D&D Next: Sacred Spells

So I just got the new survey from the D&D Next team about the playtest, and I'm frustrated with this one.

It asks which spells must be in the game for it to be D&D and then it lists all Wizard and Cleric spells, and you can choose which ones must be in the game.

I selected 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' for all of them and left this reason:
"No spell has to be in the game to make it D&D."

For the final comment I left this note:
"The idea that some spell or other 'has' to be in the game for it to be D&D is a ridiculous proposition that panders to players who favor nostalgia instead of design refinement."

I hate the idea that a particular spell has to be in D&D, otherwise it's not D&D anymore   This is the kind of thinking that panders to old-school players but kills progress and refinement.

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Heroes Against Darkness is guaranteed not to contain any spells that must be in D&D:
Heroes Against Darkness: Downloads.

Remaking Magic: Blood Anima

One of the deliberate features of the magic system in Heroes Against Darkness is the strict limits on the amount of anima that is available to magi. Level 1 magi have about 9 anima and by Level 10 they have about 15 anima.  This is combined with the rules that limit the amount of anima that magi can spend in a single turn: Level + 1 anima.

Rule:  Maximum anima points is 5 + Wisdom bonus. Rule:  Magi spend anima points to cast spells. Rule:  All spells have an anima points cost. Rule:  Variable anima cost spells must have at least 1 anima spent on the variable X component. Rule:  Magi cannot spend more than Level + 1 anima points in a single turn. Rule:  Magi can end the ongoing effects of their own spells as a move action.

The combination of these two rules means that magi have a virtual abundance of anima at lower levels, but at higher levels they have the potential (and risk) to 'spend' their anima very quickly, or to eek out lesser amounts over more rounds.

But there's always another option.  Once magi are out of anima they can choose to use blood anima to pay for their spells:

Rule:  Magi can overspend anima at the cost of 4 health points per anima point. Rule:  Magi cannot overspend anima on healing spells.

Each blood anima costs 4 HP, so magi will generally be able to afford an extra blood anima each level they gain, in addition to the four or five that they have at Level 1.  So by Level 10, a brave magi has almost 30 anima at their disposal, rather than the nominal value of 15, which is their actual anima.

A curious person would ask, simply:

What is the point of blood anima?  Why not just double the amount available anima (or ramp up to the higher amount) and get rid of the blood anima?

Why indeed...

In combat warriors and their ilk 'spend' their HP to defeat enemies.  Blood anima introduces a risk/reward mechanic for magi classes.  The player of a magi character can choose to operate within the limitations of their normal anima or they can choose to use their blood anima to increase their round-to-round power at the risk of their character's safety.  The also combines with the Rally power, making that power all the more effective when used by a character whose anima and health are depleted, compared to a magi who has only used his (or her) anima and is otherwise on full HP.

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

Remaking Magic: Avoid All Absolutes

Yet another of my self-imposed 'rules' for Heroes Against Darkness is to avoid the sorts of absolute effects of earlier (and future!) versions of D&D.  The history of D&D is littered with absolute effects, here are a few of the more egregious that come to mind:

•  Immunities (such as the Dwarven immunity to poison that has reappeared in the D&D Next playtest)
•  Weapon Requirements (creatures that are only vulnerable to +1 or better weapons?!?)
•  Massive Damage (creatures taking more than 50 HP damage in a single attack must save or die)
•  Sleep Immunity (Elves are immune to sleep effects)
•  Attacking Low-Level Enemies (Fighters can make multiple attacks against enemies of 1 HD)

Each of these examples has an absolute effect and has no regard for the magnitude or potency of the effect, nor the relative strength or weakness of the target and the attacker.  But these are mechanical examples, and we're here to discuss magic, so how about some examples of D&D spells that have absolute effects:

•  Magic Missile (always hits, even targets that have cover or high magic defense)
•  Sleep (affects 4 HD of creatures, or creatures with less than 10 HP each in the D&D Next playtest)
•  Knock (opens any old lock, no waiting)
•  Power Word Kill (target with up to 100 HP must make save or die)

In Heroes Against Darkness I've tried to kill the sacred cows, to remove the anomalies and exceptions and layers that are gumming up the works of D&D, and to get rid of the evidence of the biases and idiosyncrasies of the designers behind the systems.

