5e D&D Lost Mines Of Phandelver part one

Last night I ran the first session of The Lost Mines Of Phandelver, which is the adventure that comes with the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set. TLDR; It was a huge amount of fun and the rules were fluid and natural.

We played at HATE VI, my gaming groups club nights, at The Blacksmith And The Toffeemaker pub in Angel, London, UK. It was a boardgames night rather than a full-on wargaming and boardgaming event. Playing in a pub, even in the back room comes with advantages and disadvantages : beer vs noise. I think overall the beer won out, but at times I had to raise my voice, and it was clear once or twice that the party was struggling to communicate. However the venue is central, does good provisions and had a big table.

Anyway, the players blind drew the characters, with only one swap. One player really wanted to play a cleric and the player with the Cleric was happy to change to the Noble Fighter. Naming took no time at all and we ended up with Tor Wightbane, a Folkhero Fighter, Imowen the Halfling Rogue, Zarrfron The Elven Wizard, Brookn The Tall who is the Dwarven Cleric and Lord Strakken the Noble Fighter. The party found their bond very rapidly too, Imowen had used to Tor to help smuggle when he was a dock hand. Brookn had sought to arrest the pair, but had had to join forces with the pair to fight off underdwellers in the cellar he’d cornered them in, and became friends since. Zarrfron had seen Imowen in a strange and cursed vision, so sought the halfling out, and finally Lord Strakken had need of specialists to help regain his wealth.

The adventurers assemble

Gundred, the NPC who acts as the PC’s hook was 2nd cousin to Brookn, so they party were only too glad to help and gain coin. On the road they efficiently dispatched the goblin raiders, although a wounded goblin did escape up the trail only to forgot his own snare trap, where the party found it hanging half-dead. After securing the oxen and cart, the group then set off up the trail and found the cave mouth that led to the lair of the Craig Maw goblins. I embellished here with a bit of purple prose as I found the initial description of the cave mouth a little dry. The party defeated the goblin guards, but took several wounds in the process and decided to take a short rest to heal a little more. Then the fun started.

They explored the cave mouth and had the dwarf use his darkvision to spot the wolves without drawing attention to themselves. The wizard, who’d had bad luck up to now cast a powerful sleep spell and sent two of the wolves to asleep, but a third in hiding ran out and attacked. After an epic battle in which two wolves were killed in single blows the group pushed on deeper into the wolf lair to find the chute that crawled up into the dark.

The dwarven cleric decide to use his climbing tools to ascend the chute, but then changed his mind, realising that hammering pitons into the cave wall would be very noisey. He fell slightly once, then reached the top and was able to see into the cave beyond, where two goblins, a wolf pet and something huge and furry sat upon a crude throne. Descending to tell the rest of the party, he slipped badly (rolling a 1) and fell. Taking enough damage to put him on 0 hp, the party realized he was dying so they desperately set about trying stabilize him. Thankfully they succeeded, but without his healing skills they carried him out of the cave and headed back to cart to rest overnight and revive him.

Failing from a great height!

Overall I thought the new rules are pretty effortless and fluid. I love the advantage/disadvantage system but hate that long rests completely heal characters as it removes any kind of attrition, especially in overland settings IMHO. Of course it’s D&D and an RPG so I can change what I don’t like, and so far there isn’t a lot of that at all.
 

Doing Your Thing in 40K

While making terrain for our first club night I was talking with my good friend and long time 40K'er Toby. He mentioned that one of the frustrations he had with the evolution of the rules was that special abilities that were introduced for a particular unit to give them a unique and flavoursome ability where often watered down, given to others widely and, in the example of Chaos Raptors and Hit & Run, removed for that unit but left for others.

With my current Dark Heresy GUMSHOE hack in mind, I started thinking about how often in 40K you don't get to do your 'thing'. By 'thing' I mean that which makes your army unique, that which your character is feared for. It's your shtick. There are so many special abilities across units that there has been a steady increase in the countermeasures to them. Taking pinning for example. I can't remember the last time I ever saw it work, let alone considered a usable tactic, because so many units ignore it, or have enough leadership for it to be a cold day on Nocturne when it kicks in.

