On Monday, I attempted to post the third part of the current series on alternate damage-handling systems for 3.x. Unfortunately, time ran out when I was only half-done…

A quick refresher on where we stand. There are flaws in the system of progression for healing spells that result in an unacceptable degree of overlap, especially when it comes to higher-level healing spells like Cure Critical Wounds. To correct and overcome this, a revised progression structure was created that does far more healing per spell – with promises that this would make sense by the end of the article.

This revised progression can be summed up in these tables:
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1d4 – – – – 1 1d4 d6 – – – 2 1d4 d6 + 1 – – – 3 1d4 d6 + 2 d8 + 5 – – 4 1d4 2d6 + 2 d8 + 6 – – 5 1d4 2d6 + 3 2d8 + 6 d10 + 12 – 6 1d4 2d6 + 4 2d8 + 7 2d10 + 12 – 7 1d4 3d6 + 4 2d8 + 8 2d10 + 13 d12 + 27 8 1d4 3d6 + 5 3d8 + 8 2d10 + 14 d12 + 28 9 1d4 3d6 + 6 3d8 + 9 3d10 + 14 d12 + d6 + 28 10 1d4 4d6 + 6 3d8 + 10 3d10 + 15 d12 + d6 + 29 11 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 10 3d10 + 16 d12 + d6 + 30 12 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 11 4d10 + 16 2d12 + d6 + 30 13 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 17 2d12 + d6 + 31 14 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 18 2d12 + d6 + 32 15 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 18 2d12 + 2d6 + 32 16 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 19 2d12 + 2d6 + 33 17 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 20 2d12 + 2d6 + 34 18 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 21 3d12 + 2d6 + 34 19 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 22 3d12 + 2d6 + 35 20 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 2d6 + 36 21 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 36 22 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 37 23 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 38 24 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 38 25 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 39 26 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 40 27 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 28 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 29 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 30 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 …and so on.

 

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 / 2.5 / 4 – – – – 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 1 / 3.5 / 6 – – – 2 1 / 2.5 / 4 2 / 4.5 / 7 – – – 3 1 / 2.5 / 4 3 / 5.5 / 8 6 / 9.5 / 13 – – 4 1 / 2.5 / 4 4 / 9 / 14 7 / 10.5 / 14 – – 5 1 / 2.5 / 4 5 / 10 / 15 8 / 15 / 22 13 / 17.5 / 22 – 6 1 / 2.5 / 4 6 / 11 / 16 9 / 16 / 23 14 / 23 / 32 – 7 1 / 2.5 / 4 7 / 14.5 / 22 10 / 17 / 24 15 / 24 / 33 28 / 29.5 / 39 8 1 / 2.5 / 4 8 / 15.5 / 23 11 / 21.5 / 32 16 / 25 / 34 29 / 30.5 / 40 9 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 12 / 22.5 / 33 17 / 30.5 / 44 30 / 38 / 46 10 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 13 / 23.5 / 34 18 / 31.5 / 45 31 / 39 / 47 11 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 14 / 28 / 42 19 / 32.5 / 46 32 / 40 / 48 12 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 15 / 29 / 43 20 / 38 / 56 33 / 46.5 / 60 13 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 21 / 39 / 57 34 / 47.5 / 61 14 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 22 / 40 / 58 35 / 48.5 / 62 15 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 25 / 46.5 / 68 36 / 52 / 68 16 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 26 / 47.5 / 69 37 / 53 / 69 17 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 27 / 48.5 / 70 38 / 54 / 70 18 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 28 / 49.5 / 71 39 / 60.5 / 82 19 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 29 / 50.5 / 72 40 / 61.5 / 83 20 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 41 / 62.5 / 84 21 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 42 / 66 / 90 22 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 43 / 67 / 91 23 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 44 / 68 / 92 24 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 45 / 74.5 / 104 25 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 46 / 75.5 / 105 26 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 47 / 76.5 / 106 27 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 28 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 29 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 30 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 …and so on.

 
So, if everyone has caught up, let’s plunge onward…

Photo by Sura Nualpradid, provided free by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Healing Differential

The key principle of all the alternate damage handling systems has been to make the significance of the different healing spells to something more substantial than a simple numeric variation on the amount of damage healed. This is achieved by setting in place definitions of “Light Wounds”, “Moderate Wounds”, “Serious Wounds” and “Critical Wounds” so that the lesser healing spells cannot cure greater injuries.

One of the consequences of this proposal is that a cleric is obliged to stock more healing spells – at least one of each variety to which he has access. But this has an unwanted consequence – that of making the cleric, more than ever before, nothing more than a “Walking Drip Bottle”, as one of my friends used to describe it disparagingly. By consuming more of the cleric’s spell slots with healing spells, the variety and depth of clerics is arguably diminished.

(There is a counter-arguement that suggests that by leaving clerics less scope for flexibility, they are forced to make choices as to which spells to carry that actually result in greater distinctiveness from one to another. While there is something to that, it presupposes that all clerical magic has equal utility and hence that there are no ‘ideal choices’ for the remaining spell slots – an assumption that I would dispute.)

It follows that the best way to redress the balance and restore flexibility to the cleric is to make each healing spell more effective, so that the cleric doesn’t need to pack as many of them, leaving spell slots free for other varieties of spell. This should counterbalance the need to carry more healing spells because some of them won’t work in any given post-combat situation, resulting in a relatively unchanged game balance.

The only alternative that comes to mind is a slightly more generous rewording of the rules governing Spontaneous Casting to permit any clerical spell to be Spontaneously Cast as a Cure spell of equal or lesser spell level. But that has other undesirable consequences, since such spells inflict damage on creatures harmed by positive energy, fundamentally weakening an entire class of creature relative to one character type only – without reducing the xp value of such creatures. This represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power between heaven and hell. Either such creatures receive some compensatory ability that only affects clerical spellcasters or the GMs campaign must factor that balance-shift into its background and setting. Of course, if that sort of change in balance is appropriate to the campaign that you want to run – I could argue that the results are more suitable for younger players – then no such rebalancing is needed. But, in general, the solution that has more limited consequences and fewer impacts on game balance is the ‘more powerful healing spell’ solution.

The Healing Imperative: General Principles Of Wound Differentiation

There are four main variations under the umbrella of “The Healing Imperative” system (and innumerable sub-variations). There is also a fifth approach that doesn’t completely fit these general principles, which I’ll describe at the end of the article, and which was a compromise adopted in the Shards Of Divinity campaign when the full Healing Imperative rules could not be completed in time for play to commence.

The four variations all rest on the principle of setting the thresholds that indicate the different wound types according to the healing power of their namesake cure spell. In other words, “Cure Light Wounds” is used to define what a Light Wound is, “Cure Moderate Wounds” is used to define what a Moderate Wound is, and so on.

Each has deeper implications for the look-and-feel of combat, for the consequences in combat readiness (especially at low-to-medium character levels), and for the relationship between wound levels and for the “reality” that they supposedly reflect.

The four variations are:

• The ‘maximum of the minimums’ variation;
• The ‘minimum of the maximums’ variation;
• The ‘average of the extremes’ variation; and
• The ‘average of now’ variation.

but I prefer to use the less mechanically-descriptive and more colorful titles,

• The ‘You look like you’ve been in a fight’ Variation;
• The ‘Exceptional Wounds for Exceptional Blows’ Variation;
• The ‘Only A Flesh Wound’ Variation; and
• ‘The Proportionate Response’ Variation;

respectively.

Variation #1: “You Look Like You’ve Been In A Fight”: The maximum of the minimums

In this variation, the maximum healing result that can be achieved with a given healing spell at the level it is first bestowed defines the threshold for the next higher wound type, and each individual attack is resolved separately. If a fighter has 3 attack rolls in a combat round, he can inflict three wounds in that round. The thresholds are:
 

Wound Type Damage Range Typical Description Bruise 1 – 3 Bruising Minor Wound 4 – 5 Nicks & Abrasions Light Wound 6 – 12 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound 13 – 21 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound 22 – 38 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound 39 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
Most wounds will be bruises, minor wounds, and light wounds, with the occasional moderate wound from a weapon that does a lot of damage. A serious level of magic in a weapon (+3 to +5) will usually carry its damage up one or two categories when coupled with an appropriate strength modifier, but the really dangerous wounds will only result from a critical hit. The result is a plethora of bruises, nicks, cuts, abrasions, and cracked and fractured bones. At low character levels, serious and critical wounds will tend to linger and accumulate, slowly eroding the character’s capacity to engage in combat.

Combat with a more powerful opponent becomes far more serious, and knowing when to back away from a fight becomes a survival trait. Hit-and-run tactics by stronger opponents can be effectively used to wear down an opposition until they can no longer defend themselves against even a weaker foe. Life becomes much more dangerous for an adventurer.

Under the surface, there is a lot going on here. It takes account of the combat effectiveness of both attacker (attack, damage) and the defender (AC). Alter just one of these – by wearing better armor, for example – and the wounds that are received in battle from the same opponent will change in pattern, frequency, and character. This variation has a lot of “Die Hard” feeling to it, and yet at the same time there is a flavor reminiscent of very old-school game mechanics in the resulting behavior.

By providing the above table to the players and having them interpret each attack that they make, it forces them to use more narrative terminology to describe the results of their attacks – instead of “I hit for 14 points”, a player would announce “I inflict a moderate wound for 11 points” or (even better) “I hack at his arm for 11 points”. The defender simply keeps a tally of the number of each type of wound received and the total damage that has been inflicted to date (for reasons that will become clear a little later).

The downside: because each attack must be interpreted, this choice can slow combat down even if that interpretation is quick and easy.

Variation #2: “Exceptional Wounds for Exceptional Blows”: The minimum of the maximums

This brings us to variation number two, in which the minimum healing result for the maximum effectiveness of a healing spell defines the threshold of the wound type received, and in which the total damage inflicted in a round is compared to this total.

The logic runs like this: if each attack roll represents a vast number of attempted blows, as described in the rules, most of which fail but some of which succeed, then all the attacks carried out in a round collectively can be used to indicate the severity of the sum consequence of that attack.

The thresholds, accordingly, are:
 

Wound Type Damage Range Typical Description Bruise 1 – 3 Bruising Minor Wound 4 – 8 Nicks & Abrasions Light Wound 9 – 15 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound 16 – 30 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound 31 – 48 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound 49 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
This makes more damaging wounds rarer until characters start getting multiple attacks in a round, when the cumulative damage inflicted can begin to really ramp up. It results in more frequent serious wound types, but fewer overall wounds to keep track of. It takes into account all the combat factors listed earlier AND the number of attacks in a round overall. At low levels, a character can only expect to inflict light wounds, except on a critical (and often even then). As they learn (i.e. gain multiple attacks, each of which gains in likelyhood of success), first moderate and then serious wounds become routine.

It makes weapon enchantments even more significant – consider that a character with 2 attacks in a round using a +2 weapon effectively gets both an increased likelyhood of success on any given blow and an increased quantity of damage inflicted by each blow.

Once again, it is presumed that this table will be attached to each character sheet to make interpretation quick and easy. This approach is something of a compromise between Variation #1 and Variation #3, and is relatively flavor-neutral in most respects. It might seem that there is too large a jump when a character gets another attack in a round, but this is actually balanced by the unlikelihood of succeeding with those additional blows (at least at first).

Variation #3: “Only A Flesh Wound”: The average of the extremes

This variation is a little more artificial, averaging the minimum healing when the spell is first bestowed and the maximum possible healing when the spell caps out to define the thresholds. These are, once again, compared to the total damage inflicted by an attacker in each combat round. The threshold table that results is:
 

Wound Type Working Damage Range Typical Description Bruises & Minor Wounds — <5 Bruises, Nicks & Abrasions Light Wounds (1+24)/2 = 12.5 –> 13 6 – 25 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound (6+44)/2 = 25 26 – 42 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound (13+73)/2 = 43 43 – 72 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound (28+118)/2 = 73 73 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
Under this approach, wounds, and especially big wounds, become a lot less frequent. They are still possible, but only at high levels, or when there is a serious discrepancy between the power level of individual opponents. The result is an amplification of the consequences of individual power levels, a more epic feel as characters approach epic levels. At lower levels, even a critical hit is often not going to be enough to get out of light-wound territory – it will take two or more in a combat round.

A key difference is that it defines anything less than a light wound as being a minor wound. The result is a shorter, neater table. But this variation doesn’t work well at lower levels – most mages can be killed by “bruising, nicks and abrasions” for the first few character levels! Heck, even at 12th level, a mage with a -1 CON Bonus who has only average rolls for his hit points – something that becomes more likely with more dice rolled, remember – will only have 18 hit points!

The only way to rationalize this – and it IS rationalizing it – is to assume that low-HP characters are so weak that even a light wound or a collection of bruises and minor cuts can so impair them in combat that they cannot effectively defend themselves against a killing blow, effectively a coup-de-grace in the middle of a combat round. This starts to move us back into the territory of “wounds as a measure of helplessness”, which is where we started.

Variation #4: “The Proportionate Response”: The average of now

All three of the variations presented thus far reduce the effectiveness of an encounter with many creatures of lesser capabilities, to a somewhat varying extent – least impact to greatest – while increasing the effectiveness of encounters with fewer opponents of greater individual effectiveness. While this may be desirable to a GM, it may equally be undesirable; this thought prompted me to look outside the box and find a fourth option that does not suffer from this potentially undesirable consequence.

The resulting approach is seriously metagame, in some respects: it links the degree of wounding to the ability to heal of the party cleric – assuming the party have one. If they don’t, use their average character level as though they DID have a party cleric. By setting the thresholds to what the cleric can heal, which are – at least in theory – proportional to the damage the party can inflict and the damage they can absorb, wound categories remain relevant throughout the adventuring life of the party. No rationalizing of “bruises, nicks, & abrasions can kill a mage” required.

Here is a compendium of the resulting tables (running across the page and not down for practicality reasons):
 

Cleric Level or equivalent Damage to achieve wound type Minor Wound Light Wound Medium Wound Serious Wound Critical Wound 0 <4 4 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 1 <4 4 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 2 <5 5 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 3 <6 6 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 4 <9 9 – 10 11 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 5 <10 10 – 14 15 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 6 <11 11 – 15 16 – 22 23 – 29 30 + 7 <15 15 – 16 17 – 23 24 – 29 30 + 8 <16 16 – 21 22 – 24 25 – 30 31 + 9 <17 17 – 22 23 – 30 31 – 37 38 + 10 <17 17 – 23 24 – 31 32 – 38 39 + 11 <17 17 – 27 28 – 32 33 – 39 40 + 12 <17 17 – 28 29 – 37 38 – 46 47 + 13 <17 17 – 29 30 – 38 39 – 47 48 + 14 <17 17 – 29 30 – 39 40 – 48 49 + 15 <17 17 – 29 30 – 46 47 – 51 52 + 16 <17 17 – 29 30 – 47 48 – 52 53 + 17 <17 17 – 29 30 – 48 49 – 53 54 + 18 <17 17 – 29 30 – 49 50 – 60 61 + 19 <17 17 – 29 30 – 50 51 – 61 62 + 20 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 62 63 + 21 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 65 66 + 22 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 66 67 + 23 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 67 68 + 24 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 74 75 + 25 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 75 76 + 26 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 76 77 + 27+ <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 82 83 + Typical Description: Bruising, nicks, & abrasions Cuts & cracked bones Wounded limbs & fractures Torso wounds & compound fractures Deep torso wounds, head wounds, & shattered bones

 
The strength of this approach is also its weakness: the table of thresholds has to be updated every time the cleric goes up a character level (or the average level of the party increases by 1, if they don’t have a cleric). Admittedly, this won’t happen all the time, but it will happen often enough to be a pain in the posterior.

In theory, I like this approach very much. In practice, it won’t wash – at least for me. Other GMs might disagree.

I would certainly like this variation a lot more if it were married to an XP-system variant such as the one I described in Objective-Oriented Experience Points which completely removes the direct connection between success in combat and xp earned, because this would enable the GM to directly control when the tables change.

And yet, there is something philosophically profound about this approach. It is based in part on the (subtle and hidden) premise that the total separation between life and death doesn’t change as characters advance in levels, it just gets subdivided into smaller and smaller pieces (this is another of those eternal debates that have been cropping up since the early days of D&D – usually in discussions about falling damage – and never resolved). I say in part, because this is the situation that the table trends towards and eventually achieves; but at early levels, it implies that there are some demonstrable improvements in the ability to survive at lower levels, but that these soon come to an end.

Healing Old Wounds

It may have been noted that earlier I said to simply keep a tally of the number of wounds of each type and the total hit points lost, rather than tracking the damage associated with each wound. Not only is this simpler to perform during battle, minimizing unwanted delays in combat, but it ties in directly with the way wounds are healed.

Any wound can seemingly be healed with any healing spell. Apply enough Cure Light Wounds and you will heal the hit point loss; but healing the wound itself requires a bit more.

• A Heal spell heals all wounds of any type as though the character had spent the time to fully recover with appropriate medical support. See also the section on Lost Limbs & Organs below.
• A Cure Critical Wounds Heals one critical wound, 2 serious wounds, 4 moderate wounds, 6 light wounds, and 8 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Serious Wounds Heals one serious wound, 2 moderate wounds, 4 light wounds, and 6 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Moderate Wounds Heals one moderate wound, 2 light wounds, and 4 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Light Wounds Heals one light wound, and 2 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).

Unhealed wounds that have been Cured heal naturally over time. 1 day heals all minor wounds (1 week removes all cosmetic effects). Light wounds heal at the rate of 1 per day, a Moderate wound becomes a Light wound in 2 days, a Serious Wound becomes a Moderate Wound in 4 days, and a Critical Wound becomes a Serious Wound in 8 days. Except for Minor wounds, which can heal concurrently with any other type of injury, these effects do not occur concurrently, but happen in order from Light to Critical, and happen one wound at a time.

Unhealed wounds that have not been Cured (except for Minor wounds) require twice this time. This healing is concurrent with the recovery of hit points each day.

Reopening Old Wounds

Until a wound is Healed, strenuous activity may partially reopen the wound, while combat-level activities may fully reopen the wound.

A strenuous activity is designated as any activity taking up more than 8 hours in a day, or more than 2 hours at a stretch, or requiring a roll of any kind, other than those listed as combat-level activities. The intervals between such activities must be at least half as long as the maximum, and the character will still require their usual amount of rest each night.

A combat-level activity is any activity involving a weapon or something that can be used as a weapon – whether that’s scything wheat, digging a hole, chopping down a tree, repairing armor, or actual combat. It doesn’t matter how long it persists, a single round is enough.

