but the one time he did manage a hit was with the daily and that cleared a big chunk of minions that would almost certainly have pulped the bard or the fighter on their next turn.

I believe in total the fight took 7-8 rounds and took an hour and 45 minutes.  That might seem long (or maybe it doesn’t) but this was an encounter with 30 total combatants and the characters were complete unknowns to my wife, she’d never played any of these classes before so she spent time looking them over each round to see what might be the best power.  Something that one would hope wouldn’t be the case with players who’d started with these characters and had played them up to this level.

Things that helped contribute to the pacing, hitting more often (10% more often due to the +2 static bonus), doing more damage per hit (an average of +3 damage per hit) and in all honesty not having to roll damage and using average damage for everything except critical hits (we only had one over the course of the fight) sped things up as well.

Although one test does not a conjecture prove, I would at this point be perfectly willing to continue with these changes in a real campaign, assuming I could find enough players to have a real ongoing campaign.

D

I found several modules in the attic while I was looking for some speakers to use for my iPhone to play, ironically enough, DnD podcasts so I don’t inadvertantly blow out the speaker on the phone.

I ended up with A1-A4 the Slave Lords series, S1 Tomb of Horrors (I had Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as well but it wasn’t in this box), WG9 Gargoyle (Greyhawk based module), B1 – B9 In search of Adventure, G1 – G3 Against the Giants series, B6 The Veiled Society, U1 The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh, C3 The Lost Island of Castanamir, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God and good ol’ X1 the first commercial ‘outdoor’ module I ever owned complete with dinosaurs!

They’re in not great shape, I’d rate them as Poor or Well Used.  Still useable for the most part since they’re perfectly legible, they’ve just seen a lot of action.  The art pamphlet for S1 is missing, at least it wasn’t in the same box.

Anyway, I thought I’d show off my age a bit.  I was in high school when I picked these up and ran players through them first of many times.

Sorry for the graininess of the pictures, taken with said iPhone in a dimly lit attic.

Just a quick post to record my mini purchases. I use the search function of the site to keep from buying something I already have.

The dragon is pretty cool and an exceptional buy at $4. The scarab swarms look like piles of coins. The scarecrows are good. The spiders of lolth look more like a cheap Halloween trinket. The giant is tilty like too many of their minis. The troll king is okay. He’ll go well with the last trolls I bought as a boss encounter.

1 elder iron dragon.
2 hoard scarab lava swarm
4 scarecrow stalker
1 skalmad troll king
1 hunched giant
4 spider of lolth
2 swarm of spiders

Wizards has posted their fan site policy.  One paragraph in particular disturbs me greatly as it implies that it’s illegal for anyone to release any material, free or otherwise, to anyone else.

I’ve emphasized the pertinent bits below -

Please note that this Fan Site Policy does not allow you to publish, distribute or sell your own free-to-use games, modules or applications for any of Wizards’ brands including, but not limited to, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. If you want to engage in any of these activities related to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, such use is subject to the Game System License http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome. For questions concerning digital rights for all other Wizards brands, please visit www.wizards.com/customerservice.

Is there any way to read other than if you write a module, using 100% of your own work from the layout to the creatures (or not), that you run the risk of the Wizards legal team from doing everything from a C&D to a full blown lawsuit against you?

So Asmor’s monster creature, being an application to create monsters for 4th edition is illegal in spite of the great help it provided to everyone?

An excel based character sheet?  Does that fall under the application rule?  So now you can’t offer those up for download?

Do home brew classes, monsters, spells, feats?  Is Wizards claiming those are illegal?

It sounds very much like they’re wanting to be the sole provider of anything D&D related.   You shant play anything but official material, read anything but official material or use anything but official material in your game.

Or maybe I’m reading that wrong, perhaps they’re not the newest [world war 2 organization reference] or [nutcase religious group founded by a crackpot reference that sues anyone and everyone] on the block.  Perhaps they’re not.  Time will certainly tell won’t it….

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Found a source for some old school maps.  Pretty nostalgic looking at these maps as they’re typical of my first decade of DnD gameplay for me. Lots of rooms connected by the ubiquitous 10′ corridor, just the right size for a gelatinous cube to keep clean.  One room might have undead in it and the next room down might have orcs.

