Forge Engine combat turns description...

One of the unconventional elements of the Forge Engine RPG is the structure of the turns.   Traditional RPGs have a round/turn structure where each character has a discrete turn within each round.   Their actions occur within their own turn, and time passes in a strangely linear fashion which requires some mental gymnastics to unravel.   Once each character's round is over, play passes on to the next character in the initiative order, etc...

The Forge Engine's combination of an Energy action economy and a system of actions and reactions that are individually costed means that the traditional linear round structure can be replaced with a more non-linear 'do what you want as long as you have the Energy' structure.   Characters can jump in and out of the action as long as they have enough Energy to perform their action; whether it's moving, attacking, reloading, or some other costed action.

As with any system, there are several caveats.   First, characters can take reactions before their first turn in combat, but they can't take actions.   Second, if a character is surprised, they can't take actions or reactions until their first turn, which means that they can't spend Energy to dodge when they're being attacked.

(Dammit, that should be 'Character #2' up there, not Character #3...)

So, what other RPGs have non-traditional round and turn structures for combat?

Maze of the Minotaur Adventure Playtest

Playtester 0 (Violet, aged 4) and I spent an hour last night playing through the Hero Kids premium adventure Maze of the Minotaur.

I've mentioned Maze of the Minotaur briefly before, but this adventure deserves some attention because it's quite different from the game's normal adventures.   Maze of the Minotaur is different because it features a randomly generated maze and randomly generated encounters in the maze.

The maze is generated from a set of over 30 random cavern tiles, so each time the heroes move off the edge of a tile, the GM takes the top tile from the pile and (if it fits) puts it down to extend the maze.   If it doesn't fit, the GM puts it on the bottom of the tile and takes another (rinse, repeat).   The tiles include straight tunnels, t-intersections, crossroads, and corner pieces so there's a huge amount of variety on offer for junior adventurers.

The GM also rolls 3d6 to generate a random encounter for each new tile that the heroes enter.   For example, a roll of 3 (three 1s) gives a rock-fall trap, 11 is an encounter with giant rats, 12 is an encounter the titular minotaur, and any total of 15+ means the heroes discover the minotaur's lair, which is the actual goal of the adventure.

But enough this talk, here are some photos from the session.   Enjoy.

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A maze with a minotaur, that's almost as original as Heroes Against Darkness:
Heroes Against Darkness: Downloads.

Sneak peek at a Hero Kids character

So while all of the helpful playtesters are putting Hero Kids through it's paces, I reckon it's a good time to show everyone else what a 'Hero Card' looks like for one of the heroes that's included in the game.  From the card you might be able to work out the basics of the system itself.

First, each of the heroes has four main attributes:
•   Melee (dice pool for melee attacks)
•   Ranged (dice pool for ranged attacks)
•  Magic (dice pool for magic attacks)
•  Armor (dice pool for defending against enemy attacks)

Plus a number of attacks and actions:
•   Normal Attack (melee, ranged, or magic)
•   Special Action (usually a special attack or other action)
•   Special Ability (a passive ability based on the hero's specialty)

Finally, heroes can also have these items and skills:
•   Healing Potions (these are used in combat to heal the hero)
•   Inventory Items (these can be used in adventuring)
•   Skills (these can be used in adventuring or role-playing)

Hero Kids works as a simple skirmish game or as a full RPG, and the characters themselves have layers of complexity so that they are usable by kids from 4 to 10.  Younger kids just have to use their dice pools and their Normal Attack, while older kids can use tactics and their heroes' Special Actions and Abilities to tackle hard combats and other adventuring and role-playing obstacles.

If I've designed the Hero Cards it right, this example card should pretty much tell you about the underlying mechanics of the game and the possible and probable variations in the heroes that come with the game.

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Looking for something more complicated, look no further:
Heroes Against Darkness: Downloads.

D&D Next: Early Thoughts and Opinions...

I've been looking forward to the D&D Next open playtest for quite a while.  I previously blogged about some of the expectations that I had of this new edition and ways to approach making a modular edition of D&D:

•  Mechanics of Attack Bonus Progression
•  D&D 5th Edition DDXP Play Report
•  Making D&D 5th Edition Modular - Part I

Now that the open playtest is here, let's take a look at what the edition actually looks like right now.

+1 Per Level Progression

Well, the designers at WotC have been true to their promise and appear to have flattened the progression curve.  The level steps for Level 2 and Level 3 don't appear to include any increases to characters' attacks, although the fighter does get +1 to damage at Level 3.

My current assumption is that characters will gain some kind of ability score increase(s) at Level 4.  If 4th Edition is a guide, then this increase could be +1 to two different abilities.  All-in-all, this makes for a very flat progression, where characters are only gaining +1 to attacks every 8 levels!

I have nothing against flattened progression, but I do wonder whether players will missing out on some psychological reinforcement that comes from seeing their attacks growing more powerful.  The other issue with the lack of any meaningful progression is that the game then has no way of simulating the skill differential between higher and lower level characters.  The second consequence of this change is that now magic weapons are far more valuable than they have been in any other edition of D&D, which I don't think s their intention (or maybe it is their intention).

Personally, I think if they're getting rid of the ½ level bonus (as used in 4th Edition), then they should offer ability score increases for more often, such as every second level.

HP and Healing

The pre-gen characters in the playtest start with their Constitution + Class HP (6 for fighters, 4 for clerics, 3 for rogues, 2 for wizards).  As they level up, characters only gain Class HP, no Constitution bonus.

Characters also have a number of Hit Dice (d12 for fighters, d8 for clerics, d6 for rogues, d4 for wizards) equal to their level, which can be 'spent' during a Short Rest to regain HP (although in the rules they say this requires a healing kit, which has only 10 uses).  This means that characters can regain about one-third of their total HP during an adventure day without resorting to magic.  This is interesting in that it offers far more mundane healing than any other edition except for 4th Edition.

At a Long Rest characters regain all of their HP and all of their Hit Dice - very 4th Edition.

Vancian Magic

Vancian magic is back for the Wizard pre-gen (yeech).  And making an unwelcome return with this is the absolutely terrible situation where a spell's level is different from the character's level.  Seriously, would it have killed them to spread the spells out so that spell level is equal to character level?

Modularity

There's no sense of the modularity in the playtest documents except that the characters display different sorts of ability types, including Vancian casting and at-will powers.  Again we can only assume that later releases will develop some modular elements.

Proficiencies and Equipment

D&D Next divides weapons and armor into nice groupings (Basic, Finesse, Martial, Heavy weapons), but they then go and ruin the simplicity by using specific language for the weapon proficiencies of wizards (daggers, slings, and quarterstaffs only) but all of the other classes use weapons based on the categories.  Weird.

Attack Bonuses

Just a few notes here.