Partially reopening a wound inflicts damage as though the character were the subject of an Inflict [x] Wound spell of one lower category than the wound, with a Caster Level equal to the character’s level. In other words, roll for the damage as though it were a healing spell of one lower wound type.

Fully reopening a wound inflicts damage as though the character were the subject of an Inflict [x] Wound spell of the same category as the wound, with a Caster Level equal to the character’s level. Note that this can cause more damage than the character originally received.

The Significance

It is therefore no longer enough for a character to swallow healing potions and receive multiple Cure Light Wounds spells to recover after combat. On the surface, the character may be healed – but the sinews are still weak and poorly bound together. Even the march back to town, unless carefully managed, with adequate time to rest, can leave the character as weak as he was at the end of combat – despite having been fully healed.

At the same time, Cure spells are not a waste of time. They not only replace lost hit points and accelerate the healing process, they Heal outright a certain number and level of Wounds so that the character does not need to worry about reopening those wounds.

Lost/Shattered Limbs & Organs

A Heal spell restores function to any damaged organ, but cannot restore one that was fully lost or destroyed. Such loss or destruction usually means that the character has died during the inflicting of injury. Even a critical hit will not fully destroy an internal organ, that would require the character to experience something ‘special’. Arms and legs are not critical to survival in this way. Nevertheless, a Heal spell will restore a limb so damaged – if the limb is still available to be reattached with a Heal skill, or if a replacement can be salvaged from another body – even if it has begun to rot and decay.

Of course, grave-robbing in this fashion is – at best – morally questionable, and may be an alignment violation. Such healing tactics are generally decried as immoral and repugnant – but for those without scruples and the wherewithal to fund the treatment, it’s often a valid – and desirable – choice.

Impure Healing

Another nasty wrinkle that can be contemplated is the notion of Impure Healing. Potions contain biological elements, and these constituents can be poisonous or carry illness. Those that are poisonous are obvious after the briefest tasting – real poisonous potions (ones that can be used to poison food etc) don’t give the game away with an obviously foul taste. But those which carry illnesses and disease can be harder to detect.

In most such potions, the active biological agents will eventually die for lack of nutrients, leaving the potions safe to consume. Characters would have to be unfortunate indeed to become ill after using one. For this reason, potions are normally not ‘brewed fresh’ but are left in storage for a period of months or years. None of that is true in the case of Healing potions, which Heal the illness just as they will the character who consumes them; they can remain infectious for decades, perhaps centuries or millennia.

For the record, I got this idea from the 5th season episode of Stargate SG-1, The Tomb.

The Fifth Solution

As I explained earlier, all of the above wasn’t quite finished when the time came to start play in the Shards Of Divinity campaign. As a result, I had to come up with an interim solution, and that solution may suit some GMs better than the ones I have described already. In the interests of completeness of discussion of the topic, I therefore present this fifth solution.

A Critical Hit Inflicts A Critical Wound

I started from the premise spelt out in the subsection title above. I then redefined a critical hit as “any hit that exceeds the target required to hit the opponent by an amount equal to or greater than the critical hit range, or which has a natural roll within the critical hit range.”

That in turn permitted a definition for a serious wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 5 less than that required for a critical hit”), a moderate wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 10 less than that required for a critical hit”), and a light wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 15 less than that required for a critical hit”).

That all sounds complicated – it’s not.

If you have a critical hit threshold of 20, then:

• You inflict a critical wound on any hit that succeeds by 20 or more, or that is a critical hit;
• You inflict a serious wound on any hit that succeeds by 15-19;
• You inflict a moderate wound on any hit that succeeds by 10-14;
• You inflict a light wound on any hit that succeeds by 5-9; and,
• You inflict a minor wound on any hit that succeeds by 1-4.

If you have a critical hit threshold of 19, then:

• You inflict a critical wound on any hit that succeeds by 19 or more, or that is a critical hit;
• You inflict a serious wound on any hit that succeeds by 14-18;
• You inflict a moderate wound on any hit that succeeds by 9-13;
• You inflict a light wound on any hit that succeeds by 4-8; and,
• You inflict a minor wound on any hit that succeeds by 1-3.

…and so on.

In every other way, this variant operates exactly the same way as the others. I suspect that this option might appeal to GMs who desire a bit of elegance in their games :)

The impact on play in Shards of Divinity

To date, the impact on play has been minimal. That’s a consequence of the adventures that I’ve been running, which haven’t had a lot of traditional “fight the monster” encounters, and of the fact that I started the other characters at a higher character level than the starring character (who has been given other advantages in compensation). What combat there has been has been more metaphor and mind-game in the land of the Fey, battles of wills and illusion, submission and domination, than traditional in nature. In theory, the characters should now be approaching 11th or 12th level; in practice, they are about 18th. That’s not a consequence of this combat variant, that’s the result of a number of other circumstances. Unfortunately, the combination of these facts and the interim rules above means that there will be minimal opportunity to test these combat variants properly, ie at low-to-non-epic levels.

All those caveats notwithstanding, the PCs have evidenced a relative reluctance to engage in direct combat, avoiding it whenever possible in preference to non-combat solutions – is that the consequence of these rules? I don’t know – but if so, it’s a good one.

Photo by Cralos Porto, provided free by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the first two parts of this series we examined alternative approaches to the simulation of injuries that were written cold, without the benefit of actual use in play. In this third and final part, I will describe a third – but this is an update on a variation that I have actually used (and use) in one of my campaigns, Shards Of Divinity. The updates will represent the benefit of hindsight and actual playtesting.

I started work on the third and final part of this series expecting it to be a big article, but the size has proven to be TOO big for one post. After some hurried rescheduling, I’ve divided it in two – the first half today, and the second half for this Thursday. I would normally rewrite the article to separate the two parts more completely, but attempts to do so in this case were less than successful. So, unfortunately, part 1 will start lines of discussion that won’t be completed until later this week. Sorry about that…

Although I hadn’t noted it when first drafting the series, it worked out that the first variant lowered the fantasy element in favor of a more gritty, reality-based environment, the second was relatively neutral in that respect, and this is something of a high-fantasy concept.

In practice, the Healing Imperative approach, also referred to as the Differential Damage approach, shares a number of concepts with the earlier alternatives, as you’ll see when we get into specifics. But I wanted to start this article by drawing the reader’s attention to a couple of larger issues. In particular, I wanted to emphasize how changing the damage handling system even minimally alters the look and feel of combat within the game, and of its consequences, and by extension, alters the atmosphere of the campaign.

Of course, this is only part of the story of distinguishing one campaign from another; you need the encounters and adventures that you design to do their share as well, and we could argue about which is the dominant factor until the turn of the century without settling anything. With everything working in harmony, these small differences compound and synergize and deliver a gaming experience that is both memorable and unique.

The point that I want to make is that the standard rules are just that, a common standard that is functional and capable of delivering most of the unique flavor of a campaign to the players, but their very ubiquity and generic capability blunts the final all-important few percentage points of distinctiveness.

The Flavor Experiment

I once ran an experiment, taking the one basic and generic adventure and running it using three or four different game systems; while the plot didn’t change, the mindset that the players carried into the game did and that made a major difference.

Part of the concept of this experiment grew out of discussions with a fellow-GM about convention adventure modules and how different players could take the same basic adventure and make it completely different by virtue of their different play styles, and how two GMs could take the same adventure and put completely different spins on it because of their own GMing style. I wanted to minimize these variables to focus on the consequences of changing only the rules system, so for the most part the same set of players were used throughout. The results were compromised, to some extent, by additional GMing experience and (more importantly) by contamination from player foreknowledge – an experience that eventually played a key role in the methods I devised for creating mysteries, described in my recent articles The Butler Did It and The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch which provides examples of the techniques described in the first article.

The point is that the same adventure will seem completely different in tone and dynamics when it is played with different game systems – the systems I used were AD&D, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls, and Chivalry & Sorcery. Plans to repeat the experiment with Empire Of The Petal Throne and GURPS Fantasy fell apart when I didn’t have the time to learn those rules systems or the finances to seek out copies of the rules, but by then the principle results were well-established. Those results have formed the foundations of my perception of House Rules as a necessary medium for the actualizing of campaign concepts into game mechanics ever since.

Image by jscreationzs, provided free by Free Digital Photos .net

The Healing Foundation

Which brings us to the core subject of this article – the “Healing Imperative” variant on the d20 damage-handling game mechanic. The key difference between this and earlier systems is that instead of making the differential between different wound types a function of the character’s total hit point capacity, it distinguishes types of injury by the amount of damage inflicted in a single blow – making it more akin to the “internal injury threshold” mechanics presented in part one, which were based (in part) on this variant system.

Rather than basing the point of distinction between types of wounds on the total damage inflicted, this goes to the source – the healing spells themselves. But before we can get into that in detail, we first have to address a strange anomaly in the effects of these spells:

The Inconsistency Of Cure [X] Wounds

When you compare the healing effects of the different clerical spells available, some strange anomalies present themselves. Compare them in the following table:
 

Spell Spell Level Base Healing Progression With Class Levels Cap Cure Minor Wounds 0 0d8 +1 per caster level +1 Cure Light Wounds 1 1d8 +1 per caster level +5 Cure Moderate Wounds 2 2d8 +1 per caster level +10 Cure Serious Wounds 3 3d8 +1 per caster level +15 Cure Critical Wounds 4 4f8 +1 per caster level +20

 
This is obviously the way the designers thought of the spells when they were designing them, it’s a nice orderly progression and looks very rational on the page.

But watch what happens when we compare the range of possible results for a given character level:
 

Caster Level Results Range (min / ave / max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 1 / 4.5 / 8 – – – 2 1 2 / 5.5 / 9 – – – 3 1 3 / 6.5 / 10 2 / 9 / 16 – – 4 1 4 / 7.5 / 11 3 / 10 / 17 – – 5 1 5 / 8.5 / 12 4 / 11 / 18 3 / 13.5 / 24 – 6 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 5 / 12 / 19 4 / 14.5 / 25 – 7 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 6 / 13 / 20 5 / 15.5 / 26 4 / 18 / 32 8 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 7 / 14 / 21 6 / 16.5 / 27 5 / 19 / 33 9 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 8 / 15 / 22 7 / 17.5 / 28 6 / 20 / 34 10 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16 / 23 8 / 18.5 / 29 7 / 21 / 35 11 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 10 / 17 / 24 9 / 19.5 / 30 8 / 22 / 36 12 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 11 / 18 / 25 10 / 20.5 / 31 9 / 23 / 37 13 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 11 / 21.5 / 32 10 / 24 / 38 14 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 12 / 22.5 / 33 11 / 25 / 39 15 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 13 / 23.5 / 34 12 / 26 / 40 16 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 14 / 24.5 / 35 13 / 27 / 41 17 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 15 / 25.5 / 36 14 / 28 / 42 18 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 16 / 26.5 / 37 15 / 29 / 43 19 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 17 / 27.5 / 38 16 / 30 / 44 20 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 17 / 31 / 45 21 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 18 / 32 / 46 22 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 19 / 22 / 47 23 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 20 / 34 / 48 24 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 21 / 35 / 49 25 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 22 / 36 / 50 26 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 23 / 37 / 51 27 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 28 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 29 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 30 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 …and so on.

 
Do you see the problem now? The 3.x spell system is predicated on the concept that 2nd level spells are more powerful than 1st level spells – so why is it possible for the 2nd level spell, Cure Moderate Wounds, to do less healing than a Cure Light Wounds (Caster Levels 3-5)? And the same problem holds true for the 3rd level spell, Cure Serious Wounds, relative to Cure Moderate Wounds (Caster Levels 5-13); and for the 4th level spell, Cure Critical Wounds, relative to Cure Serious Wounds (Caster Levels 7-20). Until a spell achieves its cap bonus and drops out of the running, the minimum effect of the more powerful spell is always 1 point less than that of the more powerful spell.

Similarly, until a spell achieves the cap, the average result of the more powerful spell is less than the maximum that the lower-level spell can achieve, and this difference grows with increasing spell level. This might be comparing apples and oranges – but statistics shows that the more dice are involved, the more likely it is that the result will be close to the average. That means that these comparisons are absolutely reflective of the likely outcomes.

Rationalizing Healing

Fixing the minimums is easy – we just need to add a progressive bonus to the amount of healing each spell. +2 to CMW, +4 to CSW, and +6 to CCW will fix that problem. Fixing the second problem is a little trickier; we need to increase the variability of the results without increasing the overall healing amounts very much. Instead of throwing more dice at the progression, a better answer would be to adjust the dice size with increasing spell levels, incorporate the progressive bonus, and then tweak the results as necessary to give a rational progression of minimums, averages, and maximums.

So, let’s try this:

• 1d4 for CMinW.
• 1d6 for CLW, +1d6 at levels 4, 7, and 10, and +1 every caster level from 2nd except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +6.
• 1d8+5 for CMW, +1d8 at levels 5, 8, and 11, and +1 at per caster level from 4th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +12.
• 1d10+12 for CSW, +1d10 at levels 6, 9, 12, and 15, and +1 per caster level from 6th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +23.
• 1d12+27 for CCW, +1d6 at levels 9, 15, and 21, +1d12 at levels 12, 18, 24, and 27, and +1 per caster level from 8th except those in which a dice is gained or transformed, to a maximum of +40.

Or, to put it into a table:
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1d4 – – – – 1 1d4 d6 – – – 2 1d4 d6 + 1 – – – 3 1d4 d6 + 2 d8 + 5 – – 4 1d4 2d6 + 2 d8 + 6 – – 5 1d4 2d6 + 3 2d8 + 6 d10 + 12 – 6 1d4 2d6 + 4 2d8 + 7 2d10 + 12 – 7 1d4 3d6 + 4 2d8 + 8 2d10 + 13 d12 + 27 8 1d4 3d6 + 5 3d8 + 8 2d10 + 14 d12 + 28 9 1d4 3d6 + 6 3d8 + 9 3d10 + 14 d12 + d6 + 28 10 1d4 4d6 + 6 3d8 + 10 3d10 + 15 d12 + d6 + 29 11 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 10 3d10 + 16 d12 + d6 + 30 12 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 11 4d10 + 16 2d12 + d6 + 30 13 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 17 2d12 + d6 + 31 14 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 18 2d12 + d6 + 32 15 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 18 2d12 + 2d6 + 32 16 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 19 2d12 + 2d6 + 33 17 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 20 2d12 + 2d6 + 34 18 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 21 3d12 + 2d6 + 34 19 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 22 3d12 + 2d6 + 35 20 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 2d6 + 36 21 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 36 22 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 37 23 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 38 24 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 38 25 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 39 26 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 40 27 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 28 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 29 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 30 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 …and so on.

 
This violates the nice, neat orderliness of the original table, but it should come closer to giving a rational progression of results. CLW now caps out at level 10 – it was level 9. CMW now caps at level 13, the same as it used to be. CSW now caps at level 20, the same as it used to do. CCW caps at level 27, also the same as it used to be. So there has been minimal change in that respect. In the critical caster level 7-20 range, there are (in general) more dice on the entries to the left than on the right – so lower level spells will deliver less healing but more reliability of result. Higher level spells appear have higher maximum results – but also greater variability. On average, healing results will have increased somewhat – but that will be counterbalanced by restricting the utility of individual spells, ie specifying that there are some injuries that can’t be healed so quickly, as will be seen in later sections. But there’s no way to check that this has solved the problems other than recalculating the minimums, averages, and maximums.
 

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 / 2.5 / 4 – – – – 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 1 / 3.5 / 6 – – – 2 1 / 2.5 / 4 2 / 4.5 / 7 – – – 3 1 / 2.5 / 4 3 / 5.5 / 8 6 / 9.5 / 13 – – 4 1 / 2.5 / 4 4 / 9 / 14 7 / 10.5 / 14 – – 5 1 / 2.5 / 4 5 / 10 / 15 8 / 15 / 22 13 / 17.5 / 22 – 6 1 / 2.5 / 4 6 / 11 / 16 9 / 16 / 23 14 / 23 / 32 – 7 1 / 2.5 / 4 7 / 14.5 / 22 10 / 17 / 24 15 / 24 / 33 28 / 29.5 / 39 8 1 / 2.5 / 4 8 / 15.5 / 23 11 / 21.5 / 32 16 / 25 / 34 29 / 30.5 / 40 9 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 12 / 22.5 / 33 17 / 30.5 / 44 30 / 38 / 46 10 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 13 / 23.5 / 34 18 / 31.5 / 45 31 / 39 / 47 11 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 14 / 28 / 42 19 / 32.5 / 46 32 / 40 / 48 12 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 15 / 29 / 43 20 / 38 / 56 33 / 46.5 / 60 13 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 21 / 39 / 57 34 / 47.5 / 61 14 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 22 / 40 / 58 35 / 48.5 / 62 15 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 25 / 46.5 / 68 36 / 52 / 68 16 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 26 / 47.5 / 69 37 / 53 / 69 17 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 27 / 48.5 / 70 38 / 54 / 70 18 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 28 / 49.5 / 71 39 / 60.5 / 82 19 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 29 / 50.5 / 72 40 / 61.5 / 83 20 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 41 / 62.5 / 84 21 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 42 / 66 / 90 22 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 43 / 67 / 91 23 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 44 / 68 / 92 24 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 45 / 74.5 / 104 25 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 46 / 75.5 / 105 26 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 47 / 76.5 / 106 27 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 28 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 29 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 30 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 …and so on.

 
Close examination of these results reveals five anomalous results:

• Caster Level 4, Cure Moderate Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Light Wounds. This is acceptable as the average result is still better for the higher level spell and the minimum much higher, so the supposedly more powerful spell actually IS still more powerful.
• Caster Level 5, Cure Serious Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Moderate Wounds. This is acceptable for exactly the same reasons as for the Caster Level 4 anomaly.
• At Caster Levels 15, 16, and 17, Cure Critical Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Serious Wounds. This is acceptable for the same reasons as for the previous anomalies.

This shows the degree of effort and complexity involved in ensuring that a fine-sounding principle or progression does not lead game designers to flawed ends.

Reality Check

The numbers shown for healing are much higher than those of the old system. Here’s a direct, spell-by-spell comparison, at caster level 12 (chosen randomly):
 

Spell Old New Cure Minor Wounds 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 Cure Light Wounds 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16.5 / 24 Cure Moderate Wounds 11 / 18 / 25 15 / 29 / 43 Cure Serious Wounds 10 / 20.5 / 31 20 / 38 / 56 Cure Critical Wounds 9 / 23 / 37 33 / 46 / 60

 
To see how reasonable these are, let’s consider the likely number of hit points that a character of 12th level will have (various classes). The panels in green highlight the values that have been found to be most probable for each class, through experience of the priorities for each class.
 

