The Reaper Threshold, Part 2

Just read this twist on the reaper threshold concept over at Jeff's Gameblog. It's from the original Chainmail rules, but its the same premise: just cuz you're out of hit points doesn't mean you're dead. This is a much more qualitative approach and I think I actually prefer it. Since I was applying my idea to Castles & Crusades rules, I might add the generic Constitution bonus to the roll instead of adding +1 for 1st level characters... except that that would make someone with an 18 constitution very hard to kill; you'd have to roll a 1 and then fail 3 saves vs. Death Ray.


Which raises another point: how come I haven't seen any Death Rays in the Old School gaming movement? C'mon guys!

WTF! D&D running commentary on the original rules

Sadly, this bit over at somethingawful.com is as close as I have ever come to seeing the inside of the original D&D rules. I found it entertaining; others may be offended. But I think their final analysis of OD&D vs. 4thed is pretty cogent:

Steve: Gygax didn't have 50 writers and 100 artists and color printing. He just went out there and said, hey, here's how you subdue a dragon and sell it as a slave. Here's what a robot is doing in a fantasy game. Deal with it. I made it up, deal with it.

Zack: And now a committee has designed everything.

Steve: The stupid baby committee.

2nd Monday of the Month House Rules: Life Beyond Zero Hit Points or The Reaper Threshold

Everyone’s got a theme day these days wherein they address a fixed topic on that day of the week/month/Mayan calendar, and since I’ve got a whole bucketful of home rules lying around and a semi-flaccid commitment to writing this here blog, I’m celebrating the 2^nd Monday of every month by writing one up. That said, this rule is one I just thought up over the weekend; it came to me in a flash of brilliance/stupidity—you be the judge.

Today’s homebrew suds-fest involves Constitution and negative hit points. If you use negative hit points in your AD&D-type game, read on. If you believe such is heresy, please disperse, there is nothing for you here.

At some point when I played AD&D back in the day (1980s) we decided that if your character was reduced to 0 or less hit points, s/he was out cold but still alive—though s/he would lose 1HP per round until they hit -10, at which point s/he was no mas. I can’t remember the source from which we derived this rule* but I think it might have come about because of Cavaliers somehow; it’s usually safe to blame game unbalancing rules on the cavalier. The -10 HP rule, sadly, relegated our super-cool “swansong” house rule to the dustbin. The swansong rule allowed characters reduced to 0 HPs (or slightly less, I don’t remember a hard and fast limit but at some point it was assumed that you were just too dead to do anything) to make one last-gasp action as long as it did not directly cause damage; you could warn your friends of something or fall in front of a spear that was about to perforate a colleague, that sort of thing.

*As the literate among you have already realized, the source was, of course, the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. (insert shame-faced emoticon)

In case I haven’t said so before, I am forever on a quest to make AD&D ability scores somehow more pertinent to game mechanics. Recently, I was looking over the ol’ Constitution table in the PHB and marveled at the System Shock stat; something that was never once ever used in my playing days, even on those rare occasions when someone managed to get themselves polymorphed or petrified or something. With this proposed house rule I hope to expand the scope of System Shock to include surviving a death blow. Here’s how it would work:

Polvo the Dwarf has 8 HP when he walks into an ambush. Punctured by 4 arrows, he takes 13 points of dmg and is reduced to -5 HP; not quite -10, so he is not yet permanently dead. Polvo’s player then rolls his system shock deal; if he passes, his character is still out cold and appears for all intents and purposes to be dead—no pulse can be felt—but is actually in stable condition, ie. not losing hit points.

Even while the brigands are picking over his presumed corpse, Polvo will actually begin to heal at a rate of 1 HP every [1d6] hour(s) for a period of up to a maximum of [Con + d12] hours or until he reaches 1 HP. At that point he regains consciousness and may crawl/slither to safety. If food and water is achievable, he may rest, eat and recuperate, recovering hit points at the normal rate for such activity.

If, however, he does not find food and water—and shelter if exposure is an issue—within [2 x CON + d12] hours of regaining consciousness he will lapse into a coma and begin to drop HPs at a rate of [1hp / 1d6] hours until he finally reaches -10 and is dead.

official 2nd monday of the month house rules Evaluation Form:

Stated Goal: Bring some minor relevancy to a rarely used statistic, provide “back from the dead” type occurrences a la Jason Voorhees, et al.