It looks like fighters and wizards score (somehow) a total of +3 to their attacks, fighters get this for melee and ranged attacks and wizards get this for the magic attacks.  For the melee and ranged attacks, +2 of this seems to come from the character's proficiency but +1 of it is a 'mystery' bonus that I can't account for.

It also looks like monsters have a +2 attack bonus, probably from some underlying proficiency bonus.

Monsters

Monsters have no level (listed), but they do get lots of HP.  Even the toughest monster (the gnoll pack lord) has only 66 HP and +6 to attack (+4 from his 18 Str and +2 proficiency).  To be fair, that gnoll has a few special actions (no, they're not 'powers', really) that make it stronger than the 66 HP would suggest.

Action Economy

So they've gutted the action economy from 4th edition, and have an ad hoc series of actions.  First, characters can perform one action each turn, they can also move during their turn (before, after or split around their action), there are also a series of 'incidental' actions that are 'free'.

The problem with this ad hoc codification is that it introduces silly situations like the Healing Word spell, which when cast allows the caster to make a melee or ranged attack or to cast another 'minor' spell.  How much ink is going to be spent so that they don't have to codify certain spells or incidental actions as Move Actions or Minor Actions?

Save of Die

Maybe it's a mistake, but there's a save or die effect on the Medusa, where you have to avert your eyes to avoid her Petrifying Gaze.  If you avert, you are disadvantaged against her (always roll two dice and take the lowest).  If you're surprised or don't avert your gaze, you just save vs petrification (Constitution vs. DC 12) or permanently turn to stone.

Advantages/Disadvantages

After all of that D&D Next does something that I consider wholly unnecessary: it introduces an Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic to the game.  Sometimes the game will specify that you have advantage or disadvantage, such as when attacking a paralyzed character or when your character is blinded.  When you have advantage, you roll two d20s and take the higher result. When you have disadvantage then you roll two d20s and take the lower score.  It does make me wonder whether they'll change the name of the system to dd20 now?

My problem with the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is that D&D already has a bunch of mechanics for bonuses and penalties to attacks and ability tests, so I don't understand why the game needs another way of representing these adjustments, especially a mechanic that only has one magnitude.  Also, don't think that this entirely replaces bonuses and penalties.  Advantages and disadvantages work alongside bonuses and penalties, so if you're prone you take -2 to attacks, but if you're blinded then you have disadvantage on your attacks (but attackers don't seem to get advantage against you, which is weird).

Summing Up

So, all in all I'm interested in this flattening of the progression curve, but the rest of it isn't really grabbing me.  It looks like they're really trying to target the OSR crowd, but the cost of accommodating those players is pretty high for the rest of us.

We're playing a session of this on Monday, so it'll be interesting to see what the other guys think!

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You could be playing Heroes Against Darkness instead: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

+2 Is Easy

One of the goals for the classes in Heroes Against Darkness was that each of them should be easily able to gain +2 to their Attacks, whether it's a melee attack, a ranged attack, or a spell attack.  The game's combat powers are all based on class specialties, situational bonuses, or trade-offs, so each of the classes draws from these possibilities for their specific attack power that grants +2 to hit.

Heroes Against Darkness has an assumed hit chance of around 45% (hitting on a 12), based on the standard progression and monster stats, so the extra +2 on offer immediately switches this to 55% (hitting on a 10). Each of the classes gains this +2 in different ways, so let's take a tour:

Warrior

Warriors have the most straightforward method of gaining their +2. The Careful Strike power allows warriors to trade off some damage (2 damage per damage tier), for +2 to attack:

Careful Strike

Condition	Target in melee range.
Attack	Melee + 2 vs. AD
Damage Level 4: Level 8: Level 12:	Weapon + Melee – 2 2d Weapon + Melee –4 3d Weapon + Melee –6 4d Weapon + Melee –8

Heroes Against Darkness Version 1.0 Released!

Well, editing has taken several weeks longer than I anticipated but it's done now, so v1.0 of Heroes Against Darkness is released:

The major changes and updates for this revision are:

• Changed Stabilize to be a major action, not a full action
• Changed opposed movement to be a major action, not a move action
• Rewrote Introduction and Character Creation intro
• Updated character sheet
• Updated character creation instructions
• New art for races
• Added Smack It Off power for some monsters
• Added Shake It Off by default for all monsters
• Edit pass over entire document (kill me)
• New cover art, take that!
• Clarified that magic doesn’t stack on Attacks/Defenses
• Fixed Divine Strike anima cost
• Changed immobilized condition to be –2 to Defenses
• Clarified rogues’ Backstab Attack power
• Added ghouls, kobolds and lich to Beasts & Bastards
• Adjusted several necromancer spells to have X costs
• Clarified that allies are other creatures, not the character
• Added swooshy thing at the top of all pages
• Updated monster art
• Added cover art page
• Split Acknowledgements from Art Credits
• Moved Combat and Role-Playing Encounter sections

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Check out Heroes Against Darkness over at the downloads page: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Alpha Rules Updated to v0.244

I've updated the downloadable Heroes Against Darkness Alpha rules to v0.244.

This is a huge revision of the rules, and incorporates many of the significant changes I've been discussing here on the blog and over on the Game Design & Development forums at rpg.net.

Healing, Anima and Resting

The biggest single change to the game system has been a full overhaul of the Healing Powers and resting in the game.

First, the old Healing Powers (Rally, Recuperate, Rejuvenate, Regenerate) have been removed and replaced with a single Rallypower that is available to all classes at Level 1.

Previously, the Healing Powers healed fixed amounts of Health Points, didn't regain any Anima Points. They also had some fairly fiddly rules for when they could be used. The new Rally power rolls up the regeneration of Health Points and Anima Points during encounters and in short rests into one single power.

Instead of healing fixed amounts of HP, Rally now allows the character to regain half of the amount that their Health Points and Anima Points are depleted.

This change also meant that I made a slight (but significant) change to the formula for Anima Points:

• Anima Points: 5 + Magic Bonus

The final part of this package of changes was to allow the Rally power to be used at short rests, and to allow multiple short rests to be taken between encounters (but each with a longer duration than the last, starting at 15 minutes, then 1 hour, then 4 hours).

Rally

Action Time	Full action
Power Effect	Character regains ½ of the amount by which their Health and Anima Points are depleted. +4 to all Defenses until end of character‟s next turn.
Special	This power can only be used once per encounter

With this change, I've also changed to rules for Resting:

Rule: Characters can take short rests after encounters. Rule: At a short rest, characters can use their Rally power to recover Health Points and Anima Points. Rule: At a long rest, characters recover all of their Health Points and Anima Points.