Class -1 CON Bon +0 CON Bon +1 CON Bon +2 CON Bon +3 CON Bon +4 CON Bon Barbarian 72 84 96 120 132 144 Bard 30 42 54 66 78 90 Cleric 42 54 66 78 90 102 Druid 42 54 66 78 90 102 Fighter 54 66 78 90 102 114 Monk 42 54 66 78 90 102 Paladin 54 66 78 90 102 114 Ranger 42 54 66 78 90 102 Rogue 30 42 54 66 78 90 Sorceror 18 30 42 54 66 78 Wizard 18 30 42 54 66 78

 
So a revised CCW is barely able to fully heal a fairly typical 12th-level Wizard with an average result. For most classes, it would require two such spells to fully heal a character who was near-death – perhaps a CCW and a CSW might suffice. For many classes, even a maximum result on the CCW would not be enough. Even though the CCW is twice as effective (on average) as it used to be, it is not a cure-all.

It should also be remembered that a cleric who has access to CCW is not that far away from having access to the most powerful healing spell in the game, Heal. So a spell that can heal a little more than half a character’s hit points is not all that far out of line – though it is far more powerful than the original version of that spell.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that I ran out of time. Calculating and recalculating and re-recalculating the tables above simply chewed up too many hourglass sands – there’s more work in them than there seems! So these results will be put to good use later this week in Part 3b…

Tuesday Update:

RaptorKing has suggested (refer comments at the bottom of the post) that what the designers actually meant for the table of results to be is as shown below, something I find both plausible and unsettling (there’s something odd about accruing bonuses for a spell you can’t cast yet).
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 d8 + 1 – – – 2 1 d8 + 2 – – – 3 1 d8 + 3 2d8 + 3 – – 4 1 d8 + 4 2d8 + 4 – – 5 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 5 3d8 + 5 – 6 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 6 3d8 + 6 – 7 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 7 3d8 + 7 4d8 + 7 8 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 8 3d8 + 8 4d8 + 8 9 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 9 3d8 + 9 4d8 + 9 10 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 10 4d8 + 10 11 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 11 4d8 + 11 12 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 12 4d8 + 12 13 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 13 4d8 + 13 14 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 14 4d8 + 14 15 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 15 16 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 16 17 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 17 18 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 18 19 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 19 20 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 21 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 22 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 23 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 …and so on.

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 2 / 5.5 / 9 – – – 2 1 3 / 6.5 / 10 – – – 3 1 4 / 7.5 / 11 5 / 12 / 19 – – 4 1 5 / 8.5 / 12 6 / 13 / 20 – – 5 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 7 / 14 / 21 8 / 18.5 / 29 – 6 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 8 / 15 / 22 9 / 19.5 / 30 – 7 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16 / 23 10 / 20.5 / 31 11 / 25 / 39 8 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 10 / 17 / 24 11 / 21.5 / 32 12 / 26 / 40 9 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 11 / 18 / 25 12 / 22.5 / 33 13 / 27 / 41 10 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 13 / 23.5 / 34 14 / 28 / 42 11 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 14 / 24.5 / 35 15 / 29 / 43 12 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 15 / 25.5 / 36 16 / 30 / 44 13 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 16 / 26.5 / 37 17 / 31 / 45 14 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 17 / 27.5 / 38 18 / 32 / 46 15 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 19 / 33 / 47 16 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 20 / 34 / 48 17 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 21 / 35 / 49 18 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 22 / 36 / 50 19 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 23 / 37 / 51 20 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 21 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 22 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 23 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 …and so on.

 
While this disposes of the first set of anomalies quite comfortably, it does nothing for the second. Because the more powerful spells always have more dice, they are more likely to yield a result close to the average than the supposedly weaker spells to their left on the table.

With the +1 per caster level the same for all caster levels, it becomes easy to compare the possible results:
 

2d8 vs 1d8 2d8<1d8 21 in 512 apr 4·1% 2d8=1d8 84 in 512 apr 16·4% 2d8<1d8 407 in 512 apr 79·5% 3d8 vs 1d8 3d8<1d8 126 in 4,096 apr 3·1% 3d8=1d8 210 in 4,096 apr 5·1% 3d8<1d8 3,760 in 4,096 apr 91·8% 3d8 vs 2d8 3d8<2d8 5558 in 32,768 apr 17% 3d8=2d8 7,308 in 32,768 apr 22·3% 3d8<2d8 19,902 in 32,768 apr 60·7% 4d8 vs 1d8 4d8<1d8 512 in 32,768 apr 1·6% 4d8=1d8 722 in 32,768 apr 2·2% 4d8<1d8 31,534 in 32,768 apr 96·2% 4d8 vs 2d8 4d8<2d8 11,852 in 262,144 apr 4·5% 4d8=2d8 17,224 in 262,144 apr 6·6% 4d8<2d8 233,068 in 262,144 apr 88·9% 4d8 vs 3d8 4d8<3d8 437,264 in 2,097,152 apr 20·85% 4d8=3d8 533,744 in 2,097,152 apr 25·45% 4d8<3d8 1,126,144 in 2,097,152 apr 53·7%

 
You read that right – only 53.7% of the time is 4d8+number better than 3d8+number. Heck, 4d8+number is better than 1d8+number only 96.2% of the time!

The same two basic problems remain: there is too much overlap in the results (curable with a bigger bonus) and there is less variability in the higher-level spells than in the lower level spells.

And that means that the fundamental solution remains – the modified tables for healing results that I presented earlier.

Mike’s notes

For those interested in peeking behind the curtain (I do, as often as possible) to see how the figures in table above were derived, I’m including a PDF of my working, warts and all… Oh, and if you’re wondering why I went to all this trouble, it’s because I was afraid that my error may have undermined the whole foundations of the alternative damage system, leaving the second part of this article moot. As it happens, those fears were unfounded…
 

Photograph courtesy of Conor Ogle via Wikipedia

Human nature never changes. That’s what makes science fiction and fantasy accessible to modern audiences. Often, it is by denying that fundamental truth that poor science fiction and fantasy are created. This was especially rife in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (in terms of television and movies) and the 30s, 40s, and 50s in terms of written works. The popular thought at studios and other such dens of iniquity was ‘slap some makeup on there to make them alien and their motives don’t have to make sense’. The end result was the B-grade movie and the B-grade novel, and though the best of them could be entertaining at times, the majority were simply awful.

It follows that a roleplaying game needs to respect the foibles and flaws of human nature or it, too, will be bad science fiction or fantasy.

But a game’s internal environment, which comprises the plot, characters and background, is not a state of objective reality, it is a state of subjective communications between GM and Players and vice-versa, overlaid and interrupted by objective descriptions of actions and conditions that have been translated into game mechanics by the game system.

It is the GM’s responsibility and burden to generate an internal environment that is conducive and appropriate to the genre and subgenre of the game to be run. His primary tools for achieving this are his narrative content and the ability and manner in which he delivers it.

Good narrative can get players into the right mindset, which is reflected in the attitudes, choices, and dialogue from their characters. It can convey factual & consistent details of the environment while communicating texture, mood and tone. Such narrative is sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘flavor text’, an injustice that I personally have been guilty of from time to time; it’s so easy to discount its effectiveness and impact. This article is going to focus on one area of flavor text, and how to make it work to strengthen a campaign.

Vices and Flaws

So let’s think for a moment about those human foibles, and how we can use them to convey flavor and reinforce genre.

Gossip can be used to reflect the adaption of technology into everyday life – we have Twitter, for example, as a medium for exchanging news and opinions with others all over the world.

Vices reflect the technology that’s available. You can’t have designer drugs without a certain level of technical expertise in chemistry being extant; you can’t have really exotic foodstuffs without a certain level of transport capability and a reasonable degree of exploration. Vanity talks about clothing styles, Lust informs as to the state of medical knowledge – are the women healthy or do they have obvious infirmities? Social issues such as population levels, economic woes, social classes, and so on, can also be addressed with a sentence or two while discussing such flaws in the human character.

But, of all the vices, none can better inform the audience – your players – better than gambling. This is a lesson that was first intimated to me when watching the original Battlestar Galactica, whose opening episode I saw in a big theatre (long before I saw Star Wars in a small country cinema). Starbuck was gambling, but it wasn’t a common game that we all knew, though some elements were similar to poker. As a result, it not only informed us about his society, it made that society accessible.

Who gambles? Where? What limits and restrictions? What is legal? What is ethical? What is criminal? What are the social conventions that surround gambling?

What games do they play?

The Mechanics Of Improbability

If probability is about how likely an event is, surely gambling is about how unlikely an event is. Games of chance succeed with the public if they ensure that the potential payout is greater in the audience’s mind than the unlikelihood of that outcome, while such games succeed with the house if those payouts are less than the cumulative losses of those who do not achieve an improbable result.

When creating a new game to reflect your society, there are three aspects that need to be considered, and they go hand-in-hand. The first is the improbability of the various winning results, which specify the payouts. In this respect, games essentially come in a couple of basic varieties; there is the poker paradigm, where the winnings derive from a ‘pot’ to which all players contribute in some measure, for example; and the ‘roulette’ approach where the improbability of the outcome is awarded by a payout determined by the size of the stake and the specific outcome.

A number of articles on this site have hinted at the Poker-oriented opportunities in this respect. I wanted, this time around, to concentrate more on the formal elegance and drama of roulette. It’s not too difficult to set up a game simulation – and that’s what we’re discussing when we are talking about an RPG – with any given chance of winning, and a relevant payout for achieving that winning result. You can get any reference information you need in this respect from Wikipedia’s article on roulette, or one of the articles on Poker Odds from the same source.

Note that the roulette article seems to contradict my earlier statement about the odds and the desirability of playing the game – the payouts shown are a fraction below the odds of them happening – but they are close enough, and often you can place a single bet with multiple chances for a payout at the same time.

How much effort you want to go to in this department is up to you, because it doesn’t matter what the gameplay is, there is always a simple way to simulate it using basic dice rolls. For traditional roulette, a d20 and a d6 (for high-and-low) will do the job – if the d6 comes up high, add 18 to the result on the d20; if you roll a 19 on the d20 then reroll it; and if you roll a 20, that’s either “0” or “00”. An even simpler approach is to roll a d20 and call the result to determine the player’s “luck” for that hand or spin, and invent the appropriate results and narrative as you go.

But that’s simply simulating the existing and traditional game of roulette; what we want is something that expresses a bit more “genre” than that, for use in those games that aren’t set in a reasonably modern era. That means that we have to look beyond factual sources for the basis of our fictional game.

Visual Distinction

The second aspect of the fictional game you are creating is to consider the look-and-feel of the game – not the gameplay, but the components, table markings, and so on. This is where your imagination can really run riot. Instead of a traditional round wheel, why not an elliptical one that has some wedges larger than others? Or two contra-rotating wheels with gaps in the inner one for the ball to – possibly – bounce out from into the better-paying but less-likely outer wheel? Or a three-dimensional globe that can spin on two different axes at the same time? Or a wheel with zones of increased or decreased gravity?

Or, for fantasy analogues, why not a spinning wheel with a rotating (and hidden) inner section concealed by a keep tower, with the ball fed in through the top and emerging at an unknown speed and direction? What could you build with a touch of magic in the construction – perhaps a roulette wheel with more valuable numbers (ie bigger payouts) partially protected by miniature Gates that can randomly redeposit the ball? or a wheel above a larger non-rotating wheel and a maze of ‘tunnels’ under the upper wheel, the ball possibly falling into various pits and ending up somewhere on the lower wheel – or perhaps re-emerging from the central column of the upper wheel? Think of everything that’s been done with pinball machines, then build those tricks into a spinning roulette wheel…

The difficulties of translating the visual distinctiveness into real odds quickly makes clear the benefits that can derive from a more abstract, less realistic, method of simulating the progress of the game. If you’re an expert physicist and a pretty good mathematician, you could work out from these descriptions and a bit more detail exactly what the odds are of any given result, based on the permitted patterns of laying bets – but it’s a lot of work and slim rewards. Ultimately, that much detail would interfere with the gameplay at the RPG table as well as the gameplay at the simulated casino table; the abstract approach is infinitely preferable.

The Nature Of Play

The third and final aspect of the simulated game to consider is the gameplay. Are games normally fast-moving, or slow and deliberate? Do players of this game interact with each other, or with a simulated bank, or with a rotating dealer’s slot? Is whoever won the last hand the dealer for the next? Or is it whoever last lost a round? Again, let your imagination go wild. Why not a roulette game with a card-playing component, where each winning hand was placed around the roulette wheel as the “numbers” on the wheel? High cards would tend to dominate, and there would be sequences and multiples of some numbers, while others would not be present at all. The lower the number on the card face, the less likely it would form part of a winning hand, and so the less likely it would be to appear on the roulette wheel when the card phase was complete – and the bigger the payout if the ball landed in that particular space.

Direct Experience

In order to really get this aspect of play down pat, to give your imagination something to build on, the best approach is to actually play some games. Virtual roulette played over the internet gives you the foundations and language that you need in order to successfully describe what the characters are experiencing and seeing. Of course, you could also visit a real casino, but that’s likely to be a lot more expensive and a lot more inconvenient than learning in your own home.

There are lots of sites out there to choose from, of course, and not all casino sites are created equally. Some are better than others, some have better layouts or more help for the novice, or any number of other differences. And some are less trustworthy than others. Fortunately, help is at hand, thanks to the casino.org website which offers reviews of a number of different online casinos, and some helpful information pages to help you decide where to risk your hard-earned cash. After all, just because you’re learning how to play, and what it feels like, doesn’t mean that you have to take a loss, right? You may as well at least try to win, or at least break even.

As usual, there are common-sense guidelines that you should follow. Have a budget that shows how much you can afford to lose in gaining this education, and don’t exceed it, no matter what. Set yourself some time limits as well. Keep security uppermost in your mind – only give your financial information to a website that casino.org tells you that you can trust. And remember that for these purposes, breaking even is almost as good as winning!

Putting It All Together

Here’s another way to look at what you are doing when you create a game simulation in this way, especially one that has been tailored to the fantasy or science-fiction environment in which your adventures are set: you are creating an element within your game setting and permitting your players to interact with it, while being careful to shunt technicalities and game mechanics to one side; combining narrative elements that are unique to your game setting with roleplaying activity within that setting in such a way that the social, economic, and legal fabric of the world you have created is translated from dry words on the page into something that lives and breathes. In other words, into something that imparts genre, flavor, setting, and fun.

The alternative damage-handling subsystem proposed in last week’s article suffers from one major flaw, as some of our commentators have pointed out – it involves additional processes and bookkeeping that can adversely impact the flow of combat. This flaw is present to a much smaller extent in this proposal. Once again, this is not a variation that I have personally enabled within one of my campaigns, so the discussion is strictly theoretical.

It all stems from a proposed definition of hit points as “soft-tissue damage”. That includes muscles and skin and major organs, but it specifically excludes broken bones. It follows that “damage” comes in two types – that which is scored against the character’s hit point capacity and that which is not.

The significance, of course, is that most healing spells and healing potions only specify a restoration of hit points, they say nothing about this new class of injury.

The Breaking Of Bones

The first question that has to be asked is how a broken bone is scored against a character. There are three basic options: the first is simply to keep a tally – one critical hit, one bone. This has the virtue of extreme simplicity, and minimal systemic impact on combat. But is might, perhaps, be too simplistic. There are better ways.

Option 2: Critical Thresholds

The second alternative uses our old friend, the threshold. Critical hits, by virtue of doing more damage, are more likely to exceed this threshold. But this approach, while a little more elaborate than the elegance of the first, has two really big advantages going for it:

• First, it permits the exclusion of damage that should not break bones – things like electrical and fire damage, for example; and
• Second, it permits the bone-breaking risk to be differentiated by type of weapon.

Unfortunately, heading down this path leads back to the same sort of complication that was encountered with the previous system. There is a simpler, third alternative.

Option 3: The dedicated die roll

A different kind of damage deserves a separate, dedicated damage roll.

A piercing weapon has virtually no chance of breaking a bone (unless the combatant falls awkwardly), a slashing weapon has some chance, depending on its size and weight, a crushing or bludgeoning weapon has a high probability. This can be achieved by simply rolling a die of a different colour and size as “bonus damage” towards the breaking of the threshold only, and increasing the size of the threshold to compensate.

A d4 for piercing weapons and light slashing weapons, a d6 for medium slashing weapons, a d8 for heavy slashing weapons, and a d10 for crushing weapons, with a threshold of x, would work quite well. Add the character’s STR bonus to the roll. X, of course, would be a value associated with the target – it might be the size of the hit die of the creature plus their CON bonus, and perhaps with an additional value based on how well the target’s armor protects them against such damage. +0 for leather and cloth, +1 for chain mail (partial or complete), +2 for plate mail (full or half); and a further +1 for a shield, +1 for a helm.

Increase the number of dice according to the critical multiplier in the case of a critical hit.

Instead of rolling this for each hit with a weapon, where the character gets multiple attacks, add 1 to the roll for each successful hit after the first. Similarly, you could add the magical deflection bonus of armor to the threshold and magical attack bonus to the die roll. And you rule that a miss doesn’t trigger a bone-breaking check.

The big advantage here is that all this math can be done in advance and written on the character sheet, where it is instantly accessible. The threshold won’t change for a specific target, and the bone-breaker die (and most of the modifiers) won’t change from combat to combat, either.

Right away, this achieves every advantage of the preceding proposed options, and none of the drawbacks. You automatically exclude damage effects that won’t break bones, and you can also exclude unusual attack modes like Backstabbing that will do increased damage but not increase the likelyhood of breaking bones.

There may be further alternatives, but this is so simple and quick and yet comprehensive that it’s hard to see how they could possibly be improvements.

Examples/testing

It’s one thing to invent a house rule out of whole cloth, such as I have done above; in order to be confident in the results, you really need to run a couple of examples through the system. In this case, I am going to employ a trio of characters with typical equipment, each of whom will act as the target in a set of examples, with all three taking turns to attack that target.

Target #1 is a 4th-level rogue in +1 leather armor and buckler, armed with a +1 dagger. STR bonus of +0, DEX bonus of +3, CON bonus of +2. Feats are Agile, Alertness, Improved Initiative. HP 26, AC 17, Critical Threshold 19, Multiple x2, Attack of 4, doing d4+1 damage, 1 attack per combat round. Backstab does +2d6. In example set 1, this will also be the attacker.

