My last hit point musing for now.

After much mild moping about hit points, I rediscovered Robert Fisher's old Classic D&D Injury Table, as well as Trollsmyth's revised version, which seems to me a productive way to begin thinking about injury, hit points, and balancing low-level survival with the simplicity of managing hit points as an abstract system. I think it was Roger the GS who noted that the best way to think of hit points is that only dropping below 1 hit point should be seen as an injury. I think that's probably a good idea if I want to keep the general set of D&D rules, warts and all.

Personally, I think I may just take Mr. Fisher's rules more or less whole cloth, but the rumination on the issue of hit points has been enlightening.

Hit Points, Hargrave, and Me

I have a love-hate relationship with D&D style hit points. On the one hand, they are ridiculously easy to use and track. Also, the low hit point totals of low-level characters enforce a certain grittiness I like, and hit points are a good implementation of the idea of managing limited resources. On the minus side, high level characters' hit points make them seem invulnerable to normal threats, make it hard to mix on characters with large level differences, and often lack verisimilitude.

Dave Hargrave thought the same back in the 70s and early 80s. His solution was an alternate hit point system for PCs he elaborated on in the (second?) volume of his Arduin trilogy. His system set up a much higher starting total based on things like race, class, and (going on memory) Constitution. This total increased each level, but by small, fixed amounts. This seems on many levels to be the early forerunner of 4e's system.

While this brings down high level hit points and prolongs low-level characters' survival chances, it also removes the fear of sudden, brutal death. Apparently, Dave already had that covered with some brutal critical hit charts.

This tome demonstrates a major challenge of house rules-- that one change may beget another, adding complexity to solve a seemingly simple problem.

Every time I think of ways to address my hit point concerns, I keep reaching for rules changes rather than tweaks (Arduin style hit points, Star Wars d20 hit points and vitality rules, AD&D style negative hit points) and each leads to more changes.

Which all makes me think I may just be trying to fix something that isn't broken, and that maybe I need to embrace the rules for what they are.

Joining in the DCC first impressions posts.

The "Character Funnel": while this might be entertaining once, it feels forced and gimmicky, just like I felt it did when it showed up with AD&D first edition. And the method of winnowing down a pile of characters to come up with your "real" character seems like a caricature of old-school D&D. And doesn't really feel like the kind of stories that the game tries to emulate.

And why start at level zero with negative experience? That just seems clunky.

Why are halflings masters of two-weapon fighting?

The pile of necessary charts for critical hits and fumbles, magical results, are about the opposite of simplifying play that I prefer.

The odd dice are a bit off-putting.

Variable healing based on proximity of alignment and clerical miracles are interesting. The ideas behind magic are interesting, but adjudicating that complexity would be a real challenge, at least at first.

Combat maneuvers seem like more to memorize.

Why do we use different size dice for two-weapon fighting instead of penalties?

Spell duels might be cool.

Some of this seems like design for design's sake. This indeed captures the feel of many after-market unofficial D&D supplements, clones, variants and the like from my youth, but much of that was also cluttered and full of things we used for a little while before abandoning.

I'd gladly play a demo to see if I'd change my mind, and will print and read it, I suppose. But after my first skim through, I am not likely to be looking to grab the final version.

Fiend Folio Friday: the Flumph as the face of good

Notoriously, the only good monster in the Fiend Folio is the flumph. The flumph is small, weak, and lawful good. It's essentially a flying jellyfish, with a really hard to hit top (AC 0), and a squishy underside (AC 8), and its main defenses are a nasty musk and dropping onto opponents with its stinging underside. Though of average intelligence, it only speaks a smattering of its alignment tongue.

This is the face of good in the Fiend Folio. Your best chance at a friend or ally. The enemy of evil. The protector of order and weal. The flumph.

What sort of cosmology gives us the flumph as the friend of the paladin? I mean, the Monster Manual has some odd options for good creatures. No angels, but we get shedu, lamassu, ki-rin and couatls. But the flumph takes the cake.

So imagining the world that allows for flumphs as a great force of good really implies a good that is alien, weak, and set upon by external forces. A good largely unable to keep evil at bay, and which needs to survive by avoidance, escape, and surprise. And a force of good that can't even really speak to you. Which really leaves the good guys in the lurch.

Hassled by the Man: Bureaucrat encounters in Haven

Who they are:

1. Imperial Eye
2. Judge
3. Litigator
4. Imperial Tax Collector
5. Imperial Tax Assessor
6. Trade Guild Representative
7. Church Official
8. Con Artist
9. Academic
10. Foreign Ambassador
11. Magic User's Agent
12. Thief or Assassins' Guild

What they want:

1. To arrest the characters.
2. To hand the characters over to thugs for gentle persuasion.
3. To frame the characters for a crime.
4. To serve legal papers.
5. To demand a fee.
6. To be a bureaucratic pain in the ass.
7. To demand services.
8. To force the characters to buy something.
9. To demand goods from the characters.
10. To deliver a curse as a penalty.
11. To demand the characters sign over their souls.
12. To force characters to sign a contract.

Random goblins

A first stab at some inspirational info about eliminating the mess of humanoids and replacing most with just "goblins."

Roll a d10 for appearance. Roll twice for twice the fun.

1. Twisted limbs.
2. Fishy features.
3. Covered with fur.
4. Thin and gangly.
5. Insect features.
6. Pot-bellied and bandy-legged.
7. Giant noggin.
8. Mouth full of fangs.
9. Child-like appearance.
10. Huge ears.

Roll a d8 for coloration.

1. Black
2. Green
3. Orange
4. Tan
5. Grey
6. Yellow
7. White
8. Blue

Roll a d4 for size

1. Small. Hit die: 1-1
2. Medium: 1+1
3. Large: 2 +1
4. Really Large: 3+1

Roll d20 for Special Tribal Traits

1. Tracking scent.
2. Echolocation.
3. Leader is a thief, level 1d4+1
4. Leader is a magic-user, level 1d4+2
5. Leader is a cleric, level 1d4+1
6. Make use of traps and tricks.
7. Organized tacticians.
8. Tame and use rats.
9. Tame and use giant spiders.
10. Tame and use giant bats.
11. Tame and use ravens or other birds.
12. Skilled guerilla fighters.
13. Berserkers.
14. Superstitious.
15. Eat human/dwarf/elf flesh.
16. Headhunters.
17. Primitive firearms and gunpowder.
18. Climb walls like spiders.
19. Camouflage, surprised on 1-4.
20. Roll twice.