And I've updated the examples of resting:

Example: Rothgar the berserker, Brythil the warrior, Charlange the warlock and have just fought and defeated a vengeful spirit, leaving Rothgar with just 9 HP (out of 31) and Brythil with 16 HP (out of 28). Charlange has emerged unscathed, but his remaining AP is just 3 (out of 10). When they all used their Rally power at a short rest, Rothgar regains 11 HP, taking him up to 20 HP. Brythil regains 6 HP, so he goes to 22 HP. Charlange regains 3 Anima, taking him to 6 AP.

Other Major Changes

Here are the other big changes:
• Changed some fonts! :-)
• Split example character sheet section into two pages for clarity
• Major edit pass over the whole book.
• Added a 7th Role-Playing Tip to the Role-Playing Encounters section.
• Updated the Combat Encounters section with more examples of powers.
• Conditions section revised, including sections on how to remove ongoing, enforced and area conditions and effects.
• Clarified the healing rules for dying or stabilized characters (returns them to 1 HP, but dazed until the end of their next turn).
• Changed magic Armor enhancements (e.g. +1) to apply to all Defenses, not just AD.
• Updated Powers: Attacks & Spells section with more examples of each of the components of powers.
• Major revision of all class powers.
• Recuperate, Rejuvenate and Regenerate have been removed and replaced with three all-new attack powers for all of the martial classes.
• Unified all ability test powers to use the same difficulty (15 + level of caster or creature that applied the spell effect or condition).
• All martial classes now have five Level 1 powers, two powers each level between Level 2 and Level 5, and one power each subsequent level up to Level 10.
• Improved the presentation of Attack and Spell powers to reduce the amount of wasted space and split lines.
• Reworked many spell powers to scale with X Anima.
• Expanded and differentiated spell lists for all magi classes.
• Added huge section for GMs on Ability Tests and difficulties for lots of tests (Perception, Break Doors, Lifting, Diplomacy, Lock Picking, Climbing, Tracking, Swimming).
• Added section on Magic Weapons & Armor with level breakdowns for appropriate pieces.
• Added section on Magic Items with level breakdowns for appropriate stuff.
• Expanded the On Magic section with lots more detail on the Anima cost of specific spell components.
• Updated the appendix tables and stuff at the back for printing for a GM screen.

Beta Soon?

With all of these changes, there are only a few things to clean up before we're Beta!

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Head over to the game rules download page to grab yourself a copy of this bad-boy: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Heroes Against Darkness: Session Report

Some readers might be wondering how Heroes Against Darkness works in play, rather than on paper. So here's a quick recap of our Monday night session.

In the lead up to the session, the six adventurers had been captured by goblins while traveling through an ancient dwarven tunnel that linked a series of beacon towers along a range of mountains. We pick up the story with the adventurers in cells in the goblin's tower, and negotiating with the goblin shaman to rescue the goblin chief who had been captured by human bandits based out of the next beacon tower to the south.

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The goblin shaman returned to the cell-block with an ultimatum: Help the goblins or else. Luckily, the various members of the party had come to their senses, and negotiated the release of four of the party to rescue the goblin chief from the bandits who were holed up in the next beacon tower some 12 miles to the south. After some discussion, they decided that it was best to leave behind Gorlock the barbarian and Wraistlin the warlock, and to take the Boags the warrior, Stark the hospiter, Sting the hunter and Maza the warlock.

Their decision made, the shaman knocked out the four heroes, who woke up on the mountain pathway that led away from the goblin's tower down to the foot of the mountains. At this point the path widened somewhat, but through the middle of this wide section ran a deep crevasse. The goblin shaman and his minions stood on the other side of the crevasse, waiting for their captives to wake.

Once they were awake, the goblins threw the characters' equipment across to them and pointed the way to the bandit's tower, which was visible some distance to the south. The goblin shaman also threw across a small pouch of healing potions to aid the characters in their quest to rescue his chief.

The smaller party struck out down the path, then followed it into the woods at the foot of the mountain range. During their journey south, the group discussed their plan and decided to try to enlist the help of the bandits in a counter-attack against the goblins.

Some three miles from the bandit's tower, the group came upon a human lookout asleep at his post up in a tree. The party woke him and demanded that he take them to the tower. The lookout claimed that the tower was haunted (been there himself) and warned the party away. The party members insisted and ended up scaring the lookout, who fled into the forest, pursued by the hunter. The fellow proved evasive and lost the hunter to make good his escape.

Resuming their journey, the party came across another person on the side of the road, just a mile or so short of the tower. Again the second lookout warned them away from the tower, but the party convinced him that they had come from the goblin's tower and were here to see his leader. The lookout fetched the bandit leader, Jenton.

Jenton, the bandit leader, came to meet the party, with the first lookout in tow (and looking slightly worse for wear). Jenton told the party that the lookout had claimed that the party tried to kill him. The party convinced the bandit leader that the lookout was lying, and they had not attacked him. Furious, the bandit leader killed the hopeless lookout, and warned the heroes not to lie to him.

Sting the hunter immediately lied to him about what they wanted from him, prompting a final warning from the bandit leader.

Chastised, the warrior told the bandit leader of their captured allies who were held in the goblin's tower, and how they had severely weakened the goblin forces. Eventually, the bandit leader was convinced, and the party reached an agreement with him to assault the goblin's tower to wipe out the goblins and to rescue their captives.

After some discussion, together they came up with a plan for a three-pronged attack, with the bandits assaulting the tower from the northern and southern dwarven tunnels, while the remaining party members would take the goblin chief back for delivery to the goblin shaman. Ahead of the meeting time (sundown the next day), the party drugged the goblin chief to keep him out of the fight, and Enshrouded the hunter (extending the duration of the spell as well) so that he could take up a strategic position in the rocks above the rift-breached mountain pathway.

At the appointed time, the party arrived for the handover. When the goblin shaman arrived, along with two strong guards, two archers, and two weaker guards.

The party attacked. The goblin shaman acted first and knocked out the hospiter with a Restrain spell, but not before the hospiter immediately used an interrupt spell - Seize Initiative - which increased the initiative of all of the party members. Maza followed up with Wall of Ice, which he used to fashion a bridge across the rift. Boags the warrior grabbed the downed hospiter and dragged him across the ice bridge as he charged at the shaman and his guards. Up in the rocks, the hunter had been sighting the shaman using his Steady power and was ready to fire, a shot which struck the goblin a terrible hit.

The battle then began in earnest, with the goblin shaman Bane-ing the heroes to reduce their attack rolls and also calling forth a Mystic Warrior, whose attacks distracted the warrior by forcing him to attack the apparition. The Restrained hospiter managed to use his Shake It Off power to end the effects of the shaman's spell, and re-entered the fight as well as offering some limited healing to the other party members.