Target #2 will be a 6th-level cleric in +1 chainmail, small shield, and helm, armed with a +1 heavy mace. STR bonus of +1, DEX bonus of +1, CON bonus of +3. Feats are Improved Initiative, Improved Turning, Persuasive, Weapon Focus (Heavy Mace). HP 56, AC 18, Critical Threshold 20, Multiplier x2, Attack of 7 doing d8+2 damage, 1 attack per combat round. In example set 2, this will be the attacker.

Target #3 will be an 8th-level fighter in +2 Full-plate and helm, armed with a +2 flaming bastard sword used two-handed. STR bonus of +4, DEX bonus of +2, CON bonus of +4. Feats are Blind-Fight, Combat Expertise, Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Sword, bastard), Weapon Focus (ditto), Improved Critical (ditto), Weapon Specialization (ditto), Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, and Quick Draw. HP 77, AC 21, Critical Threshold 19, Multiplier x2, Attack 11/6 doing d10+10 damage, 2 attacks per combat round.

First, for each of our three combatants, lets work out the bone-breaker rolls:

• Target #1: d4 +0 (STR) +1 (magic) +d4 on a critical.
• Target #2: d10 +1 (STR) +1 (magic) +d10 on a critical.
• Target #3: d8 +4 (STR) +2 (magic), +1 if both attacks hit, +d8 for each critical.

Next, the critical thresholds for each:

• Target #1: 4 (Hit die size) +2 (CON) +0 (leather) +1 (magic) +1 (buckler) = 8.
• Target #2: 6 (Hit die size) +3 (CON) +1 (chainmail) +1 (magic) +1 (shield) +1 (helm) = 13.
• Target #3: 10 (Hit die size) +4 (CON) +2 (plate) +2 (magic) +1 (helm) = 19.

Example Set 1

Rogue vs. Rogue: The attacker needs to roll 8 or better on his bone-break check. This is only possible if he gets the second d4 from a critical hit. One of the resulting 2d4 must be a 4, and the other must be a three or four, so there is a 1 in 8 chance of success on a critical. To get a critical, he needs to both hit, rolling a 19 or 20, and then to hit again. With an attack roll of d20+4 and a target of 17, he needs to roll 13 or better to hit. So he has a 2-in-20 chance of a critical check, and a 13-in-20 chance of confirming the critical, for a 26-in-400 chance of a critical hit overall. On 1-in-8 of those 26-in-400 chances, he will cause a broken bone – that’s 26-in-3200 attacks, or about 0.8% of the time. Not very likely, but everything is working against him, so it is not too surprising.

Cleric vs. Rogue: The attacker needs a total of 8 or better on his bone-break roll. On a non-critical hit, he rolls d10+2 to achieve this target, so a six or better on the dice will suffice – that’s a 40% chance on any such hit. On a critical hit, he has 2d10+2 to hit the target number, which makes it a 90% chance of success. He needs to roll at least a 10 on his attack roll to hit – a fifty-fifty chance. If he does hit, there is a 1-in-20 chance of a critical check and a 50% chance of confirming that critical – the other 50% is just a normal hit.

• So, 45% chance of a 40% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 18%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 40% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 90% chance of a successful critical resulting in a broken bone = 2.25%.
• Total chance of inflicting a broken bone in a combat round against the rogue = 18+1+2.25 = 21.25%.

That seems a little low – one in every five combat rounds? Perhaps crushing weapons should use d12s instead of d10s? How would that change the results?

He still needs to achieve a target of 8, but on d12+2 that’s a 50% chance, not a 40%. And the chance on a critical goes up to 134 out of 144 results, or just over 93%.

• 45% chance of a 50% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 22.5%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 50% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1.25%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 93% chance of a successful critical resulting in a broken bone = 2.325%.
• Total chance of inflicting a broken bone in a combat round against the rogue = 22.5 + 1.25 + 2.325 = 26.075%.

From one in five to one in four doesn’t sound like the big gain that we were looking for. The cleric’s relatively low chance to hit in the first place is dominating the odds. To prove that, let’s drop the rogue’s AC by 1 – a relatively small adjustment, but it increases the cleric’s chance of hitting, and of confirming a critical, by 5%, and run those d12 results a third time:

• 50% chance of a 50% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 25%.
• 5% chance of a 45% chance of a 50% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1.125%.
• 5% chance of a 55% chance of a 93% chance of a successful critical causing a broken bone = 2.5575%.
• Total: 25 + 1.125 + 2.5575 = 28.6825%. That’s a lot more than a 5% improvement in the chances – it’s a 10% increase (28.6825 is 110% of 26.075%).

Increasing the cleric’s strength, or the magical bonus from his weapon, would not only yield the direct improvement shown, but would make it easier to achieve the threshold values – compound effects.

Keeping the Rogues AC down by 1 (so that this set of results can be directly compared to the previous ones), lets contemplate the situation if the cleric had a +4 STR bonus and a +4 weapon; that means that the cleric’s bone-breaker check is now d12+4+4, +d12 on a critical, still against the target of 8; and his attack rolls are now d20+13 against a target of 16.

The chance of an 8 or better on d12+8 is 100%. The chance of an 8 or better on 2d12+8 is still 100%. The chance of getting 16 on d20+13 is 17 in 20, or 85% (but 5% of that indicates a possible critical). 85% of possible criticals will become actual criticals, but it doesn’t matter because the bone-breaker chance doesn’t change – it’s still 100% either way. So if there is an 85% chance of hitting, there is an 85% chance of breaking a bone in the target on any given combat round. A battle that lasts three rounds has better than a 61% chance of three broken bones, a 93.925% chance of two, and a 99.66%+ chance of at least one – you’d feel pretty comfortable betting the farm on it.

Fighter vs. Rogue: All of which makes the confrontation between Fighter and Rogue very interesting. The fighter is both more likely to hit and more likely to inflict a broken bone through sheer strength – but his weapon is less likely to do so than that of the cleric. What’s more, He gets two attacks, and because the number of successes changes his likelyhood of causing a broken bone, we need to start with the to-hit rolls.

For his initial attack, the fighter rolls d20+11 and needs a total of 17 – so that happens on 6 or better. On a 19 or 20 he has a critical chance, which will be confirmed on a 6 or better. That makes the probability of outcomes:

• 25% chance – miss.
• 75$-10% = 65% hit with no critical chance.
• 10% critical chance which is not confirmed 25% of the time (=2.5% overall) and IS confirmed 75% of the time (7.5% overall).

For his second attack, he rolls d20+6 against the same target, so he needs to roll 5 higher than last time.

• 50% chance miss.
• 50%-10% = 40% hit with no critical chance.
• 10% critical chance which is not confirmed 25% of the time and IS confirmed 75% of the time (same overall numbers).

Putting these together, we get:

• 12.5% chance, both miss – no chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 44.375% one hit, not critical – base chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 5.625% one critical hit – +d8 to the bone-break roll.
• 28.6875% two non-critical hits – +1 to the bone-break roll.
• 8.25% two hits, one of the critical – +d8+1 to the bone-break roll.
• 0.5625% two critical hits – +2d8+1 to the bone-break roll.

The target is 8, and the base roll is d8+7. Chance of achieving the target: 100%.

This is not too surprising, after the analysis of the cleric vs. rogue result. The combination of strength and magic bonus from the weapon are exactly enough to make up for its inefficiency as a bone-breaking weapon. In each combat round, there is a 50% chance of one broken bone resulting, a 37.5% chance of two, and a 12.5% chance of a clean miss.

Example Set 2

Cleric vs. Rogue
In this set of examples, the target is the cleric, and the critical numbers are his AC of 18 and the critical threshold of 13. To cut a long story very short, there is no way that the rogue can achieve this target with his bone-breaker rolls of d4+1 and 2d4+1 on a critical.

Cleric vs. Cleric
Being the target of another Cleric with the same equipment is bit more difficult, especially with the upgrade from d10s to d12s that was made to the system as a result of the previous set of tests. To hit the AC of 18, the cleric has attack roll of d20+7 and a critical threshold of 20; and to hit the bone-breaking target of 13 he has d12+2, plus another d12 on a critical hit.

The chances of a non-critical hit are therefore 11 or better on d20, less the chance of rolling a 20, or 45%. There’s a 5% chance of a critical check, and a 50% chance that a critical check will result in an actual critical, leaving a 50% of 5% chance that it won’t. That’s a 47.5% chance of a non-critical bone-breaker check and a 2.5% chance of a critical bone-breaker check.

The non-critical check requires a total of 13 on d12+2, in other words an 11 or 12 on the roll – a 1 in 6 chance. So that 47.5% chance of a non-critical hit gives a 7.91666…% chance of a broken bone.

The critical bone-breaker check is 2d12+2 to achieve 13 or better, which is the same as 11 or better on the 2d12. That will happen 77 times out of 144, or 53.47222…% of the time. The 2.5% chance of a critical gives an additional chance of a broken bone result of 1.33680555…%.

So there is a grand total of 9.25347222…% chance of inflicting a broken bone in any round of combat. Call it nine-and-a-quarter percent. Compare that with the same attack on the Rogue of 26-and-a-bit percent. The difference is due to the larger hit die size, the better armor, and the helm – plus a little from a better CON bonus. In other words, because a cleric is more adept at face-to-face combat than a rogue, they are better able to protect themselves in combat from this sort of injury.

Cleric vs. Fighter
At this point, it’s worth noting that the cleric’s AC is only one better than that of the rogue, and while changes in the AC can have a big impact (as was shown previously), there’s no expectation of big differences between the outcomes on that score. However, there is a much larger difference between the cleric and the rogue when it comes to bone-breaking threshold – 13 vs 8 – and that should cause a substantial difference in the outcomes. Remember, the fighter couldn’t help but break bones on a successful hit when attacking the rogue.

As before, the fighter gets two attacks, one at d20+11 vs. AC 18, and one at d20+6 vs. AC 18. These are the equivalent, respectively, of d20 vs. a target of 7 or better, and d20 vs. a target of 12 or better.

In combination, these yield:

• 16.5% chance, both miss – no chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 46.05% one hit, not critical – base chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 5.95% one critical hit – +d8 to the bone-break roll.
• 23.94% two non-critical hits – +1 to the bone-break roll.
• 7.07% two hits, one of the critical – +d8+1 to the bone-break roll.
• 0.49% two critical hits – +2d8+1 to the bone-break roll.

As expected, there isn’t a lot of change in these numbers. The chance to miss has increased 4%, the chance of one hit only by about 2%, and everything else is down slightly to make up for that extra 6% in “poor” outcomes. It’s when these are translated into targets and rolls for bone-breaking attempts that things get more interesting:

• 16.5% chance of no chance.
• 46.05% chance of needing 13 on d8+6 = 25%.
• 5.95% chance of needing 13 on 2d8+6 = 76.5625%.
• 23.94% chance of needing 13 on d8+7 = 37.5%.
• 7.07% chance of needing 13 on 2d8+7 = 84.375%.
• 0.49% chance of needing 13 on 3d8+7 = >98.04%.

None of those rolls is a guaranteed success. The odds range from okay (25%) to excellent (98.04%) but there is always a chance of failure. When these chances are totaled up, we get 31.49% and change chance of breaking one of the opponent’s bones on any given round.

Learning from the examples

This testing suggests some further tweaks to the basic system. Using d12s for crushing weaponry still doesn’t go far enough. Since d16’s – while in existence (I have one) are fairly non-standard, the better way to boost this is to set the base as 2d10 and the extra dice for criticals remains a d12.

Part of this is compensation for an increase in the bone-breaker threshold of +2.

The goal of these changes is to make it a little rarer for non-crushing weapons to inflict broken bones while boosting the chances for crushing weapons to do so. Beyond these minor tweaks, the system would seem to work fairly well – it just requires an attacker to keep track of how many attacks succeed, and to add a dice to his stack each time he scores a critical hit. Most players can handle that with no extra time taken. At the end of their attacks, they simply roll the bone-breaker dice, add the modifier from their character sheet and the modifier for the number of attacks that succeeded, and announce the total while the GM/target compares that total against the target number on that character sheet and tallies any broken bones.

It should be fast and simple.

Fractures and Splinters

Having determined how it will be decided whether or not a bone will be broken, the next step is to decide how that affects the character in combat. While there are many choices, there are only two that fulfill the brief of keeping the system simple and non-intrusive into the combat process. The first is the slightly unrealistic but very playable solution of having broken bones inflict NO consequences during combat. The second is the slightly more realistic option of reducing the characters’ chance of hitting by 1 for every broken bone. Both are very straightforward and should have minimal impact on the pace of combat.

Which brings us to the question of post-combat consequences – and to decisions concerning which bones are broken and how badly.

Again, the focus should be on simplicity and realism should be declined in favor of something abstract and efficient. My inclination would be to base the severity on the total percentage of hit points lost in the battle, and again to modify the result according to the nature of the weapon that inflicted the break:

• 24% hit points or less: minor break, no impact
• 25-50% hit points lost: inconvenient break
• 51-75% serious break
• 76%-100% critical break

Bludgeoning/crushing weapons advance the break type by 1 step, i.e. Minor Breaks become Inconvenient Breaks, Inconvenient Breaks become Serious, and so on.

Meat on the bones

That’s all well and good, but at the moment these are just empty labels. Before they can be of any use to us, they need some further definition.

Minor breaks represent a fractured finger or toe, a broken cheekbone, or a broken nose – something of that order – and clean breaks. If properly treated, these will heal perfectly. These are annoying, and may even be inconvenient for a while, but they are not crippling and will barely even slow the character down as they continue doing whatever they are doing.

Inconvenient breaks represent either more serious fractures of the preceding type – compound breaks – or cracked ribs, or cracked limb bones (arm or leg). In a 3.x world, some of these are difficult to treat properly, and bone fragments may cause persistent trouble. In general, though, complete recovery is possible if the injuries are properly treated, but the character will be impaired or inconvenienced to some extent in the meantime.

Serious breaks are broken ribs, broken arms, wrists, ankles, legs, a broken jaw, a broken clavicle, or something along those lines. These not only severely impair the character, normal levels of activity frequently cause them to heal imperfectly, resulting in ongoing pain or incapacitation. Furthermore, since cracked bones and minor breaks are placed in the inconvenient category, those which may be found in this category are the more extreme versions of such injuries. This category also contains cracked bones in more dangerous and sensitive locations – pelvis, kneecaps, spine, neck, skull. These are actually less incapacitating but more potentially dangerous as a successive injury to the location of the damage may cause permanent incapacity or death.

Critical breaks are the most sort of broken bones – skull fractures, shattered pelvis, broken back, crushed hand or foot (maiming), shattered kneecaps, and so on. These will not only cause immediate impairment and pose a serious risk of permanent incapacity, they may be life-threatening in their own right. Even the act of conveying an individual with these injuries to safety for treatment may be a life-threatening activity, and treatment is as likely to kill as cure.

Interpretation

Having defined the injury types in descriptive, subjective, terms, the next step is to consider how to interpret them in terms of game mechanics. Rather than offer some hard and fast rules for this, though, it might be better to consider the problem in relative terms, and leave the question in the hands of the GM.

In other words, the GM decides how to interpret the injury and resulting impairment/handicap based on what the injured character is trying to achieve at the time. Some tasks will not be impaired at all, others will be impaired to a minimal extent, others may be impaired greatly, and there will be some tasks that might be impaired in a progressive fashion – only a little at first, becoming more severe as the activity (such as walking a great distance) is maintained.

Natural Healing

Each progressive type of break takes longer to heal: 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 5 months, 7 months, (12 months). The healing time for all but minor breaks goes up one step if the character engages in strenuous activity.

Healing Potions

Because healing potions work on soft tissue injuries only, they won’t heal a broken bone. What’s more, unless the bone has been set first, it may well result in the “healing” of the soft tissue causing as much damage as is “healed” – and more, when the bone is actually set.

Healing Spells

One of the big benefits of the damage system suggested in part one was the differentiation between healing spells. It is extremely desirable that this benefit be perpetuated in other alternative healing subsystems such as the one proposed by this article. Fortunately, this is easily achieved.

Cure Light Wounds

This most basic of healing spells does nothing but heal soft-tissue damage, i.e. hit points, in exactly the same manner and with the same restrictions, as a Healing potion. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Moderate Wounds

In addition to healing hit points, this spell can heal 1 minor break completely. It can also reduce the healing time required for one inconvenient break (normally 1 month) by the amount of the healing time of the next lower bone break type (1 week). This benefit cannot be applied to the same broken bone repeatedly, but multiple castings can be applied to reduce the healing time of several different broken bones (or several breaks in the one bone). It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Serious Wounds

In addition to healing hit points, this spell can heal a single Serious Break to the point of being equivalent to an Inconvenient Break (in terms of subsequent healing time required), i.e. reduce it from 3 months to 1 month. It can, similarly, heal an Inconvenient break to the point of being equivalent to a Minor Break (in terms of subsequent healing time required) i.e. reduce the remaining healing time from 1 month to 1 week. It does not alter the nature of the break, i.e. a Serious Break remains a serious break, only its healing is accelerated. Any consequences of imperfect healing are not affected. This spell cannot be used to affect the same break repeatedly, though subsequent castings can accelerate the healing of other broken bones. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Critical Wounds

In a similar manner to that of Cure Serious Wounds, this spell can accelerate the healing of any broken bone to the point of requiring the next lower healing time before it is completely healed. This benefit can only be applied once to any given break in a bone, and does not alter the severity of the original break. Any consequences of imperfect healing are not affected by this spell; it simply accelerates the process, though that will reduce the opportunity for further harm. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Heal

This spell completely heals any broken bones in addition to restoring hit points. However, while it will complete the process of knitting the broken bones together, this will take place with the bone fragments arranged in whatever position they occupied before the Heal spell was cast. It is possible to correct such bone misalignments by re-breaking the bone very precisely and correctly aligning it before casting Heal. Heal may or may not repair any other damage resulting from fractures such as spinal cord injuries and consequent paralysis, though it will restore the tissue to health. It is also possible that it will repair the physical damage but that the character will need to undergo rehabilitation to relearn how to use the damaged/impaired/paralyzed limbs. In essence, these three options can be summarized:

• Accelerated Time – the character receives the benefits of healing as though he had simply waited for the injury to heal naturally.
• Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration – as above, but damaged tissue is restored and rejuvenated, even if the body could not do so unassisted through the passage of time.
• Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration and rehabilitation – as above, but full function of the affected body is also restored.

