Delta's D&D Hotspot

Book of War: Siege of Bridgefaire

2012-01-27T08:00:00.003-05:00

Two weekends ago, I high-tailed it up to RI, so as to help out my good friend Paul in running a large and critical battle in his D&D campaign that we'll call the Siege of Bridgefaire. This fight sees a walled town called Bridgefaire undergoing an assault by a large force of undead skeletons, zombies, siege towers, and a high-level necromancer (hence the earlier tests on my part). Even better, our other friend BigFella made the trip down from Boston, we divided the attacking forces three ways between us, and then we literally "went to town" against Paul's players (5 of whom joined us to run the defending opposition this afternoon).

For what it's worth, Paul's campaign is actually an expansion starting from AD&D Module L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, which he plays using Moldvay B/X rules (basically). The nearby town of Restenford, detailed in that work, was the focal point of an earlier battle (see links at bottom). Pelltar the wizard has been an active and important member of the defense in both of these fights (as you'l see below).

Paul's also recently gotten into 10mm miniature wargaming, so he can fit a lot more figures on the table at once, and they take up less storage space and painting time. Since Book of War conventionally assume figures like 25/30mm (like those used in D&D or Warhammer), there was some advance discussion on whether the rules needed to change or not. My position was to say no; as long as everything is all scaled together (even approximately so), there really shouldn't be enough difference to worry about, or justify re-basing everything. Perhaps if I was being paid to push some particular miniature product line I'd be compelled to say something different; but I'm not, so it seems like the best answer is to "play with whatever you've got".

Setup -- Here's the town and surrounding terrain as set up by Paul & myself the night before. As you can see, the defenses include walls, towers, and a gate. Outside there are hills and a river -- uncrossable except at the shallow ford, which is itself defended by an external tower on a high bluff. We also gave the players the option to specify a secret sally port (location unknown to us until they decide to use it) which they can exit but we can't enter.

Turn 1 -- Below you'll see our undead army right after we've taken our first move forward. We have something on the order of 30 zombie figures, 40 skeleton archers, 80 skeleton infantry, 3 siege towers, and a 13th-level wizard necromancer with a fireball wand (as usual, representing about 1500 individual troops on the ground). The defenders have about 20 archer figures, 10 crossbows, 10 light infantry, 10 heavy infantry, 10 medium cavalry, and one 9th-level wizard with a lightning wand (Pelltar from L1). They also have 3 figures of acolytes -- representing 30 organized 1st-level clerics from the town who can use a collective turn undead once during the game (and otherwise fight as light infantry). The defenders spent quite some time planning their strategy with us out of the room (smart), including initial placement of figures, division of control, and spell selection. You can see in the picture that they've bunched a lot of figures behind the main gate -- this being a feint, as their plan is to actually stream out of the hidden sally port which is in a different location.

Turn 2 -- Our undead army pushes forward, taking just a very few hits from wizard's lightning and long-range archery. The external tower actually started off with the roof filled with archers, but my very first move (I'm controlling far left, closest to the photo) was to position skeleton archers close-by across the river, and unleash a hellish fusillade on the tower; this instantly wiped out all the defenders except one figure of archers and heavy infantry (invulnerable in the tower), and now my skeleton archers are marching forward to the town proper. I've also got a squad of zombies clawing their way up the hill to assault that tower. Other interesting note: Due to no-morale for undead, we're just throwing our army towards the walls as fast as possible, even outrunning the slower siege towers to do so. If this were a mortal army it would probably be a self-defeating tactic (you'd want to more carefully protect yourself behind protective implements), but as mindless undead we don't care so much. So the use of siege towers sort of flip-flops for us, and they'll be a follow-up strike, not the initial hit on the walls (with everyone else carrying some ladders for a direct escalade).

Turn 4 -- Cavalry charge! Here the defender's medium cavalry have poured forth out of the sally port beyond the far right tower. The nearer units have almost entirely destroyed one of our skeleton units (one figure left by the red die), but the further one has gotten held up by the more powerful zombies. Now they're facing a line of skeleton archers who are about to recklessly pour arrows into them, our skeletons, and some of the zombies, as well. Also, Paul & BigFella have maneuvered another big unit of skeletons over the hills in that direction to backup our forces on that side. Outside the picture: I've got the skeleton archers raining arrows on the wall defenders, trying to degrade them as much as possible before we escalade to the battlements.

Turn 6 -- Several of our units have now made contact with the town wall, and are trying to climb it a few figures at a time -- but they'll taking gruesome losses from the double-attacks permitted to wall defenders as they throw down rocks, spears, and boiling oil. Close-by, I've got a figure of zombies in the tower meleeing with the heavy infantry there (I even had to delay and turn my siege tower because archers were about to degrade my skeleton pushers). But the far right is more critical -- the defender's cavalry were a very real threat to run over our lines there, and gain access and maneuvering at our backs around the whole table. So while we very much wanted our wizard to get close to the town wall, he's currently locked down on the topmost peak of the far hill, so that he can lob a death spell and fireballs at those enemy cavalry (results of which can be seen by the fiery-red dice around that part of the board). Next turn we'll finally succeed in getting them to rout off the top of the board, and our wizard will be free to press the assault again. But at the same time: We're going to lose the entirety of that big units of skeletons beyond the hills, as the defenders bunch up all their acolytes together and, with some exceptional rolls, turn the entire batch of them all at once! (That's like 15 figures or 150 skeletons lost to us in the next attack phase; for simplicity we just remove them from the board once they're turned.)