GUMSHOE's philosophy of being good at your thing can, and should, translated to war games. You should, unless you plan poorly, be able to do the glorious deeds you're forces are infamous for at least once during the game.

A very simple, and probably ill conceived idea to improve the situation in 40K would be to give each player a Joker card. When played, the Joker means an HQ, and any unit it is attached to can automatically make, or force the failure of a single dice roll. It also removes an immunity to a particularly ability that would resolve normally on that single dice roll. So, for example a Tau HQ leading a unit that has pinning weapons plays it after it's shot at a unit of Space Marines, who are normally immune to the pinning effect. The Joker means that they lose that immunity for that single test and automatically fail. Further examples would be a unit of Warp Talons deep striking with an attached winged Daemon Prince. The player uses the Joker to make the blind test a nearby unit of Devastators makes automatically fail.  A Tiberius, down to his last wound, uses the Joker to avoid making a psychic test, and activates his powers without fear of the warp consuming him. Of course it might mean that an HQ with a squad with a powerfist could remove the Instant Death rule from an opponent and force it to fail an invulnerbilty save. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Possibly it couldn't be used for attacks that have more than one to-hit roll.          

Initial skills matching in GUMSHOE Dark Heresy

I went through Dark Heresy RPG and Trail Of Cthulhu and compared the skill sets. Sticking, for now, to the basic skills from Dark Heresy and not looking beyond ToC I compiled this match, which is pretty impressive. There is a lot less work here to do than I fear, clearly Messier Hite and Laws knew someday it would come to this. I can see that I'll need to add some kind of specialisation option to Athletics, to allow people to be particularly good at Contortionist, or more likely Dodge. There are quite a few GUMSHOE skills I'll want to added to GDH. Finally I realise that the list of Lore skills will be quite large and I should consider if PC's should get more investigative points to adapt to this increase. Probably not.

Dark Heresy Basic Skills with existing Trail Of Cthulhu GUMSHOE counterpartsAwareness - Sense trouble
Barter - Bargain
Carouse - Athletics
Charm - Flattery or Flirt
Concealment - Conceal or Stealth
Contortionist - Athletics
Deceive - Reassurance
Disguise - Disguise
Dodge - Athletics
Evaluate - Art history (partial)
Gamble - Streetwise (partial)
Inquiry - Interrogation, Reassurance or Assess honesty
Intimidate - Intimidate
Logic - Cryptography or Physics
Climb - Athletics
Scrutiny - Assess honesty
Search - Conceal
Silent Move - Stealth
Survival - Outdoorsmanship
Swim - Athletics
Tech Use - Mechanical repair or Electrical repair
Tracking - Shadowing

Trade - Craft or Art
Animal Wrangling - Riding (partial)

ToC GUMSHOE Skills missing from Dark HeresyCredit Rating
Evidence Collection
Language
Locksmith

Medicine

Oral History (gossip, traditions, folklore)

Streetwise

ToC Abilities To ConsiderAthletics
Conceal (items)
Disguise
Driving
Electrical Repair
Explosives
Filch (pilfer)
Firearms
First aid
Fleeing
Health

Mechanical Repair
Pilot
Preparedness (kit, stuff)
Psychoanalysis
Riding
Sanity
Scuffling
Sense Trouble
Shadowing
Stability
Stealth
Weapons

Dark Heresy Lore SkillsCommon Lore:
Adeptus Arbites
Machine Cult
Administratum
Ecclesiarchy
Imperial Creed
Imperial Guard
Imperium
Tech
Underworld
War

Forbidden Lore:The Black Library
Cults

Daemonology

Heresy
Inquisition - Ordos (Malleus, Hereticus or Xenos)
Archeotech
Mutants
Adeptus Mechanicus

Adeptus Astartes
Psykers
Warp
Xenos

Scholastic Lore:Archaic
Astromancy
Beasts
Biologis
Bureaucracy
Chymistry

Cryptology
Heraldry
Imperial Creed
Judgement
Legend
Numerology

Occult
Philosophy
Tactica Imperialis

Using AD&D for 3rd age Middle Earth roleplaying – a quick and dirty guide.

