Traverse Fantasy

Thank y'all so much for y'all's interest in the last one! Will respond when I can, just preparing for a (nice) busy week and weekend :) in any case, yep... they're back ! Been using them. Just slightly different. Bracket Hearts Power Aptitude Defense Speed Grunt 2 1 +1 11 3 Elite 4 2 +2 12 4 Champ 8 3 +4 14 5 Boss 16 4 +8 18 6 Minion* 1 1 +0 10 2 To translate each of the columns: Hearts: How much damage they can take. Power: How much damage they can deal per turn, possibly split into multiple attacks or spent on special effects. Aptitude: Attack bonus, or more generally for D20 checks if applicable. Defense: Roll against for D20 checks to attack. Speed: Initiative score to beat . Then, you can quickly build encounters by spending heart budgets on opponents (hold off on minions): Difficulty Heart Budget Easy 1/PC Medium 2/PC Hard 3/PC Deadly 4/PC Having used this to plan sessions an...

A bit of a mouthful! I had the thought: why not give each instance of a weapon constant damage, but roll to determine that constant amount? For example, a D6 weapon can deal somewhere from 1 to 6 damage, and one you buy from town might just deal 3 damage. However, if you go adventuring, you might come across special ones that deal even more (or less). Besides reducing the complexity of combat, this also introduces Diablo -style loot where you get just a little meaningful granularity. Plus, check this: on a roll of 1, you increase the rarity of the item and reroll the weapon die. Each point of rarity could map to +1 of some special type of damage if you want to be basic, or it could be an actually special power that triggers on some condition (like rolling a crit or something). You would probably want either a D20 master table of weapons or a smaller D6 table specialized for a specific faction or type of opponent (to make it a general loot table, probably use entries 1–3 for weapons and...

Need to write something to stay in the habit. Story's going well, just trying to avoid burnout. There are three separate "problems" I have: making attack and damage rolls separate per se is tedious; attack bonuses are tedious to track separately and can also be confusing, e.g., about whether you also add them to damage rolls; and the set of classic armor class values {10, 12, 14, 16} represents very low probabilities if you assume a typical modifier of 0. How about you use your damage roll as your attack bonus? Meaning:   D20 + D(Weapon) ≥ AC We would get probabilities as follows (notice that each die step adds ~5%): Damage AC 10 AC 12 AC 14 AC 16 d4 68% 58% 48% 38% d6 73% 63% 53% 43% d8 78% 68% 58% 48% d10 82% 73% 63% 53% d12 85% 77% 68% 58% Speeds things up in terms of hitting more often and also treating attack and damage rolls as a singular operation rather than two discrete steps of a procedure (even if you opt to r...

Sort of a two-parter, since they relate to each other. Combat Equipment Assume characters can afford most things. What matters are what they can carry in their hands and on their body: let's say 3 bulk. Some items also require a hand (or two) to carry in order to use. Pick weapons (magic weapons deal an additional ½ ♥ of damage): Light weapon (–½ ♥) → 0 bulk, 1 hand Medium weapon (–1 ♥) → 1 bulk, 1 hand Heavy weapon (–1½ ♥) → 2 bulk, 2 hands Pick armor (characters have a base of 3 hearts): Light armor (+1 ♥) → 1 bulk, 0 hands Heavy armor (+2 ♥) → 2 bulk, 0 hands Possible combinations: Medium weapon, light armor, shield Heavy weapon, light armor Medium weapon, heavy armor Medium weapon, light armor (leftover: 1 hand, 1 bulk) Light weapon, heavy armor (leftover: 1 hand, 1 bulk) Heavy weapon (leftover: 0 hands, 1 bulk) Medium weapon (leftover: 1 hand, 2 bulk) Light weapon (leftover: 1 hand, 3 bulk) Hands are a short-term "What are you holding right now?" thing, but bulk is a...

