Downtime in High-Level Classic D&D

One of the things I really like about Classic D&D – especially the Frank Mentzter BECMI/RC version – is the treatment of the post-Name Level game. That is, how the emphasis changes, and the way that's encouraged by the game mechanics. This is most evident in the character options available in "downtime" between traditional adventures.

At Name Level, Magic-Users get to conduct magical research. This is a much bigger deal than it might at first appear. One reason for this is the content of the research: M-Us can craft magical items. Crafting magical items is a very powerful tool, as most veterans of 3.x D&D are well aware – if only because the ability to easily make scrolls of uncommonly used spells and wands of commonly used spells makes the M-Us spells-per-day limitation much less limiting. What's significant about crafting magic items in Basic is that, unlike in 3.x, there is no prerequisite in feats (or anything else) to craft, nor is there any experience point cost; just money and time (and M-Us of this level are bound to have a good amount of money). On the other hand, there is no exhaustive shopping-list of items and costs, which puts things more in the DM's hands to decide what can be made, what can't be made, and what requires a quest for an exotic component, which helps keep it all under control. Unlike AD&D, however, the tone isn't all about discouraging crafting magical items in favour of gaining magical items solely as loot. So the magical research rules in Basic are powerful, but still give DMs the last word in what's possible.

Other classes have options too. The Expert Set allows PCs to build strongholds, claim lands and raise private armies, but the Companion Set opens things up much wider by adding dominions and their management. This is a sophisticated minigame that can play out like an empire-building computer or board game, but it feeds into the core D&D adventuring game too. In a beautifully simple extension of the XP-for-gold reward system for adventuring, dominion income is also worth experience.

Fighters are the quintessential land-owning high-level characters. They gain automatic followers if they build a keep, plus are likely to be offered land in a feudal arrangement. Should they choose this option, the additional XP that they gain from this between adventures contributes to their level gain, which goes a long way to topping up their THAC0 and impressive higher-level saving throws to keep them strong and viable when the Magic-Users are coming into their own. In fact, the usefulness of domain management to the Fighter is such that in a way, the special abilities of the well known wandering-Fighter options of BECMI (Paladin, Knight, or Avenger) are compensation for giving that up.

Clerics are more of a middle ground. They probably get financial aid from their religious hierarchy in building a stronghold and free followers as well, so they are also well suited to the domain-management minigame. On the other hand, they can take advantage from magical research (although not to the same degree as Magic-Users), so they don't get a subclass option comparable to the landless Fighters.* It makes for an interesting choice – be landless and spend downtime making items to get more "juice" during adventures (especially for healing), or run a dominion for the XP to go faster through the upper levels and get to the Righteous Firepower high-level Cleric spells.

Thieves are a bit of an odd one out (as they often tend to be in BECMI). They build hideouts instead of strongholds and get apprentice Thieves instead of soldiers, with a place in the Thieves Guild hierarchy. Actually running organised crime is left to the DM, which feels weak compared to the level of detail given to dominion management. Wandering Thieves get a tantalising hook in the form of a chance of a treasure map or similar per game week, but nothing more systematic. Crime really doesn't pay in BECMI, which is unfortunate for the Thieves. Should the DM flesh things out for the guild thieves, though, there's lots of potential for gangster goings-on with lashings of experience points for ill-gotten gold.

Even Magic-Users can build strongholds (a tower in their case), but it's a more casual affair; they get a few apprentices, but don't really run dominions. One fun quirk is that they can build open dungeons beneath their tower, which draw monsters to lair there. By and large, though, M-Us have more important things to do than manage people.

Demihumans have special rules for strongholds, which – like the racial classes themselves – helps to emphasise that they're not just like humans. For instance, elves build strongholds that blend into the forest, and gain the friendship and aid of the woodland animals. They don't get any special subclasses for forfeiting a stronghold, which makes sense considering they're at or near their level cap anyway.

These options help to change the texture of the game beyond Name Level, and in a gradually increasing way. At higher and higher levels, magical researchers get more and more resources for ever greater projects, while the dominion rulers' territories grow to grander scales with even greater experience rewards. So – while it's never actually forced – incentives are there to spend increasing amounts of in-character time doing non-adventuring things. This gives higher-level gaming a very different style to lower-level gaming (not just more of the same with bigger numbers), and also emphasises the unique style of each of the character classes.


* Neutral Clerics can become Druids, but I think that the trade-off of armour versus the extra spell list is an evenly matched one, so it doesn't belong to the same category as the Fighter options.