Which of these interpretations applies in a specific campaign is a choice for the GM of that campaign. It may be desirable to differentiate between the impacts by race of the caster, e.g. Humans & Dwarves use the Accelerated Time healing principle, Elves and human followers of the Goddess of Healing use the Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration, while Elven clerics of the Goddess of Healing can use the most complete interpretation. Or perhaps battlefield mages are the group restricted to the most basic version of Heal.

Laying On Of Hands

Of course, there’s another form of Healing to be considered – Laying On Of Hands by a Paladin. While this doesn’t deliver anywhere near as much healing potency in terms of hit points, I rather like the idea of them being able to do something that a Cleric can’t get to do with anything short of a Miracle – such as perfect restoration of function and realignment of mis-healed bones without having to re-break the imperfectly-healed bone. This would, of course, consume a full usage of the laying on of hands ability. Again, this is entirely up to the GM.

Magic Items

It should also be clear that the addition of a new damage-handling subsystem holds potential for a whole new batch of magic items to be found by, and used against, characters. Weapons that give bonuses to the bone-break roll instead of the to-hit roll, weapons that inflict more serious breakages, armours that protect more effectively against broken bones, bandages that (at least temporarily) set and hold broken bones, and so on. A net that breaks ankles? Why not?

Trollish regeneration

The final subject I’d like to throw out there for consideration is the question of what this means for abilities like Trollish Regeneration. Does this automatically realign and set broken bones? Does it do so imperfectly, producing trolls with misshapen limbs, limps, and hunched backs? Or can it only handle soft-tissue damage, the same as a healing potion? The first makes Trolls even more dangerous relative to an adventurer; the second maintains the relative power level, at least approximately; while the last weakens them compared to what players would be used to.

My personal choice would be to introduce several different species of Troll – this is something I do in most of my campaigns, for the sheer fun factor. Black trolls might have the weakest healing, but the greatest intelligence amongst their kind, as is the case in my Fumanor Campaigns, while Green Trolls might heal more rapidly but be even thicker intellectually than the typical Troll (again the way I have it arranged in my Fumanor Campaigns). There are also the horny-ridged Trolls (which the PCs have yet to encounter) who can only heal each other with their regeneration, and not themselves, and whose abilities are triggered by the mating rituals of the species – so that the more you injure them, the greater their population grows, a generation later.

This is a place where you can have some fun, exercise some creativity, and give your world more verisimilitude all at the same time – so don’t waste it!

The third part of this set of articles will look at a high-fantasy approach I call the Differential Damage Approach (for lack of a better name, I have to admit). Unlike this mid-level fantasy approach or the previous low-level approach, this is one that I have actually used, though I will be taking the chance to revise and tweak it.

What are hit points? The most obvious answer is that hit points are a numeric index between healthy and imminent death, but there are other interpretations of the significance of this ubiquitous character statistic, and some of them lead the GM down interesting paths. This article will examine the first of these options, while parts 2 and three will examine a second and a third, even more far-reaching alternative, respectively.

Each of these alternatives has consequences for the flavor of the game that is being run, and requires house rules to interpret the philosophical metagame definition into concrete game mechanics correctly.

The Healthy and the Helpless

Another possible answer which I have seen in house rules from time to time is that hit points are a numeric index of the gap between healthy and helpless. This relates the damage that is inflicted apon a character to the impact that this damage has on his abilities, and his capacity to overcome that impact.

Before going too far with this, I have to admit that I have never run a game using this particular wounding model. Everything that is written below is unplaytested and derived strictly from RPG theory, and being written straight off the cuff.

We’ve all experienced injuries in our time – abrasions, falls, nicks. Some have had more serious injuries like broken bones or surgical wounds. And a few unfortunates have even more serious injuries in their pasts. So we can all relate to the principle that being injured slows our movements, impairs our physical capacities for action, and saps our will to act. These are responses to the pain of the injury, which is the body’s reaction to that injury; if we heed these warning signals, we heal, or at least have the chance to do so, and if we don’t then healing is slowed, may not progress properly (bones fusing out of alignment and so on), or may not occur at all (cuts reopening, etc).

We have all also seen people, especially in desperate circumstances, ignore wounds that might have incapacitated them at other times, in order to meet the needs of survival (be those their own or those of someone else).

Under this paradigm, the increase in hit points a character receives as a result of a level increase can be described as an increase in the capacity to remain functional despite injuries that may have been received, and the condition of zero hit points remaining – helplessness – is tantamount to death, should any enemy remain in better condition.

Implementation

To have the game mechanics reflect this metagame definition, two things are required: first, an index of impairment, relating the degree of injury to the degree of impairment suffered; and secondly, a table of consequences which define the consequences on other game mechanics of the impairment that a character may suffer.

Index of impairment

Interpreting the increase in hit points as a character acquires levels as an increase in capacity to absorb injury before reaching a given point of impairment gives us the scale apon which an index of impairment must be measured – the percentage of hit points lost.

Further, since characters have four limbs, plus a head (even a character with both arms and both legs broken or ruined can bite the enemy), and there would need to be a base level of no impairment, it is easy to construct such an index as a percentage of hit points lost.

While many such tables are possible, I’m going to present three that will represent the field of possibilities.

Impairment Index 1: Simple Linear

The graphic to the right illustrates a simple linear impairment index. Start by considering the left-hand-side: at no hit points taken, the character suffers no impairment, and this persists until the character has lost 1/6th of those hit points. At the point where his damage taken crosses that 1/6th boundary, he goes from ‘impairment zero’ to ‘impairment A’ and suffers the impairment effects that match that condition. At 1/3 hit points lost, the character enters condition B and suffers greater impairment, and so on. How much impairment is something to be considered later, when we work on the table of consequences.

The left-hand section reflects external injuries and the relative impairment that results. ‘A’ can be considered minor impairment, B is impairment equivalent to the inability to use one limb, C is equivalent to two limbs, D to three, and E to four. When the character has no hit points remaining, he hits the bottom of the chart and is helpless to prevent the enemy doing whatever it likes to him.

The right-hand section concerns itself with internal injuries, and divides the potential impairment and consequences into three sections, labeled alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha means that the character has no noteworthy internal injuries unless the weapon specifically inflicts them. Beta describes a condition where there is some risk of internal injury – how great a risk and how serious they are forms a third section of these variant rules – while gamma denotes a condition in which such wounds are more likely to have occurred and/or for them to be more serious.

If a tenth-level fighter with 79 hit points were to set up a list of ‘danger points’, it would look something like this:

• 0-13 HP lost: zero zone, alpha zone.
• 14-26 HP lost: A zone, alpha zone.
• 27-39 HP lost: B zone, beta zone.
• 40-52 HP lost: C zone, beta zone.
• 53-65 HP lost: D zone, gamma zone.
• 66-78 HP lost: E zone, gamma zone.
• 79 HP lost: totally helpless.
• 89 HP lost: death.

That doesn’t sound too unreasonable, does it? Compare that with a mage of 10th level, no CON bonus, giving him 25 hit points. 25-1=24; divide by 6 to get the intervals (4 hit points):

• 0-4 HP lost: zero zone, alpha zone.
• 5-8 HP lost: A zone, alpha zone.
• 9-12 HP lost: B zone, beta zone.
• 13-16 HP lost: C zone, beta zone.
• 17-20 HP lost: D zone, gamma zone.
• 21-24 HP lost: E zone, gamma zone.
• 25 HP lost: totally helpless.
• 35 HP lost: death.

That seems a bit nasty, doesn’t it? After 9 HP damage, the mage is either casting spells one-handed or leaning against something, unable to stand on one leg.

This scale of impairment and injury permits the rules to be adopted to be simple and straightforward, with minimal calculation required; though that is another area the GM can tailor to his own requirements.

Before we get into that, let’s consider a couple of alternative impairment Indexes.

Impairment Index 2: Biased Linear Progression

This is achieved by making the early zones larger and reducing the later zones accordingly. The example to the left shows just how broad a scope the GM has for tweaking the design. The GM who designed this proposal (me, obviously) has tripled the size of the zero zone, and doubled the size of the A and B zones relative to the C, D, and E zones. 3+2+2+1+1+1=10, so this gives an impairment index based on tenths of the character’s hit point total.

Until the character loses three-tenths of his total hit points, he is unimpaired and in the “zero impairment zone”. When he has lost half his total hit points, he is only slightly impaired – the equivalent of using the use of one limb. Until he has lost seven tenths, he is still in the ‘B’ zone – the equivalent of using the use of two limbs. Use of the remaining limbs then occurs fairly quickly, at 8 tenths and 9 tenths his total, respectively.

He has then gotten carried away with his own cleverness (note that I have done this deliberately to make a point!) and set the end of alpha region (no internal injuries) as occurring half-way through the A zone, so that a character can have nothing more than bruises and contusions but still have a risk of internal damage – perhaps a rib puncturing a lung, or something of that sort. He has then made the gamma region the same size as it was before, adjusted, i.e. overlapping the D and E external injury zones, and stretched the beta zone (some risk of internal injuries) to fit.

Relative to the even breakdown that was there before, this is the equivalent of making the Alpha zone 5% larger than it was, the beta zone 36% larger than it was, and the gamma region only 60% of what it was. The critical numbers are 7/20ths of hit points lost and 80% of hit points lost.

Personally, I would think this was overcomplicating things, but it’s certainly possible to arrange things this way.

How this is better than the simple linear index:
It defers impairment until the character has taken more damage, letting him fight for longer. And if the designer hadn’t gotten carried away, it would have been just as simple to implement. Consider the 25-HP mage from the previous example. 25HP-1 = 24 (because once he has taken 25 HP he is totally incapacitated), divide by 10 to get intervals of 2.4:

• 0 to 2.4×3 = 0 to 7 HP lost: zero zone, alpha zone (was 0 to 4).
• 8 to 10 HP lost: A zone, alpha zone (was 5 to 8).
• 11 to 12 HP lost: A zone, beta zone (combination didn’t exist before).
• 13 to 16 HP lost: B zone, beta zone (was 9 to 12).
• 17 to 19 HP lost: C zone, beta zone (was 13 to 16).
• 20 to 21 HP lost: D zone, gamma zone (was 17 to 20).
• 22 to 24 HP lost: E zone, gamma zone (was 21 to 24).
• 25 HP lost: totally helpless.
• 35 HP lost: death.

So the seriously-incapacitating zones don’t occur until the character is much closer to helplessness. Even with this fairly tight scale – the result of a low HP total to start with – the effects are evident.

How this is worse than the simple linear index:
It’s more complicated (it adds an extra condition step). It’s less intuitive as a result – we used to have three internal injury conditions, or zones on the table, each subdivided equally into two external injury/impairment zones. And worse still, by getting clever and putting the alpha-to-beta transition midway through a zone, it introduces a new calculation that has to be done on the fly.

Finally, if even a low-hit-point mage feels the benefits, how big will the effects be on somebody with a fairly decent HP total? Consider a character with 101 hits points (to make the math simple):

101 minus 1 = 100; 100/10 = 10. This gives:

• 0 to 30 HP lost: zero zone, alpha zone.
• 31 to 40 HP lost: A zone, alpha zone.
• 41 to 50 HP lost: A zone, beta zone.
• 51 to 70 HP lost: B zone, beta zone.
• 71 to 80 HP lost: C zone, beta zone.
• 81 to 90 HP lost: D zone, gamma zone.
• 91 to 100 HP lost: E zone, gamma zone.
• 101 HP lost: totally helpless.
• 111 HP lost: death.

ImageL:Wound Index 3

Impairment Index 3: Geometric Progression

Those who like consistent patterns may wish to take things a step further, making the range of each zone a multiple of the range of the zone that follows it. This achieves something similar to the Biased linear progression, only more so. The following table shows the breakpoints for a variety of geometric patterns (plus a ringer at the end).

Of course, these results aren’t all that useful as they stand. Utility – and the revelation of an interesting pattern or two – comes from converting the above results to a percentage of the sum of the ratios:

Personally, I would stick near the top of the table. The lower reaches leave the extreme zones too small – for characters of under 100 hit points, and that’s most of them – a single point would be the difference between one level of injury and the next. Oh, and if you’re wondering why such a precise value as 2.23435 is stuck in the middle of the table, that’s the result that comes closest to delivering a total of exactly 100; without the rounding errors, the total comes to almost 99.992, which is pretty darned close!

Also as a personal note, and while I adore elegant patterns in my tables, I DON’T like this approach. It’s too extreme, there’s too much capacity for no effect at the top (0/a/b zones) and results crowd together too closely at the bottom (c/d/e zones). But that’s a personal assessment, and yours may differ.

Consequences: translating impairment zones into game mechanics consequences

There is a natural approach to assigning a game-mechanics effect to any given impairment level – it’s called the modifier. But from there, things can become a lot more complex and sophisticated.

Modifier Pattern
To start with, consider the amount of this modifier. The simplest approach would be -1, -2, -3, or even -4 per external wound level. (Since there are 5 such wound levels, a -4 per level gives a net -20 at the most extreme level).

But there are non-linear models to consider. -1 cumulative would mean that each wound level increases the change in penalty by 1 at each wound level step – so -1, -2, -3, -4, and -5; the cumulative part means that these compound, giving -1, -3, -6, -10, and -15. This result falls somewhere between the flat -2 and -3 results, and has the additional virtue of reducing the impact at lower wound levels. The result, if applied to the simple linear impairment index is not dissimilar to a flat modifier of about -2-and-a-half applied to the geometric or biased impairment models – and is a lot simpler to implement.

Impairment from internal injuries can be considered a separate issue – perhaps a flat -1 or -2 in addition to the modifiers from external injuries, coupled with a point of bleeding, for each of the two internal injury zones.

Modifier to what, exactly?
Next there is the question of what this modifier is applied to. There are many options:

• Attack Rolls – the character’s mobility is impaired, making his reactions slower in battle.
• Damage Rolls – the character’s physical forcefulness is impaired, so he does less damage in melee.
• Saving Throws – the character is impaired both physically and mentally, making it harder to shrug off environmental complications and spell effects
• Skill Checks – the character cannot move or think as freely as usual, making it harder for him to employ skills successfully
• Initiative – the character slows down in battle
• Hit Points – the character does additional damage to himself by acting forcefully while wounded (once per turn or once per attack)
• Armor Class – the character’s mobility is impaired, making him an easier target in battle
• Movement Rate – the character’s mobility is impaired, slowing his movement

These are all reasonable. And then there is the possibility of combinations – a minus one or two to each of these applications (with the exception of movement rate) would not be terribly significant in isolation but when compounded with all the other penalties represented here, it can be enough to swing the tide of a battle. Multiplying the penalty by 5 would give an appropriate measure for loss of movement (i.e., -5′ per -1 penalty).

Complex Models
Nor do all of these have to receive penalties at the same level, or following the same pattern, or even starting at the same impairment zone. Attack Rolls, Saving Throws and Skill Checks might be -2 per wound level, Initiative and Hit Points might be -1 cumulative for each wound level after Zone ‘A’, AC might be -2 and Movement -5′ per wound level after wound level ‘B’. There are so many combinations and so much flexibility that you don’t really need the complications of a geometric impairment index (which is why I didn’t bother doing a graphic for it).

An even more complex solution is to apply different impairment index models (but the same impairment levels) to different character classes by Hit Dice size. Perhaps your d4 and d6-based classes get the benefit of the more benign Biased Linear Index while the higher hit-dice types – the more active combatants, under normal circumstances – have to cope with the more even-handed Simple Linear Index.

Internal Injuries

These got a mention in the previous section, listing a possible penalty to go with an internal injury, but – aside from defining hit point ranges where a character is at risk – we haven’t yet looked at the ways that a character might incur that risk. As usual, there are a couple of options to consider.

None
This model states that – for the sake of simplicity and game-play – internal injuries are ignored or presumed to be included in the existing external injuries. This is the simplest possible approach.

Automatic
This model states that as soon as a character enters the appropriate injury zone, he receives the appropriate injury. This is the simplest approach that actually includes internal injuries.

Automatic With Save
This is exactly the same as the Automatic check except that the character gets some sort of a saving throw each time they take damage while at risk. I would suggest DCs of 15 and 20 for beta and gamma, respectively, as being appropriate. Note that external injury modifiers may make these saves harder to achieve (modifier to the saving throw) or even trigger a mandatory check (modifier to hit points for strenuous activity).

Automatic With Numeric Threshold
In this approach, a character receives an internal injury if they receive a certain quantity of damage in a single attack, or in a single round. If this is the GMs preferred option, I would suggest thresholds of 5, 10, or 20 points (depending on how severe the penalty is). Note that these thresholds may be different if the character’s condition after the attacks are totaled leaves them in zone beta or forces them into zone gamma.

Automatic With Percentage Threshold
This approach inflicts an internal injury when the damage received in a single blow, or alternatively in a single combat round, exceeds a certain percentage of the character’s hit points. If the simple linear index is being used, the gap between zones is 1/6th of the total hit points, and that seems a reasonable threshold. If a more complex index, then it might be easier to state a percentage outright – 10%, say. Note that this approach permits characters to receive internal damage without serious external wounds if zone 0 is larger than the threshold, and provided that the GM has modified the meaning of zone alpha from “no risk” to “low risk” of internal injuries.

The more likely an injury, the smaller the penalty should be. The less likely, the more draconian you can afford to be. Always bear in mind, when considering such choices, that these penalties are in addition to any conferred by the external injuries system.

Differentiation Of Healing

This is where the fun starts. D&D lists several different varieties of Healing Spell, differentiating them by Wound Type – Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Critical Wounds, Heal – and I hope I haven’t missed one! Pathfinder preserves this array of choice. When you get right down to it, the only real difference in these spells is the amount of damage they heal – as though they were presuming that injuries totaling a certain amount could be automatically defined as being wounds of a certain degree of seriousness.

In reality, of course, they simply needed a variety of names, and the content of those names is metagame fluff. But that’s what this whole system (and its kindred to follow in other blog posts) are all about – giving same game-mechanics meaning to that fluff, giving it some teeth.

How you apply this differentiation is up to you. The simplest way is for it not to matter – each healing spell does so much healing and that adjusts the character’s position on the impairment chart accordingly.

But there are other, more interesting approaches. You could match each impairment category with a type of damage – Zero and A = light wounds, B & C = moderate, D = serious, E = critical (for example), and state that a lesser form of healing than the one corresponding with the character’s current level of impairment just doesn’t work, or can’t move the character out of that impairment zone. You could state that only Cure Critical Wounds and Heal can restore an internal injury.

You can define Healing potions as CLW only. So you can’t quaff eight or nine or sixteen or whatever to fully recover.