Convolution Factor scale of 1[simple] to 10 [Byzantine]: 7

Game Balance Issue(s): Makes folks with high constitution much harder to kill

Cool Outcome Potential: Favorite henchman who was presumed dead crawls into town 3 days later; merriment ensues

Lame Outcome Potential: extra bookkeeping and monitoring for DMs when applying this rule to “slain” monsters/NPCs; grumbling ensues

Avoid this rule: If you just want that sucker dead already

Final Analysis: Without even submitting this rule to playtesting I don’t think I would implement it in a game as is. After reviewing system shock scores in the PHB, characters w/ a Con of 13 or better are looking at 90+% success rate, even a 9 Con provides a 65% success rate. The “left for dead” survival effect that I’m looking for suddenly seems pretty commonplace. But then it’s pretty silly to think that a stat designed for one thing—determining if your body survived the shock of being turned into a pumpkin—can be so easily transferred to a different, more commonly occurring event. I still like the idea, but it needs a different means of determining success.

So: let’s try it out with another system: Castles & Crusades

To ‘port this rule to C&C, I’d use a Constitution check to replace the system shock roll. I’m thinking someone with an 18 should have ~45% chance of success or so. Let’s check it out: a C&C character w/ Con 18 would roll his Con check and add his +3 bonus: he'd need a 15 (30% successful) if his Constitution is not a prime ability, or a 9 (60%) if he is constitution primed--for an average of 45%! And I swear I did not figure this out before I laid out my target of 45% success rate.

But wait—I’m thinking as I type here—just to make things more dramatic and situationally driven, let's subtract the negative value of his current HP. To look back at Polvo’s dilemma above: he was reduced to -5 HP and so would subtract 5 from his ability check roll. Let’s say that Polvo is 1^st level with a 16 Con so he has a +2 bonus, +1 more for being first level, but -5 for his current HP total for a bonus/penalty of [2 + 1 – 5 =] -2. He’ll need a 20 (5%) if he is not Con-primed, 14 (35%) if he is. Most likely ol’ Polvo is on the slippery slope to the great beyond. I like these odds a lot better than the system shock idea.

Addendum: Reaper Threshold

Rather than a standard issue -10 HPs before you die, I'd prefer a value--which I've just decided to call the Reaper Threshold--that is somehow influenced by one's constitution. I think I’d set the negative hp barrier at -6, and then modify it by subtracting the character’s Con bonus or penalty:

Reaper Threshold = -6 - Cons bonus/penalty

Polvo would have [-6 – 2 =] -8 HP before the reaper takes hold. Someone with a 4 con would have a [-6 - -2 =] -4 HP Reaper Threshold. Now this is a rule I might actually bring to my game… If I were playing C&C. I’ll give the Troll Lords credit here, it’s a lot easier to mess with the system than with AD&D.

Thanks all, for allowing me to think out loud. If anyone has used such a rule or is inspired to use something similar in their game, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it turned out.

Naming the Blog: This is not a euphemism

When I decided to open up shop here, I spent a fair amount of time considering a title for my site. I decided the best, cleverest, mildly-amusing-without-being-too-ridiculous name I could think of that wasn’t likely to already have been taken was Chaotic Nerd. The name has specific significance to me though possibly not for the reason you’re thinking—I do not pride myself on my lack of organization. When my older brother and I first started playing D&D as wee lads, we looked at the alignment chart in the Holmes edition and saw that elves and unicorns were chaotic good. Not knowing what “chaotic” meant, my brother proclaimed that, since these creatures were clearly the pinnacle of good, then chaotic good must mean really good; pure, unadulterated goodness. And therefore chaotic evil was unbridled evil, hindered by no order or conscience. Lawfulness—we did understand that one—somehow mitigated one’s goodness, evilness, or neutralness; the order of society acting as a restraint to true personal expression. As such, lawful characters were quite rare in our game.

Although—or, more accurately, because—I have long since figured out what chaotic means, I continue to (mis)use the term to mean "very"or "extremely" or "hella" if you must; as in “Man, that movie was chaotic stupid!” or “these brownies are chaotic delicious!” So, for its personal meaning and obvious gaming implications, I thought it would be a clever name for my blog; satisfying at least to me even if no one else cared.

Alas, some dude already took the name. And as far as I can tell—the blog is written entirely in Spanish—he doesn’t even have an alignment. I had to scurry for a backup name and settled on the Unfrozen Caveman thing—which I almost immediately regretted. Sure, there’s the Phil Hartman reference and the applicability to my personal gaming history—a lot of gaming evolution occurred in the years between ~1985 and ~2005 to which I remain almost completely oblivious. But dice-chucker? Sheesh, what was I thinking?

After reading some of the other clever and/or amusing names out there, I feel a bit humbled by the lackluster moniker I’ve saddled myself with. Below is a short list of names that I’ve come across that I find cleverly amusing; thanks for rubbing it in, guys.