Navigating the Labyrinth

So far, we're two adventures into the Labyrinth Lord campaign. The first was Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics #0: Legends Are Made, Not Born, and the second was The Fountain of Health from Dungeon issue #39. Running an old-school D&D game has been different in a few ways from the games I'm used to.

Simplicity: I mentioned in a previous post that I really appreciate the simplicity of LL. The easy prep for me is more than just a matter of investing less of my time; every time I ran a d20 game the drudge work involved was demoralising. That meant that I'd put off the prep work to the last minute, and it would be rushed and unfinished, which didn't work as well and put me in a negative mood for the game. I actually abandoned the last two d20 campaigns I ran (Lone Wolf and Monte Cook's World of Darkness) because they were actually souring me on GMing. LL has been really liberating.

The simplicity in character options is something I had reservations about, because the group is used to games where you get to "build" your character with certain strengths. I think some of the group still aren't sold on LL's build-free way of handling characters (where one Fighter is much like another game-mechanically), but they seem to be giving it a fair shot. Hopefully the old-school ethos that characters are defined by what they do in the game and not by their powers will catch on as the campaign develops.

THAC0 & AC: Some of the group are still tripping over the THAC0 and to-hit rolls with lower-is-better AC. I even got a little confused once or twice myself. We're getting used to it again though, which isn't surprising considering the group's collective long experience with AD&D 2e.

The controversial THAC0 Defence house rule has mostly worked fine, but there was one weird moment in the first adventure where a PC fought an enemy one-on-one, which worked out as the player rolling the same d20 himself back and forward. Maybe THAC0 Defence needs a duelling exception to stop that happening, where single combat reverts to the standard system where the DM rolls attacks.

Lethality: We had one PC death in the first adventure. The second adventure was going well up till the very end, when a single bad decision got half the party killed. Not an ideal ending, but I think the group would have to admit that it was player error, and there didn't seem to be any bad feelings over it. I think the fact that it wasn't just a single PC loss this time made it seem less personal.

An unexpected benefit of the lethality comes from the fact that the players have been taking hirelings along with them to improve their odds. Having NPCs travelling with the group has opened up a little more roleplay. I think it's also helped the players feel less discouraged about the low power levels of their characters (compared to later editions), when they can see that the NPC adventurers don't do any better.

Sandboxing: I'm introducing sandboxing in small steps, because the group (me included) is used to linear sequences of adventures. So the first adventure was a straightforward "this is your mission, go and do it" thing to ease into the new game. After that, I gave the group several different adventure hooks to choose from. That drew comments about the videogamey feel, and the players approached it exactly like in a Bioware RPG; they also had a brief bit of analysis paralysis from those choices, but that didn't last long. When the PCs get more capable (round about when they graduate from the "Basic" into the "Expert" level range) I'll try opening things up further. When they start to outgrow the small town they're based in, I'll sound them out for where they want to go next, and build from there.

Experience for gold: I was surprised at how fiddly this turned out in actual play. I'm used to giving out mission-based XP, which is a simple case of picking a number to award, but gold-plus-monster XP needs a fair bit of calculation, at a point in the session where I'm usually finished GMing. The other thing that caught me off guard about it was that it makes the amount of treasure in the adventure very important for the experience award as well. In particular, the first adventure I ran was very cash-poor (which I hadn't thought to consider in advance) so I ended up multiplying the XP ad hoc, and even then it wasn't a whole lot when split between the PCs and the hirelings.

Description Over Dice: One of the biggest changes in this campaign is having the players' interaction with their environment be mostly based on the exact descriptions of their actions, instead of having skills like Perception or Search. This bit of the game style is still a work in progress for all of us to adjust to. I still instinctively feel like calling for dice rolls when it's not necessary, and I need to prompt the players occasionally to be specific about their actions. It's only to be expected that this will take time, considering how long we've been playing regular-style games but we've only had two adventures with LL.

Level Limits

There are some things about old-school D&D that I've completely changed my opinion about at some point, and the system of limiting demihuman level advancement is one of them. For many years I thought that it was completely stupid, an arbitrary game-balance artefact that gave demihumans some weird kind of mental disability that stopped them from learning anything new after a certain point. In fact, until recently I'd intended to house-rule level limits out when I ran Labyrinth Lord.

What changed my mind was the sudden realisation of what level limits mean. They're not a “learning difficulty” - they're a performance plateau, like when an athlete reaches a peak performance where they just can't get any better, and actually have to work hard just to keep up what they have.

