In Microlite20, every spell as a DC target. This makes both Clerics and Magi skill-based spell casters. In earlier D&D there are no skill-based spell casters in the standard rules. Adding one to Andras or any retro-clone has a much different effect than doing it in Microlite20.

The same is true for any Mana based system. It doesn’t exist in earlier D&D, but all spell casters in Microlite20 use their hit points as a mana pool. Varying how the mana is used doesn’t do much in Microlite20. In fact, it looks like a record keeping nightmare. (Am I going to cast this as a 6th level Thaumaturge or save a point and cast it as a 4th level one?)

The classes themselves, however, offer an intended tradeoff. This is the element I want to keep. Over time, a Thaumaturge has to pay more to cast the same spell as a Wizard. At 15th level, a Thaumaturge will pay 9 points for a full Magic Missile while the Wizard will pay only 3. The gap closes as spell reach higher levels. At 21st Level, both the Thaumaturge and the Wizard pay 19 points for a 9th level spell. Yet, even at this high level, the cost for the Thaumaturge will continue to increase.

I also want to keep the feel of miracle magic. In other words, Shamans have strange and fearsome powers and Psions are regarded as atheists by the Priests. I like the idea that Psion create an issue of faith for a priest. This is further enhanced by the other changes that will make psionic ability much more similar to Priest spells.

Many telepathic abilities are similar to divination. A psion can determine a person’s thoughts, discover the history of a place or item, travel astrally to be in a place far away in order to gather information and much more. Psions can heal. Psions can create things in a similar fashion as the gods (though not nearly as powerful as the gods). There’s more, but you get the idea. Many abilities are already similar, so tweak the rest of the Priest spells to fit for psions.

Lastly, just like Priests can have various domains (or spheres in 2nd Edition), I have changed the Psionic disciplines from six to many. Just like 2e had Priests of Specific Mythoi, the framework is in place for GMs to create Psions of a Specific Path. This makes individual psions different based upon which school they attend. This is optional, just like the Specific Mythoi rules, but for a flavorful campaign, it feels a lot more fun.

Shamans are intended to be fun for the GM. I’ve almost ported over the D6 Fantasy Spell Building system to D&D. Since that spell building system has options for group casting, big effects, day-long rituals, etc, it becomes easier to build spells that just don’t fit into the Vancian system.

For example, to create a spell that places a wall of force around an entire village isn’t effectively possible. The spell caster would have to be a triple digit level spell caster to get a diameter that large. Using the spell builder, however, longing casting time and community help can make it possible. Not only that, it can provide a good measure of the appropriate level of this kind of spell.

Work continues on. Hopefully the next post will provide the new disciplines for psions and detailed examples of shaman spells.

I had posted on Google Plus about a shortcut method of performing opposed rolls. The numbers do not come out the same, but I figured that they were close enough. What I discovered in studying these numbers points to effects of specific designs. In the end, I think that my design doesn’t produce results that are always similar, but that produces results more in line with my design philosophy.

Specifically, the results show that:

• Characters with equal bonuses to skill rolls under Microlite20 will have a similar, but varied chances of success under my system.
• The Microlite20 system is affected by relative adjustments to the roll. My system is affected by the actual skill ranks and Attribute score.

Here is an example using the Microlite20 rules as written and comparing to my system.

Listen is Subterfuge + MIND.
Move Silently is Subterfuge + DEX

Aesir is attempting to sneak up on a guard. Aesir has a 16 DEX and a Subterfuge rank of 2. The Guard has a MIND of 12 and a Subterfuge rank of 4. According to the rules, the one with the highest roll wins. Each character receives a bonus to their individual rolls of Skill Rank + Attribute Bonus.

For Aesir, we get 2 (skill rank) plus 3 (Attribute Bonus in M20) to get 5.
For the guard, we get 4 (skill rank) plus 1 (Attribute Bonus in M20) to get 5.

Given these stats, Aesir will succeed 47.5% of the time. The guard will succeed 52.5% of the time because he will win all ties. By rule, ties go to the character with the highest skill rank.

Under the Microlite20 system, the chances of success will not change if the guard has a Skill Rank of 5 and a MIND of 10, a Skill Rank of 3 and a MIND of 14 or a Skill Rank of 2 and a MIND of 16. The adjustment to the roll remains +5.

