rules of thumb: combat maneuvers and blasting with items

there are three kinds of combat maneuvers:

1. little, simple maneuvers that aren't as good as an attack. these you can do for free as well as an attack. they dont matter really, who cares.
2. middley, normal maneuvers that can replace an attack. so you roll to hit, or the enemy makes a save, and you get the effect of the maneuver instead of the damage of the attack.
3. big maneuvers, or blasts, which deal damage as if they were an attack, with some additional effect, which is probably greater than that of a normal attack, something like a spell effect. the cost is more than an attack, and the effect is more than an attack
   

 so for example, if youre trying to steal an object, if it's a purely cosmetic or largely useless object, i'll let you treat that as a simple maneuver and also make an attack on your turn, because who cares, its fine. if you’re stealing a weapon or something useful, thats a normal action and it replaces an attack. If you want to destroy the enemy's item or sunder their armor or something as your action in combat, that's a blast and it uses some special rule for that case.

so for a system where all blasts need to be one rule, let it be this:

you can blast if you have an object or ability that can be used to blast. mark one use of that thing (or use it up if it doesn't have uses). you roll a save. if you succeed, you do big (d12 or whatever) damage to the target and you get the improved rider, the cool big effect you want. if you fail, you do normal damage to the target (d6 or whatever), the rider has no effect, and take a d4 ability damage to that save.

if it doesnt need to always be the same rule, then, you know, various degrees of this thing.

but the real point of this post is to propose the silly mode version of this rule, so if youre not ready to comprehend the Knights and Knaves Auxiliary Miscellaneous Toolkit, turn back, traveller.

so like, obviously you can use this rule for spell-like items, but the secret real thing is you can blast with any item. so like, blast with your rope: guy gets tied up. blast with your torch: shit's on fire. blast with your ration: gets the effect of a short rest. now we're really Dungeons and Dragonsing. please make use of this secret knowledge.

rules of thumb: challenge rating

 something i noticed with Bigby, in fifth edition, a CR2 creature is roughly equivelant to a 5th-level player character.

generally when im making something with stats i don’t assign a challenge rating because i dont really trust challenge ratings to indicate anything, but i’ve had this rare glimpse where im like, oh CR2 isnt like level 3, it’s like level 5, which is maybe going to play into my own mythology about how things are from now on

something i’d like to believe is that the character levels indicate rank in some military structure (so that level 3 characters are suitable to lead level 2 characters and level 1 characters are suitable to lead level 0 characters and so on), call that the rule of governance or whatever, i dont neccessarily simulate the tree of guys that your guy is standing on, but they’re there in potentia

i think in the past ive been too excited for doing all the population math to no end, like having the dice tell you there’s 3 cobblers in a town im not totally sure what adventure hook that is (its a classic three cobblers situation)

but supposing the rule of governance is true and meaningful and also that the adventure tops out at like level 8 (as adventures im familiar with tend to do)

then a CR2 creature is like, the king of most adventure sites (the king is like level 5, hes the guy who leads the guy who leads the guy who leads the guy who leads the guy who leads the guy)

im not sure what that does for my simulation, i mostly don’t imagine a CR2 creature as strong enough personage for that kinda leadership, in my other reckoning a CR2 guy is sort of a mid level mook, leader of a warband (12 guys or something)

so i think either thing could be true and it bothers me because it interferes with my delusion about a unified theory of the game

MICE and OWLS, CURRENCY, WEIGHTS and MEASURES

agent HOG WILD was here fixing up his motorbike. HOG WILD is the guy who got me into playing d&d, we used to play 4e and he was the DM. We had a conversation about coin weight and most of the good ideas here is stuff he come up with.

Ok so in the 70s monster manual if a guy can carry a lot of stuff they tell you how much that is in coins, like, a giant eagle (i crossed this out and put VULTURE) can carry 2000 gold but is slowed, and a EFREET can carry 7500 gold pieces freely or twice that and be slowed.




Mice are a staple of the peasant diet, like: if you don't have mice you'll probably have gruel or something; but a mouse will liven up the gruel, it'll get some red in the bowl.

Um, MICE and OWLS is the best-beloved part of the AGENTS HANDBOOK. In my schema everything is paid for in mice and owls. A mouse is worth its WEIGHT in copper, and an owl is worth its weight in silver. These are just the STANDARD MEASURES, like, sometimes you can't always trade in live mice and owls. Common small prey animals are measured in mice (like a goose from a human merchant weights 3d6 mice) and a larger or more predatory animal (maybe like a stag) is measured in owls. Dead animals are worth half that. Rare animals like predator eaters (like an owl-sentinel if you could find one, or like a dragon) would be worth their weight in gold if you can find a king or someone rich enough to pay for stuff in gold.