Suddenly, those different spells have a reason to be different, and spell selection for clerics becomes absolutely critical. In fact, a character class that has a Cleric’s combat and spellcasting abilities but a spell list comprising nothing but those Healing spells becomes quite a viable choice (though it would need something else to make up for the other clerical abilities and spells that it was giving up). Call it the Healer?

Even More Fun: Magic! And Class Abilities

By adding another parameter to the handling of damage, Magic can be created by the GM to exploit that parameter. A sword which always inflicts a wound one class higher than the damage would signify. Armor that downgrades impairment levels. A net that impairs a character as though they were one impairment class worse off than they are. A sword that does more damage when the character is seriously impaired, or has some other effect that is triggered only by entry into a given impairment zone (beware of healing effects triggered in this way, they can make a character nearly-invulnerable).

Another potential that these concepts offer are for the creation of class abilities that will further distinguish one class from another. Perhaps some classes take no impairment until zone B, or are treated as being one impairment class better than their current hit points suggest (at least under certain conditions) – A Barbarian’s Rage becomes something more akin to a Berserker attack if he has the latter advantage while Raging, for example.

There’s a general principle here – if you make a change to the game mechanics with a house rule, try to extend it into as many areas as possible. Anything less compromises the uniqueness conferred on the campaign by the presence of that House Rule.

What’s It All For? – The Implications & Benefits

I started this article by suggesting that the reasons for adopting such a system as I have described are flavor. Certainly, they mean that combat takes on a more realistic attribute, where performance in battle is directly compromised by the injuries received. That flavor can also show up in terms of healing and magic items. It certainly gives the GM some direction and foundation for a narrative description of combat, and the flavor that this imparts is reflected back in game mechanics. But there are other implications, some good and some not so good.

Who acts first in a battle become even more important than it was. Having a high Initiative total gives the opportunity to impair a combatant before they even get a chance to strike. For some, that’s a neutral item; for me, that’s a negative (because my NPCs always seem to roll poorly for initiative).

Healing becomes more important, and either a larger slice of the cleric’s role in the party, or the province of a whole new character class. Certainly, the differences between spells that otherwise simply do more or less of the same thing become a lot more significant. That’s both a good thing (the spell definitions) and a bad thing (restricting the role of the cleric).

Critical Hits, which do more damage in a single blow, and hence are more likely to carry a character into an Impairment Zone, also become more than a matter of bookkeeping. That’s a good thing.

Multiple attacks become a more significant step up than a simple multiple of one attack, by virtue of their ability, cumulatively, to force a character into impairment. That’s a bad thing, because it means that the advantages of additional character levels increase at certain points in a character’s history – but that also brings high-level fighters somewhat more in line with the power progression of high-level Wizards, which is a good thing (if you think, as many do, that there is a game imbalance in this area). Wizards become more vulnerable, further eroding any power imbalance; this may provoke more characters to take martial class levels, and that’s probably a bad thing.

Extended combats – ones in which the combatants are closely matched – become more epic. That’s a good thing.

The game in general becomes more lethal, especially to low-level characters and those with small hit dice sizes – that could be either good or bad, depending on a multitude of factors.

Combat becomes something to enter into less lightly and more reluctantly – encouraging everyone to look for non-combat (i.e. roleplay) solutions. Some players will find that a negative, but most players and GMs will view it as a positive.

R&R times between adventures will increase, especially at low- and mid-level, when characters don’t have access to the healing magic they need to recover, and have to lie up until they heal naturally sufficiently for their remaining injuries to be treated magically. That could be good or bad.

The game will certainly be changed, and changed significantly. If your campaign, and the way you want PCs and NPCs to behave, and the tone of adventures and encounters, all support and fit this changed mood, these house rules can be a winner for the whole game. There will be less fantasy and more gritty realism. In a high-fantasy campaign, that can act as a leavening agent; in a mid-to-low fantasy campaign, it can bring the game closer to a historical simulation and less of a comic-book. Is this a change that’s right for you and your game? Yes? No?

Who would have thought that so much impact can be felt from a simple metagame redefinition of the humble Hit Point?

The next part of this trio of articles will look at another option: Hit Points as an index of soft-tissue damage. Part III will consider a high-fantasy variation on the handling of wounds called the Differential Damage Approach (for lack of a better name).

Image: www.freedigitalphotos.net

Last week, I proposed an alternate approach to plotting mysteries that made them more suitable for RPGs and could also be of benefit to mystery writers generally. Due to time pressures, I didn’t include examples – and I wasn’t entirely sure they would be necessary (that’s why I spent some time working on the diagrams; they were supposed to be a combination illustration & abstract example). Nevertheless, I had also intended to include some actual examples, if there was time. Since at least one reader has requested some “real” examples – and since I hold by the tenet that one person making a request represents up to a hundred more who didn’t bother to actually make the request – today’s article consists of those missing examples.

The Jar Of Jam: An example of the Linear mystery

The initial situation: A household contains a three-year-old boy, a five-year-old boy, and a ten-year-old girl, plus mother and father. The Father works Saturdays, departing before the Mother gets out of bed. On the morning in question, he told the Mother as he was leaving that they were out of bread. When she gets up, and before getting breakfast, she nips down to the corner store to buy more. When she returns, she finds what had been a new and unopened jar of jam on the kitchen floor, with half its contents consumed. Her task: to decide Who is responsible.

1. Observation: There are traces of jam on the floor and walls in the rough shape of a small handprint.
2. Observation: The three-year-old’s cheeks are covered in jam.
3. Statement 1: The five-year-old claims to have been playing the PS3 in his room at the time.
4. Statement 2: The ten-year-old claims to have been talking on the phone to one of her friends at the time.
5. Investigation Of statement 1: Plausible, fits the childs habits.
6. Investigation Of statement 2: Plausible, the ten-year old can spend hours on the phone.
7. Suspicion: The three-year-old is immediately the prime suspect, but the evidence is purely circumstantial.
8. Known Fact: Jam-Jars can be very difficult to open for the first time, even some adults struggle unless they know the trick of using a sharp knife to break the vacuum seal first.
9. Deduction: A three-year-old doesn’t have the gripping strength to open such a jar. He may have consumed the jam, but cannot be responsible.
10. Deduction: The same is true of most five-year-olds.
11. Suspicion: The Ten-year-old girl is therefore the new prime suspect.
12. Deduction: A ten-year-old would probably not have consumed jam direct from the jar, she would have made a sandwich.
13. Known Fact: There was no bread to make a sandwich.
14. Deduction: The ten-year-old is therefore probably not responsible.
15. Deduction: Therefore, either the 5-year-old was strong enough to open the jar of jam, despite expectations, or someone else opened it. The only possible “someone else” present in the household at the time is the ten-year-old, who has previously been eliminated.
16. Deduction: If the father gets up before the rest of the family on a Saturday Morning to go to work, he either has no breakfast or makes his own.
17. Deduction: If the father did not make his own breakfast, he would not have known that the family had run out of bread. Therefore, he did, in fact, at least attempt to make his own breakfast.
18. Investigation: Mother asks the five-year-old to help open a new jar of jam and observes his behavior. He struggles with it for a few seconds before giving up. His demeanor displayed some guilt at the mention of Jam, however, and the jar lid is slightly sticky when he returns it to the Mother.
19. Observation: The three-year-old is not tall enough to see a jar of jam left on the breakfast table without climbing onto a chair.
20. Known Fact, not previously revealed: The three-year old can climb onto chairs but does not do so unless others are at the breakfast table.
21. At this point, three plausible solutions are possible. Either the ten-year-old opened the jam to make breakfast while talking on the phone and before realizing that there was no bread left, or the father used the last of the bread for his breakfast, opening the jam and leaving it on the kitchen table. The five-year-old saw the opened jar and ate from it using his fingers before giving it to the three-year-old or leaving it on the table where the three-year-old could get it, or consumed the jam himself and smeared some on the hands and face of his brother to deflect guilt over ‘being naughty’ from himself.
22. Observation: The butter is still on the breakfast table. This supports both possible explanations.
23. Observation: The usual storage location of the jam is beyond the reach of the 3-year-old and reachable only with difficulty (involving moving chairs) for the five-year-old. Since the chairs appear relatively undisturbed, this supports both possible explanations.
24. Observation: There is a bread-and-butter plate in the sink with breadcrumbs on it. Since there was no bread for the ten-year-old to consume, this exonerates her and leaves only one possible guilty party: The absent father. The five-year old is an accessory, but is guilty of lying about his behavior actions, and may be guilty of attempting to frame his brother.
25. Interrogation of the five-year-old confirms the more innocent alternative. He came out for breakfast, followed by his brother, who climbed up onto a kitchen chair because his brother was sitting at the table. He decided that since there was no bread, he would just have jam for breakfast. His brother then demanded some of the jam. They both got down from the table to make it easier for both of them to reach it at the same time.

This was a straightforward, linear, and trivially domestic investigation. There was only ever one solution: Father to Five-year-old to Three-year-old. It was also a very realistic situation that many parents will know from first-hand experience.

Okay, be honest: How many readers suspected the father from the start? And how many were sure of it from item 15 on? Okay, who doesn’t have their metaphoric hand up – no-one? That’s the problem with a linear mystery plot – it can be easy to suspect the identity of the guilty party, and it turns the whole thing into an anticlimax that plods to a solution.

That’s bad in a TV show or piece of fiction. It’s worse in an RPG, and more likely to occur, because you don’t have one person investigating (and possibly missing key facts), you have two, three, four, or more. In fact, it was very hard to slow down enough to identify each concrete step in the above chain of detective work; if all the clues had been presented at once, most people would have the solution in seconds.

The Wounded Monarch: A Parallel Plot

To demonstrate the Parallel Plot, we need a somewhat more complex and significant mystery than the simple story of the Jar Of Jam. We also need a somewhat broader suspect list. At the same time, to keep the example practical (and capable of completion in the time I have available), it must necessarily be limited in scope. So this will not be a complete example, but rather an illustration of the various steps involved in constructing a mystery plot of this sort; where those steps are to be repeated multiple times in order to construct the finished mystery plotline, only one or two iterations will be presented. Anyone who wishes to complete the process of turning it into a complete adventure or suite of fictional accounts is welcome to do so.

I’ll be putting the actual content of each step in a text box like this one to set it off from the description of the process.

1. Initial Briefing

The construction of a Parallel Plot has several elements in common with that of a Linear Plot. You still start with a setup, or initial briefing, which describes the mystery to be solved, but is otherwise devoid of clues or evidence.

While dispensing high justice and hearing supplications from his subjects, someone has shot the King with a crossbow. Fortunately, the bolt missed hitting anything vital, but the rumors have been swirling ever since he was carried away to the Royal Chirurgeon where the bolt was removed. The King is still in considerable distress and not entirely rational following the attack. With the Palace Guards all tasked to defending the King, the PCs have been summoned by the Seneschal to discover who shot the King and Why.

2. Prior Knowledge

It is better to be minimalist here, but context is also very important – clues may exist in the form of encounters that the PCs have had in past adventures. For example, if it is known that there is a conspiracy of high-level mages hunting for a lost artifact, that’s a piece of information that may be relevant if magic or a clue to the artifact appear in the mystery.

So the second thing that the GM should do when constructing a mystery of any sort is to make a note to themselves of any such Prior Knowledge that might be relevant to the mystery, or that the PCs may mistakenly consider relevant.

(Because this is an isolated example and not part of a series of stories or adventures, there should be nothing here. Note that it can be useful, when designing a mystery for an RPG, to work backwards to establish certain facts in advance of the actual adventure – whether that is the presence of a dark cult, personality profiles of selected nobles, or whatever. So you can build a list of “prior knowledge” requirements and then use that as a checklist of elements to include in preceding adventures.)

3. Three Solutions

The next step is to outline at least three solutions to the mystery. These must all be plausible stories that explain what has happened. I’ll call them A, B, and C. So far as possible, they should feature (mostly) the same protagonists, though the relationships between the protagonists, and even elements of their personalities, may vary. These variations should all be consistent in terms of objective behavior, however.

The King was shot by a member of the Assassin’s Guild in fulfillment of a contract with the Earl Of Halsford, who is 14th in the line of succession but who has Crown Prince Harald under his thumb. The Earl then plans to persuade the Prince to permit him to marry the Prince’s daughter, bolstering the Earl’s claim to the throne, and then have the Prince follow his father into the grave. Poison on the bolt has deranged the wounded monarch; the PCs are also required to find a cure BEFORE they can confront the guilty party. The Seneschal, already suspicious of the Earl, has chosen to have outsiders investigate because he does not know who in the court are in league with the Earl.

The King was shot by a member of the Assassin’s Guild in fulfillment of a contract with the Earl Of Halsford, one of the King’s advisors, because the King has become progressively more deranged and the Council Of Advisors are finding it increasingly difficult to conceal this condition from the public while preventing the monarch from doing serious damage to the Kingdom (if not outright disaster). The Earl would be Horrified at any suggestion that he wants to claim the throne himself. But Crown Prince Harald is not a strong character, and the Earl fears that a court faction led by the Seneschal will unite behind the Princess Alyssa – unless he can force the Prince to marry her off to someone who will blunt her ambitious nature, preventing a Civil War. The Seneschal, who fears a disaster should the Prince ascend the throne, has brought the PCs in to conduct the investigation because he suspects the Earl, and can use the incident to discredit both the Earl and the Prince and possibly even have the Prince removed from the line of Succession as a traitor. Rumors of poison are being spread to explain the King’s current incapacity, but in fact there is no poison and the incapacity predates the attack.

While the Seneschal and Earl of Halsford each lead a faction within the court and would like to blame each other, one a supporter of the Crown Prince and the other a supporter of the Princess Alyssa, neither had anything to do with the plot. The assassin was a deranged individual whose life was destroyed by a poorly thought out Royal Decree. He believes that the King, who was once good, wise, and kindly, has been possessed by a demonic evil and must be destroyed. In truth, the King has NOT been possessed, but he has been replaced by a Doppelganger. The PCs have been brought in to investigate the attempted assassination because neither faction would trust any member of the court acceptable to the other (and the undecided are courtiers and idiots who couldn’t be trusted to investigate a birthday party). The Doppelganger keeps a vial of Lamb’s Blood on hand at all times to fake any apparent injury necessary. There was no poison on the bolt at the time, but another Doppelganger has anointed it with some after the “King” was wounded to mislead investigators who might otherwise want to poke and pry. * NB * This solution works exceptionally well if the ideas in The Complete Guide To Doppelgangers by Goodman Games, or in my addendum to that game supplement (described in ‘The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers’) is used.

Notice how much these three theories have in common? In all three, we have the Seneschal and Earl of Halsford as antagonists toward each other. In all three, we have a King with a reputation for wisdom and kindness and being a good ruler. It might have been helpful to establish the existence of the Assassin’s Guild and the rivalry between the two factions in advance, but these can be brought out by witness statements.

4. Mouthpieces

Next, we need to “Salt” the adventure with people who will espouse the motivations contained within each of these three theories. The deranged peasant in the third can act as his own spokesman, but it would be helpful for the others to come from the outside – the innkeeper where the PCs are staying, a member of the watch, whatever. These exist only to ensure that the possible theory is in front of the PCs for the players to consider.

5. Hotheads, Reactionaries, and Red Herrings

Next, we need a couple of hotheads from each faction (and I count the followers of the lunatic and those who oppose them as factions, bringing the total to four), who will blame the other without need for tedious investigation, and act accordingly.

We also need to make a note of anyone who would have strong reactions to the events, deciding that the time is right to set plans of their own in motion. A lieutenant of the guards might see this as a chance to eliminate his captain, ensuring his own promotion, in the hope that by making the crime look similar to that under investigation, the same person or persons will be blamed for both.

Thirdly, there will always be a couple of people who will seek to exploit the situation for gain. While some of these may be obvious – “King Ramus Memorial Mugs” – others will be more subtle, involving perhaps trade deals or illegal acts that would normally not be permitted but which might escape notice while everyone is distracted by something more important. All three of these groups are Red Herrings but they are also plausible suspects.

6. Witnesses & Confusion

Finally, we need to populate our cast with a number of witnesses – some of whom are truthful, some of whom are not, and some of whom just want attention.

Eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence there is – it’s even worse than circumstantial evidence or hearsay. At the same time, it can often be the most powerful testimony in convincing investigators of what took place. (For more on this, I strongly encourage everyone – GMs and Players alike – to read:

• Eyewitness Testimony Can Be Tragically Mistaken, an article at the Live Science website; and
• The Certainty Of Memory Has Its Day In Court from the New York Times.

So we need some wheat, and a heap of chaff to hide it in. Everything from Halflings riding miniature dragons to magically-animated shadows to members of the Palace Guard attacking the King with swords. Witnesses should disagree on the number of assassins, the number of shots, the type of weapon, ages, descriptions, genders, and clothing. Make up the nonsense now so that you can avoid distracting yourself with it while working on the real clues.

6. The first trail of breadcrumbs

Next, we need to outline a trail of breadcrumbs that lead the PCs to solution A. These should be everything from true statements by witnesses – the “wheat” mentioned above – to physical evidence. This is the trail that, if followed, will solve the crime – if Solution A is the real answer.

This trail of breadcrumbs can be simplified into larger chunks and then broken into details, which tends to make life easier. For example, for solution A, we might have

Bolt to Assassin’s Guild to Earl of Halsford to Prince Harald to Princess Alissa to The Plan To Usurp The Throne to Poison to Cure to Solution.

It’s necessary to break those landmarks down into individual steps before the path of the investigation can become clear:

Bolt to Expert Fletcher to Assassin’s Guild as suspects. Watch Crime Reports (Dead bodies) to General Location Of Assassin’s Guild. Street Rumor (investigation) to Specific Location of Assassin’s Guild. Raid on Assassin’s Guild to Guild Records to Earl’s Pseudonym & Method Of Payment. Method Of Payment to Earl’s Estate to Meaning Of Pseudonym to Identity Of Earl. Identity of Earl to Relationship with Prince Harald. Prince Harald’s history and personality to Earl’s Plans (suspicion only). Investigation of Earls Estate to confirmation of Earl’s Plans for Princess Alyssa. Suspected Nature Of Poison Used to Search Of Earl’s Estate to Dark Elven Outpost. Raid On Dark Elven Outpost to confirmation of Agreement between Earl & Dark Elves. Dark Elven Poison to Elven Lands to Cure for Poison. Cure For Poison to Recovery Of The King to Confrontation With The Earl. Capture Of The Earl to Solution.

That’s a substantial adventure in four parts – the Mystery, the Assassin’s Guild, the Earl’s Estate and Dark Elves, and finally the confrontation with the Earl and Cure of the King.