•  Why does Magic Missile automatically hit?  Because someone decided to make an exception.
•  Why does Knock open any lock?  Because someone didn't have a rogue/thief with the party that day?
•  Why can't clerics use edged weapons?  Because someone misunderstands or misrepresents a piece of history.
•  Why can magic-users only use daggers or staffs?  Because someone likes it like that.
•  Why does sleep affect 4 HD of creatures and not 5 HD?
•  Why do fighters only get attacks against 1 HD creatures  What about 2 HD creatures?  Why are they so different?

Heroes Against Darkness avoids these sorts of absolutes by using inclusive design, rather than specific design (such as for equipment proficiencies), by using Defenses and Attacks to determine whether an attack hits or not, and by applying costs to spell components to ensure that the overall cost of a spell is proportional to its actual power.  The one area where I am most likely to have made arbitrary decisions in Heroes Against Darkness is in the assignment of martial powers to each level.  It's here where I've had to make judgements of the relative utility and required skill level for each of the powers, and it's here where I'm most likely to have erred.  So if you find evidence of my idiosyncrasies and biases, let me know so I can take them out the back and put them on the spit with the rest of the sacred cows!

For further reading, check out these articles by Sean Reynolds:

Fewer Absolute Effects (Variant Rule) - Part 1
Fewer Absolute Effects (Variant Rule) - Part 2

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

Remaking Magic: Narrative Control

Much to the consternation of some of my more seasoned D&D players, Heroes Against Darkness doesn't have some of the staples of magic that feature in D&D.  When looking for solutions to some problems their characters faced, they'd ask about spells that they'd used in D&D to solve similar situations.

I made a conscious decision in the design of Heroes Against Darkness that the spells would not afford players the sorts of broken tricks and combos that have become a tiresome cliche in D&D.

Here are a few of the main offenders:

•  Teleport
•  Scrying
•  Discern Location
•  Locate Object

The most overused combo is Scry-Buff-Teleport, where characters scry their target (such as with a spell or a crystal ball), and then, having established the target's location, they buff their characters and finally Teleport to the target's location and unload the rest of their spells and attacks while buffed.  Furthermore, the existence of spells like Discern Location, Locate Object, Locate Creature, Scrying, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience means that the simple task of presenting players with a normal locate, rescue, acquisition, recovery, thieving or vengeance quest becomes an exercise in contingencies and failsafes.  As a DM, I've got better things to do than spill thousands of pints of gorgon's blood to prevent this kind of shenanigans!

Teleport (and Teleport Without Fail) is so abused that various editions and expansions have added more spells to counter it:

•  Static Veil (gives bonus to save against scrying attempts)
•  Foil Tracer (Teleport spells cannot be traced)
•  Scry Retaliation (Inflicts damage upon scryer)
•  Teleport Block (No teleports are allowed in or out of area)
•  Teleport Redirect (Switch destination of teleport)
•  Teleport Tracer (Detect destination of teleport)
•  Pretur Ar Nuade (Teleport intruders to specific destination)
•  One Step Beyond (Make target immune to divination)
•  Anticipate Teleport (Alerts caster to a teleport)
•  Greater Anticipate Teleport (Alerts caster and delays teleport)
•  Screen (Protects from scrying and divination)

Never have so many spells been created to mitigate the effects of one bad spell.

To me, spells and combos like this are the equivalent of introducing a weapon at higher levels that totally bypasses all armor.  Once something like this has been introduced, the only option is to add a bunch of magic or magical armor that negates the ability of the weapon, returning the status-quo.  Obviously this is a totally pointless exercise, and one that breaks the game either temporarily or permanently.

D&D's Teleport could be easily 'fixed', perhaps by only allowing teleport into a properly prepared area, rather than just any area.  In Heroes Against Darkness, I'd balance a similar teleport spell by increasing the anima cost (so that you can teleport, but you'll be low on anima once you've reached your destination), increasing the casting duration, adding a temporary Wisdom cost, or maybe applying a condition (e.g. stunned or dazed) to all teleportees for a while after they arrive.

At the end of the day, the idea of narrative control isn't an attempt to railroad the players.  It's more of a case of ensuring that players use more than just one method for solving all problems that I present them with.  If their default solution for almost any problem is to cast Locate Object (or some variation), and then GM has to plan for this and make some plan against it or some reason for it to not work, then there's something wrong.

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

Remaking Magic: Enhance, Don't Replace

First, a quick confession.

I'm generally such an isolated throwback that I hadn't even heard of 'niche protection' until just a few weeks ago.  In spite of not having heard the damned term, the idea that each class in a RPG should have its own thing was apparent during the development of Heroes Against Darkness.