So that VULTURE probably isnt gonna pick up 2000 gold coins anywhere but he could carry a lot of sheep and lions if you strung them together.

Persons weigh one coin for each point of strength and ten coins for each point of armor, something like that. Richer guys are worth their weight in silver or gold.

It's tempting to start like a MICE FARM to produce counterfeit mice, but obviously the best mice are wild field mice: any fool can taste that a farm mice doesnt taste like a wild mice, and they'll be obvious if you look at them: malnourished farm mice eat their own tails, so you can tell the quality of a mouse by how long its tail is. A counterfeit OWL-SENTINEL is probably just a bunch of crows glued together, but a real sentinel will at least be good at catching owls.

LANGUAGES

HUMAN LANGUAGES

AKKADIAN is the best-known tongue, called COMMON, a remnant of long-gone UR.

LABRYNTHIAN, a complex speech, is used by the maze-folk in mountain caves.

SWAIN, a sailor-tongue, is common along every coast.

DESERTLISH, so-called by outsiders, is the harsh tongue spoken by all desert folk.

THIEF'S CANT, a secret tongue, unwritable, indescipherable, ever-changing, is known to all guild thieves.

ANIMAL LANGUAGES

RAKKUS is a common animal-tongue, brutish and harsh.

HIVE is the vibrant speech of insects.

TWILL is the flowery speech of birds, also known by cats and elves.

MER is a confusing language sometimes spoken by fish and other sea-creatures.

RACIAL LANGUAGES

ELF, GOBLIN, DWARF, and GNOLL are common.

HOW MANY HEROES

start with the basic premise that a guy with levels is part of the ruling class (so a level one guy can probably get a level 0 guy to do what he wants, and so on)

one hex = 24 miles =  one days travel on foot

FINDING A HERO
(on the frontier) each hex-day you have a one in four chance of finding a guy with levels, (in hobbiton) one in eight (in a war-zone) one in two

HERO LEVEL NAMES
1 knave (fighting-man, mage, etc)
2 knight (warrior, wizard, etc)
3 baron
4 duke
5 king (warrior-king, witch-king, etc)

FIVE PERCENT
5 percent of the population are heroes, these the guys with levels. (named and dangerous) including all noble combatants - these guys would have the full adventurer set: armor, rations, lots of rope, whatever they need, these guys are usually landed and are legally allowed to carry blades and stuff

(what if you want to play a lower class guy like a beggar or whatever?) even so: if you got levels you can exercise power over a level-0 guy, and if you got gear you're something like a knight, you're probably a big one among your own people, so that population is your fief, your domain, even if they dont wish to be, they do exist and they work to create and support you. lower-class guys are twice as hard to locate.

FIVE PERCENT AGAIN
a further 5% of all dudes are 0-level combatants (watchmen and brigands, with lanterns and cugels but not much else)

THE MAJORITY
the majority 80 percent are peasant food producers, working the mud,  non-combatants, of these maybe another 5% can be raised as levies in times of war.

WHICH LEAVES
10 percent are burghers, artisan shop-keepers, of these:

1 shoemaker
2 clothier
3 woodworker
4 smith
5 free-mason
6 animal handler
7 chiurgeon
8 grounds-keeper
9 money-lender
10 mystic

these are true craftsmen, guildsmen, if no burgher is local then these tasks would still be performed by travelling burghers (but not as reglarly) or by upstart charlatans (but not as well). burghers are usually twice as easy to locate as heroes.

list idea rules

1 shuffle ideas because the good ideas are not at the beginning/the end? if you don't like ideas just cross it off and don't do it. take out the bad ideas, make a shorter list.
2 if only one idea is good. don't try to think of others like it: drop the others and move that idea to the top, start a new list about it.
3 include extra stuff, instead of in an appendix, put it in the text.
4 save a good idea for later? no! use the idea now. what are you thinking?

RACIAL SPECIAL ABILITIES

mostly you are a person and you do person stuff

but you are also a special person who's a robot or a mushroom or something, because that's fun

so sometimes you want to do robot mushroom stuff and that's fine too but i don't want you to do robot mushrooms stuff all the time, i want you to do person stuff mostly

so you get to do robot mushrooms stuff for free once a session
then the next time you have a 5/6 chance to do the stuff, then the next time its a 4/6 chance and so on

the player tracks their odds (writes FROG STUFF 6-in-6) and if they succeed a frog thing their odds go down, but not to under 1-in-6.