Maza the warlock used as much of his Anima as he could on several Chain Lightning spells, which coursed through the battlefield and electrocuted the shaman's cohorts. As the battle raged, the shaman and his archers managed to knock the hospiter unconscious with a few good arrow hits. With the hospiter down and their healing potions all gone, the party members were out of healing (having forgotten about the own Rally powers). Just as Boags himself was knocked out, Maza used the last of his blood Anima to cast another Chain Lightning which killed another two of the goblins, leaving just the shaman and three of his guards (one of the tough ones and the two archers).

Up above, the hunter sighted carefully and loosed an arrow which struck and killed the goblin shaman. With the shaman dead, the remaining guard fled towards the ice bridge (created by the Wall of Ice spell), just as the spell expired, and promptly plunged into the crevasse as the ice gave way beneath him. The two archers fled back towards the tower, but then came screaming back, pursued and quickly cut down by human bandits who'd made their way from the dwarven tunnels and had successfully overwhelmed the remaining goblins inside the tower.

As the smoke cleared, two of the adventurers lay dying on the ground (Stark the hospiter and Boags the warrior), Maza the warlock was on 4 HP (having spent a great deal of blood Anima through the course of the fight) and the hunter was unhurt!

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Total combatants:
- Stark the hospiter (Level 5)
- Boags the warrior (Level 5)
- Sting the hunter (Level 5)
- Maza the warlock (Level 5)

- Goblin Shaman (Level 7)
- 2x Goblin Guards (Level 3 each)
- 2x Goblin Minions (Level 3 each)
- 2x Goblin Archers (Level 3 each)

Total Party Level: 20
Total Enemy Level: 22

Combat Rounds: About 8?
Combat Duration: 60 minutes (this was probably a bit slow because one of the players was controlling two characters he wasn't familiar with; the hospiter and the warlock)

20 Quick Questions for Heroes Against Darkness

20 Questions about my Heroes Against Darkness campaign from Brandon at Untimately:

1. Ability scores generation method?
The system supports 3d6, 4d6 drop lowest, point array and point buy:

Method 1: Normal Player Characters
Roll 3d6 six times, then choose which ability to assign each score.
This method gives an unadjusted cumulative total of 64.

Method 2: Epic Player Characters
Roll 4d6 (drop the lowest dice) six times, and then choose which ability to assign each score.
This method gives an unadjusted cumulative total of 73.

Method 3: Point Array
Assign the following scores to one each of the Ability Scores: 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10.
This method gives an unadjusted cumulative total of 76.

Method 4: Point Spread
Spread a total of 75 points (or another agreed amount) amongst the six abilities.
No ability score can be less than 8 and no score can be more than twice as high as the lowest.

In our current campaign, the players used the 4d6 method. This led to some disparity, with both of the Warlocks having cumulative ability score totals of over 80 points.

2. How are death and dying handled?
Heroes Against Darkness has these pretty straightforward death and dying rules:
• Unconscious at 0 HP
• Dying from -1 HP
• No single attack can take a character to less than -5 HP
• Dying character loses 1 HP/round
• Stabilize a dying character with an ability test
• Death occurs immediately at -10 HP

The -5 HP clamp for a single attack is because character and enemy damage in Heroes Against Darkness scales at higher levels, so characters can end up taking enough damage to take them from quite alive to dead-dead without this rule.

3. What about raising the dead?
All of the magi classes have a spell variant that allows them to raise the dead:

• Warlock: L10 Reincarnate (Transfers character's soul into new body)
• Healer/Hospiter: L8 Restore Life (Returns dead character to 1 HP)
• Canonate: L9 Resurrect (Returns dead character to 1 HP, but with Ability Scores temporarily lowered)
• Necromancer: L10 Reanimate (Returns dead character to 1 HP, but with Ability Scores permanently reduced by 1)
• Mystic: L10 Recall Soul (Returns dead character to 1 HP, Wisdom permanently reduced by 2)

These powerful spell powers also temporarily reduce the caster's Wisdom score by the level of the spells target. The caster's wisdom score then improves by 1 for each full rest.

In my campaign, characters who have died have been dead-dead. The other characters haven't had access to the resurrection spells, so we've used character deaths (which occured in an almost TPK) to introduce new characters.

4. How are replacement PCs handled?
The recent character deaths wiped out most of the party, so we used that opportunity to introduce a whole new adventuring party that picked up close to where the old characters died and then went on to rescue the only survivor of the previous party from a band of orc raiders that he'd been sold to.

5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
Individual initiative for all characters and for groups of monsters.

6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
Critical hits are worth maximum damage, critical fumbles aren't in the game system (but the GM is always welcome to house-rule it).

7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
Nope, helmets are an integral part of any set of armor. If you're specifically not wearing a helmet I imagine your armor defense would be lower.

This is slightly reminiscent of 'called shots', where characters gain bonuses from trying to hit specific locations on an enemy's body. I like to think that the character is always trying to damage the enemy as much as possible, so there's no point to introducing specific 'called shot' mechanic (unless they're trying to achieve something specific, like disrupting a bowman's shot or something).

Having said that, Heroes Against Darkness has a few melee powers that replicate some of the mechanical effects of called shot. These powers are Careful Strike and Powerful Blow:

Careful Strike (Level 1)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus +2
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 4: Level 8: Level 12:	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus – 2 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus – 4 3d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus – 6 4d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus – 8

Powerful Strike (Level 2)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus -2
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 5: Level 9: Level 13:	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus + 2 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus + 4 3d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus + 6 4d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus + 8

Mechanically, these offer the sort of trade-offs of a called shot (extra damage for reduced hit chance or less damage for increased hit chance), but without the rigmarole of hitting a particular part of an opponent.

8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
Nope, not in the rules. But as ever, GM discretion applies.

9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
Depends on the encounter and the state of the player's characters. Last night they ran away from a couple of spear-fang spiders when they were exploring an ancient beacon tower, having just survived a large fight with the spider queen and her minions.

10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
Nope, but temporary ability draining could be interesting.

11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
Nope, there's no Save-Or-Die. Death is only through loss of HP, not through absolute binary spell powers.

12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked?
Barely.

13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?
Well, the system offers the GM the discretion to require training or any other requirement before the characters gain levels. New spells and martial powers are automatically gained.

I personally allow the characters to gain levels at a short rest.

14. What do I get experience for?
Experience is gained for overcoming challenges, which might include:
• Beating or otherwise overcoming monsters
• Solving puzzles
• Disarming or avoiding traps
• Overcoming adversarial NPCs
• Completing quests

15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
This is up to the GM. Ability tests for the character's perception are the usual way that I run these, which involves a d20 dice roll plus their intelligence bonus (intelligence modifier + ½ level bonus).

16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
Not encouraged or discouraged, daily costs are listed for various hire rates. Morale is at the GM's discretion.

17. How do I identify magic items?
Using the Identify Magic spell:

Identify Magic (2 Anima) (Level 2)

Spell Effect	Discern magical enchantments of an object or area. 1 enchantment per caster level (lowest level enchantment first).
Casting Time	10 minutes
Range	1 object or area

18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
Yes, but in my campaign they're rare. Potions can be bought, if you can find someone to sell them to you.