The "peak performance" claim might seem strange when the level limits look far short of the level that the game goes up to (20), but look at things in perspective. Compare the demihumans in the LL core to Fighter, the human class that they all have much in common with. All but one of them can get beyond Name level, by which a Fighter already has most of the hit points he's ever going to get, and near-superhuman combat ability overall. At level 9, without any other modifiers, a Fighter can wound an opponent in plate armour with shield 50% of the time; he can confront large numbers of level 1 Fighters (each one a “Veteran” per the D&D level titles) successfully, fight and kill creatures like giants and dragons of colossal scale, and is so renowned for his prowess that merely founding a small keep will attract warriors from far and wide to pledge themselves to his service. In short, a level 9 Fighter is a warrior of epic proportions. A Dwarf at level cap (12) is beyond even this, with slightly more hit points than the equivalent level Fighter and significantly better saving throws. The Elf can also get beyond Name Level (to 10), and is fully as capable at magic as a Magic-User of equal level as well. Even the humble Halfling gets almost to Name level (8).

Imagine that these breakpoints represent the maximum physical potential of the demi-humans. Dwarves are excellent at combat thanks to their toughness and determination, but they they're just not built for much speed or agility. Elves have speed and agility to spare, but lack brawn. Halflings can get surprisingly effective in combat, but are disadvantaged in physical power. In all cases, building on their strengths eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns where it doesn't overcome their inherent weaknesses anymore. Hence, the level limit. Humans are the special case – they are the supremely versatile race, whose unique package of qualities allows them to develop in potential without limit. Outside of the context of RPG game systems, the idea that someone who already is exceptional among the elite (at any physical or mental discipline) keeps getting better and better is extraordinary; so really the demihumans aren't odd for having level limits, it's the humans who are odd for not having them!

Looking at things in this way is especially in-genre: it's a very common trope in fantasy and sci-fi that humans have the greatest potential because of their all-round capabilities, unhindered by any intrinsic limitations. It also works well on a world-building level – having the very mightiest warriors, spellcasters, and so on be humans helps to justify the human-dominated world that D&D (and most classic fantasy) is built around.

Primarily, though, the level limit mechanic is about game balance. It gives demihumans a disadvantage to compensate for their racial benefits. Many other games model “human versatility” by making them equally suited to any class/role while non-humans excel only in one or two roles, failing to consider that in group games, characters typically do best by focusing in one or two roles anyway because they're in a team of specialists. The level-limit method handles “human versatility” on a micro-scale (versatility within a role) not just a macro-scale (versatility across roles) which works much better within typical RPG gameplay.

Armour Class and Me

Given the recent mini-controversy over the AC change to leather armour in the revised edition of Labyrinth Lord (from 7 to 8), I'd like to talk about a related issue: ascending versus descending armour classes in D&D retro-clones. Some clones have 3.x-style ascending AC (and to-hits), others have traditional descending AC with descending THAC0 and/or a to-hit chart.

This issue is a bit of a special case in the old-vs-new D&D debate, because new-schoolers seem prone to claim that ascending AC is objectively superior. Jonathan Tweet (co-creator of 3rd Edition) said that it's “just clearly better” in his blog:

http://wanton-heat-jet.livejournal.com/24132.html

So... is it? Well, with descending AC, you need to either work from a chart or use THAC0. Dependence on a chart for a fundamental combat function can be inconvenient when juggling all the other things involved, while THAC0 and subtraction makes the mental arithmetic just that bit harder. The descending AC doesn't bring many advantages as such in return: I don't count the fact that descending AC is a D&D tradition as an advantage in itself, because I don't think that tradition for it's own sake has any value.

However, whether it's objectively better or worse isn't the right question to ask, I think. A better question is: “Is it actually a problem?”. This is where you really need to look at the AC system in the context of the combat system as a whole. 3.x's ascending AC may be a tiny bit easier to work with, but this is in a system that desperately needs any little bit of streamlining because the overall system is overly complex and bursting at the seams with modifiers. In OD&D/BD&D, the system is already simple and easy to work with. So you might need to look up a table for every attack roll – but there's only a couple of tables that you need in total, so it's easy to have them all on a single page right in front of you. If you use THAC0 instead, the mental arithmetic added still doesn't make running combat hard.

Also, a positive advantage of descending AC is seamless compatibility with old D&D material (plus, descending AC tends to be a de facto standard in the OSR (old-school renaissance) community, and there's plenty of free content available online). What little speed in-play that might be lost through working with descending AC is gained right back by not needing conversion.

