Adventure Path Math (Feb 7, 2013)

I think the mission-based structure of Guild Wars suits the Adventure Path format really well, actually — moving the heroes from one location to another across Tyria, upping the ante through a steady stream of antagonists and plot revelations.

Here’s the campaign outline I wrote up:
Download: Guild Wars Prophesies Campaign Outline

I noticed while working out which enemies to make the focus of combat encounters, how quickly I ran out of room for monsters that didn’t tie into the plot.

One of the main differences between a tabletop roleplaying game and a computer roleplaying game is definitely the frequency and density of combat. It takes longer to roll dice and tick off hit points at the table — but a PC runs numbers really well.

When you’re playing a computer game, you can chew through a lot of monster fights really quickly — at the table you have to try and make each one count.

That gave me an idea to integrate the “lesser” baddies of Prophesies into the non-combat skill challenges. Fighting these creatures individually doesn’t garner much experience for the players, be they Skale or Devourer or Grawl or Giant Spider.

No, instead the players want to outmaneuver the Grawl, sneak past the Skale, steal eggs from the Devourers, or escape the webs of the Spiders. Simply fighting these creatures just doesn’t provide enough of a challenge for an adventuring party.

Skill-Based Encounters (Feb 14, 2013)

Now that my outline is finished, I think I’ll work backwards a bit in developing the adventures. Starting from the endgame and hashing out the final challenges, I’ll work on creating some monster themes and let those “trickle down” to lower-level threats.

My thinking is that if I can make this work for Guild Wars, I can make it work for other games too. And once I have the hang of the process, I can use it to develop wholly original adventure paths. To infinity, and beyond!

Current Project Development (May 21, 2013)

If you saw my Red-Green Antagonist Deck the other day, you might be able to figure out how I’m approaching the story from different angles — there are events taking place on several different levels between forces that threaten the world.

…Which is how it always seems to go in roleplaying games. I’m aiming to make the story operate on at least two levels — the straightforward and the bigger picture. Exploration is central to the game, and the bigger picture will be about the conflicts between the various protagonists and the central antagonist.

If you can call it a separate level unto its own, there will be minor conflicts, “subplots” that don’t necessarily tie into either of the others — exploration or “main plot” — that serve to help flesh out the setting. These aren’t exactly what you’d call side quests.

Whereas the main plot and the exploration elements of gameplay will be decidedly straightforward, the game’s ambiguity will largely be tied up in solving the problems presented by the various subplots, in a “no right answer” kind of way.

With the over-world map complete, I hope to differentiate the settlements and their respective stories according to their locations on the map — that’s a complicated way of saying that towns at crossroads will be more about trading, while comparatively secluded settlements on the fringes of the world will be more insular.

That might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how often that sort of thing is overlooked. Experience has taught me that making towns and settlements appear “inhabited” is one of the last things that game developers look at — they are more often based around what sorts of quests they can provide the player.

My thought is that a settlement should provide quests based upon the needs of the settlement first, with its relevance to the larger story being a close second. Whereas dungeons and a conceit of the genre and a place for the player to express their character, settlements are ideal for setting the stage and reinforcing immersion.

I’ll probably take another stab at that Magic deck before proceeding with the deck to represent the protagonists. So much to do…

Over a year ago, I started sorting my cards into their respective blocks so that I might build decks accordingly. The big idea was to create something like a “gallery.” In the last couple years, I’ve grown to really appreciate the sealed deck format.

As a direct result I build 40-card decks, almost exclusively. I might be concerned if that meant I couldn’t play with friends but I don’t play constructed and I don’t have a bunch of friends who play Magic. I’m not even much of a collector either.

Now to bring this all into focus — I built a Magic deck to reflect the antagonist of my upcoming RPG Maker project. It’s a 40-card deck, limited by theme and card pool. I made selections based on the sealed format and used a combination of math and intuition to figure out about how many of what usable cards I might draw.

