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Well, look what I found in my attic! Shame I've got nobody close by to play a game with.  I'd forgotten just how much stuff there is in the rules, especially in AD&D - when I played it in my teens, most of it would have been ignored because it was too much of a faff to keep paging through the book to find whichever table you needed to see that a glaive had an extra -1 to hit against an AC3 enemy, or whatever. Gygax's "What ho, my good fellows!" thesaurus-vomiting writing style quickly gets wearing, too. But it was still entertaining to re-read them after all these years, and also to realise that even though they're dated (and flawed in a lot of ways), the systems still work.
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Feb 24, 2013 18:19
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I'm just now re-reading the B/X rulebooks after a post in the Next thread made me wonder what a modernised B/X might entail, and had a  moment when I got to page B60. "There's always a chance" is about the simplest and most elegant solution to the issues/problems/bloat of feats, skills, manoeuvres and so on that I can imagine, and it was tucked away in the back of Basic all along. Roll a d20 under an appropriate ability score to see if you succeed at something, with a + or - if it's hard or easy. Done. Why the hell was this not boxed out in giant letters on the very first page?
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Apr 23, 2013 17:41
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I've now got it into my head to convert the whole of Basic into a 'roll below ability' system with the goal of not having to look anything up on tables during combat. Heartbreaker ahoy! It should be fairly straightforward - enemy AC (recalculated to start from 0 and go up) becomes the modifier to hit, saving throws are somehow derived from specific abilities (CON against poison, INT against spells) plus the PC's level, monster to-hit rolls are based on 8 or 9 plus their hit dice, etc. Dammit, though. I've got real work to do! 
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Apr 23, 2013 18:51
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AlphaDog posted:If your whole system is "roll below ability", why derive the saving throws? Just roll below your CON to save against poison. Roll below your DEX to dive out the way of something. Roll against STR to resist being knocked down or pushed along. Roll below INT/WIS/CHA for spells / mind controls / social pressure (or whateverthefuck, I dunno). I did take a first poke at the combat system last night, though. Just breaking down the numbers (I used the probability of someone with a stat of 12, slightly above average but probably normal for a starting PC, having a 50/50 chance of hitting an AC9 target as a starting point) revealed just how weak Basic characters are - even at L3, they're the equivalent of a sub-1HD monster if they don't get any to-hit bonuses, and with +3 to hit will still miss 50% of the time against anything of AC6 or above. (Eg, a bog-standard orc.) Roll-under-stat, on the other hand, gives as much as a +6 bonus to hit if translated into Basic terms, so since the system would have to allow ability scores to increase by level, I might have to come up with a character creation system that keeps them lower to begin with to give room for improvement - 7+1d6 or something, with the prime attribute for the class getting a bonus of 3. Oh god, what have I done? Now that I've started on this, I know I'm going to have to finish the bloody thing. 
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Apr 24, 2013 08:29
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Did some more messing around with numbers for a roll-under-ability, tables-free take on Basic, and it was fairly straightforward to make the maths match up (more or less). Saving throws were a bit of a pain because there was never much apparent logic to them in the first place (and why are magic wands a different save from magic spells?) but a formula of half the ability score (rounded down) + level kinda-sorta fits with Basic's tables. Converting ACs to an ascending system and translating monster HDs to an 'attack stat' (since Basic monsters don't have ability scores) was pretty easy, so apart from switching thief skills from percentile to roll-under-DEX while keeping them in line with the original numbers, there's not a huge amount of mechanical stuff still to do. It was called Basic for a reason, I guess! It was a fun challenge doing it, but of course now that I've got this far, the urge to tweak and 'improve' will no doubt kick in. Dammit.