Let me share an example of four level-1 encounters, from easy (2 ♥) to deadly (8 ♥). Remember that characters deal a hit on a roll of 20 and up, choose to dodge or exchange hits from 10 to 19, or take a hit without dealing one on 9 or less. Easy Encounter Round 1: Monster strength 2 of 2. Alice dodges an incoming blow (8+3). Bob dodges an incoming blow (15+3). Claire dodges an incoming blow (10+2). David defends themself and lands 1 hit (17+4). Round 2: Monster strength 1 of 2. Alice lands 1 hit but takes 1 in turn (11+3); 2 hearts left. Medium Encounter Round 1: Monster strength 4 of 4. Alice lands 1 hit but takes 1 in turn (9+3); 2 hearts left. Bob dodges an incoming blow (9+3). Claire dodges an incoming blow (17+2). David dodges an incoming blow (13+4). Round 2: Monster strength 3 of 4. Alice dodges an incoming blow (16+3). Bob lands 1 hit but takes 1 in turn (8+3); 2 hearts left. Claire defends themself and lands 1 hit (18+2)....

I suggested shifting goalposts more in favor of players, and a second idea: removing hearts altogether in favor of burdens, fictional effects which disadvantage the character by subtracting their value from rolls. Did that work out? Nope. Simulations Let's assume the original scale and its melee effects for a second: 20+: Triumph 11–19: Compromise 1–9: Failure 0-: Catastrophe For a sequence of attempted melee results, the outcomes for different aspect bonuses are as follows:  Aspect Bonus Total Turns Hits Dealt Burdens +0 6.4 2.6 5.4 +1 7.6 3.2 6.3 +2 8.7 3.9 7.2 +3 9.9 4.7 8.2 +4 11.3 5.9 9.2 +5 12.7 6.9 10.2 This means that a character can take from 5 to 10 "hits" (in the form of burden) while dealing on average 2 hits plus their aspect bonus. Their aspect bonus soaks up the effect of the burden accumulated until it exceeds the bonus, at which point it will basically always take 5 burdens to down the character. This al...

Did forbidden 5e math too. The whole game is fake! Shout-out to Paul Hughes' business card monster manual , and Reddit user Asinus for their calculations on average DPR per character tier . Basically, I figured out that the game really is balanced around monsters taking around 4 hits or 7 attacks to defeat if their CR equals the party's level. In other words, a medium encounter should take about 2-3 rounds to resolve. This is because monsters' hit points and armor class increases at more or less the same rate as player-characters' damage-per-round and attack bonus, respectively. We can extrapolate that deadly encounters have double the duration. The damage that a medium encounter deals per round also tends to be 20% of the player-party's total hit points, although it tends to be distributed between multi-attacks and legendary actions for more powerful monsters. An ancient white dragon (CR 20) attacks up to 6 times per turn, each dealing an average of 15 hit points;...

While inactive but lurking, I saw someone on a Discord have a question about handling groups of figures with two-sided melee rolls (where partial success may mean both hitting and getting hit). There's some answers on the Dungeon World side of things , but I wanted to think about what a dynamic ruling would look like were I in the driver's seat. When multiple players target the same monster: Everyone rolls. Successful hits accumulate, but only the character with the lowest roll takes damage if they would otherwise. Everyone gangs up on a living scarecrow. Alice rolls 16, Bob rolls 3, and Claire rolls 8. Only Alice rolls enough to land 1 hit, and would usually take 1 hit in return, but only Bob takes 1 hit from the scarecrow for rolling the lowest. When a monster would deal multiple hearts of damage : They may deal 1 heart of damage up to that many characters. Hearts of damage in excess of characters cycle through again. Alice and Bob attack a dragon, rolling 15 and 17. Bot...

I don’t like reading rules examples, but I wrote this to help communicate the potential for improvising combat and hit locations . It’s funny focusing so much on combat after saying I don’t want any combat-specific rules! But this is because people were interested in what combat situations might look like otherwise. Notice that nothing below is really set in stone. The dragon can lose up to 8 hearts, sure, but where or how those hearts are lost are not a concern of the rules. Instead, it’s all about the player negotiating their own fictional positioning to decide what risks they want to take. If it makes sense attacking the dragon’s tail would usually deal 1 damage, that’s what happens. If it makes sense the tail falls off if it takes 2 damage, that’s what happens. Remember in the previous post, I didn’t even mention the dragon having a tail! This is improvisation based on conjecture. Example 1: The Dragon GM: The dragon is sleeping, its wings and tail curled around its soft belly...