19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
Scrolls, Potions, and Wands can be created from spells. The spell powers for creating these are introduced at levels 3, 7, and 7, respectively. As with the resurrection spells, creating these sorts of magic items actually temporarily reduce the caster's wisdom score.

20. What about splitting the party?
Up to the players. They've done a little bit when some players have been missing for a week, but generally they're well-drilled to keep the party together.

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Check out the full rules for Heroes Against Darkness over at the downloads page: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Gameplay Tuning for Solo Adventures...

It's been a quiet week here on the blog, not because I've been slack, but because I've been working on the solo adventure for Heroes Against Darkness.

The adventure itself is adapted from a location that I used with my players at the start of our current campaign. The players were washed up on an island, having escaped from enslavement on a trade galley. While exporing the island, they can across an abandoned tower that was said to be the original home of a powerful sorcerer.

So I've taken the tower map and adapted that adventure for just one character, which is proving tricky.

I was up late last night running through the first encounter with the pregen Warrior character that comes packaged with the adventure. The first time I ran it, there were three monsters in the encounter. Without using any healing, my character survived the encounter 65% of the time (after 20 runs). This isn't great for the first encounter of an introductory adventure, so I removed one of the monsters and reduced the stats of the two that remained. When I ran through the encounter again, I survived the encounter 85% of the time (again after 20 runs). In the three runs where I died, it was mainly down to lots of bad rolls by me combined with critical hits from the baddies.

I think that 85% survival is a much more realistic and desirable rate, but it will be interesting to see whether that's too hard when combined with the rest of the module. The adventure itself has five full encounters, two against single monsters, two against groups of weaker monsters, and one final fight against a strong boss monster with some weaker minions.

Here's a preview of one of the encounter maps.  As you can see, I've tried to keep the style of a hand-drawn map you'd get from your GM:

As it stands, the solo adventure portion is finished, the encounter maps are done and the pregen characters are done. All I need now is an image for the front of the adventure (a sundered tower) and to tune the rest of the fights.

Wish me luck.

Head over to the game rules download page to check out the system: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Heroes Against Darkness: Alpha rules updated to v0.200

I've updated the downloadable Heroes Against Darkness Alpha rules to v0.200.



The major changes are:
• Switched page format to US Letter (reluctantly)
• Removed the damage section from monsters (was redundant and didn't reflect their different attacks)
• Fixed some minor issues in the example character creation maths
• Clarified that the relevant Attack Bonus is added to damage rolls, subject to the details of the power (Melee Bonus for melee attacks, Ranged Bonus for ranged attacks and Magic Bonus for Magic attacks)
• Added Dragons to the Beasts and Bastards section as examples of Boss monsters
• Added grid image to clarify movement rules in combat (when using a grid)
• Added guidelines for creating viable boss monsters
• Reduced HP gain from healing powers from 10, 20, 30, 40 to 10, 15, 20, 25, but also changed these to add Constitution Bonus instead of Modifier
• Split cover and invisibility in the combat rules
• Clarified difficulty of dying Stabilization ability tests
• Clarified use of Healing Powers between encounters
• Allowed Bastard Swords to be used one or two-handed, dealing either d10 or d12 damage (dedicated two-handed weapons deal 2d6 damage)
• Adjusted encumberance to only affect characters at their weight limit or one item from their weight limit (used to be two items from the limit)
• Expanded power glossary
• Consolidated higher level martial powers into their base power, with details of changes to the power at higher levels
• Moved some spells so that none are higher than Level 10
• Adjusted some spell costs to reflect rule that the caster can spend no more than the Level + 1 Anima on a single spell
• Added Reflex Strike, Takedown, Reflex Trip and Quick Strike powers which are similar to Attacks of Opportunity
• Expanded martial power list for Warriors and Barbarians (these are now complete up to Level 10)
• Clarified how to adjust Party Level for combat encounters when there is a discrepancy between the player character levels and the monster levels at high levels
• Started section on Pre-Built Encounters
• Expanded Tuning and Modding section with more tweaks to give the game an 'old-school' feel
• Added an appendix of useful tables that can be printed to be used as a DM screen

Head over to the game rules download page to grab yourself a copy of this bad-boy: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Heroes Against Darkness: Development Update

Now that the alpha rules of Heroes Against Darkness have been publically released for a few weeks, it's a good time to let you guys know what I'm working on at the moment and what I'm thinking about working on.

Stuff I'm Working On:

Filling Out the Martial Powers

As I mentioned in this blog post, I've collapsed all of higher level variants of the martial powers into the single base power and added details of the changes at higher levels, like this:

Careful Strike (Warrior Level 1)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus + 2
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 4: Level 8: Level 12:	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 2 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 4 3d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 6 4d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 8

This has had the desirable effect of reducing the length of the power list for the martial characters (yay for the trees!), but it's also thinned out the powers at higher levels. Previously, martial characters had a couple of powers listed each level for every level up to 10 and higher. Now, the new powers gradulally fall off between level 6 and 7. I'd really like the martial characters to have unique powers all the way to level 10, so I've been working on filling out those higher levels with appropriate powers.

For example, at level 10 Barbarians have a unique interrupt power:

Hard to Kill (Barbarian Level 10)

Action Time	Interrupt
Interrupt Condition	When the character is hit with an attack that would reduce his or her HP to 0 or less.
Power Effect	Character immediately reduces the damage by Constitution Bonus. The power cannot be used again until the start of the character's next turn.

One of the things I think I'll try to do for each of the classes is give them an appropriate interrupt power at higher level, like the Barbarian's Hard to Kill example. I think that these are interesting powers to play, and players of high level characters should have had enough experience with the game to be able to handle the intricacies of Interupt martial powers.

The goal is ultimately to have all of the martial classes have five powers at level 1 (including Melee Attack and Ranged Attack), 2 powers each at levels 2-5, and 1 new power each level from 6-10. This will give each martial class a total of 17 powers once they reach level 10.

HAD SOLO 01: A Solo Adventure

So another thing I've been working on is a short solo adventure, along the lines of the Ghost Tower of Witchling Fens adventure by Robert J. Schwalb from Dungeon Magazine issue 182.

The idea of this solo adventure is to allow people who are thinking about running Heroes Against Darkness with their play groups to try out a short adventure on their own to familiarize themselves with the underlying principles of the rules. The adventure will come with a few pre-generated level 1 characters, presented like those in the Pathfinder Beginner Box. The Pathfinder characters are printed on a landscape sheet, with the character sheet itself in the middle, and then the left and right margins include relevant rules information and powers for the character.

I've just finished the flow-chart of the adventure (using Twine, which is an awesome gamebook authoring tool), and I need to add in the encounters, create the pre-gen characters, playtest it and then package it all up.