All in all, I think that Tweet's claim that ascending AC is “just clearly better” than descending is (pardon the pun) fantasy, and irrelevant besides. It's really no big deal either way in the games it was used in; it would be awkward if (for some reason) descending AC were ported into 3.x, but that points more to a problem with 3.x than with descending AC.

AD&D 2nd Edition Retrospective

I've noticed that, despite there being a lot of online interest in the older editions of D&D, one edition seems to get no love: 2nd Edition AD&D (2e). Original D&D (OD&D), Basic (BD&D) and 1st Edition AD&D (1e) have thriving fanbases and retroclones, while 3rd Edition (3.x) is still effectively in print through Paizo's Pathfinder. 2e, though, seems to be the red-headed stepchild.

I think that a big part of the reason for this is the very conscious and deliberate division between old-school and new-school fanbases. For old-schoolers, 2e is part of the post-Gygax era, when the “grit” and the “heart” had gone out of the game. For new-schoolers, 2e is still archaic: THAC0, descending AC, class/race restrictions and demihuman level limits, etc. In other words, each of the two main schools of thought sees 2e as being too much a part of the other camp; basically, it's unfashionable.

Another big part of the reason for 2e's unpopularity is that it was the basis of arguably the biggest and most blatant “supplement treadmill” of D&D's history (depending on whether you count the third-party supplements for 3.x). Volume of support is a double-edged sword, depending on individual preferences – some DMs feel like they must have every splatbook published, others are happy to pick and choose; some like to have things set out in sourcebooks in fine detail, others like to have broad strokes and fill in the detail themselves.

Personally, I ran the game for close to a decade, and by the time I was finishing up that campaign to begin a new one with the then-new 3rd Edition, I had a love-hate relationship with the system that had slid most of the way towards hate. With the passage of time, that's cooled off. I had a quick look at the books again recently, and I've been inspired to give the game a bit of a defence. Maybe there's still a bit of the love from the love-hate still in there somewhere.

First of all, the game's core systems are really quite simple and stripped-down. A lot more than I remembered is flagged as “optional”. All classes except fighter/mage/cleric/thief? Optional. Individual Initiative? Optional. Proficiencies? Optional. Detailed Encumbrance? Optional (and, by the way, there's a simpler system there too as an alternative). 2e is, without all the optional material, almost on a par with BD&D for simplicity, but with a selection of advanced options. It's a toolkit system, more so than any other edition of D&D.

Another good point of the system is the game worlds published for it, during it's era. This touches on the supplement treadmill I mentioned above, but I think it deserves special mention as a strength of this edition. So many classic worlds were made for 2e: Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Al-Qadim, Birthright, Ravenloft, just to mention some of the bigger ones. It shows the enduring appeal of these settings that two editions and a new publisher later, Dark Sun is being rereleased as the next setting for 4e (and there are plenty of fans calling for the others). 2E critics might say that it was a mere accident that a weak edition got good settings, but I think that 2e's flexibility (the toolkit approach) made it an ideal basis for experimentation.

Many other editions of D&D are criticised for having fighters become irrelevant at high levels. That's not the case in 2e (in fact, I think 2e goes too far in limiting mages). Spells like Fireball and Magic Missile are capped in 2e, unlike some early editions. At higher levels, magic resistance (which caster level doesn't help against, unlike 1e) and high saving throws of opponents keeps the mages' offensive power in check, while the risks and costs of spells like Teleport, Haste and Polymorph Self curb some of the excesses that 3e is vulnerable to.

Despite all that, 2e is not a system that I intend to ever go back to. First of all, it has the AD&D attribute charts, which I consider to be a succinct example of everything wrong with AD&D – they're ad-hoc and cobbled together, adding more complexity for little benefit to the game – but worst of all, they give heavy bonuses for the very top ability scores and little or no bonuses for scores just a few points less, widening the gap between characters in the same group rolled up the say way. The second reason is bloat – the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (BD&D's final version) does most of what 2e does (and many more things 2e doesn't) in a single book about the size of each of 2e's core rulebooks. I know that one of the things I got fed up with about 2e by the end was carrying around three big core rulebooks, at least one other hardcover (High-Level Campaigns) and a selection of the Complete Handbooks, plus all the Forgotten Realms stuff; and that was just the basics.