Red-Green Antagonist
Unlimited Edition only

Basic Lands (17)
x9 Forests
x8 Mountains

Creatures (18)
x2 2RR – Dragon Whelp (U)
x2 2R – Gray Ogre (C)
x2 3R – Hill Giant (C)
x2 1R – Ironclaw Orcs (C)
x1 1RR – Wall of Stone (U)

x1 G – Birds of Paradise (R)
x1 3GG – Cockatrice (R)
x2 1G – Grizzly Bears (C)
x2 4G – Ironroot Treefolk (C)
x1 3GG – Thicket Basilisk (U)
x1 2G – Wall of Brambles (U)
x1 G – Wall of Wood (C)

Enchantments (3)
x1 R – Firebreathing (C)

x1 G – Instill Energy (U)
x1 1G – Regeneration (C)

Instants (2)
x2 G – Giant Growth (C)

Beside the limitations I described above, this deck has a “primitive magic” theme. I avoided using much in the way of “flashy” magic and tried to apply a more modern deck-building aesthetic to an older card type and play style.

There are minor Deathtouch, Firebreathing, and Regeneration themes; there are no artifacts, to reflect the “primitive magic” theme; and there is no removal to speak of — artifact, creature, or enchantment. There are a couple Defenders and Fliers.

I realized after a bit, that I had nearly built a deck out of cards from my collection — not just from reprints and such, but from my collection of Unlimited cards. Then again, I have trouble telling them apart from Revised, so it’s possible I’m confusing the two.

This isn’t a flashy deck by any means, and far from optimal. The Ironclaw Orcs are strictly weaker than the Grizzly Bears — they’re included for thematic purposes, and for fitting into the card pool I imagined. They reflect a “less optimized” planeswalker, and help balance the colors a bit. Just a tad.

I swear I read about this only a week or two ago and it seems as though it has disappeared from the Internet. I know it’s on like, a zillion RPG blogs, but I can’t find any references whatsoever to the so-called “Front System.”

I initially dismissed the system as being functionally identical to the Arkham Horror concept of the Doom Track. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t get to put a new name on something until you distinguish it significantly from existing game mechanics.

The “Front System” … WAIT, I found it on Sly Flourish. It was from all the way back in March, and that’s why I wasn’t able to find it before. There goes my memory…

Dungeon World Fronts in DnD
on Sly Flourish

See, the main problem I have with the idea of “Fronts” is that they’re more ambiguous and overall less useful than Arkham Horror’s Ancient Ones. When you choose an Ancient One, it tells you what their followers are — usually augmenting one or more existing monsters, such as the Cultist — special effects in the world, and so on.

“The Impulse” is supposed to be the motivation behind the Front, but I think there’s a problem inherent with defining the motivations of the villains in a tabletop roleplaying game — the players might well agree with the villain and decide to join forces.

While that might sound compelling from a narrative perspective, you’ve suddenly eliminated the driving conflict of the game and must now find a suitable replacement — creating stats for towns and villages the party will now be looting and burning.

“Grim Portents” correspond to “Signs” of the progress of the eponymous Elder Evils from the Third Edition DnD book, Elder Evils. See, between DnD and Arkham Horror, I don’t think Dungeon Worlds has contributed anything new to the concept.

Admittedly, the name “Front” is probably the better contribution because it could be compared to a storm front, a war front, or simply the “most forward part” of some activity — economic, political, criminal, meteorological, volcanic, et cetera.

I guess it’s important that people know the tool exists for easing or enhancing the development of a campaign, it just seems like it isn’t enough. You don’t trumpet your achievements when they’re someone else’s achievements. Maybe I’m being a little too pessimistic here, but it doesn’t seem different enough, or even well-established.

Here’s the Heroic Hospitaler class:
Download: Essentials Hospitaler (Paladin) v.1

One of my other players expressed an interest in playing a class that had a power similar to the Guardian character theme — except as an “class thing” rather than a “theme thing.” It involves taking a hit for a nearby ally. I was down.