Drop me an email if you'd like to playtest the solo adventure.

Stuff I'm Thinking About:

High Level Spells

With the move to have unique martial powers effectively top out at level 10, I'm thinking about bringing the higher level spell powers back to a maximum of level 10.

One of my goals with the spell powers in Heroes Against Darkness is to make sure that they never become useless at higher levels (via scaling power spells with X anima costs, etc), so clamping the most powerful spells to level 10 shouldn't have a huge mechanical effect. Right now, the most powerful spells are the variantions on ressurection that each magi class has:

• Warlock: L13 Reincarnate (Transfers character's soul into new body)
• Healer: L10 Restore Life (Returns dead character to 1HP)
• Canonate: L11 Ressurect (Returns dead character to 1HP, but with Ability Scores temporarily lowered)
• Necromancer: L12 Reanimate (Returns dead character to 1HP, but with Ability Scores permanently reduced by 1)
• Mystic: L13 Recall Soul (Returns dead character to 1HP, Wisdom permanently reduced by 2)

So all of these spells will have to come back to level 10 at the highest, which means that Restore Life might need to drop down to level 8 and the Reincarnate and Recall Soul will top our at level 10.

Opportunity Attacks

Everyone hates opportunity attacks, right?

Maybe not necessarily everyone, but lots of people hate them and lots of other people love them. So, right now I'm thinking about introducing opportunity attacks (or something like them) to each class.

The problem with opportunity attacks in 3rd Edition and 4th Edition is that they are very powerful, and those games added lots of associated powers that made them even more powerful (such as feats and attacks that trigger off opportunity attacks). So what I want to do is to introduce something like opportunity attacks (such as a Reflex Strike, for example) with a few differences:
• They're only available to martial classes
• They're not available until the character is capable of dealing 2d melee damage (level 3, 4, 5 or 6)
• Each class's variation of the attack might be different, for example a Rogue might trip an opponent instead of hitting him
• The attack will deal less damage than usual
• The attack will have a trade-off cost, which is the condition Hindered (character only has Major, Minor and Free Action - no Move Action)

Here's an example of the power for a Reflex Strike:

Reflex Strike (Level 4 Warrior)

Action Time	Interrupt
Interrupt Condition	Target moves out of melee range and moves more than 10' in a single move.
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 8: Level 12: Level 16:	Melee Bonus Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus
Power Effect	Character is Hampered until end of character's next turn

Spell Anima Costs

Another area that's been taking a lot of hind-brain bandwidth is the underlying principles that are used to determine the Anima costs of spells. Originally I just eyeballed the spells and their levels to determine their costs, but a couple of spells crept in that were way too powerful (for their cost), such as one of the early versions of the Plasma Bolts spell. When that happened I set about creating a set of guidelines for the cost of spells, which now appear in the On Magic section of the Game Master's Guide.

Basically, I'm trying to nail down the relationship between the each of the aspects of a spell:
• Magnitude of the effect (such as number of dice of healing or damage, or the amount of a bonus or penalty that it applies)
• Number of targets
• Ongoing duration
• Defense it targets
• Range
• Effect range (such as a radius)
• Persistence of effects in the environment

Ultimately, I'd like to create a set of guidelines so that any GM can work out the Anima cost of (almost) any spell.

This process is proving tricky, especially when factoring in spells with multiple targets or that deal multiple dice of damage (or healing). The first step I've taken along this path was to (reluctantly) create an additional rule:
• Rule: Magi cannot spend more Anima than 1 + Level on a single spell.

This rule prevents casters from simply discharging all of their Anima at once into a single target or in some other fashion.

I hate papering over cracks with rules, but I think that this one is core to the power of a spellcaster.

HAD ADVENTURE 01: An Adventure Module

I've been running my play group using Heroes Against Darkness now since last May (when the rules were about 30 pages long). I plan to turn some of these materials into a module that will be ready for the 1.0 release of Heroes Against Darkness.

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The current stable version of the rules can always be found here: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Mechanics of Attack Bonus progression in D&D and Heroes Against Darkness

One of the areas of D&D that has changed in most editions is the way that the game deals with the gradual improvements to a character's abilities over time. Each of the editions has some mechanism to reflect each character's skill improvement as they gain levels. In the earliest editions, this is achieved through predefined tables, whereas 4th edition (and Heroes Against Darkness), the improvement is calculated by summing inherent character properties (½ Level Bonus, Ability Score modifiers, weapon or magic modifiers).

+1 Per Level Through the Ages

Let's take a tour through the editions to see how each of them achieved the +1 per level progression:

Basic/AD&D:
• Character Hit Roll tables that progressively adjust the predefined number that must be rolled to hit a specific Armor Class

2nd Edition:
• Calculated THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0) tables, only defining the roll needed to hit a 0 Armor Class, with the player left to work out the actual target number for the dice roll for the monster's AC

3rd Edition:
• Base Attack Bonus (BAB), which increases (for fighters) at +1 per level, progressively slower for other classes
• Ability score increases (to a single score) at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th Level (etc.)

4th Edition:
• Calculated Attack Bonus, which is the sum of Ability Score Modifier + ½ Level + Modifiers.
• Ability score increases (to a single score) at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th Level (etc.)

Heroes Against Darkness:
• Calculated Melee Bonus and Ranged bonus, which is the sum of ½ Level + Ability Score Modifier + Modifiers.
• Ability score increases to two different scores at 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th Level (etc.)

Components of +1 Per Level

In my previous post about the mechanics of 5th Edition, I fully broke down the attack bonus progression for 4th Edition and Heroes Against Darkness:

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition has the following underlying ingredients to achieve the +1 per level progression:
• ½ Level Bonus
• Weapon or magic enhancement every 5th level (assumed +1 weapon at level 5, +2 at level 10, etc)
• Ability score modifier increase every 7th or 8th level (via +1 to two ability scores every 4th level and then semi-randomly after that)
• Various feats and proficiencies that are available to the player, but are sometimes not chosen

If you add up the first three of these, you end up with a progression of about +0.85 per level, with the remainder (+0.15) coming from various feats. The 4th Edition feats that are used to plug these gaps include:
• Weapon Focus
• Weapon Talent
• Weapon/Implement Expertise

Heroes Against Darkness has the following components in its progression:
• ½ Level Bonus
• Improved weapon or magic enhancement every 4th level (assumed +1 weapon at level 4, +2 at level 8, etc)
• Ability score modifier increase every 4th level (via +1 to two ability scores every 2nd level starting at level 3)

Analysis of +1 Per Level Progression

The major difference between the earliest editions of D&D and 'modern' editions like 4th and Heroes Against Darkness is that the modern editions take into account more factors when calculating the +1 per level progression, such as magic weapons or other sundry equipment.