Monsters and Manuals
sword +1
bite the bulette
I SEE LEAD PEOPLE
The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
Curmudgeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Digressions
A Rust Monster Ate My Sword...
"It's okay; Gary sent us."
There's a Bugbear in My Kitchen!
Sham's Grog 'n Blog
The Sandbox of Doom

Special notice:

Playing D&D with Porn Stars
This one was originally on the main list, above, until I realized that, rather than attempting humor, this dude is quite literally playing D&D with actual porn stars! Mazel tov! With this premise you’d think he might be a bit distracted but, as far as I can tell, he’s a serious gamer with some really cool insight.

Addendum:

Asshat Paladins Just came across this one and had to add it, I particularly like the subtitle and the dude's stated intent to never even address it.

New friends! Cool.

Welcome to my new followers Fantasy Cartographic, Talysman the Ur-Beatle and Grodog. Just when I was thinking that I might as well post my little ditties on the backside of my water heater for all the action this little blog was getting, along come these three fine folks--not to disregard Daddy G.--excuse me, Humber G.--and James for their early support, of course. Thanks for stopping in all of you!

Megadungeon Design Review Comittee

As far as Old School gaming goes, my cohort Bob and I are strictly amateurs. But between the two of us, we're sitting on a pretty big gob of experience and training in construction design and planning. As such there was one incident during our recent foray into The Castle of the Mad Archmage that piqued our professional interests.

So we’re blundering through the dungeon in our distinctly ignorant fashion when we head down a long passage to the next level that’s labeled “slope 5°.”

Bob: What’s the elevation change between levels?

Me: I think it said 30'

[We do some math: 5° is equal to a 1:9 slope, which means there needs to be 270’ to get down to the next level. Feel free to check our work.]

Bob: Let’s see if this ramp is long enough ... [gleefully counting 10’ squares] ... Oh he’s got it made, well over 300’ here. Even accounting for the landings at the turn and the intersecting corridor.

And, satisfied that our dungeon creator is on top of his game, we move on.

About halfway down the slope there’s a numbered encounter.

Bob: What's that say?

Me: "slope in the corridor is too subtle to be detected under normal circumstances. Dwarves etc. have their normal chance to detect”

Bob: [chuckling] I guess that makes us dwarves.

To put things in perspective for any non-math nerds out there, a 5° slope equals a vertical change of ~1' (rise) for every 9' of horizontal (run). This is significantly steeper than the maximum allowable slope for an ADA (handicap access) ramp, which is 1:12. Without belaboring the point, a 5° slope is not at all subtle. A consultation with the Joe the Dungeonmaker—isn’t the internet grand?—assures me that it should read 5% slope not 5°. A 5% slope is a much more reasonable 1:20, but no biggie either way, Megadungeon rules apply; if it says it’s too subtle, then so be it. And besides, Bob and I are both looking at the dungeon plans anyway, the cat was already out of the bag.

But then, even if the corridor were perfectly level, the cat would have snuck out in its own surreptitious fashion. There’s something about long, unbroken corridors, you expect to come out of them in a place that is somehow different from the place you just left. Maybe they don't realize that they've left one level and arrived in another but they're expecting a change of one sort or another. Think about going to the zoo: you’re walking along a path with a bunch of savanna animals on either side, then you hit a stretch of path where there are no exhibits for a stretch. Then you find yourself in a new cluster of critters, chances are, these exhibits are somehow different from the savanna you just left. Maybe they’re monkeys--you’ve entered the jungle portion of the zoo. Or maybe the savanna predators are here, isolated from their prey in the previous exhibit. If it was just more gazelles and zebras, you would wonder how they’re different from the critters you left behind, and you might start to think that this zoo needs to diversify its collection.

Just walking that distance gives you time to exit one experience and prepare yourself for something new. It’s the concept behind labyrinths—as opposed to mazes—that the journey itself is transformational. And this works the same in table-top play as it does whether you’re walking through the zoo or traversing the pattern underneath Castle Amber. Even if your players have no idea that they have technically just entered a new dungeon level because they didn’t notice the elevation change, they already know that they left something behind. Walking the length of the passage has provided them a moment of cautious respite, and they’re prepared for something new.

That said, I wouldn’t advise a dungeon designer to redraw his map. Unless the sole purpose of your design subterfuge is to confound the player’s mapmaking efforts—it would be fun to watch the confusion unfold as their map starts bumping into itself in the Southwest quadrant—one needs to not only disguise the elevation change but also hide any other signs of transition as well. Say, if the entire first level, rooms and all, were juuuuuuust so ever slightly sloped—0.5°, 1:100, 1%, choose your labeling convention—toward the northwest,until the party opens a nondescript door off of an unassuming room and, unbeknownst to them—POW!—they’re facing a whole new wandering monster table!

Death to Timrod! All Hail Timrod! or Who's running the damn cleric this time?