But Players are fickle and unlikely to follow the train-tracks of such a straightforward plotline, and nor should they. They might well focus on the poison first, or decide that the Assassin’s Guild is too obvious, or any of a dozen other possibilities. It was contemplating that reality that led to the invention of the Parallel Plot approach.

When you look over such a detailed list of breadcrumbs, you soon find that things are missing, as well. For example, there is nothing there about the factions within the court, but an understanding of the nature of those factions is critical to understanding the relationship between the Earl and the rest of the Royal Family. That information needs to be inserted at the very top of the investigation, before the PCs even get to the Bolt, and while they are still interviewing witnesses.

7. & 8. The other breadcrumb trails

Repeat the above procedure for plotlines B and C. Don’t be surprised if there is considerable overlap. Remember that at the moment, all three solutions are equally valid.

Key Switching Points

The next step is to determine which of these events are Key Switching Points. Solutions A and B, in the case of the example, are perfectly parallel right up to the plans for the Princess Alyssa and the encounter with the Dark Elves – since there was no poison. That makes this a key switching point between solutions A and B.

9. The Innocence Flags

The final preliminary prep that is needed is to identify, in each of the solutions, evidence that will disprove the other two, leaving that solution as the one true story. What is the central point of difference, and how can these be brought to the attention of the PCs?

These are events, and evidence, that can ONLY occur if the solution that contains them is the correct one. These will usually be found at the Key Switching Points; they are the branching points in the flowchart of the investigation. For example, if solution B is the correct answer, then even if there is a Dark Elven Enclave on the Earl’s estates that is proffered up to the PCs as a Red Herring, they will find evidence that the Earl (who in solution B is a good guy, if ruthless) has opposed and tried to eliminate the Dark Elves, not that he did a deal with them to get a rare poison that induces madness, and whose effects linger even after the poison itself is neutralized.

10. Who says what

With the solutions now mapped out, just as a list of quick notes like the one presented above, and some definition of the personalities involved, it is now possible to determine who says what to the PCs, and when – in other words, to construct a list of initial clues and subsequent ones. The Earl will accuse the Seneschal, the Seneschal will accuse the Earl, the Lunatic will accuse the Demons, his enemies (the churches) will accuse the Lunatic, and so on. You can determine who has a reason to lie under each of the possible solutions, and about what, and construct a table accordingly, as shown in the previous post (and replicated below).

As much as possible, each witness should say exactly the same thing, regardless of which solution is correct. But some of what they say will be the truth in one solution and a lie in one or more of the other solutions. Use wit and double-meanings as necessary to achieve this.

Often, the “person” saying something will be the GM interpreting a skill or observation roll. “I examine the bolt – what do I see?” This is every bit a witness statement as anything said by an NPC, but it must never be a lie – though it might be a mistake, or misleading. Never assume that a PC will succeed or fail in any given role of the dice, either – eventually it will catch you out.

Anything that a PC is expected to determine using his own senses or skills should be backed up by a witness saying the same thing. Just in case. And if a PC’s extraordinary perception is going to give the solution away immediately, make sure that someone has the means of confounding that perception, and a reason to be doing so.

The Power Of The Parallel Plot

Because you have three possible solutions to the mystery and don’t have to choose between them right away, two of the three become false trails while the remaining solution becomes the truth. The answer that the PCs decide to focus on obviously seems to be the truth to them, or at least the most likely to be the truth; if this really were to be the truth, the end of the adventure would be truly anticlimactic. Deciding that the first solution they investigate is NOT true leaves you with two, and a guaranteed plot twist part way through the adventure. You can then focus your efforts on making one of those remaining solutions seem to be the truth when it isn’t, building in yet another guaranteed plot twist, or on using the third solution to raise doubts about their proposed – second – solution until the very last minute, your choice.

Remember the limitations of your players

I have one player (and a very good friend) who appears in my campaigns from time to time (and who has popped up as a commentator/contributor here at CM in the past) who loves Sherlock Holmes and enjoys some other mystery authors – but who is not very good at detective work, himself, and who becomes extremely frustrated when confronted with such plotlines as a result. For him to get full enjoyment out of a mystery plotline, he needs a constant stream of obvious clues and lines of investigation to follow – give him those and he’s as happy as a clam (He’ll know who I’m referring to).

The lesson is this: Plan your mysteries based on the limitations and abilities of your players. Don’t hand them anything they will ferret out for themselves on a silver platter (or they will busy themselves with ferreting out something else that might be more damaging to your plans) – but don’t let the adventure bog down too much if your player doesn’t have the knack of thinking a certain way.

This ia an art that takes practice. There is a fine line between catering to your players capacities and being condescending toward them. So aim for a level of sophistication and difficulty that is just a little above what you think they can handle – and then give them a helping hand across the final threshold if they need it.

My personal solution

Someone is sure to ask, so here is my personal solution to The Mystery Of The Wounded Monarch (and yes, it’s a further step up in sophistication): All three solutions are partially true. As a GM, I will do my best to make the solution A appear to be true at first, right up to the flag point regarding the Drow. At the same time, I will do my best to ensure that solution C appears to be a Red Herring by constantly foisting apparent railroad tracks leading toward it in the direction of the PCs – then letting them ‘jump the tracks’. Putting the lunatic front and centre and then being dismissive of him as a harmless fruitcake with a bee in his bonnet will distract the players. I will then have Solution B appear to be the correct solution, right up to the point where the PCs have to make the moral judgment that’s implied between letting the Earl get away with a very bad deed in furtherance of a righteous cause or exposing him and letting the Seneschal sow the seeds of Civil War. Once the mystery has apparently been resolved, I will have the lunatic expose the reason for the King’s seeming loss of touch with reality as his replacement by a doppelganger (Solution C).

So A is partly true (it was the Earl) but B is partly true (it was a desperate attempt to prevent a Civil War, and his oath to the Kingdom is more important to the Earl than his oath to the King or his personal Honor) and C is partly true (the King really has been replaced/possessed, not be a Demon but by a Doppelganger) – which means that the consequences of the PCs moral choice will be visited apon the Kingdom almost immediately.

Sounds like fun to me!

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AetherCon is coming!

(As any viewer of Babylon-5 knows, a Zocolo is a marketplace or gathering place).

The unusually observant may have noticed a new link in our right-hand Navigation. AetherCon is an idea that has arrived at exactly the right time – just as the required technologies and their distribution intersect with the realm of possibility that is required to make it work.

So what is AetherCon, exactly?

AetherCon is the first example (that I’m aware of) of a new (to me) concept: the virtual convention – a gaming convention that is held purely and completely over the internet.

Just like any other convention, it will have a huckster’s area, an art show, games and tournaments, areas for con “attendees” to mingle and chatter and meet one another, and so on. The only difference is that it will take place entirely within cyberspace.

Many of the building blocks for such a convention have been in existence for a while now, waiting for someone to assemble and package them in the right way. People have played RPGs in chat rooms before, for example, and there have been podcasts and streamed interviews, which are virtually the same thing as an online “Panel”. E-commerce has been around for years. Twitter’s been around for a while, and Tweetchat can turn Twitter into a virtual chatroom within a chatroom using the magic of hashtags. One such regular “virtual chatroom” that’s been around for a while is #RPGChat; I’ve only had the opportunity to participate in one, but gained some new friends and followers from the experience, and picked up a couple of new ideas for my trouble. It was quite rewarding :)

But playing games in this way is somehow less stimulating than the genuine tabletop experience with its interactivity. What will make AetherCon really work is a new piece of virtual tabletop software, currently in Beta test, Roll20.

AetherCon is scheduled to take place on the weekend of November 16-18, 2012.

And here’s the best part: It’s absolutely Free!. No registration fees. No registration QUEUS. No sudden rushing from one room to another after a panel is relocated.

Distributed Conventioneering

One of the big reasons why I expect AetherCon to be very successful, and why Campaign Mastery is so happy to be associated with it, is the fact that attendance is distributed all over the planet. It has the potential, therefore, to become the biggest convention in the world. This first effort is the first raindrop of a monsoon.

Furthermore, with GMs scattered around the globe in different time zones, with a little scheduling effort and the right volunteers, a virtual convention could operate 24 hours a day, with GMs and administrators in one country taking up the baton from those in another. Even if were a convention you had to pay for, that means that attendees would get more value for their dollar – and however much it costs to line up sufficient servers to run the convention, I am quite sure that the cost per attendee would be far less than a ‘conventional’ con, which has to worry about renting facilities, refreshments, insurance, and so on. That’s a savings that can be passed on to the customer – and it also means that virtual conventions would be more easily profitable.

The advantages just keep adding up. Have you ever missed a convention panel you were interested in because it was scheduled back-to-back with another one that you also wanted to attend? A streamed convention panel can be recorded, and a text-based one can be automatically transcribed – and both can be downloaded for “attending” at a later time, just like a podcast.

Guest fees are almost certainly going to be less, because there is no need to pay for transport and accommodation. That’s either more guests or even lower prices! Because guest commitments can be smaller – they can attend from home, or from wherever else they happen to be – guests should also be easier to find and organize. What do you need – ten bucks for a webcam and twenty towards internet fees and electricity?

At some conventions, guests are paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and justifiably so – they have a lot of demands on their time, and a convention can be a big commitment. Add security and other overheads, and the total can be staggering. The virtual convention undercuts all these requirements, all these expenses.

And finally, there is the international appeal. I live in Australia – for an American or European guest to attend a convention here, the air fares are thousands of dollars, the time commitments are much greater (call it a couple of days spent travelling), the guest is often jetlagged. It not only makes it much more expensive to have such guests, making cons more expensive and less profitable, you have far fewer guests when you do organize a convention. The virtual convention internationalizes attendance. It doesn’t matter much where the convention is being based, or where the guest lives, or even if they are working – on a movie, TV show, or whatever. It would be a lot easier to get Peter Jackson on a webcam for a panel for an hour than to get him to physically attend a con, especially if he was in the middle of editing or shooting his next movie. Does anyone seriously think he wouldn’t be a popular guest at a gaming con? It just hasn’t been practical in the past. It still might not be easy, but it’s suddenly not out of the realm of possibility!

So, let’s talk about AetherCon

AetherCon, as befits any prototype, is not organized on a scale to match these grandiose visions, but it’s still impressive. AetherCon is a free to attend, free to partake, non-profit initiative.

It will feature tabletop RPGs of all genres throughout the weekend, highlighted by four three-day tournaments of Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, and Shadowrun. Game tables will be run on the Roll20 browser-based virtual tabletop. There will be Roll20 tutorials and a Roll20 Live Stream. The Roll20 program will allow GMs and players alike to simply click on a link in our Gaming or Tourney Halls and enter the playing area as opposed to needing to download and install the software to participate.

Game publishers confirmed as taking part in AetherCon either through prize support, supplying guests, or taking a vendors booth include Battlefield Press, Catalyst Game Labs, Chaosium, Chronicles of the Void, Flying Buffalo Inc., Immersion Studios, Imperfekt Games, Kenzer and Company, Paizo, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Scrying Eye Games, Skirmisher Publishing LLC, Stardust Publications, Sundered Epoch, The Design Mechanism, Third Eye Games, and Vigilance Press.

Confirmed guests to date are Wedge Smith and Doug Bush (Chronicles of the Void), Steven ‘Bull’ Ratkovich (CGL), James Sutter (Paizo), and Lawrence Whittaker and Pete Nash (The Design Mechanism).

Current Members of the Artists Enclave include Paul Abrams (TSR, Shadowrun); Alex E. Alonso Bravo (DC Comics, Pixar, AEG); Brent Chumley (AEG); John L Kaufmann (Shadowrun); Eric Lofgren; (Paizo, White Wolf, Mongoose Publishing), Chris Malidore (Fantasy Flight Games, PEG), Patrick McAvoy (WotC, AEG, Fantasy Flight Games), Brad McDevitt (Chaosium, CGL, Battlefield Press), Jesse Mead (Fantasy Flight Games), Aaron B. Miller (WotC, AEG, Open Design), and Stanley Morrison (AEG) – among other up and comers in the field. Some of the work by these artists is available as computer wallpapers for free download from the AetherCon website, and Convention attendees will have the opportunity to purchase prints of these and other works as well as attend live tutorials by those artists during AetherCon.

Confirmed games now include:

• All Flesh Must Be Eaten
• A Thousand and One Nights
• Atomic Highway
• Call of Cthulhu
• Castles & Crusades
• Dark Heresy
• Eclipse Phase
• Fantasy Craft
• Labyrinth Lord
• Legend of the Five Rings
• Leverage
• Mouse Guard
• Mutants & Masterminds
• Paranoia
• Pathfinder
• Pathfinder Society
• RIFTs
• Savage Worlds
• Serenity
• Shadowrun
• Time Lord
• Star Wars WEG D6
• Swords and Wizardry

…with more to come.

How to participate

If you’d like to play in a game use AetherCon’s Player Pre-Registration Tool to register.

If you’d like to run a game use their GM Pre-Registration Tool.

If you don’t see your game in their lineup, would like to lend a hand, or need to inquire for any other reason, they encourage potential attendees to feel free to use their ‘Contact Us’ page.

Be sure to visit their website and show your support for AetherCon via Facebook, Google+, and Twitter:

• Website: http://www.AetherCon.com/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AetherConRPG
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/AetherCon
• Google+: http://www.gplus.to/AetherCon

The Shape Of Things To Come

I’m proud that Campaign Mastery is a supporter of AetherCon and wish the organizers every success. I’ll be updating this post regularly in response to releases from the convention website, and I’ll post a comment each time I do. So if you want to use Campaign Mastery to stay informed, post a comment to this post and tick the box to subscribe to further comments.

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I was running an adventure this weekend from a module that I had downloaded from the net. Central to the plotline was a mystery, a political situation in a small town, stories of an ancient Curse, all calculated to drive the PCs to an above-ground dungeon which could also be called a Mansion.

While the content that was provided was excellent, the author had ignored a couple of plot holes – or plot opportunities – as large as the mansion that was the central feature. Specifically, a historical mention of a drought and a plague of snakes, and the arrival virtually simultaneously with those events of a band of Druids who had set up shop in a grove outside of town. To anyone except the author of the module, it would seem obvious that these events are possibly linked, and that investigating the Druids was a rational step in solving the mystery.

The problem was that no details useful in roleplaying the Druids had been supplied. There was no statement as to what information they could contribute if their cooperation was won over, no suggestion as to what fees & services they might demand in exchange for their assistance – in fact, beyond the fact of their existence, and that they had converted one-quarter of the locals to their theology, there was virtually nothing about them.

Since I had already been preparing to write an article on how to do Mysteries in RPGs, the failures of this adventure in this department struck home all the more forcefully. So, what should the author have done? I’ll get to that a little later. Let’s start by looking at the taxonomy of mysteries and laying some groundwork…

The Elements Of A Mystery

Anytime you have a question that needs answering in an RPG, you have a mystery on your hands. It might be a small-scale puzzle whose solution only requires asking the right person the right question, or it might be quagmire of lies and deception that will require substantial investigation.

The Focus

Mysteries all start with a Focus. In a crime-style mystery, this is the victim; in other kinds of mysteries, it may be some unexpected scientific outcome or unexpected event or surprising decision or action. In other words, it’s always “X did something” or “Something happened to X”, and the question to be answered is always, “Why?”.

From the circumstances and conditions, clues are gathered and a list of potential suspects – theories – is formed. These are then investigated, hopefully leading to other clues, eliminating suspects until only one remains, and all clues have been tied to this person or cause with none remaining to be investigated.

The Suspect Triangle

At it’s heart, a mystery – any mystery – can be summed up, “Who did what, why, how, when, and where?”. These elements are summed up in the Suspect Triangle. The top half of this inverted triangle covers Motive, subdivided into Who and Why, while the bottom half deals with Means & Opportunity in the shape of the questions How, When, and Where.

All three areas of the triangle need to be filled with something that is uncontradicted and undisputed before you can consider someone a genuine suspect, and only if you have eliminated all other suspect triangles can guilt be confirmed and the mystery be considered solved.

Of course, that’s a very crime-oriented approach; but substituting “What” for “Who” covers all the other types of mystery which may be encountered.

The Clue Process

Each clue is subject to a three-step process, without fail.

• Detection, in which the presence of a possible clue is identified;
• Analysis, in which the specifics of the clue are determined; and
• Interpretation, in which the meaning and significance of the clue with respect to one or more suspect triangles is determined.

Each clue adds an item to one or more of the areas of the suspect triangle for some suspects, while demonstrating that one or more other suspects could not be responsible.

The Investigation Procedure

This relationship between clue and suspect triangle is depicted in the graphic showing The Ideal Situation. Ask the right questions – and each question-and-answer constitutes a single clue – and you will only be left with a single suspect, the guilty party.

This question-answer-meaning trio corresponds with the structure of a clue. The trio can be taken literally, where each question is asked of a witness to the event being investigated or to part of the circumstances surrounding it, or metaphorically, where the question can relate to physical evidence, historical relationships, financial information, and so on.

The Lie

Mysteries would be easy to solve if everyone told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They don’t.

One person in particular – the guilty party – has every reason in the world to lie. This is so axiomatic that discovery of a lie is tantamount to elevating the liar to the status of Prime Suspect.

A lie works as depicted in the illustration: by shifting apparent guilt or by contradicting part of the suspect triangle to show that the guilty party could not have committed the crime. In this case, a truthful statement would have led directly to the first suspect (the one on the left), but the lie makes it seem like the second suspect is guilty rather than the first, or makes it appear that the guilty party could not have been responsible because he no longer had one or more of means, motive, or opportunity.

Mysteries in Media & Fiction

Making a mystery more interesting requires that things not be so clear-cut. One of the easiest ways of achieving this is the introduction of a lie for some reason other than guilt in relation to the main mystery. Blackmail, an adulterous relationship, the commission of a minor but unrelated crime or impropriety, seeking to protect someone who the liar thought was guilty, protection of social status or reputation; there are a multitude of possible reasons for such a deception. Only once this second lie has been identified and the deception penetrated can the other lie, that of the guilty party, be verified and proof of guilt obtained.

This gives us the simplest of satisfying mystery structures – the Linear Mystery. The name derives from the fact that one step follows another in logical progression, like the pages of a script or the chapters of a novel. The first clue describes the circumstances of the crime; the second represents the line of questioning that initially leads to the questioning of the guilty party. The Guilty party lies, of course. The next clue represents the questioning of everyone else except the second liar. Everything else not shown in the linear mystery is essentially irrelevant, window dressing and red herrings.