From Basic to the 3rd Edition of D&D, the progression does not factor in any magic weapons that the characters have. 4th edition and Heroes Against Darkness offer DMs guidance for when players are expected to earn better weapons and enhancements (with the obvious ability for GMs to accelerate or slow the distribution of these items).

From a mechanical point of view, the major difference between the two options is that in the early editions, there's no expected progression, so characters of the same level in different games may have vastly different attack bonuses, depending on the generosity or stinginess of their respective GMs.

For the modern game (4th Edition and Heroes Against Darkness) there are similarities and differences. Both systems employ the ½ Level bonus, but Heroes Against Darkness offers more frequent ability score modifier increases (every 4th level) and improved weapon or magic enhancement bonuses (also every 4th level, but staggered) to compensate for not having feats with mechanical bonuses.

In combination, Heroes Against Darkness' three elements add up to +1 per level, like this:

Level 2: ½ Level Bonus increases (+1)
Level 3: Characters find improved weapon or magic enhancement (+1)
Level 4: ½ Level Bonus increases (+1)
Level 5: Player increases primary Ability Score to an even number (+1)
...and so on...

The difference here underscores the characteristics and emphasis of each of the games. 4th Edition, like 3rd before it, is a game which offers players lots of character build choices of feats and powers. Heroes Against Darkness doesn't offer character build choices for feats and powers, instead predefining the powers for each class to keep the game simple and streamlined.

Advantages of Calculated +1 Per Level Progression

As I see it, the advantage of a modern calculated +1 per level progression is that it can apply to more than just melee attacks.

For example, in Heroes Against Darkness, I use calculated bonuses for each of the types of attacks in the game:
Melee Bonus: Strength Bonus + ½ Level Bonus + Modifiers
Ranged Bonus: Dexterity Bonus + ½ Level Bonus + Modifiers
Magic Bonus: Wisdom Bonus + ½ Level Bonus + Modifiers

The progression of these is inherent in the rules and reward systems.

For Hunters, their Ranged Bonus will increase at +1 per level because the player will likely increase his character's Dexterity Score by +1 every second level and the GM will likely grant that player an improved ranged weapon as treasure at appropriate points in the campaign (approximately every 4th level). This same progression applies to each of the classes, where the player will increase their character's most important Ability Score every 2nd level, and the GM will reward the players with improved weapons or magic enhancements approximately every 4th level.

Furthermore, because there are no feats or power choices, there are no bad decisions that the players can make, such as not choosing the right feats (such as the essential feat taxes) or the ideal powers for their class (or race).

Grab the Alpha version from the downloads page to see for yourself whether it's succeeded: Heroes Against Darkness.

Omit Needless Powers*

* With apologies to Strunk & White...

The current Alpha version (v0.189) of Heroes Against Darkness represents each of the improved attack powers as their own separate power. Generally, these improved versions of the powers then slot into the class's power list every 4th level (or so).

For example, the Warrior's Melee Attack is superceded by Superior Melee Attack at Level 4:

Melee Attack (Level 1)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus
Against	Armor Defense
Damage	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus

Superior Melee Attack (Level 4)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus
Against	Armor Defense
Damage	2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus

In order to reduce redundancy, I'm going to change the format of the individual combat powers so that each base power incorporates the higher level scaling:

Melee Attack (Level 1)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 4 Level 8 Level 12	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus 3d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus 4d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus

Another example:

Careful Strike (Level 1)

Condition	Target in melee range
Attack	d20 + Melee Bonus + 2
Against	Armor Defense
Damage Level 4 Level 8 Level 12	Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 2 2d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 4 3d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 6 4d Weapon Damage + Melee Bonus - 8

This should reduce the long list of class powers and allow me to introduce more unique powers at higher levels. It also means that players can be sure that each of the powers on their list has a unique effect.

The downside is that players will have a bit more reading to do when looking for a power to use as they review even their earliest powers to check when they scale.

Making D&D 5th Edition Modular: Part II

The previous post in this series looked at a few of the underlying concepts of a unified modular D&D system, and also some of the disparate mechanics that would need to be reconciled in the new system:
• Core Mechanic (d20)
• Ability Score Bonuses (Ability Score - 10 / 2)
• Gradual improvement (+1 per level mechanics)

Before I look at Combat, Themes, Feats, and Skills in more detail, there are a couple of general areas that require further investigation:
• Gradual improvement mechanics
• Balancing modular mechanics

Gradual Improvement Mechanics

In the previous post, I looked briefly at the options for how to implement the +1 per level mechanic that is present in each of the editions (but implemented differently in each). At this stage, it's worth having a closer look at how this mechanic has been implemented in various editions, and how it could be implemented in a unified system.

D&D 4th Edition uses a variant of this system which is both interesting and broken at the same time. The ½ Level bonus in 4th Edition is great because it can be combined with gradually increasing ability scores and magic enhancements to met the assumed +1 per level. However, in practise 4th Edition's rules mean that the rate of increases in ability scores and magic items is not fast enough, meaning that the edition has increasingly relied on feats to patch the holes in this progression.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition has the following underlying mechanics for the +1 per level progression:
• ½ Level Bonus
• Magic enhancement every 5th level (assumed +1 weapon at level 5, +2 at level 10, etc)
• Ability score modifier increase every 7th or 8th level (via +1 to two ability scores every 4th level and then semi-randomly after that)
• Various feats and proficiencies that are available to the player, but are sometimes not chosen

If you add up the first three of these, you end up with a progression of about +0.85 per level, with the remander (+0.15) coming from various feats. The 4th Edition feats that are used to plug these gaps include:
• Weapon Proficiency (+2 to hit)
• Weapon Focus
• Weapon Talent
• Weapon/Implement Expertise

The problem with these feats is that they are optional for players. So in many cases, casual players will choose non-optimal feats, and their characters will fall behind the expected progression, leading to large mechanical imbalances between optimal and non-optimal characters.

Now a system that doesn't support feats (or makes them optional), can't rely on feats to be a key component of the game's progression and mechanics, so 5th Edition is going to need to satisfy the +1 per level without feats.

As I mentioned, I 'solved' this issue in Heroes Against Darkness with the following:
• ½ Level Bonus
• Magic enhancement every 4th level (assumed +1 weapon at level 4, +2 at level 8, etc)
• Ability score modifier increase every 4th level (via +1 to two ability scores every 2nd level starting at level 3)

The combination of these three mechanics gives Heroes Against Darkness the assumed +1 per level progression, without feats. Obviously there's some variability here, with the GM able to give magic items sooner or later than the assumed level and with the unlikely situation of players choosing to put both of their ability score increases into non-optimal choices.

In my opinion, D&D 5th Edition is going to need to achieve the planned progression rates in a manner close to what I've got in Heroes Against Darkness so that the system doesn't rely on feats (or any other optional element) to shore up its core progression mechanics.