DEATH and DIMINUTION

i've got this weird DEATH SAVE rule I've been using, it's pretty simple:

everybody has a DEATH SAVE. you roll 1d6 and write down the result, and write DEATH SAVE or draw a big skull or something. the death save should stare out at you from the page, humbling you. "I want to jump over this chasm - but if I fall, there's a 3-in-6 chance I will die," you will say.

so whenever you are hit by an attack that takes you down to 0HP, make a DEATH SAVE.
or when a thing happens that should kill you, or when the book says 'save or die', make a DEATH SAVE.

to make a DEATH SAVE:
roll a d6, get on or under your DEATH SAVE score.

if you fail, you are dead.
if you succeed, you are not dead, and (optional variant: you heal a little) and (optional variant: you lose a thing), and your death save goes down by one, so that with each successful save you are slowly ticking down to the day when you will die. if your death save reaches 0, you can still do adventures if you want to, but you can't succeed a DEATH SAVE anymore.

the DEATH SAVE increases by one each time you level up.

rules of thumb: small creatures

small creatures:
-use small weapons.
-get +1 initiative.
-fit in small holes.

halflings and gnomes are small. dwarves are not small.
if the setting does not include either halflings or gnomes, dwarves are small.

rules of thumb: assassination for assassins

the ad&d dmg has a assassination table for assassins which basically amounts to:

[DC11]  roll (d20 + your level - their level) to assassinate a character

i think this is an abstraction of an offscreen assassination mission, and represents several days of planning and execution, it's not usually what you'd use to determine assassinations played out in person. But you might use it to determine the success of tactics like 'put poison in the guy's wine and then wait'. If it fails, the assassination attempt is discovered.

rules of thumb: how to hit

d&d is a god-killing game. you can kill a god, if you want to. you don't, by neccessity, have to kill a bunch of kobolds first. (fighting all the guy's underlings' underlings, then all the guy's underlings, then the guy, is an unusual progression, and everyone - the players, the dm, the enemy characters - should try to avoid this.) every encounter is appropriate for every character.

to hit: roll a d20 + your attack bonus ('to hit' bonus, initially 0). if the result is greater than or equal to the enemy's AC, you have hit them. your attack bonus should include you STR modifer for melee attacks, and attacks with thrown weapons, or your DEX bonus for missile attacks.

on a successful hit: you roll your weapon's damage die (for swords, d6) + your damage bonus, if any. you deal that many hit points of damage.

An unarmored opponent has an AC of 10. If you have an attack bonus of +0 and you're trying to hit an unarmored guy, you succeed on a roll of 10 or more (55% of the time).

Demogorgon, Prince of Demons and God of Death, has an AC of 27. A character with an attack bonus of +17 will hit Demogorgon on a roll of 10+ (55% of the time). If your attack bonus is somewhere under +17, you should not try to hit Demogorgon.

leather armor is +2AC, chain armor is +4AC, usually plate armor is +6AC, but a full suit of plate armor is +9AC. a shield is +1AC. you add your DEX bonus to your AC.

a d20 roll with a result of 20 on the die is always a hit, a 1 is always a miss.

fighters get +1 to hit every two levels.
clerics get +1 to hit every three levels.
thieves get +1 to hit every four levels.
wizards get +1 to hit every five levels.

or

fighters get +2 to hit every three levels.
clerics get +2 to hit every four levels.
thieves get +2 to hit every five levels.
wizards get +2 to hit every six levels.

monsters get +1 to hit for each hit dice.

fighters get +1 damage at first level and +1 damage every two levels.

attack bonuses:
-when you're not in front of the enemy, ignore their shield bonus to AC.
-when the enemy cannot see you, ignore their DEX bonus to AC.
-get +2 to hit if you're completely behind the enemy.
-get +4 to hit if the enemy is distracted or cannot react. (stunned, prone, grabbed, running away, backstab. also, if they cannot see you, ignore their DEX bonus to AC.)
- if the enemy is helpless (magical sleep, paralysis, prone with no weapon and no shield) you ALWAYS hit them, and you can hit them twice per round, and you deal maximum damage each time.

you should not try to hit Demogorgon with your sword. you should try to hit him with Orcus, Prince of the Undead.