With the need for a Paladin remix, and the need to experiment with “Guardian”-type powers, I created Shield of Sacrifice. It isn’t like the “Guardian’s Counter” power at all, to be totally honest — but it is very much a Paladin power.

As an immediate reaction, you can lose a healing surge when an ally within five squares has taken damage from an attack, to grant the triggering ally temporary hit points equal to your surge value. It has a better range than “Lay On Hands.”

I don’t know that I really like the idea of a class having access to more than one sort of damage mitigation effect unless that’s part of their class’s schtick (like the Monk or the Healer, for example), so the Hospitaler has mostly the one power.

Important to note is the fact that temporary hit points don’t count toward hit point total, meaning that a bloodied ally with THP is still considered bloodied, which enables the Hospitaler’s Zealous Fervor — and who doesn’t like a +1 bonus to attack rolls?

Which is not to say the Hospitaler doesn’t have plenty of other great stuff going for it. Plate proficiency is hard to come by, but it’s a hallmark of the Paladin archetype. The Hospitaler prefers the use of a shield, as it’s a requirement for at least one power.

Bless Weapon draws influence from the Artifier’s “Magic Weapon” power, though here it only grants a bonus to damage, however using the Hospitaler’s primary ability score — kind of a big deal. The Hospitaler likes having allies nearby.

I borrowed quite a bit from the 3.5 Paladin class when working on the Hospitaler — Divine Health at 1st level provides the class with a bonus to surge value, and the Aura of Courage feature at 6th level grants the Hospitaler immunity to Fear.

Incidentally, Fear immunity is not totally unprecedented in Fourth Edition, it’s merely difficult to find. The odd power or magic item grants immunity to Fear effects. The Hospitaler has immunity, and grants a defense bonus to allies nearby.

While I don’t think I will ever be quite as proud of any class design as the Hellraiser, I do like what came out in the Hospitaler design. Take a look.

Play at your own risk.

Here’s the Heroic Hellraiser class:
Download: Essentials Hellraiser (Warlock) v.1

The Hellraiser is a sleak version of the Infernal Pact Warlock without all the weird Christmas-Tree powers that WotC decided to hang on the Warlock because they couldn’t find another place to put them. No design space was wasted here.

The Hellraiser has a twinned themes: darkness and the Infernal Pact. This is reflected in basically every class feature and power. The Warlock’s former “Shadow Walk” has here been streamlined as Shroud of Shadows. Counting spaces was a pain.

There’s a simple matter of using a move action to walk, run, or shift. You still get the same basic effect — the Hellraiser moving every round — and knocking him down or immobilizing him proves a life-threatening handicap with his meager defenses.

Binding Curse replaces the bookkeeping-intensive Warlock’s Curse, and further references the theme of the Infernal Pact. The Hellraiser can literally attack his foes with the bargain he struck with the Lower Planes.

Pact boons have also been replaced with the straightforward Infernal Compact, which borrows a little from the Essentials Warlocks — Binder and Hexblade. The Infernal Rebuke power is the Warlock’s “Eldritch Blast” — albeit with more flavor.

Shadow Flay is a new addition, reflecting the Hellraiser’s vicious nature, and reinforcing the class’s role as a striker — it begs the leader classes to grant this character attacks — more attack rolls means more chances to crit.

And the pièce de résistance is the class’s encounter power, Burnt Offering. It is essentially the Executioner’s Death Attack feature in power form, but it more closely resembles “Power Strike” in form and function. Ten extra damage once per fight.

But, but – you can only use Burnt Offering when your attack reduces an enemy to within ten hit points of dead, and you can only use it once per encounter (at first), and you lose the choice of whether to kill the creature or knock it unconscious.

The beauty of the power? You’re doing the bidding of the character’s Infernal master.

The Hellraiser just gets cooler as it advances in level — overcoming fire resistance, gaining bonuses while concealed, and recharging your Second Wind whenever the infernal flames of your encounter power consumes yet another doomed soul.

At 10th level, you gain the Shadow Retreat power, which you can only use while in partial or total concealment. It allows you to remove yourself from play until the end of the encounter, or you decide to come back. It’s the coward’s way out. Beautiful.

