Dice Ratatouille

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A peek into my dark, twisted mind. I came across someone hacking OD&D for the titular Anglosaxonese setting of HârnMaster and seemingly adjusting the rules to be more Hârn-like (I’m only familiar with it by way of John B. waxing about his eventual midwife campaign—we’re waiting, John!). Everyone gives me unsolicited advice about random bullshit, maybe because I just have that kinda face, so I thought I’d also give unsolicited advice about how to develop dice functions so as to avoid giving the user headaches. This is in the spirit of Idle Cartulary’s series about dice, but less about dice statistics in themselves than presenting an intuitive order of operations.

Let’s take the below HP calculation from the Hârn-D&D hack:

  • Hit Points: Males start with 14HP, Females with 15HP.
  • Fighters receive +5 HP to their starting HP
  • Clerics/Shamans receive +3 HP to their starting HP
  • Shek-Pvar receive +1 HP to their starting HP
  • +1 HP per point of CON over 12.
  • –1 HP per point of CON under 12.
  • Fighting Types receive +1 HP per level
  • Clerics/Shamans receive +1 HP every two levels
  • Shek-Pvar receive +1 every three levels.

The first reaction of everyone with whom I had shared this was, oh God, are we giving females and males different base hit points—and not only that, but it’s a difference of 1?! But I’m unfortunately used to that, both from OSR people and the ancient texts which inspire them so, uh, let’s let them have that. What strikes me more (unfortunately) is that we define a pretty arbitrary base number of hit points on the basis of sex, but then that’s modified at a 1:1 rate based on how much the character’s constitution varies, with respect to a particular number which also isn’t the ability’s average possible score. It’s awkward in a way which, if you know what to look for, is avoidable. The OSR types at least have an excuse in being like, oh, I don’t do game design, I just play my games, but I have seen similar from more indie types who think they are exceptionally intentional with their dice math. I just hope to encourage readers to think about what steps they are asking users to take and to make those steps as least annoying as possible. Everyone can learn from this. Anyone can make non-annoying dice math.

First, let’s take the awkward constitution modifier and set its base at 10 instead of 12. If we don’t want this to impact base hit points, we need to decrease the base amounts by 2. This means females start with 13 hit points and males start with 12 hit points. But why are we even doing that? It’s easier to start with constitution, assume it’ll be about 10, and let females add +3 and males +2. And even that’s a bit much, because really everyone gets +2 whereas females get a bonus of +1. Unless we also want to account for hermaphrodites and transsexuals (counting or not counting gang violence?), I’d recommend shifting the +2 to each of the class hit point bonuses because at least everyone gets to pick one. We like when females get a little something extra, don't we folks?

Here’s our reduction:

  • Hit points equal your constitution as a base. Females start with +1 hp.
  • Fighters start with +7 hp and gain +1 hp each level.
  • Clerics/Shamans start with +5 hp and gain +1 hp every two levels.
  • Shek-Pvar start with +3 hp and gain +1 hp every three levels.

Let’s do some examples. Using the original formula, you can calculate hit points for a level-4 female cleric with constitution 8 as:

Sex + Class + (Con – 12) + Level/Rate = HP
15 + 3 + (8 - 12) + 4/2 = 16

Or using the new formula:

Con + Class + Level/Rate + Female Bonus = HP
8 + 5 + 4/2 + 1 = 16

Or for a level-4 male fighter with constitution 13, on the old formula:

Sex + Class + (Con – 12) + Level/Rate = HP
14 + 5 + (13 – 12) + 4/1 = 24

Versus the new formula:

Con + Class + Level/Rate = HP
13 + 7 + 4/1 = 24

There we go; less annoying! Thank you in advance, shifty louts, for letting me pick on you. I have similar thoughts about THAC0, being itself not bad except for how it’s presented in the most annoying possible way, but this was closer to the surface of my mind. Good luck on your Hârn-hack! Can you play as a midwife? I’m not asking.


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