A short collection of thoughts on running a Middle Earth campaign using AD&D rules.

Character creation

• There are no clerics, except for elven magic-user/clerics, who are restricted to magic-user weapons and armour usage, but may also wield longswords, shortswords and bows.
• Pure magic-users, illusionists and druids must be human and derive their powers from the same source, given to them by the Valar and is spiritual in nature. They are nominally lead by the 5 Istari Wizards (Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Morinehtar and Rómestámo ) who train all types by tend to favour certain classes, Saruman favouring magic-users, Gandalf favouring magic-users and druids, Radagast favouring druids, Morinehtar favouring magic-users and illusionists and Rómestámo favouring illusionists.  There is no magic-missile spell!
• There are no gnomes or paladins.
• Half-elves are considered High-men and half-elves are usually elves.
• Half-orcs are considered Uruk-hai, evil by all other races, and maybe challenging to play unless the party are in league with Sauron or Saruman. 

Bestiary

• Goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, bugbears and ogres are all types of goblins and orcs.
• Undead of all types. Nazghul are fighter/magic-user spectres.
• Will'o'wisps.
• Wyvern's without stings are fell beasts.
• Giant spiders of various sizes. Shelob being one of the largest.
• Hill giants are trolls.
• Stone giants.
• Balor demons are Balrogs. Other demons are hinted at throughout the books.
• Were-creatures.
• Dire wolves are worgs.
• Treants are ents. They can be used for evil or angry tree spirits.
• Faerie spirits are related to Tom Bombadil, and can be dryads, nymphs etc,.
• Creatures like carrion crawlers are hinted in the dark caverns of the world, and should be used as singular entities.
• The watcher in water could giant squid or even a hydra aka cold drake.
• Dragons and dragon like giant lizards.

Magic items

• These should mainly be arms and armour, often of elven manufacture and all individually named.
• Avoid very D&D themed miscellaneous items. 
• Herbs, properly harvested and applied can count as healing spells of various sorts.  Rangers, druids and elves are able to recognise such herbs on a % roll of 5x their level.

Birthday AD&D game

As part of my birthday celebrations I'm running N1 Against The Cult Of The Reptile God [spoilers] for a group of about 8 players on Saturday from 12pm-6pm (ish). I've not run 1st edition AD&D in a very long time and want to use some of the improvements that have come along with later editions. On top of that 8 players can be slow, even in 1st ed, so I've streamlined the combat even further, particularly around initiative and player order. Effectively what happens now is the following:-

• Optional surprise d6 roll based on class, with Thieves, Monks and Assassins being surprised on a 6+, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Clerics and Druids on a 5+ and Wizards and Illusionists being surprised on a 4+. Monsters such as Bugbears add to this roll. 
• The initial roll is made by the player who's character is unsurprised and has the highest dexterity rolls d6 and adds their reaction adjustment, as do all the monsters in similar fashion. Which ever team scores highest goes before the whole of the other team.
• Players take it in turns to do their move around the table. The starting player is the whoever is sitting closest to the DM's left or right, alternating left to right between each combat.

Other rules changes include positive Armour Class values, so that they are target values (e.g. Chainmail is normally AC 5, but is now AC 15 and therefore the base to-hit is 15+), spell mastery so that spellcasters can substitute their memorized spell with the spell they have chosen to master. (Often Cure Light Wounds or Magic Missile).

I've worked up a single page rules explanation cheat sheet with many of these based on the character sheet PDF, which can be downloaded here.  
 

Alternative AD&D Character creation rules

If say, I was to run an old school game, like N1 Against The Cult Of The Reptile God, or something.

1. Choose between picking a class you are aiming for or rolling completely randomly.

If you roll randomly, roll 3D6 six times, and write them down in order against Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. Then roll a further 3d6 and if it’s higher than your best result replace it.