Timrod was the name of a character I ran during my hard core playing days as a youth.            Actually, that doesn't do him justice; he was a serial character that I and others in my gaming group ran. Let me explain. He was the token cleric in our party when none of the players wanted to play one; a very common problem in our campaigns.        The original Timrod was my henchman, and I named him in a direct and blatant attempt to annoy an itinerant player in our group whose name was Rodney.   . And, to further the insult, I played the ‘Rod—we always allowed the PCs to “run” their own henchmen—as a sycophant who was more dedicated to my PC than to his chosen deity.

Alas, Timrod was killed in action at 2nd or 3rd level, but at the time we had a rule that allowed all dying characters one last action before they went to the great beyond; usually they'd utter some profound last words or the like. Since Timrod still had a Cure Light Wounds spell handy, I figured why let that go to waste; I had him leap to my PC's side and with his dying breath, call upon his deity to heal me.  The DM—my brother, who was generally supportive of my more ridiculous shenanigans—allowed it and it became one of those legendary moments of our group that is still discussed on the rare occasion when a few of us find ourselves in the same town for a few moments.

The idea of tormenting poor Rodney was such a hit that other players in the group started calling their cleric henchmen—the chore of henching the cleric was generally alternated between players—by names derived from Timrod: Dimrod, Rimnod, Timroyd, Midrot, etc.  I’m actually impressed that none of us stooped to naming him Nimrod; that would have been too obvious.  Though the original Timrod was a human, his successors were of any race and, at first anyway, they were all characterized by their adulation of certain PCs of the party.  After several incarnations however, the Timrods seemed to become more and more cynical and jaded.  The worst was the above mentioned Midrot, a half-orc cleric/assassin whose PC-employer declared was the reincarnation of the original Timrod and who therefore treated my PC with great antipathy.  It mattered not that I was no longer running the same PC as Timrod the First’s employer.

Timrod was prevalent for a couple of years during jr. high and then the franchise died out when we started taking the game a bit more seriously in high school.  Besides, the player whom Timrod was created to annoy had left the fold. The ‘Rod had been dormant for almost 2 years when I decided to bring him back, but this time elevated to the role of PC.  He was a half elven Cleric/MU and, like his predecessors, was somewhat lacking in self esteem; he had a low charisma and I drew a particularly unappealing character sketch of him. Actually, until I drew the sketch I had intended to run an elven fighter/magic user/yoga instructor, but, after finishing the drawing, I knew immediately that this dude was Timrod the Next.  But Timrod needed to be a cleric; so a few abilities were re-arranged, “half’ was added to his race—as Per PHB, only NPC elves could be clerics—and voila!

Unlike his predecessors who tended to be either boisterously sycophantic or aggressively disgruntled, he was brooding and sullen--unusual for a character run by a 15 year old boy, no?--though kind and helpful to those he felt worthy of trust. He simultaneously revered and resented all full elven characters and magic users.  He felt his role as cleric was a burden to him and was confounded by his own limitations as a(n) MU—we played with the race-level limits for PCs as per the PHB so he was limited to 8th level MU and 5th level cleric if I remember correctly.  I decided that he was the child of a great human wizard whose legend cast a shadow on his life long after the parent's death.    He sought out the career in the cloth to, hopefully, gain recognition and acceptance in the elven culture of his mother with only mild success.

The party of which Timrod the Next was a member went defunct before completing a single adventure, but he continued on as a journeyman, cropping up in a campaign when someone of his skillset was required, drifting off again when his limitations made him less useful; or if I just got tired of playing him.  He slowly amassed a large fortune and a hefty spellbook, and, though he could achieve name rank in neither of his chosen fields, he did build a large estate and became a prominent authority in whatever city he lived—we generally based our PCs out of the Wild Coast, though I can’t remember which town Timrod settled in.

Because, I think, he was such a departure from the stable of rogue-ish fighters and good-natured thieves that were my main fare as a player, Timrod eventually became my iconic character.  He was seen as moody and complex by other party members and they often went to some length to placate him.  This, of course, was an extreme reversal of fortune for the Timrod franchise.  Most telling, he was the only one of my characters that no one else ever played.  While it was a common practice for us to alternate DMs within a single campaign; usually, if the DM had a PC in a particular adventure, his character was passed off to one of the other players to run.  But if I was running a dungeon and the players wanted T-rod to take part, I ran him as an NPC.

Although I stopped playing the game pretty much completely when I went off to college, I have one friend who has kept at it without a break—and still plays regularly to this day.  He says that he has used Timrod NPCs from time to time in both incarnations: Timrod the Peon, faithful cleric whose sole purpose is to bring succor to the more important characters of the party, and Timrod the Wise, an enigmatic figure who commands respect before dispensing sagely knowledge.