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Apr 24, 2013 23:06
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Did my very first test of my "There's always a chance" roll-under-stat hack of B/X, and... it seems to work! I converted B2 to my system and sent four L1 characters (Cleric, Fighter, Thief, Wizard) into the kobold lair. The cleric (using WIS for perception) spotted the pit trap, and then everyone had to make a DEX roll to shuffle around the edge without opening the pit and falling in. Oh, nice going, wizard. Now we just attracted six kobold guards! Six versus three (the wizard was stuck in the pit) and the kobolds had the initiative. However, they all failed to do any damage. The thief retaliated by gutting one kobold with his sword, then the fighter killed another and tried to use his class-unique Cleaving Attack (hey, gotta give the martial characters something cool...) to carry over the excess damage, but missed his extra attack roll. Then the cleric bonked another kobold with her mace and killed it stone dead. Morale check failed, the kobolds legged it. Victory! It was hardly pushing the mechanics, but just having all the numbers needed to determine a hit or miss right there on the character sheet rather than needing to be looked up on a table did make a difference - it moved quickly, which to be honest is what I want from combat, as I often find it quite draggy. I might actually finish developing this one!
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May 8, 2013 20:59
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Rulebook Heavily posted:How is your Attack VS AC math working out? I remember starting work on a unified system like this once but I got distracted years ago. The idea is that an 'average' stat of 11 vs an AC0 opponent (AC9 in B/X) has the same to-hit chance as an L1 Basic character, with the enemy's AC acting as a negative modifier to the stat/target number. I'm using a stat-rolling system of 7+1d6, with +2 to the class's main stat and a -1 penalty to one other at startup. So to begin with, a fighter with 15 STR hits 75% of the time against an unarmoured enemy; possibly a bit high, but I'm still working on the numbers.
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May 8, 2013 22:19
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AlphaDog posted:With the Fighter's cleave thing, have you ever considered letting a fighter's overkill damage carry onto the next adjacent creature automatically? It might throw stuff out of whack since the b/x fighter is already pretty good, but it worked ok when we houseruled it into 2e. Fighters also get 'signature weapon' bonuses at higher levels, which are essentially proficiency (the idea was to have each fighter associated with a particular kind of weapon, so orcs would go "Oh crap! It's Bloodgrim, and he's brought a battleaxe!  ", but after reading some ideas in the Next thread I might let them be spread over different weapons.Other things I've tweaked are that clerics get Divine Powers rather than spells, which can be called on at any time without needing to be chosen in advance (ie, "Help me, Lord! I need to [heal this guy/identify the evil doppelgänger/light this dark and deadly chamber/whatever]"), and elf spells aren't just the same as wizards', but are towards the 'natural magic' side of things, making them more like druids instead of "armoured sword-wizards who gain levels really slowly".
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May 9, 2013 08:27
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Ran another test of my system, and drat, Sleep is so overpowered in B/X against low-level monsters that it's not even funny. I put my four generic guys against six kobolds, four orcs and an ogre, and in the very first round the wizard took down every one of the kobolds and orcs. (RAW, there's no save.) At the end of the fight (which didn't last long), only one character had taken any damage. I think I might make it so that Sleep affects Hit Points rather than Hit Dice in my game, cued off INT+level, because as it stands it's an instant "I win" button. Caster supremacy, even at level 1! I'm probably also going to either tone down armour ACs slightly, or else make high-end stuff really expensive and well out of the reach of an L1 character, because even the ogre only managed to score a single hit thanks to the cleric and fighter having chainmail and plate. EDIT: tried the same fight with the new version of Sleep; the wizard took out all the kobolds, but it still ended as a TPK even with the ogre down, with three orcs left standing. Seems a bit swingy, but then, should L1 characters really be facing off against a monster that can potentially one-shot them? (The wizard did end up punching an orc to death after using his spells and then throwing his dagger, however, which I thought he almost deserved to survive for.) Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 17:54
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DalaranJ posted:I want to hear more about peoples experience/opinions with roll under. Did a one off dungeon with d20 roll under for skills and enjoyed it, but I was a little concerned about it's solvency over the course of an extended campaign. i.e. Because attributes rarely change my players expressed concern that they wouldn't feel like they were growing over time. (We're all used to 3rd and 4th ed though.) Saves are stat+level/2, rounded down. So at L1, if you've got a stat of 7 (the absolute minimum with class modifiers), you have to roll 4 or under to save, but with a class high of 15 it's 8 or under. At L6, a stat of 15 gives a save of 10 and a stat of 18 a save of 12, while at L12 an 18 stat saves with 15 or lower. It's roughly in line with B/X, though I'm still thinking that save-or-dies should be used as little as possible just because "you had one bad die roll, and now you're dead. Tough poo poo" is a crappy mechanic.