And there were typically no larders, grocery stores, bathrooms or whatever.  It was really one discrete encounter after another.  Which is why I laugh when people say 4th Edition is ‘combat oriented’ and ‘nothing but one fight after another’ or ‘kills roleplay’.   But that’s a dead horse of another color.

Anyway, more resources is rarely a bad thing. Unless you’re extremely indecisive and then I suppose having more options might be a bad thing.

Mass Combat Rules

[Disclaimer:  This is a stream of thought idea, read it with that in mind.]

I had the thought of having a larger mostly melee based battlefield swirling around a party, an ‘epic’ encounter but at the heroic level.  The party would help direct the forces of the battle by using minor actions to make skill checks and these would add bonuses to the embattled forces.

To that end there needs to be some quick and fast rules for massed combat that are easy to keep track of and yet allow for varying degrees of ‘quality’ of the combatants.

Yes I know there are published rules for this kind of thing and they may be awesome but half the fun of a DM is coming up with your own stuff.

My initial though is each side will have units of troops.  These will be under the control of the DM but can be influenced by the players.

The units will make opposed rolls but their ‘turn’ takes place over the course of the players encounters so they’re several minutes long typically.

The players will be directly involved in a series of encounters, waves of the bad guys and will be performed as normal.  The other forces will have a single simple die roll that will be performed at the end of each of the PC encounters.  The players will get a 5 minute rest between waves.

My current idea is each unit will have an Attack and a Defense value.

These attack and defense values will range from 1 to 20 although I see typical units falling into the 1 to 10 range.  

When two (or more units) attack each other there they make an opposed roll, attack versus defense.  Each side can make this roll or not although obviously if neither side does then it’s a little boring.  But a side with a strong defense but weak attack may decided not to attack but only make defensive rolls.  If both sides want to make attack rolls damage is determined at the end.

The difference between the opposed rolls is divided by X .  For my needs I’m making X = 5, 1 for each minute of the mass combat round.

Both sides in a fight take 1 base damage.  The loser of the opposed roll also takes the computed difference. In the case of a tie, both sides take just the 1 base damage.

Once a unit hits 0 or less in both attack and defense they’re considered destroyed or otherwise out of the combat.

Example:

Kings Guard squad a A:7 and a D: 7
Bloody Hand Orc squad has an A:8 and a D:2

Both sides are going to attack so it’s two sets of rolls.

Let’s do the guards attack roll first – d20(16)+7 = 23
The orcs make a defense check – d20(6)+2 = 8

The difference is 15 and we divide that by 5 and end up with (15/5) =3.

The orcs currently will take 4 damage to their attack and defense at the end of the round and the guard take 1 for the base.

The orcs make an counter attack:

Orcs attack – d20(14)+8= 18
Guard defense – d20(11)+7 = 18

It’s a tie so sides take (base 1)+(0/5) or 1.

The orcs will take 3+1+1(computed damage)+( base damage).
The guard takes only the base 1+1 damage.

Round two –

Guard – A:5 D:5
Orcs – A:3 D:-3

Orcs attack –
Orcs attack is (11+3) = 14
Guard defense is (20+5) = 25

Defense wins by 11 so the orcs will take 11/5 or 2 damage +1 base or 3 total.
Guards take 1 base damage.

The guards counterattack –

Guard attack is (4+5) = 9
Orc Defense is (11-3) = 8.

Even results (1/5) = 0 so both sides take an additional 1 base damage.

That’s a total of 4 damage for the orcs and 2 damage for the guards:

Guard – A:3 D:3
Orcs – A:-1 D:-6

The orcs are decimated/routed/slaughtered whatever you wish to have had happened.

But the guard unit is not looking too good and if the orcs have another squad or two to throw at them then the guard could very easily go down and that wall of the keep could be ripe for the taking.

I need to actually try it out and get a feel for it.  It’s simple enough I suppose unless without be so simple as “This side beat this side, that side is destroyed.”.  It allows for units to be drained of power over the course of time and allows them to be ‘healed’ up by simply shoving men from the reserve units into their place.  

Probably needs defensive bonuses for cover.  Perhaps a +2/+4/+6 if they’re in cover but they can’t attack from cover only defend.

Bears consideration I suppose.

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