I had a suspicion the other day that HD 1 figures are more like HD 2 figures than HD ½ figures in terms of longevity since it will usually take at least 2 hits to defeat both (since HD 1, half the time, will have more hit points than damage dealt by a single attack). Simulated this and it turned out to be more-or-less true! Hit Dice Turns to Defeat Hits to Defeat Relative to HD ½ Relative to HD 1 ½d 2.37 1.16 100% 74% 1d–1 2.75 1.37 118% 87% 1d 3.22 1.58 136% 100% 1d+1 3.71 1.85 159% 117% 2d 5.01 2.51 216% 159% 4d 8.91 4.47 385% 283% 6d 12.9 6.49 559% 411% 8d 16.9 8.47 730% 537% 10d 20.9 10.4 897% 659% 12d 25.0 12.5 1078% 793% This effect is due to the Packing Problem, the effect of which Delta's D&D Hotspot also discusses on sweeping attacks : figures with less hit points "waste" overflow damage, whereas figures with more hit points soak the full force of the attack. This means tha...

The rat post was fun ! For my next trick, I will reveal the secret "challenge rating" system inside OD&D . Virtual Hit Points First, let me explain in greater detail some ground I covered in the last post. Hit dice are not the final word on monster longevity because they do not account for the likelihood that they will get hit by an attack. This means we can get a more accurate picture by calculating a figure's "virtual hit points": how much longer they last in combat as a result of their armor class. I did this years ago , but have a more accurate function now because of a simulation I ran. The results are as accurate for 4 hit points as they are for 35 hit points. AC Avg. HP Adj. 9 [10] 100% 8 [11] 111% 7 [12] 125% 6 [13] 142% 5 [14] 168% 4 [15] 198% 3 [16] 251% 2 [17] 334% As an example, an unarmored character with 10 hit points doesn't get anything extra, but if they were wearing plate armor it would be as i...

How many hit points does a giant rat have? My friend Gus L. posted this fun illustration the other day , proposing that the open-endedness of OD&D implies the possibility of giant rats with 8 hit dice. He takes page 20 of Monsters & Treasure as evidence for this, that giant rats have at least 2 hit dice and hypothetically up to 20 (not just 8!): This category includes giant ants and prehistoric monsters. Armor Class can be anything from 8 to 2. Hit Dice should range from 2 to anywhere near 20, let us say, for a Tyrannasaurus Rex. Also included in this group are the optionally usable “Martian” animals such as Apts, Banths, Thoats, etc. If the referee is not personally familiar with the various monsters included in this category the participants of the campaign can be polled to decide all characteristics. Damage caused by hits should range between 2-4 dice (2-24 points). My initial thought was I disagree because a “giant rat” might not qualify as a large animal even if it’s...

Someone shared with me Chaos Reigns , a hack of OD&D combat. It’s not to my own taste (check it out still!), but it got me thinking about something I wish it had done: consolidate attack and damage rolls. Since everything is d6, why not! My thought was: roll 2d6 ≤ AC , and the damage is the highest of the two dice. For example, if a target has an AC of 7 and you roll a 2 + 5, then you hit and deal 5 damage. This is how the numbers break down, for AC values from 8 to 3. ‘DPA’ stands for damage-per-attack, and ‘DPH’ stands for damage-per-hit. Armor Class To-Hit DPA DPH 8 72% 3.5 4.3 7 58% 2.9 4.0 6 41% 1.9 3.4 5 28% 1.2 2.9 4 17% 0.6 2.2 3 8% 0.2 1.7 Given that table, I think values from 7 to 4 are the best range, and they could easily correspond to the typical four armor types (none, leather, chain, plate); alternatively, treat 7 to 5 as light/medium/heavy and subtract 1 for a shield. I like the numbers better than the Kubular meth...

Occasionally, I check Reddit to see if I missed anything interested in this sphere of things. Not usually, but today—yeah! Reddit user Kubular reported a misunderstanding of typical D&D combat from one of their friends, and took it as a possible new direction for one-roll combat. Here’s the link , and here’s the important bit: I rolled a 16 to hit and they had an AC of 13. I rolled a 5 for damage, but she was still looking at the 16 and was like “wait, why is it 5? Shouldn’t it be 3?” I was confused for a moment, but then I realized (a) she hadn’t seen my damage roll, and (b) I hadn’t explained how combat works and this was her first exposure to any RPG. So she saw the 16, understood armor class as representative of her armor, then just assumed that you would subtract the AC from the attack roll to get damage. Math Comparison That’s interesting! How does it compare to other methods? Let’s take for example: Original: Attempt an attack as per Chainmail , and take 1d6 damage ...