In my system, success is determined by rolling-under the total of the Skill Rank and the Attribute itself. When performing an opposed roll, the Player Character has to subtract half the total of the NPC’s skill rank and attribute. In this example, Aesir’s Subterfuge rank plus DEX is 18. The guard’s Subterfuge rank plus MIND is 16. Success is determined by Aesir rolling equal to or under 10. In other words, 18 minus 8 (half of 16). This give Aesir a 50% chance of succeeding. This is a slightly better chance of succeeding than with the Microlite20 system.

What I found surprising is that if the guard is changed as I mentioned earlier, Aesir’s chances of success are affected.

All four of these guards are identical according to the Microlite20 system, but the results are slightly different under my system. Nothing is really dramatic in the results, even with very improbable NPCs (do you hire MIND 16 guards? Would a MIND 10 guard have a 5 subterfuge skill?)

For the sake of completeness, let’s say that Aesir is opposing a lower skilled guard of average intelligence. Subterfuge skill rank of 2 and a MIND of 10. Under the standard Microlite20 system, Aesir has a 62.5% chance of success. Ties no longer go to the guard, but they don’t go to Aesir either because there would be a re-roll. Under my system, Aesir has a 60% chance to succeed.

Why does it give a worse chance? The amount of change is less in my system. If you compare the original example, Microlite20 provided no advantage to Aesir. He and the guard were equal. In my system Aesir had a slight advantage, thus a higher chance for success as compared to M20.

Changing to scores provided Aesir a great advantage. Instead of being even with the Guard, he now enjoys a +3 advantage. That big of an advantage yields bigger results. In my system, Aesir already had an advantage over the first guard. Changing the skill and MIND score had less effect because the amount of advantage changed comparatively less.

Somehow I’m Awake, What Does All This Mean?

Advancement in Microlite20 provides for increasing Skill Ranks and Attributes. This makes the characters very high powered around 10th level. In my variation of M20, characters cannot change Attributes except by magic or optionally by age.

I hope this means that characters can be fun to play for more than 10 levels.

This also means that using Microlite20 as a platform to develop Andras helps me get the bones of the system working well. This will be easier to playtest, especially for newer GMs. This also allows me to playtest a solo version of M2010 (my system). Maybe I have been reading too much T&T lately, but having a solo version plus the Mythic GM appeals to me.

As always, more later.

It starts with this post from Greywulf.

The shared worlds thing was already done with Spelljammer. As I said in G+, Dragon Magazine even had an article for porting over Space:1889.

As far as writing style, I am all over the end to the Gamebooks are Technical Manuals school of thought. Even the rules to Life (boardgame) are not as dry as other game rules.

I don’t like to use minis, so I’m just skipping that part.

I wanted to focus on the bit about doing this with an OGL game like Labyrinth Lord. To do one better in this exercise, why not just go straight to Microlite 20. One page of rules, many possibilities, right? Well, let’s start with M20 Purest Essence. 17 pages.

The PHB: Remove all race and class information and the Game Master’s Guide. Also remove the spell lists and the creature lists. What you’re left with is about one page of rules to play the game.

The GMG: The entire M20 Purest Essence, although it will need to be organized.

Then we have the codices:

Humans – Race information for humans (+1 to all skills). Class information for all humans playing the various classes.  Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. The only place with a universal spell list is the GMG. That’s just the crunchy stuff. The rest is history, a section like the Roman Way called the Human way. Outposts of humans in various game worlds, etc. Art, fluff, lots of stuff.

Elves – Race information for Elves (+2 MIND). Class information for all elves playing the various classes. Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. You see where I’m going.

At the table, the player has a codex and a one page handout for rules. The GM has the GM Guide.

What do you think?

The big change is the addition of the bookcreator plugin. Once I get it working correctly, I should have a post here describing it in detail.

So a quick brain dump here in an attempt to get going:

Odd Retroclone Idea One:

Wanted to be successful with M20 Odd Duck inspired by this post. Basically, the spell list would be substituted with the spells from The Fantasy Trip. Conversion of the spells has been problematic. I finally figured out that IQ level =! M20 spell level. ST cost also doesn’t seem to translate as some spells have 50, 60 or 100 ST cost while many others range from 1 to 10.