Check it out. Play at your own risk.

The Elite Action (Mar 11, 2013)

I’ve had the opportunity to test it out, and I have this to say — the Elite Action property is the simplest, most elegant, and most effective means of improving the staying power of an Elite or Solo creature I have found.

With one change:

Elite Action: You gain one extra Standard and Immediate action each round. You can use these actions while Dazed or Stunned.

In addition to increasing the overall number of Immediate and Opportunity Actions creatures receive (simple ones, like a “defender’s riposte” opportunity attack), I’ve found some ways to worsen a monster’s bite without making them overpowering.

Ultimately, any changes you make to monsters ought to make them simpler, easier to run. You want to create a challenge for the players, not for you. A game master is at their best when they can easily improvise challenging encounters.

One of my other experiments with Elite and Solo monsters is in combining multiple character roles in the same monster. In addition to dropping the meaningless monster roles, I mean. An Elite monster will often be a striker and a defender, while a Solo monster will often have features and powers from all four roles at their disposal.

Aside from hit points, you don’t really want to change too much of the Elite or Solo monster statistics because then they tend to “fall off the RNG” — which is to say, the players have too much difficulty hitting them or hurting them. More HP is still okay.

But then, doesn’t it make sense that an Elite monster would have the powers of two roles? Each Elite is supposed to have the power to threaten to characters at once — why not take the logical conclusion and make the monster be two characters?

Simplified of course, but still.

Twice the normal hit points is a good start. The Elite Action is a good second step. I think the third step is to award the monster with features belonging to two roles — generally ones that complement one another but whatever, right?

That suggests that before you get into monster thematics, you have at least six main Elite types — Striker/Defender, Striker/Leader, Striker/Controller, Defender/Leader, Defender/Controller, and Leader/Controller — some more active, some more direct.

Still working on what those powers will be, but I will eventually come around to them — no doubt with a nice big list for you to see.

Here’s the Heroic Healer class:
Download: Essentials Healer (Cleric) v.1

One of my players had voiced the desire to play a “pacifist-type” healer character in our next campaign, so I had a couple ideas stewing already. The Healer is really the culmination of my work on the Captain and the Guild Wars Monk.

You’ll notice, the Healer receives no new attack powers whatsoever. Their encounter power is Life Bond, which is inspired by the Swordmage “Aegis of Shielding,” the obvious differences being its usage limitation and that it doesn’t require a mark.

Now, while I had “pacifist healer” on the mind, I was careful not to place explicit restrictions on the class. I come from a school of thought in which one doesn’t influence behavior by imposing restrictions, but rather by creating incentives.

The Healer has Defensive Ward, which allows him to share the defense bonus of Second Wind or Total Defense with adjacent allies. Additionally, when the Healer uses the Aid Defense option, they provide a greater bonus, and it persists.

More than the other remix classes, the Healer draws utility powers from the original class. You can choose Cleric utilities at 2nd, 6th, and 10th level, and I’ve included recommendations — “Sanctuary,” “Bastion of Health,” and “Shielding Word.”

The big 5th- and 9th-level features are Aid Recovery and Scourge Healing. The former allows the Healer to grant saving throws to the recipients of his healing, while the latter functionally locks down healing in adjacent enemies.

For a “healer” though, the Healer spends quite a bit more time preventing damage than explicitly removing it. Life Bond for one, can be used to prevent between two and three dice worth of damage, and I’m sure everyone wishes they had higher defenses — which the Healer can certainly impart with Total Defense and Aid Defense.

The class goes well with the Pacifist Healer feat and it even goes well with the class thematically. Battlewise is a solid choice if you get a decent Wisdom score, and it may be worth investing in Melee Training if you need to hit something on occasion.

Probably one of the more difficult choices of the class is whether to go with Holy Symbols — which tend to be better for healers — or Staves, which offer better defensive options and (potentially) offensive options for a martially-minded cleric.

Play at your own risk!