One aspect of this division of capabilities and specialties is the separation of the magic into the five main magi classes:
•  Warlocks who specialize in physical manifestations and offensive spells
•  Healers with their specialization in physiological magic that heals, enhances or weakens
•  Canonates who enforce the will of their divine god to buff allies, bless areas and attack enemies
•  Necromancers who can raise and control undead, drain health and anima from enemies
•  Mystics who are masters of control and influence, to help and hinder

During playtesting of Heroes Against Darkness, one of the players would constantly ask for utility spells, like in D&D.  I resisted his requests because the utility spells that he was asking for are the very spells that break the niches, they are the spells that allow wizards/sorcerers/clerics to become the Swiss Army knife classes who can do anything, anytime.  The main culprits in D&D are the spells that directly replace the class features of other classes, such as Knock, Invisibility, and the like.

Knock has the unfortunate privilege of making rogues/thieves just about useless.  Once you've got Knock, there's no locked door or chest that can't be opened by a night's rest and a quick spell.  If that wasn't bad enough, a sneaky rogue can be replaced with Invisibility as well.

In Heroes Against Darkness these sorts of spells don't have absolute effects, rather they offer enhancements to the target's ability tests, making these spells most effective when cast on a character that is already good at the activity, rather than allowing the spell to be cast on any character.  Even spells like Charm and Divine respectively enhance the character's Charisma and Perception, rather than having absolute effects.  The final advantage of the enhancement approach means that the spells effects are still relative to the state or difficulty of the target, so a Charisma or Perception enhancement takes into account the underlying difficulty of the activity that is being undertaken.

So, if you're after spells that allow magi to replicate the features of other classes, then these are not the rules you're looking for.

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

Remaking Magic: Balance

Heroes Against Darkness employs a number of techniques to keep magi relatively balanced against the martial classes.

First, the combination of the total pool of anima that magi have (5 + Magic Bonus) plus the speed with which they can spend their anima (Level + 1 anima per turn) limits the speed with which they can deal damage and their total potential amount of spell damage.

Rule:  Maximum anima points is 5 + Wisdom bonus. Rule:  Magi spend anima points to cast spells. Rule:  All spells have an anima points cost. Rule:  Variable anima cost spells must have at least 1 anima spent on the variable X component. Rule:  Magi cannot spend more than Level + 1 anima points in a single turn.

Second, not all magi are focused on dealing direct damage.  The warlock, which is the primary damage-dealing magi class, can deal 1d8 damage per anima.  Necromancers also deal 1d8 damage per anima, but they have less flexibility in the range of damage dealing spells.  Canonates' divine magic only deals 1d6 damage per anima against normal enemies, but this increases to 1d10 against undead.  Furthermore, each time that a spell has some additional component (such as range, targeting non-Armor Defenses, effect area, miss damage, duration) then these components are specifically included in the cost of the spell.  Let's take a look at some examples of magi's direct damage spells.

The Burning Touch spell allows a brave warlock to deal the highest possible damage:

Burning Touch (X Anima)

Cost	1 anima per dice of damage.
Target	Single target
Attack	Magic vs.  AD
Damage	Xd8 + Magic Bonus
Range	Touch

The added range component of Burning Ray means that the warlock has to spend 1 anima to not get whacked in the head with a sword:

Burning Ray
(1 Anima + X Anima)

Cost	1 anima + 1 anima per dice of damage.
Target	Single target
Attack	Magic vs.  AD
Damage	Xd8 + Magic Bonus
Range	10'+10' per level

The electrical nature of Shocking Ray means that it is cast against the target's Evasion defense, rather than their Armor defense, with +1 anima for the non-Armor defense and another +1 anima for the ranged attack:

Shocking Ray
(2 Anima + X Anima)

Cost	2 anima + 1 anima per dice of damage.
Target	Single target
Attack	Magic vs.  ED
Damage	Xd8 + Magic Bonus
Range	10'+10' per level

Finally, martial characters are not limited to a single weapon damage increment, rather their weapon damage increases as they gain levels.

Melee Attack

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

All of these factors interact in complicated ways, but the general result is that magi can deal damage faster than martial classes in the short term, but in doing so they deplete their anima and soon have to Rally or use blood anima.  Martial classes can deal a slightly lower amount of damage with each hit but over an extended duration, making them the backbone of any party in longer fights. Ultimately this means that magi can have a big impact early in a balanced encounter, but they can't win it single-handedly.

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

Remaking Magic

Let's get this out of the way: I strongly dislike Vancian magic.