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May 10, 2013 08:30
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B/X roll-under retrohack update! It's coming along pretty well; all the mechanics are now in place, and I've written up most of the actual rules (many of which are just rephrasings of B/X anyway, on the basis of "If it ain't broke...") Unfortunately, some of the rule changes affected spells, and I also wanted to amend the spell lists, so I've made a rod for my own back as I now have to type all of them in. (Humbug Scoolbus, you can rest assured that this isn't interfering with my day job. First draft of the new book should be finished tomorrow!  )
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May 13, 2013 20:23
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My B/X roll-under hack is nearly done!  Having MY GIRLFRIEND move in with me meant that evenings of full-on nerdery were no more (not that I'm complaining), but I kept pecking away at it when I got a moment, so now it just needs some bumf to be written and general tidying up, and version 0.1 will be ready for anyone who's interested to look at. Is Dropbox a good way of sharing PDFs?
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May 27, 2013 15:24
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Here you go: the PDF of my B/X roll-under hack, finally available (after Dropbox was a colossal pain in the arse). Comments welcome, and if anyone fancies playtesting it that would be fantastic. No idea if I'll ever play it myself, but at least I got it out of my system and can concentrate on real work!
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May 29, 2013 14:01
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AlphaDog posted:Would you mind terribly if I linked this to a non-goon friend? He's the other main GM for our group and it looks exactly like his sort of thing.
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May 29, 2013 15:03
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OtspIII posted:Oh, that looks really cool! Would you mind giving us a quick summary of where to look for changes--it's a pretty big document. So far I've seen the whole central 'roll under' part and the bonuses/restrictions that classes get. Class-wise, Clerics don't have to memorise Divine Powers (replacing spells) before an adventure but can call on whatever they need from their god as they need it, Dwarves and Fighters get a Battle Cry (which forces morale checks on enemies they hit), Fighters get Cleaving Attacks and a Signature Weapon (proficiency, basically), Elves don't need spellbooks but can only know as many spells as their INT, and Thief skills have been massively simplified and tweaked (Hide In Shadows is now Hide In Plain Sight, for example). Apart from all that, it's essentially the same game.
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May 30, 2013 09:57
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BTW, I created seven test characters (one of each class) for my game in about 45 minutes today, so even though it's a different system it's still as fast as B/X. The most time-consuming part was buying equipment.
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Jun 1, 2013 20:57
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Rulebook Heavily posted:You could even make some pre-written suggested packages of items that cost X amounts of gold and let people pick from those.  )
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Jun 1, 2013 22:04
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Just made an addition to my system: at the end of a combat the PCs won (in the remainder of the turn; per B/X, battles and their clean-up last one turn), they recover a small amount of HP. The formula is 1/4 of their base Hit Die (ie, d4 for Wizards, d10 for Fighters, etc) rounded down, plus any CON bonus. This way, as long as someone's still alive after a fight, they won't be limping around on 1HP, and nobody has to spend any healing on very minor injuries. I got the idea from the Next thread - ironically, from something that Next is not going to do. 
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Jun 4, 2013 16:01
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OtspIII posted:Ooh, my party does this too, but we just have a 1-hp bandage option you can do if you took damage. Scaling it to hit-die size sounds like a good deal. Maybe it should cap at the HP you started the fight with, so people don't actively heal from easy fights? BTW, there was an error in the version of the rules I put online that made Heal less effective than Cure at higher levels, which has now been fixed.