You know, I think maybe — just maybe — any effect that isn’t “until end of next turn” probably ought to be save-ends. I’ve been thinking about it since I wrote about a week and a half ago, that maybe save-ends encompasses anything that isn’t more limited.

Largely for simplicity, mind you.

So what I’m saying is, if an effect doesn’t say “until the end of your next turn,” then it ought to be, “until the end of encounter, or you until save.” (Whichever comes first.)

Ongoing damage might suddenly seem scarier — if there’s a distinct possibility it will last until the end of the encounter because you can’t make your saving throw — I mean, while this doesn’t actually change the rules substantially, it does make the consequences seem somehow more terrifyingly permanent. (Somehow.)

Really what it does is it makes the saving throw rules seem like more the “exception” rather than the rule. If you forget your opportunity to roll a saving throw, then you simply have to suck it up and suffer another round. It’s on your own head.

That way, granting saving throws can be a bigger deal because you otherwise get just the one chance — and that first one’s just when you remember. Depending on how the saving throw is granted, or whatever secondary effects might come about for a successful save, it might be beneficial to stall and let someone else end the effect.

Speaking of ongoing — I picked up this weird idea working with RPG Maker VX that ongoing damage is at all times “without type.” The type of damage is “ongoing,” and we leave it at that. What that does is make it so resistance doesn’t prevent ongoing damage from doing its work, unless a character has “ongoing damage resistance.”

I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have the majority of effects, “save ends” or otherwise, be removable via saving throw. It seems almost like it would be the most effective means of making saving throws matter — use them all the time.

And then features like Font of Life are a really big deal, since they permit a warden to remove an ongoing effect — save ends or otherwise — to remove an effect at the start of their turn, and potentially avoid problems with it at all.

One particularly effective feature or power I can think of is the “Tainted Wounds” feat from the Fourth Edition Heroes of Shadow. Enemies you hit with a weapon attack can’t regain hit points until the end of your next turn. Scary when employed against PCs.

And then there’s “grabbing,” one of those truly odd rules — it can be “escaped” from, but not saved from, and it causes still another effect — the immobilized condition.

One way or another, ongoing effects really need some work.

Here’s the Heroic Duelist class:
Download: Essentials Duelist (Fighter) v.1

First thing’s actually the skill list — one of the more interesting fighter skill lists you’ll find. The Duelist has access to Acrobatics, Bluff, Insight, and Perception — that’s largely the influence of the Complete Warrior Swashbuckler class. I had considered Diplomacy and History, but decided against them for the time being.

The class’s main schtick is the Duelist Gambit power. Simultaneously a defender thing and a punishment power, the Duelist uses an immediate interrupt to take a melee hit for an ally and strikes back against the attacker as a free action.

First and foremost, the power is an interrupt so its effect takes place before the enemy’s attack lands, which means that if the effect dazes the Duelist, it’s no biggie.

Second, the power redirects the enemy attack, which could well trigger a fellow defender’s power. Fun times, especially if the fellow defender is another Duelist!

Third, and returning to the fact that the power is an interrupt, it can be used in conjunction with any of the Duelist’s Opportunity Action powers — the standard Opportunity Attack (plus Superiority), Agile Footwork, or Deflecting Parry.

Shifting Defense is a better version of the feat of the same name, permitting the Duelist to shift with Second Wind or Total Defense — and I can tell you that comes in handy when combined with an allied character who recharges your Second Wind.

The Duelist picks up more tricks as they advance through the Heroic tier — when they have Combat Advantage, they can swing against the target’s AC or Reflex, whichever is lower. Compelling Step slides an enemy once per turn when the Duelist shifts.

Redoubled Recovery at 6th level enables the Duelist to spend an extra surge whenever they spend a surge — canny readers will recognize the Dwarven Armor property — making Second Wind more effective overall and allowing the Duelist a dramatic comeback after taking hits from Duelist Gambit throughout the fight.

…
Check it out, and let me know if you try one in a game.

As always, play at your own risk.