When I started work on Heroes Against Darkness we'd just finished playing a long 4th Edition campaign followed by a shorter Basic D&D campaign.  The switch from 4th Edition to Basic was caused by a general dissatisfaction with 4th Edition (don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater) and frustration with the final module that we played (Pyramid of Shadows).  The experience of playing some Basic reminded me of why I stopped playing that edition all those years ago:

•  Class as race
•  Spell level != character level
•  Slow non-magical healing
•  Clerics get no spells at 1st level, but elves get one?!?
•  Arbitrary lists of armor and weapons for magic-users and clerics
•  Tables (to hit), tables (saving throws), tables (thieves skills), and more tables (every damned ability score has a different one)!

Now I could whine about Basic all day, but at the time it was state of the art.  Things have moved on since then, with a lot of mechanical improvements, simplification and consolidation of separate sub-systems, and better scaling for all systems.

Sadly, one of the areas where things haven't moved on in D&D-land (at least until recently) has been the magic systems.  Until 4th Edition folded martial and spell powers into the AEDU powers system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility), D&D had stuck with the same system of Vancian spell-casting, on top of which they layered various fixes to address specific and general issues (spell resistance, casting feats, spontaneous casting, various dalliances with psionics, etc).

It's a relic of the past that should have been discarded from D&D shortly after it was introduced.  It doesn't work particularly well on an intellectual, mechanical, or gameplay level.  Furthermore, it leads to the unfortunate (literal and figurative) explosion of spell-caster power as they advance in levels while the other classes are stuck with a more linear increase in power.  And if you've read some of my earlier posts, you'll know that Vancian spell systems are a terrible waste of pages in game rule systems (compared to the amount of space dedicated to non-magic classes), occupying up to half of the total pages in some editions' player's guides (AD&D 2nd Edition and Pathfinder being the notable examples of this).

So when I decided to make my own system, the major area I wanted to rework was the magic system.  I began with the simple goal of implementing a magic system based on spell points (anima), and from there my goals evolved as I implemented the system and learned more and more about it in its evolution through playtesting.  Eventually my goals were:

•  Magi classes must be balanced against other classes
•  Spells shouldn't become redundant
•  Spells shouldn't scale without additional costs (Fireball)
•  Magi enhance other classes, not replace (Knock, Invisibility)
•  No magic can break the game or the GM's narrative control (Fly, Overland Travel, Teleport, Scry)
•  No spells should have absolute effects (Finger of Death, Sleep)
•  Allow casters to deplete HP to cast spells (blood anima)
•  Just four pages of spells for each magi class

This was going to be one post, but it's turned into a monster so I'll cover each of these areas in separate posts, so stay tuned!

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

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)

Inconsistent Mechanics: D&D Essentials Magic Missile

If 4th Edition D&D went to all of the trouble of replacing saving throws with defenses on a consistent basis, then why the hell did they undermine this good work by making the Essentials Magic Missile auto-hit?

Furthermore, this is a double-bad move, because it totally undermines the point of minions. Minions only have 1 HP because there's a chance that they'll be missed (about) half of the time. When you introduce a power that hits all the time, then you break the underlying assumptions on which minions are built, and you break your own rules.

If I ever break my own rules, please let me know.

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.

RPG Round-Up: How Many Pages of Spells!?

Just for laughs, here's a list of the number of pages of each edition of various RPGs that are dedicated to spells compared to the total number of pages in each system's Player's Guide.

 

D&D Systems

System	Pages of Spells	Player's Guide Pages	Notes
Basic D&D	4	64	Combined Player's and DM's Guide
Expert D&D	8	64	Combined Player's and DM's Guide
AD&D	60	128
AD&D 2nd Edition	118	256
D&D 3rd Edition	115	286
D&D 4th Edition	39	316	Cleric, Paladin, Warlock, Wizard

Non-D&D Systems

System	Pages of Spells	Player's Guide Pages	Notes
Castles & Crusades	53	128
Dragon Warriors	35	106
Dragon Age	4	64	Level 1-5 only
Dungeon Crawl Classic	44	147
Heroes Against Darkness	23	102
Pathfinder	150	396
Savage Worlds (Explorer's Edition)	10	159
Savage Worlds: Fantasy Companion	21	158	Includes spells in the Explorer's Edition
Savage Worlds (Deluxe Edition)	11	159
Swords & Wizardry	24	70
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing (2nd Edition)	23	189

Anyone got any more examples to add?

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.