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Jun 5, 2013 10:47
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Per Mirthless's suggestion in the Wizard King thread, I've added a rule to TAAC that allows a CON save for PCs (and key NPCs) who are reduced to 0HP, rather than the previous "splat, dead" lethality of B/X. I'll update the PDF at some point, as I made a bunch of other little changes too. EDIT: the CON saves also get progressively harder with each round the dying PC goes untreated, and I added a 'healing kit' to the equipment list that can be used to bring anyone at 0HP up to 1. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 16:13
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DalaranJ posted:So can elves/halflings use shields in TAAC?
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Jun 26, 2013 08:41
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TAAC has been updated! What do you get? • New abilities! Fighters can take one for the team with the Mighty Protector skill, and Halflings and Thieves can retake bad rolls with Rogue's Luck! • Critical Hits extended to Dwarves and Halflings, and Fighters now get them from L1! • New spells and powers! • Rituals! • Optional combat rules to minimise the "I roll to hit!" "Miss" treadmill, including something that in no way resembles 13th Age's Escalation Die! • Equipment packages for the gold-deprived! • Death saving throws at 0HP! • HP recovery after combat! • Clarifications! Errors corrected! Typos fixed! And more! If the Wizard King is still being a dick, this new version of TAAC is just what you need to make him detumesce.
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Jul 2, 2013 12:32
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Rulebook Heavily posted:And in even more great older D&D related news, the Rules Cyclopedia just got released on PDF. It's been out of print for a very long time, so this is quite welcome.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:47
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While I'm about it, have four new optional character classes for TAAC. Now you can be a murderer for hire, a vanguard of goodness, a robit mans, or a shouty healer! Do they work? Do they suck? Let me know either way.
Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 13:45
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I'm feeling generous: make it seven new classes for TAAC. Now you can also play as a tootling minstrel, a wandering hippie or a devil mans!
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Jul 4, 2013 14:32
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Ryuujin posted:Warforged almost seems like it could take the monk slot. EDIT: just added the Barbarian to the TAAC additional classes. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 10:31
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Okay, hopefully I can now stop bloody thinking about this for a while as I present: TAAC Alpha 3! Ten extra classes, an assortment of rule tweaks, and various new things. Let me know if it's any cop.
Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 15:32
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homullus posted:Demi-humans are better than humans so capping the level is "game balance." No idea why halflings are capped at L8, though. Other than someone at TSR going "Eh, gently caress those little bastards."
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Jul 9, 2013 18:26
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Covok posted:If you don't mind me asking, what is ACKS? I tried to google the term and I don't believe I found the game you're discussing. e;f,b
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Oct 24, 2013 19:06
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rock rock posted:Has anyone played much microlite 20? I really like the idea of using your hitpoints to cast spells and I'm curious as to how it plays out.
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Jan 14, 2014 11:12
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White Plume Mountain (S2) is a more player-friendly take on Tomb Of Horrors, in that it's lighter on the instadeath no-save gently caress YOU traps, heavier on the quirky NPC enemies, and is actually potentially survivable. It's certainly my favourite of the S-series dungeon crawls.
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Jan 16, 2014 22:00
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Libertad! posted:Unless someone already posted it, here's another useful list of D&D retroclones.
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Apr 5, 2014 22:53
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TAAC lives! I'm really happy that you had a blast and everything works. (Although that's more down to Moldvay and Cook than me; all I did was adapt the maths to a unified system and add a few spells. Did anyone use Swole's Mighty Blow, BTW?)
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May 17, 2014 20:16
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New link for TAAC is here! I just checked, and Dropbox has disabled older links to PDFs because of some potential security flaw. Nice of them to tell me.
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May 18, 2014 09:22
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Done; thanks for the reminder!