If you decide you are aiming for a particular class, from Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Cleric, Druid, Wizard, Illusionist, Thief, Assassin or any of the racial multi-classes you should check the class requirements and then roll 3d6, assigning them to your stats once you have completed. If you failed to meet the requirements, you must pick another class entirely although it is likely to similar. You do not have to stick with the particular race you chose. E.g. if you wanted to play an Elven Fighter/Magic-User but you only got the stat rolls for a Fighter, you can play a Dwarf or Human fighter.

2. Roll on the relationships table, in secret, about the your characters relationship with the character of the player to the left of you. If you get a secret relationship, roll again to find a public relationship that covers the secret one. If you gain gold from the relationship table, make that in secret. You then discuss with the the story behind the relationship. This is repeated around the table, skipping the DM of course, until all player characters have a relationship. If you absolutely hate your relationship, you may re-roll once.

3. Choose a first name, last name, title or nom de plume, which may or may not be related to your relationship with another player.

4. Hit points at first level are always at least half you maximum, so when you roll for hit points if it’s less than half you just take the half value. e.g. 2 for Magic-Users, 3 for Thieves, 4 for Clerics and 5 for Fighters. Rangers however only get this rule on the first d8 they roll, not both so their minimum is also 5. Then add constitution bonuses after this.

Relationships table (d4 x 10 + d10)
Your character...

10	Is the sibling of
12	Is the lover of
13	Is married to
14	Is the parent of
15	Is the uncle, aunt or cousin of
16	Is the childhood friend of
17	Is employed by the family to protect [+d10 g.p.]
18	Is indebted to the family of
19	Is a childhood friend of
20	Is an old acquaintance of
21	Is a firm friend of
22	Competes for the love of a third person with
23	Family’s have traditionally worked together
24	Saved the life of
25	Had their life saved by
26	Worked together for a cruel lord with
27	Was apprenticed to a cherished master with
28	Was hired to guard [+d10 g.p]
29	Was tasked with a quest together with
30	Travelled together with and defended each other from slavers, monsters or bandits
31	Shared a lucky find with [+d10 g.p., shared equally with]
32	Owned a business with
33	Escaped imprisonment with
34	Escaped slavery with
35	Were in the town militia with
36	Were part of the same guard unit with
37	Were part of the same hunting party with
38	Had family members kidnapped by the same slavers, monsters or bandits as
39	Were mentored together wiht
40	Was a former enemies of, but who became friends with
41	[Secret] Murdered a family member of
42	[Secret] Is employed by a family member to watch [+d10 g.p.]
43	[Secret] Is employed by the family to protect [+d10 g.p.]
44	[Secret] Is in love with
45	[Secret] Must prevent from fulfilling some prophecy
46	[Secret] The illegitimate scion or first born sibling of
47	[Secret] Prophesied to defeat some mighty enemy together
48	[Secret] Holds a grudge against
49	Your choice

The Necromancer

I've been re-reading the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, as I've being toying with the idea of doing an old school D&D version of Star Trap. It gave me the idea for a Necromancer class using solely the PHB.

The Necromancer.

Based on the Magic User class, the Necromancer studies dark texts which lead to magical spells that work very much like clerical magic. The study is difficult and taxing, and the Necromancer is forced to forgo the study of some schools of magic.
Necromancers have ability requirements, saving throws, hit points and gain levels just as a magic user. They wield weapons in the same manner to, although through the connection leather has to the dead, a special ritual allows them to wear specially prepared necromantic leather armour.

Only humans and half orcs live lives short enough to allow them a connection the necromatic arts in such a significant manner. Half orcs may indeed be Necromancer/Assassins, but are restricted still to necromatic leather armour. Half orcs are limited to levels as Necromancers as elves are to magic users .