Going too far

It’s tempting to set up a mystery in which every person interviewed has a reason for deception as a way of increasing the difficulty of the puzzle. Having tried this for myself, I can state that it is definitely going too far, and ended up generating more confusion once the lies were detected than is really suitable. There are better approaches, which I will discuss in due course.

The Clever Alternative

At this point, I have to confess to a fondness for the Columbo telemovies, especially the later ones. Many of them use intelligence and cunning in place of such crude tactics as described by the linear plot. Arranging matters so that everyone can speak the truth and still be misleading is a far better solution than a linear plot. This requires a deception as to the nature of one of the lower elements of the suspect triangle – altering the apparent time of commission of the crime being investigated, for example, or the apparent whereabouts of the prime suspect at the time of commission through the use of some form of impersonation. Having everything but one small overlooked detail covered shifts the nature of the mystery to a battle of wits between the guilty party and the investigator.

Further Complications

Investigators generally have one or more additional complications to work around. These usually (but not always) take the form of legal requirements which must be met before certain clues can be accessed.

The Parallel Plot

Roleplaying Games do not proceed in a nice, neat, Linear fashion. Players are too creative, and too cynical, for any such simple structure to suffice. They are too prone to reason, “If I assume that {suspect 1] is guilty, how can I reconcile that with the evidence the GM has put before me?” They will then test the assumptions they have made, setting traps, violating strict legal practice regarding the obtaining of evidence, or doing whatever else is necessary.

The solution is the Parallel Plot. I simply take a Linear Mystery and list of possible suspects and use the player’s own techniques against them. I shortlist a group of suspects, and then determine which ‘clues’ are lies and deceptions of various types, the penetration of which will lead to the unmasking of the culprit. I then do the same for the second suspect in the shortlisted group, and then a third.

This prevents shortcutting the mystery by ensuring that the Nth approach to the puzzle is the correct one. All the lines of enquiry the Players make which precedes the Nth approach lead to dead-ends, because the correct line of enquiry is always the last one.

Practicalities

This might seem like a lot of work, but it can be achieved relatively simply if the GM, when designing the adventure, employs only a short phrase to synopsise each clue. Setting up a table like this:

makes it simple work. For each clue, you simply need to determine whether the clue is true or not, given the identity of the guilty party (shown across the top). Using this table, you can quickly identify which statements need to be prepared in more than one form (truth or lie); for each lie, you can add a notation about why the source of the clue is lying, how the lie can be penetrated, and so on. Numbering each clue in this respect and indexing by source down the left-hand column, again as shown, turns the table into a crib sheet showing all possible solutions.

The result is that you have a list of the clues (which don’t change, but whose circumstances might), and additional notes regarding them, all of which can be organised by source and by clue number. Any clues that don’t specifically lead to the guilty party are, by definition, clues pointing to a non-guilty party – a red herring or a dead-end.

Beyond The Clichés

You can wrap a mystery, created in this manner, around any genre you like, from Fantasy to Pulp to Superhero to Western to Cthulhu to Sci-Fi, because the structure doesn’t change, only the content.

Each of these genres will have its own clichés in this respect. I urge you to get these all out of your system at once so that you can concentrate on more interesting and original approaches thereafter. By way of example, the first adventure that I ran utilizing the Parallel Plot structure was for the graduation exams in my trainee superhero campaign, where each player was presented with the same mystery in turn, and had to solve it. All but one of the five student PCs chose a different guilty party because the right answers kept changing to whatever was most interesting to play. The setting was a convention of butlers – one of whom was the killer and one the victim. I was even able to title the ‘adventure’, “The Butler Did It!” without giving anything away – this article has been titled in reminiscence of that adventure.

Technology & Magic

In the foreword to Asimov’s Mysteries, Isaac discusses the perceived difficulties of uniting the mystery genre with science fiction in his foreword. I’d like to start this section by quoting some selected passages from that essay:

…yet science fiction writers seemed to be inhibited in the face of the science fiction mystery.

Back in the late 1940s, this was finally explained to me. I was told that ‘by its very nature’ science fiction would not play fair with the reader. In a science fiction story, the detective could say, ‘But as you know, Watson, ever since 2175, when all Spaniards learned to speak French, Spanish has been a dead language. How came Juan Lopez, then, to speak those significant words in Spanish?‘

Or else, he could have his detective whip out an odd device and say, ‘As you know, Watson, my pocket-franistran is perfectly capable of detecting the hidden jewel in a trice.’

Such arguements did not impress me. It seemed to me that ordinary mystery writers (non-science-fiction variety) could be just as unfair to the readers. They could hide a necessary clue. They could introduce an additional character from nowhere. They could …

…The point was, though, that they didn’t do anything. They stuck to the rule of being fair to the reader. Clues might be obscured, but not omitted… …The reader was remorselessly misdirected, misled, and mystified, but he was not cheated.

It seemed, then, a matter to be taken obviously for granted that the same would apply to a science-fiction mystery. You don’t spring new devices on the reader and solve the mystery with them. You don’t take advantage of future history to introduce ad hoc phenomena. In fact, you carefully explain all facets of the future background well in advance…

Magic and the other trappings of Fantasy are just as problematic, because (by definition) they contravene what we know as physical laws. If they exist, they make possible the otherwise impossible. But the same solution holds – understand how it works, what its limitations are, and how it affects cause-and-effect, and make sure that any relevant information is provided to the PCs trying to solve your mystery.

It’s an additional complication, but one that yields great rewards in the long run.

Some final principles

When you are preparing a mystery – whether for a story or for an RPG adventure – there are some key steps and principles that you should keep in mind.

1. Where might information be found?
2. What do these sources know? What will they speculate? What will they get wrong, for reasons of prejudice or other failure?
3. What do the investigators need to know in order to solve the mystery?
4. Where can they get that information?
5. Where Else can they get that information?
6. What can your players do? What can their characters do? What are their respective strengths and weaknesses? How can you utilize the former to drive the plot forward, and how can you ensure that the latter don’t make it come unstuck?
7. What will be tedious to play through, and how can it be made interesting?
8. Mystery plots are inevitably frustrating at some point – how can you relieve that frustration? Will a little random action suffice?
9. If the players get totally lost, how can you help nudge them forward?
10. What DON’T you want the players to learn – and how can you avoid it, while still being fair?
11. How can you make sure that everyone has fun while solving the mystery?

It is in failure to address the first two points that the designer of the module I was GMing, and which I referred to at the start of this article, failed to perform his due diligence. The first item should have turned up the potential for investigation of the Druids, and the second one should have provided the answers necessary to keep the plot rolling along.

One other tip: It helps a great deal with the last couple of items on the list if players can find things out for themselves with their characters, rather than being spoon-fed answers through dialogue!

One Final Technique – and its pitfalls

A technique that I have used occasionally is to create a puzzle without creating a solution. Let the PCs investigate and theorize about possible solutions until you hear one that you like – then expropriate it, give it a slight twist to make it your own, and run with it.

Sounds simple, right? There’s a sting in the tail. If you don’t know where the PCs are going, they can end up painted into a corner. You are not guaranteed that there will BE a solution, after all. You can accept a solution, only to realize, months later – or for a player to realize after such a time-span – that the solution contradicts one or more of the clues that you fed the players and which was overlooked when they came up with their solution.

It gets more complicated – what if, on being confronted, the accused had admitted his guilt – and months later, a line of thought proved that he wasn’t guilty? Why had he lied? Why go to prison, or get executed, or whatever, if he wasn’t guilty? Was he protecting someone or something sufficiently important to justify this sacrifice? Was he misled, or stupid, or forced to confess by back-room interrogation techniques?

What if you’ve lost all your notes in the meantime?
I strongly recommend that if you adopt this technique – which can be an invaluable one – you make DARNED sure that you begin making contingency plans immediately for the possibility that the train will go off the rails at some future point!

Of course, the same thing can happen with ANY mystery if the GM doesn’t get his logic right, so this is good general advice for ANY mystery!

Immersion

A good mystery can produce greater immersion in the campaign world than any other plotline, but you need to hook the players. It’s a great way to take the campaign background and setting and make it relevant to the PCs. A bad mystery can confuse, obfuscate, and – in general – have exactly the opposite effect. The advice above should help bring you more of the successes and make failures fewer. That’s a good thing, don’t you agree?

Update 25 May, 2021

There are now two sequels to this article:

• The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples, and
• Delving Deeper Into Mystery.

Links open in new tabs.

Campaign Mastery is incredibly proud and humbled (and not a little excited-exuberant-exultant!) to learn that we are amongst the five Nominees for Best Blog at this year’s ENnies (Wikipedia Page) – (full list of nominees here).

The competition will be stiff, there are many other fine blogs nominated (and even more that didn’t make the five) – and that should be a source of pride for the entire gaming industry. I want to congratulate all our fellow-nominees.

With the judges choices made, it is now over to you, the public, to vote for your favorites in each category. Voting starts a week from now (on July 20th) and runs until July 29th. I’ll share a link when voting starts.

In the meantime, you – the public – can nominate your favorite publisher for a special fan-based award. Click here for details. Nominations are only open until July 17, so don’t be tardy!

Thank you to the judges for choosing Campaign Mastery as one of the five finalists, and a huge thank-you to our fans, followers, contributors, and – heck, to anyone who’s even thought about clicking a link to us! Without your support, this would never have happened!

Yaaa-hoo!

Planet Hell by Zakeros – click the thumbnail to view the image full-sized (it’s worth it!)

One of the big questions that every GM should consider when creating their D&D campaign is how to resolve the anarchy of the theological implications of the cosmology.

It’s a simple question: In a world where miracles are readily apparent at the hands of every cleric, where Gods and Demons and Devils and Heaven and Hell are demonstrably real, why would anyone in their right minds choose to be evil?

A proven eternity of torment awaits anyone who transgresses, according to standard theology – and even if you found room for doubt based on a multiplicity of theologies, why would you take a chance?

In standard christian belief, Evil can succeed in tempting the weak because there is room for doubt and confusion. As soon as there is concrete evidence, never mind proof, resistance to temptation should rocket skywards.

D&D attempts to resolve this solution by utilizing multiple pantheons and different versions of Hell (in the form of the planes of the Abyss) but the solution is only half-hearted. Devils and Demons remain standard (if high-level) encounters, and much of the descriptions of the 9 Hells and other planes of the Abyss are relatively standard extracts from christian belief.

The Fumanor Solution

So concerned was I about this particular problem that I decided to do away with evil entirely within the theology of my Fumanor campaign, making it all about a Nihilistic Chaos and a Desperately Rigid Order.

Of course, the morality of the situation I devised is not that simple. The Chaos powers are too disorganized to plan, instead coming up with new stratagems on the spot and executing them immediately. That doesn’t make them dumb, by any means – in fact, they are frighteningly intelligent. It can be argued that it takes even more intellectual firepower to fight an organized planner to a standstill than it does to devise and prepare contingency plans in case your current scheme fails.

Because the landscape keeps shifting on them, the Gods are forced to continually reassess and revise their plans, being forced into progress despite themselves, when what they would prefer would be to act as a constant, consistent foundation for the mercurial changes of mortals to build apon.

The two sides really do need each other in order to be complete, but both consider any such proposal to be heresy of the worst kind.

There is also an interesting moral inversion at work in that the progressives are frequently painted as being the good guys and the conservatives the bad, out of touch with reality. The result is a very 1950s flavor to the campaign, which at the same time is also very modern.

Everything that connects with the problem described in my opening paragraphs is explained as the manifestation or creation of one side or another. The Chaos Powers created demons to do their bidding, so the Gods created devils to interfere and compete with the Demons while creating Celestials to oppose both and keep them in check. All the temptations of evil are actually manifestations of Chaos. What the PCs have yet to realize is that so are al changes for the better. :)

The Fumanor Solution was not intended to become the be-all and end-all answer to the problem; I fully expected to need to implement one of the two solutions given below. It just worked out that I could answer all my questions using the fundamental Law-vs-Chaos conflict that I had already made fundamental to that campaign – if not perfectly, then at least, well enough.

Do as I say, not as I do

The Fumanor solution is a half-measure, and I’m the first to admit it. That it works is immaterial to that assessment. There are better answers.

There are two real solutions to these quandaries that I have been able to come up with, and detailing them is the purpose of this article.

What Fools These Mortals Be

The first solution is to link alignment with intelligence, and decide that only the foolish will ignore these obvious moral warnings. The forces of true evil have always been described as infernally deceptive manipulators, after all, and it is not unreasonable that the less-intellectually profound could be misled into a fatal mistake.

This approach mandates a different, even biased, handling of alignment transgressions than that described in the rulebooks. There can be no forgiveness – any moral lapse must leave a permanent stain apon the character of the transgressor. Absolution is a myth under this paradigm, or almost so – perhaps it is simply two, three, four, or even five times as hard to regain lost moral ground.

Under these circumstances, using the planes of Evil for afterlives of torment and punishment works. Demons and Devils run around setting traps and moral quandaries for mortals, testing and tempting them, and with each success, they gain a greater grip over the mortals who have succumbed to temptation.

The Consequences

This is not a perfect solution. Intelligent enemies are often more interesting opponents than the dumb, and this solution takes that off the table – unless you further refine the concept to make Evil something akin to an addiction. If your smart bad guys are all fallen, corrupted, good guys – think Martel in David Edding’s Elenium trilogy – does it all make sense.

You can’t spring this concept on your players without warning, or after the campaign has begun. It has to influence and shape your encounter design and society and theology and mythology from day one. It needs to subtly reshape the rules of the game – aside from alignment and alignment transgressions; there are various spells that may need subtle adjustment. The definition and class description of various classes might need to be tweaked.

As a result, while this is a simpler solution than the alternative discussed below, it is like an iceberg – there will be a lot more work needed behind the scenes and below the surface.

Let Evil Be Evil

The alternative is to redefine the nature of Hell, as depicted and represented in D&D. If it is no longer a place of torment for all who come to reside there, if there is something about that afterlife that is appealing to certain personality types, suddenly the problems all go away.

In any afterlife where there is a judgment rendered, there are always three options. The first is bliss, for those who have led a life of spiritual purity – or who have at least been forgiven and absolved of their sins. The second is condemnation (and possible destruction) for those who have been willingly disobedient to the “pure” moral code. In between these two extremes lie a middle ground – one that holds all manner of promise in terms of game theology.

Why could it not be that both extremes have their needs met by the spirits of those in the middle – until whatever minor infractions that had led to this condition had been paid for?

Two standards of Evil

This defines two different degrees of being Evil – the aristocracy of evil and the peasantry of evil. The aristocrats may be those who are actively evil, or this rank may be reserved for those who enter into pacts with the forces of Darkness, or there may even be a hierarchy of rank between these two levels of commitment to the cause. The peasantry are those who merely succumb to temptation, who take the easy way out.

If the representatives of Evil can offer power not only in this world but in the next, it both increases the appeal of Evil as a way of life and a philosophy, but overcomes the stumbling block that makes choosing that path so nonsensical. If those who labor on Evil’s behalf have a realistic expectation of a life of comfort and ease, with servants and lesser beings to fulfill their every need (no matter how vile), a life of Evil becomes far more tempting – and the playing field for mortal hearts is restored to an even balance.

The Consequences

Unlike the first solution, this can be introduced retroactively. Even if the PCs have been to the planes of Hades and seen the tortured souls of those exiled their, this can be glossed over – if the victims they had seen were neutrals being tortured not for their misdeeds by to demonstrate the power of the true evil souls for whom this was their final reward.

But, if anything, it is more work than the first solution, though it might not seem so at first glance.

• Entire planes of existence need to be redefined;
• the cosmology in back of them needs to be reexamined;
• a whole theology needs to be assembled complete with rituals and mythology;
• the cleric class description needs to be adjusted slightly;
• other classes with theological connections like Paladins, Monks, and Druids need tweaking;
• each of the major races needs to be appraised to integrate the new world-view;
• and finally, some of the standard monsters need to rewritten to fit the new paradigm.

Alignment, Schmalignment

It should be noticed that beyond the general principle of good vs evil, this has no more to do with the standard alignment definitions and treatments than does a duck or a sunset. The ethics and morality can be as complex as desired. Consult my five-part series on Alignment for more discussion in this respect. The link is to part 1, An Unnecessary Evil? which in turn links to the other 5 parts of the series.

The Reward

So, with all this work to do, why would you choose this solution over the other? Well, firstly, it puts the bad buys on an even playing field with the good guys – which automatically ramps up the challenge and drama of whatever the situation is in the game. Second, it feels far more integrated than the somewhat slapdash first solution. And thirdly, it gives more scope for independent creativity, for making this campaign different from that.

It makes your world more personal, more unique, more a reflection of you and your ideas. It makes your game better – provided you have the prep time to put all those pieces together.

That sounds like a pretty good reason, to me.

Milestones are special. Campaign Mastery has just had two – 300,000 visitors and 550,000 page views. We want to thank each and every one of you. But even more than that, we want to thank our many readers for their loyalty; more than 37% of those visits are from returning visitors. Ten percent is usually considered an excellent result for a website. 37% is extraordinary!

Another statistic that I am very proud of is our continued growth rate of 40% per year. Another incredible result! And then there are the comments – over 3300 of them, on our 386 posts so far. Enlightening, thoughtful, insightful, and encouraging, they have driven us to even greater efforts.

Sadly, Milestones also often mean change. For the last few months, Johnn has been slowly prioritising other endeavours, and working to fulfill other commitments. To make room for these efforts, he has now chosen to set aside his efforts at Campaign Mastery – at least for the foreseeable future. Which probably means he’ll be back in a month or two, since the best-layed plans have a penchant for cataclysmic disruption as soon as they are announced! I’ve greatly enjoyed working with Johnn, and I think we made a good team. I wish him well and hope to see him back in these pages on a future occasion.

What does that mean for Campaign Mastery? Not much will change. We’ll still post tips and content twice a week – most weeks, at least. There may be the occasional gap when Johnn would previously have provided a stopgap article, and – on average – Monday blog posts will tend to be smaller (at least in theory). I’m still hoping to open the blog up to more guest posts (including, perhaps, the occasional one by Johnn), and I’m still working on the sequel to Assassin’s Amulet.

Some priorities may shift a little, but the overall goal remains to arm and equip our readers with the tools to improve their campaigns, either by example, or by lessons learned through experience, or by offering insights and ideas and fresh perspectives.

And, of course, we’re not far away from our 400th post (this is number 387) – I’m trying hard to think of something special for THAT one! Any suggestions?

So here’s to the 300K. I hope you’ll all be back with us when we reach 400,000!