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May 18, 2014 18:58
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I had an idea for my next retroclone (based on TAAC, which itself was based on B/X, so it's starting to mutate in some fairly extreme ways), but I don't know how the probabilities work out compared to what they're based on, so wondered if anyone with a better grasp of numbers could help. Basically, it's a variation of Next's Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, with the intention of getting rid of +/- modifiers on d20 rolls entirely. A D&D +1 or +2 modifier becomes Best Of Two (ie, Advantage) with a d20 roll, with -1 or -2 being Worst Of Two (Disadvantage). +3 or above is Best Of Three d20 rolls, and -3 or lower is Worst Of Three. A +2 sword would still keep the +2 for damage for simplicity, but when attacking the player rolls twice and uses the best result. (TAAC is roll-under, but that doesn't matter here; "best" can apply to lowest as well as highest.) If, for example, every "attack at -1" penalty (or whatever) became a Wo2 d20 roll to hit, would it throw the results wildly out of whack compared to how it would have played out in B/X, or is it likely to even out over time? And is Best/Worst Of Three far too big a swing?
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May 24, 2014 23:22
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Thanks for all the probability help. If I take the game down the road I'd thought of, it definitely won't look much like B/X, then, but what I've got now is veering away from it already. (It's meant for short one-shot games with a defined victory objective for each adventure/mission, so characters are built from set templates with a small amount of customisation, and there's no experience progression; playing at a higher level just involves using the template from the next tier up.) I hadn't realised that Advantage/Disadvantage produced such a big difference. I'd thought that its use in Next would be really swingy, and so it is! DalaranJ posted:Actually there's one even more common modifier that will probably be your biggest hurdle if you're trying to remove all the +/- modifiers from the game. What will you do about Armor Class?
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May 25, 2014 09:22
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I'm also experimenting with a different combat system for my new 'clone. At the start of each round, the PCs declare if they're Attacking, Defending or Supporting. Attackers automatically hit their target, but they still make a roll; if they fail it, their victim manages to get in a counter-attack that also auto-hits. Either way, Attackers add their Hit Die to the damage roll - since it's based on TAAC, this means Fighters add a d10, Clerics a d8, etc. Fighters having the TAAC version of Cleave should encourage them to get right into the action. Defenders attack as normal - no bonus damage as above, but they don't run the risk of being counter-attacked either. In addition, they can "intercept" an attack on a Defending or Supporting character by making a DEX roll. If they succeed, the original target takes no damage, and the hits go to the Defender (I'm still debating whether to have them take all the damage, half of it, or make an extra roll to save somehow). If they intercept, that uses up their action for the round whether they succeed or fail. Support characters can make ranged attacks, use spells, heal, or do any other action that isn't combat. So if a Thief had to open a complex lock while the party was attacked, he'd go in Support - and hope the others will Defend him while he works! Next, the monsters make their attack rolls. "What? You mean they always get the initiative?" you cry. Nope; combat is simultaneous on both sides, so even if a participant is killed, they still get in their attack. The reason for doing it in this order is to let Defenders decide whether or not to intercept attacks; if none of the Support characters are hit, they can fight as normal without worrying about other team members. Finally, the PCs make their rolls, and all the damage is totted up. Repeat. I wanted to do something that was slightly more tactically involved than TAAC's "you're either in melee, or you aren't" approach, but without any kind of requirement for grids, range bands, positioning or the other stuff that slows combat to a crawl. Does it seem like a system that would work?
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May 27, 2014 11:46
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DalaranJ posted:It's a bit like Dungeon World, I think. Do defenders have to make an attack roll to hit? And do monsters always choose attack or does the DM choose for them in secret before the player's declare? There will only be six classes (halflings?  ), so I'm going to try to make them as distinct as possible and give them different things to do in combat.
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May 28, 2014 06:44
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 13:42 |
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That seems a pretty good idea to me, and capping the maximum damage means that the low-level wizard always has something they can do in combat rather than casting their one Magic Missile and then standing around with their thumb up their arse while everyone else battles around them, yet can't dominate things (whereas Next gives Ray Of Frost as a cantrip; 1d8 damage plus slowing the target means that wizards are going to be out-damaging almost every simple melee and ranged weapon and delivering a no-save suck effect every round).
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Jun 18, 2014 12:51
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