You're a regular 1d figure. How many tries does it take to defeat another figure like you? Maybe 1 if you can land a hit, or 2 if you account for your chance to do that. Nope, 3.0 tries, on the dot. Then it takes 2.6 tries if you have 1d–1 hit die, and 2.3 tries if you have ½d hit die. That's pretty bad. And that's just for a 50% chance to hit. Upping this by 20% gives 2.2, 1.9, and 1.7. Not helping. Think about it this way, too: to find the chance of one-shotting a figure, multiply the attacker's to-hit chance by the chance they will deplete the target's hit points. For a 1d figure at a 50% to-hit, that's a 25% chance. Add +2.5% per extra 5% to-hit. Not good. This is why I've said before that fighters need some sort of cleave or sweep or multi-attack to be "useful", as well as an increase in damage over time, but as they stand the numbers by themselves are quite bad, and bonuses to damage can be hard to scale without getting out of hand . Here...

Behold my woes: LBB or FMC : Lots of dice-rolling. AD&D: Stupid and bad; multi-attack hell. B/X or OSE : Plain boring. Boooooo. DCC: No multi-attacks. D&D4: Too many choices. D&D5 : The worst of AD&D, DCC, and D&D4. FMC Skirmishes : Hard to explain; relies on an alternate system; constant factor overwhelms random factor. FMC Basic : Having a damage floor is kinda awkward. What to do? Earlier I said that I like fighters adding their level to attack and damage rolls, in combination with some way for them to make multiple attacks per turn. That way, mid-level fighters are guaranteed to throw any regular figure they hit off the board, and can do so potentially multiple times per turn. I want fighter to be short for auto-fighter. The problem is that these effects have to be bound with respect to targets' hit points and bonuses from magic weapons, without becoming overwhelming. I don't really know what a solution looks like except for overhauling the who...

What brought this on was that I just published FMC Basic on Itch, and wanted to reflect on how the way I play OD&D has changed over the last few months. For a while, my skirmish rules were it (of which you can find the 'final' version in FMC proper ) because they felt like a direct translation between the mass warfare of Chainmail and the so-called 'alternate combat system' in OD&D . FMC Basic by Traverse Fantasy The gist is that any number # of ~1 HD figures can combine their attacks into one like a # HD figure; for example, 4 orcs can combine their forces and attack like a 4 HD figure. This relies upon a # HD figure adding # to attack and damage, so our 4 orcs fighting like Voltron add +4 to attack and damage. I fell out of love with this subsystem because although it condensed multiple figures into one unit, the rules themselves felt more arbitrary like they were still holding onto awkward D&D conventions. I don't like adding the same number ...

The cleave rule is pretty common for fighters: after defeating an enemy, you get to attempt a free attack against another. How effective is this rule, especially when compared to getting additional (guaranteed) attacks per turn? I wrote a script to simulate the cleave rule, assuming a couple parameters: the enemy would be an orc (HD 1, AC 13), 1 hit die equals 4 hit points , 1 hit lands d6 damage, and fighters improve their attack chance by +1 per level. I ran this script for level 4 and level 8 fighters, since those are typical comparison points. The results were shocking. The level 4 fighter, on average, dealt 0.85 hits and killed 0.43 orcs per round; and the level 8 fighter dealt 1.33 hits and killed 0.67 orcs. When adding a +1 bonus to attack and damage, assuming a B/X fighter with a strength score of at least 13, these values increased slightly to 1.00/0.66 and 1.70/1.10 respectively. If we use d10 for the damage die, the values became 1.00/0.71 and 1.79/1.24. If both the bonus a...

Challenge rating (CR) in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition determines basically everything you need to know about your monster: armor class, hit points, and average damage per round. This makes conversion between 5e and classic editions of D&D like B/X quite difficult, not only because of different conventions but also different expectations of how monsters and their math should function. Hits deal more damage than in classic D&D because characters add their ability bonus to the dice roll, and hit dice are kind of arbitrary and calculated retrospectively because what really matters is hit points by challenge rating (e.g.: a giant monster might have d12-sized hit dice whereas a medium monster might have d8-sized hit dice, but a CR 10 monster needs to have around 160 hit points either way). What do you if you're writing an adventure that you want to support both systems, but you don't want to work from scratch? My friend Nova found herself in this situation while...