Rolling Over Some Ideas

For years now, I've been an advocate of point-buy (PB) instead of random-roll (RR) for generating attributes in RPGs, especially D&D. One of a number of things I loved about 3rd Edition (3e) when it launched was that it included a PB system (for the first time in D&D core rules) as an alternative, and I even liked the specifics of the stepped costs (so it costs more per point the higher the attribute is). I've even been known to comment that 4e, by making PD the standard method, is where D&D has “finally seen sense”.

And yet, for Labyrinth Lord (the Basic D&D retro-clone), I'm going to have attributes be created by RR instead of PB. Why the U-turn?

I'll explain first why I opposed RR for attributes in the first place. That came from AD&D, which had big stat modifiers squeezed in the top and bottom ends of the 3-18 scale. Back when I first began running AD&D 2e for my current group, I allowed the option of RR or PB. The results were uneven to say the least, and thanks to AD&D's eccentric attribute bonus charts (which, as an aside, I loathe to this very day) the effect allowed the players with better scores to dominate the game, completely overshadowing those who the dice had been less kind to.

Besides (I thought), surely it's just common sense – apart from keeping things balanced so that everyone is on level ground with each other, PB gives players (not pure chance) control over creating their own character. Case closed in favour of PB, surely? Not so fast – RR has merits of its own. Some of these come down to the specifics of the game it's used for.

One of the arguments that some use for RR is that it's one of D&D's traditions. “Rolling up a character” is an expression that's entrenched into all of RPGs; it's even part of the vocabulary of some MMO players who have never played any pen-and-paper RPG. However, I don't believe in following any tradition just because it's traditional.

Old-school D&D, unlike new-school games (including 3e and especially 4e D&D) doesn't assume that the character you create when you sit down to your first session will necessarily be the same character that you'll be still playing months or years later. This is very relevant to character creation issues: in new-school games, you might have a detailed bio prepared for your character, and maybe a character arc in mind. For something so specific, PB gives a control you might really want. Also, in new-school games, “building” a character to develop game-mechanically over time can be an end in itself (3e really pushed this to the forefront), and being able to put an attribute array together predictably is pretty important to this, which PB enables well.

With old-school, this is turned on its head. When death is a real possibility for characters (permanent death in the case of low-level characters), PB enables players to simply remake the same character again, just like an MMO avatar respawning after death. Needless to say, this can take away any tension and become very silly. With RR, the rules change. Did you roll up a great set of stats? Then your character can't simply be remade the same, so danger to his life takes on some importance. Or maybe you rolled badly in making up your character? In that case, you can get the chance to beat the odds with him by surviving and prospering... or secretly enjoy his violent death and the chance to roll up something better. Characters made by RR are unique, for good or ill.

RR also gives unpredictability, in a good way. Hands up anyone who ever invested a serious amount of points in Charisma for a plain Fighter in a PB system. ... Anyone? Not many, I bet. With RR, you can end up with a smooth-talking magic-user or a wise thief, or various other combinations that you wouldn't normally get, just because the dice fell that way. Obviously, numbers aren't the main ingredient of a memorable character, but this kind of thing can be grist for the roleplaying mill.

Unpredictability also helps RR to avoid one of PB's pitfalls. In PB, a system can either charge extra for top-end scores (like in 3e, where scores of 15-16 cost 2 each and 17-18 cost 3 each), or not (for example, “spread 80 points between 6 attributes any way you like”). The latter is open to major min-maxing, like Fighters with all physical attributes at the absolute maximum, using the mental attributes as “dump stats”. The former solves this problem to a point, but only at the cost of encouraging either a broad spread (like Paladins having lots of 13s and 14s in 3e's system) or heavy focus in a single attribute (like Wizards having maxed Intelligence in 3e); and either way, it still allows for “dump stats”. The problem is that there tends to be a best way to build a particular type of character in PB systems; optimisation works against originality. With RR, well... good luck optimising the dice roll.

The last point is that Classic D&D is much friendlier to RR because the attribute bonus charts are more evenly set up than AD&D's. Basically, an 18 gives a +3, 16-17 is +2, 13-15 is +1, 9-12 is no modifier, 6-8 is -1, 4-5 is -2, and 3 is -3. So unlike D&D, you only need a 13+ to get a bonus (not 15/16+), and that +1 isn't hopelessly behind even the best possible +3 from an 18 score. This bonus progression means that characters don't become either totally dominant or totally ineffective from a bit of randomness in creation, but it has enough of an effect to still matter. I wouldn't be in favour of RR character creation in all games, but for this one, I think it works.