I created a spreadsheet to rank them relatively to each other. An IQ 14 spell that cost 1 ST would be a higher level than an IQ 8 spell that cost 2 ST. The formula is not that complicated as I opted out of trying to determine a normalized distribution. Besides, I’m not that good at normalization (in math or databases) anyway.

I may never finish it. Ugh. It’s a good idea that I just cannot implement.

Odd Retroclone Idea Two:

I also have some bizarre deathwish to create my own retro-clone. It would be a complete vanity project that ‘feels’ like the amalgam of B/X, 1st and 2nd edition AD&D with some new found love for BAB and other d20 conventions. The other oddity would be how everything is inspired by Paul M. Crabaugh. I will include a class generator (which only needs options for illusionists) and a monster generator. I am about 33% done with the generator – it only generates non-magical beasts at the moment.

What compels me on this idea is a mystery to me.

Part of it mentions the critters.pl script greywulf hosted on the old m20 site. I couldn’t find the original, but I found my modified script for M20 (my other post has it modified for Action!).

CODE:

#!/usr/bin/perl
srand(time ^ $$ ^ unpack “%L*”, ‘ps axww | gzip’);
$usage=”usage: $0 number maxhd\n”;
$ARGV[0]=~/^(\d+)$/ && ($numb = $1) || die $usage;
$ARGV[1]=~/^(\d+)$/ && ($maxhd = $1) || die $usage;
%rule = (
‘W’,'VF YF YF YXF YXF YXYF B’,
‘B’,'PB YNF YNXF YNXF YNXYF YXYNF’,
‘P’,'a ambi ante circum cis co de dis ob per prae se sine sub’,
‘Y’,'Ca Ce Ci Co Cu Cy Da De Di Do Dy’,
‘X’,'Ce Ci Co o’,
‘V’,'a e i o u’,
‘F’,'Ca Ca Ca Cae Cos Com Cus Cus Cus Cus Cus Cium Cium Ces’,
‘C’,'b b c c ch ch d d d g g l l m m n n p p ph r r r s s s t t th th v x z Rr sH Ll’,
‘D’,'b b c c ch ch d d g g l l m m n n p p ph r r r s s s t t t th th v x z Rr sH Ll h qu gn pt’,
‘R’,'b b c c c ch ch g g p p ph t t th th’,
‘L’,'c ch p g f’,
‘H’,'c ch cl m n p ph pl pr qu t th’,
‘N’,'n c l r’
);

for (1..$numb) { print &parse(‘W’), ” : “, &stats, “\n”; }

sub parse {
$_=pop(@_);
/[^A-Z]/ && return $_;
@TMP=split(/\s+/, $rule{$_});
$_=splice(@TMP, rand @TMP, 1);
for (split(”)) { print &parse($_); }
}

sub stats {
$tst = int(rand()*13)+1;
$hd = int(rand()*$maxhd)+1;
$hp = int($hd*4.5)+int(rand()*4*$hd);
$ac = 10+$hd+int(rand()*5);
$tohit = $hd+int(rand()*4);
$dmg = int(rand()*2)+1 . ‘d’ . (int(rand()*6)+1)*2 . (rand>0.6?’+':’-') . (int(rand()*4)+2);
%weapon = ( ’1′ => ‘Bite’,
’2′ => ‘Claw’,
’3′ => ‘Talon’,
’4′ => ‘Gore’,
’5′ => ‘Slap’,
’6′ => ‘Slam’,
’7′ => ‘Sting’,
’8′ => ‘Tentacle’,
’9′ => ‘Weapon’,
’10′ => ‘Weapon’,
’11′ => ‘Weapon’,
’12′ => ‘Weapon’,
’13′ => ‘Weapon’,);
$type = $weapon{$tst};
#    $type = (rand>0.6?”By weapon”:”Natural”);

return “HD$hd (${hp}hp), AC$ac, $type +$tohit ($dmg)”;
}

Adult Granite: HD 21d12+105 (241), AC 28, Bite +27 (2d8), or Breath 8d6 stream of rocks DC 25,  phys+DEX to dodge for half, or thorwn rock 2d6+7.