It's worth asking here whether this +1 per level mechanic is even required in the game at all.

Early editions of D&D had this mechanic through the Character Hit Table, the THAC0 table and the Base Attack Bonuses. While each of these editions generally adhered to +1 per level, there were certain anomalies:
• In all earlier editions, weapon enhancements fell outside of the +1 per level progression, meaning that the character's actual progression could be significantly higher, depending on the generousity of the DM.
• Early editions (especially Basic and AD&D) had no mechanic for balancing monster difficulty against player character aand overall party power.
• Early editions had no mechanism for gradually increasing the power/difficulty of magic attacks.
• 4th Edition matches the +1 per level progression with approximately +1 per level progression for defenses, and +1 per level to monster attacks and defenses, keeping the whole system consistent.

The only alternative that I can think of is if they somehow removed all of the assumed gradual improvement mechanics, and replaced them with a Relative Level mechanic, where you get +1 for each level lower the enemy is than the character, or -1 for each level higher they are than the character. This would also zero out all of the +1 per level escalation of attacks and defenses, leaving simply ability score modifiers and weapon enhancements or armor as the only progressive elements.

Ultimately, 5th Edition will need the following:
• +1 per level mechanic for attacks (that does not need feats)
• +1 per level mechanic for primary defense (AC), something smaller for alternate defenses
• +1 per level mechanic for monster attacks
• +1 per level mechanic for monster defenses

Balancing Modular Mechanics

Once you've established the core mechanics of the modular and unified system, the next task is to layer in various optional subsystems. For example, D&D 5th Edition could offer the following modules:
• Basic and Tactical combat options
• Feats and Skills
• Combat Powers

Combat is likely, to come in two forms, Basic (i.e. descriptive) combat for 'old-school' players alongside Tactical combat that features the grid-based combat seen in 3rd and 4th editions.

When thinking about how Skills and Feats fit into a modular game, there are a few options:
• Feats and Skills become optional modules that either totally absent from the game or can be included if desired
• Feats and Skills are always in the game, but are pre-selected in Basic character creation and customizable in an Advanced character creation module

Finally, the inclusion of Combat Powers in the game could take a number of forms:
• Combat Powers are optional, with Basic Combat only offering 'basic' melee and ranged attacks
• Combat Powers are pre-selected for characters by default, and can be customized in an advanced character creation module

Additionally, the Combat Powers themselves could take a number of forms:
• Combat Powers that are always available (gained at specific levels) and take the form of trade-offs (e.g. more hit chance for less damage) or give characters situational (e.g. flanking, etc) or class specific advantages, but do not otherwise escalate from the baseline combat power (Heroes Against Darkness uses this type of combat power system to avoid escalation of power)
• Combat Powers that behave like Vancian magic, where some are only usable on an encounter or daily basis (like 4th Edition)

Some of these possible combat and feat module choices imply lesser or greater degrees of power creep. For example, if the game doesn't have feats by default but they can be optionally included, then those feats are likely to offer some mechanical advantages when compared to the game run without feats. Furthermore, the inclusion of Vancian combat powers (like the Encounter and Daily powers in 4th Edition) is also more powerful than a combat system that is run with only basic attacks, or one that is run with trade-off and situational attacks.

The important considerations here for a creating a modular game system are:
• Can characters with different levels of complexity exist in the same game (i.e. one character without feats in the same party as someone with feats)?
• Do the optional modules increase the overall power of the characters?
• How does the escalation of power inherent in optional modules impact the overall game balance (e.g. if the party has feats and is using tactical combat, how do you balance this against enemies)?

Ultimately, a modular system needs a mechanism for avoiding or dealing with the inherent power creep of each individual module. Some systems, like GURPS, use a point buy system to balance the power of characters but I can't see D&D moving to point-buy.

Without a way of balancing the various optional modules, there's no way for 5th Edition to properly balance the entire game (for example, how would encounters be balanced for Basic or Advanced characters). So here are a few possibilities for a modular system where the power creep is kept under control:
• Tactical combat that only uses trade-offs
• Basic characters have higher ability scores to compensate for their lack of higher-power options
• Basic characters come pre-generated with appropriate feats, while Advanced characters can choose their own feats
• Feats are stripped back to minor enhancements which don't fundamentally break the balance of the game.

This series continues with part 3:

Making D&D 5th Edition Modular: Part III Combat and HP

Making D&D 5th Edition Modular: Part I

All of the role-playing blogs are weighing in with their thoughts, suggestions, demands and (sometimes) their denunciation of WotC's plans for the new edition of D&D.

So today I'm going to look at what would be involved in making a unified and modular version of Dungeons & Dragons, with elements that can be bought in (or out), and what the core rules of this system would be.

As a long time role-player, I think that all role-players should hope that the team at Wizards succeed in reuniting the various factions of D&D players, from the Grognards to the 4th Edition players. If Wizards fails, then there's a great chance that the hobby's gateway drug (D&D) will die entirely, and that with no new players coming in the hobby itself will wither and die, leaving us all the poorer.

This quote from The Angry DM seems spot-on:

"So, you can bitch and piss and moan and start edition wars and talk about why you hate WotC or D&D or 4E or 3E or whatever. And all that does is piss away the chance you have to constructively help make a new edition you want to play. If you do the bitchy pissy moany thing instead of the honest constructive thing, you’re saying you care more about hating D&D than D&D."

Roadmap to Beta

The next major release of Heroes Against Darkness is Beta.

There's plenty of work to do between now and then, including some of these areas:
• More monsters from the extended list on page 35 of Beasts and Bastards
• Further development of the On Magic section on page 18 of the Game Master's Guide to determine the Anima cost of each component of a spell
• Refinement of the magi class spell lists, including Anima costs and scaling costs of multiple target and longer duration spells
• Additional combat powers for martial and specialist classes
• Update to combat rules to clarify allowable movement directions
• More market costs for scrolls, potions and wands
• More magic artifacts

The current version of the rules can always be found here: Heroes Against Darkness - Game Rules.

Introducing Heroes Against Darkness

Welcome to the home of the indie RPG Heroes Against Darkness.

As it says up there in the header, Heroes Against Darkness (HAD) is a modern RPG that aims to provide a simple and deep game experience without becoming slow, cumbersome or complicated.

This section provides a brief overview of these core elements of the game:

• Races
• Classes
• Magic and Anima
• Combat Powers

The complexity in Heroes Against Darkness is back-loaded in the character's Magic and Combat Powers, rather than front-loaded in the racial and class features. This means that the definition of a race and a class is relatively simple, but the list of Combat Powers and Magic Spells is more extensive. The goal of this focus is to streamline the character creation process, to reduce complexity power creep (and homogenization of classes), but to still give characters meaningful tactical choices in combat situations.