Necromancers are either neutral or evil in outlook. Neutral necromancers must make a percentage roll every time the gain a level to see if they are corrupted by their increasing powers. If they roll equal to or under their level, they become evil. Thus a chaotic neutral Necromancer changes to chaotic evil on a% roll of 01 or 02 when he becomes 2nd level and at 10th level a roll of 10 or less will have the effect. Evil Necromancers must also roll in the same manner but if they roll equal to or below their level they loose a point of charisma.

Necromancers may only learn necromantic, abjuration, divination, summoning/conjuration and alteration schools of magic user spells. They may cast necromantic clerical spells, but always the reversed versions, as if they were magic user spells. In addition to the necromantic clerical spells, a necromancer may learn Cause Disease, Unholy Word and Bestow Curse. When casting Monster Summoning spells, they monsters summoned are always undead.

The necromantic leather armour that Necromancers may wear is made from the skins of intelligent creatures and requires ritual that costs 50 g.p. in extra material components. Most leather workers would be horrified to create such a suit, so specialists must be sought out. Once made, the armour maybe enchanted as normal. Magical leather armour that is found is necromantic 2% of the time.  

Critical hits and Instant Death - for a Hit Dice based game near you

Critical hit and instant death.

Weapons have a critical threat range, which indicates how likely they are to do serious damage. If the threat range is 19-20 it means that if the d20 used to hit scored a 19 or 20 a critical hit has occurred. If the creature struck had only 1 Hit Dice (HD) point it’s reduced to 0 hit points immediately, which probably causes instant death. If it has more than one HD point rolling another d20 and if that roll too was a critical then drop the creatures hit points to 0 hp, and repeat if there are yet more hit dice until a critical isn’t rolled or all threshold . Note that if the roll needs to have hit the opponent to score a critical hit unless a 20 is rolled. 20’s always hit.

The basis for this is that weapons do two types of damage. Instantly fatal damage such as stabbing through the heart that requires precision to kill. Attrition damage, for example bone crushing and muscle damage, allows the wounded to fight on but eventually slays the individual. Attrition damage is generally more easy to achieve.

Example
Drogan, a dwarf armed with a battle axe (+1 to hit, 1d10 damage, crit threat 19+) is fighting a Dreadtouch Megapede which has 12 hit points from 3 Hit Dice. He rolls a 20 to hit, which is a critical. As the Megapede has 3 hit dice it needs 3 crits to instantly kill it. He rolls a 19 but then a 14. The 14, although it hits, isn’t enough to drop his foe to 0 hp immediately. However he rolls 3d10 for damage, 2 for crits and one for the finally successful hit.

Weapons - a rough guide

Daggers are moderately easy to use, do low damage but have a high crit range.
+1, 1d4, 17+

Swords are moderately easy to use, do medium damage and have a good hit range.
+1, 1d8, 18+

Axes are average to use, do high damage and have an average critical hit range
+0, 1d10, 19+

Clubs, Maces and hammers are easy to use, do better than average damage and have a low crit range.
+3, 1d8+1, 20

Spears are moderately easy to use, do medium damage, have an average crit range. They gain a +1 bonus to initiative and have a range of 1 in hand to hand.
+1, 1d8, 19+

Missile weapons generally are average to use, do average damage and have a good crit range.
+0, 1d8, 18+

Spells that target single opponents generally have a average crit range (19+) while area affect spells cause critical hits rarely (20) if they roll to hit.

From this you can see why those people who are poorly trained in combat or are fighting well armoured foes pick crushing weapons like maces, which hit more often at the cost of reduced chances of instant death. Feats, powers, spells etc,. might increase the crit range of attacks.

Creatures and Hit Dice

Most humanoid use 1d6 to determine their hit points, humanoids are more vulnerable to damage than many animals or magical beasts, which use 1d8. Some creatures are brittle but difficult to put down, like skeleton warriors, who have 2 or more hit dice but only 1d4 for hit points, while others are tough but vulnerable, like zombies who use 1d12 for hit points but only have a single hit dice.

It’s perfectly reasonable for GMs to average and round up for creatures when writing adventures rather than rolling all creatures hit point that feature in a dungeon.