And now for the Basic Fantasy Statblock

Dragon, Granite

Granite dragons have thick, rock-like scales with small black spots on them. The scales also tend to become for red as they age. They prefer to live on top of ancient mountains or near stone quarries. In order to properly digest their food, they swallow heavy stones in a gizzard type of organ. The bite of a granite dragon is severe due to their hardened teeth. When fighting, a granite dragon prefers to be near a source of rocks. When their breath weapon is not available, a granite dragon will attempt to hurl boulders. Granite dragons are capable of great cruelty. They enjoy swallowing humanoids whole and listening to their cries as they are ground into pieces by the stone in their gizzard. Outside of this rare pleasure, granite dragons are motivated by the urge to live, breed and collect valuable items.

Granite dragons are immune to poisonous gases.

So, there will be content on my site from this point forward designed specifically for the BFRPG. This month will include new dragons, as well as statblocked content from Nevermet Press.

Did I forget M20? No, I start with M20 and work my way forward. I also intend to provide M20 statblocks for everything as well.

Here’s to a reboot of Sycarion.com

As far as acheiving balance, though, I began to think about how races are defined in Microlite20. Most races are defined as a bonus or penalty to one of the three attributes. Humans get a +1 to all skills with no adjustments to attributes.

The balancing mechanism is that all adjustments total 2. For humans, having a +1 bonus to all four skills is equivalent to a +2 Attribute adjustment. For example, Elves get a +2 MIND adjustment, Half-Orcs get +3 STR and -1 MIND, Half-Elves get +1 MIND and +1 to any two skills.

With three attributes and four skills to fiddle with, M20 seems to be the perfect place to look at the mechanics of creating new races easily. To limit the number of options, I decided to set up a few parameters for this exercise:

• There can be only one penalty and it can only be a -1. This could a -1 to any attribute or -1 to any two skills.
• The largest bonus will be a +3.
• Avoid setting specific skills to receive a bonus or penalty. It should be an adjustment to any 2 skills or to all 4 skills.
• Add in as many pre-defined races from the macropedia that still fit within the above parameters.

The result is the attached spreadsheet below:
Racial Template Options

Looking through the results, some are quite interesting. For example, a race that receives a +1 to Mind, +1 to all skills and a -1 to STR. This would mean that there is a race that is just as adaptable as humans, slightly smarter, but slightly weaker physically. Of all the possibilities, the one that appealed to me was a somewhat evolved human.

Others have definite possibilities, especially a race that would receive a +1 bonus to all attributes, but a -1 to any two skills. (This may seem like a cheat to get a super character, but M20 is a skill-based system.) This creates a race that is smarter, stronger, and more agile than a typical human, but less adaptable. This makes me think of the invading aliens from In the Balance by TurtleDove.

This only takes care of the mechanics. For those that tend to look for how a race can benefit them in combat, not much more needs to be done. For others like me that get into the fluff, getting this part nailed down provides suggestions for what a race is like without removing many possibilties. Using a good random generation like this one can fill in some of the details.

I admit, I’m a nut when it comes to fluff like this. I think about the form and function of a different race. For example, giants in my world have a different material in there bone makeup. It is stronger than regular bone material by an exponential factor. This makes them feared adversaries, but also threatened by others that seek to harvest the hardened bone material. The reason for this change is that a 12 ft tall human could barely walk and would break bones at the slightest movement.

I have other examples, but I hope this provides a good baseline for creating new races. I hope to detail more of these just to see how far it can go. If you find any entries on the spreadsheet you find interesting, let me know.

The thing is that no part of SpellJammer is or was Open Game Content. The d20 mini-game in Polyhedron 151 is great, but as stated on the first page, NOT open game content. 100% proprietary. Andy Collins’ site has references to material left out of the Polyhedron article, but all of that is also NOT open game content.

The name Spelljammer itself is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast. This post will not challenge that trademark. Other items of the setting are also trademarked and proprietary. I say this because SpellJammer cannot be used to reference the idea of magical spacefaring adventure despite the similarity in concepts.

As such, let me begin by saying I want to extend the M20 ruleset (including standard races and classes) to an extra planetary setting. The working title of this setting will be Aetherflow, abbreviated AF. I will attempt to write this from scratch using other M20 materials developed by others as well as my own ideas.