Turn 8 -- With our primary plan delayed, Paul decides to have our necromancer break away from his bodyguard skeletons and dash across the battlefield towards the wall (in think there's a scene in the Two Towers movie a little bit like that). Once he gets close enough, he casts disintegrate on the wall by the gate, opening up a gap that we can move troops through freely! Amongst our weaponry are also such diverse elements as escalades, siege towers against the wall, and more archery to kill the acolytes in revenge. But notice here that crafty Pelltar (you can see him standing alone in the far tower) has cast a wall of fire (dice) in front of our siege engine, so that a follow-up group of skeletons is barred from using it. They've had to turn to the side and aim towards the gap made by our necromancer, instead of actually being on the wall and threatening Pelltar himself in the tower.

Turn 10 -- Both sides (especially ours) are much reduced from ferocious hand-to-hand fighting at the town wall itself. Our skeletons are hung up once again at the gate itself, as lightly-armored defenders gather and push back against us through the gap. On the very far right, wizards battle with high-level magic. First, Pelltar let his wall of fire go in order to conjure earth elemental (completely unhittable by our troops) on the wall where our siege tower was letting forces up. Then, our necromancer moved to that side and cast dispel magic to eliminate the elemental. He's already been hit by a lightning bolt, but fortunately made his saving throw (yay us! aww players). Next turn, our wizard himself climbs the siege tower and makes a determined push to blast into the tower and slay Pelltar personally; he takes another lightning-hit but saves. A single heavy infantry figure bars the way; he casts two fireballs but manages to miss with both of them (boom! as the explode against the stone of the tower). The next turn, more defenders flow up through the tower to protect Pelltar, and the opportunity is lost -- our Necromancer decides to teleport away from the battle, ceding the town to the brave burghers. (And note: I never managed to kill that last heavy infantry in the outside tower, blast it!)

Turn 12 -- Victory to the defenders! Here you can see arrayed the remaining troops from this battle, standing battered but unbowed on the smoldering town walls. (Recall that they started with over 60 figures at the start, and us with 150.) Well played, defenders, well played.

Commentary -- An excellent and exciting battle! And as usual, it was great fodder for playtest feedback on how the game runs -- in the case, especially for me to see some people who'd played BOW from the book without my prior intervention. Like, there were some rules interpretations that were different from mine (like semi-accidentally using a Warhammer rule for hill movement, not pre-declaring moves and attacks, etc.). This was the most people I've seen to date all participating in a single battle at once (namely 8 -- which worked better than I might have feared, working quite well to semi-divide force responsibility). I saw that some refinements might be warranted to the castle-attacks rules (like clarifying how to target archery against wall sections, and maybe not allowing defenders to closely bunch up and still get double-attacks). And then there were the first-time-ever elements that got used here (like siege towers, earth elementals, etc.)

Finally, Paul pointed out the rather uncanny similarity between one of our photos and a very old snapshot of Arneson & company, posted on Grognardia just a few days after our game. Yikes! And a huge thanks to Paul, BigFella, and everyone else who played with us.

More views on the Siege of Bridgefaire:

And the earlier Battle of Restenford:

Friday Night Book of War

2012-01-25T08:00:00.002-05:00

Special night, special time -- this is actually a game we played here on Christmas Day. What could be better to get in the holiday mood than a desperate tooth-and-nail struggle against a seemingly endless horde of hellish undead from beyond the grave? I guess that's how we roll here. (And also hopefully lots of 6's.)

Start -- 300 points, Advanced Game with Expansion Units. At top, my opponent has picked a small group of pricey units -- a 10th-level wizard with a fireball wand, 10 figures of pikemen bodyguards, and also 3 figures of war elephants carrying archers (representing 100 pikes and 30 war elephants). And at the bottom, of course, you can see my legion of 75 figures of skeleton warriors (i.e., 750 skeletons). The only terrain are the two section of Woods placed by my opponent to slow down my already-meager movement.

Turn 3 -- The opponent made one move forward, and then opted to hold her ground and make use of missile fire against my advance. I've pushed my skeletons forward as quickly as possible (it would be nice to move forward in a unified line, but as long as I'm in the open on the right, it's best to be as aggressive as possible). Here you see combined elephant-back archery and fireball missiles wiping out half of my middle unit (7 figures, or 70 skeletons, going down on this turn).

Turn 5 -- My skeletons make first melee contact and achieve 1 hit on the elephants (remember that they have 6HD). In response, the elephants turn and start stomping all over my skeletons in melee combat (in fact, they automatically hit!). Also, the wizard fireballs one figure of skeletons in the unit in front of him.

Turn 6 -- The pikes go into hedgehog formation (so as to defend all sides), and I decide to charge them. Pikes are always going to lay out hideous damage when you do this, but I figure it's going to happen at some point anyway, and with lots of skeletons and immunity from morale, maybe I'll get some through; you can see the result of that clash below. Also on this turn (outside the picture) I've wrapped units all around the war elephants, and so with lots of attacks and rear attack bonus, managed to knock out one of the three elephant figures.

Turn 8 -- On the prior turn, I actually routed the pikes, but pinned in between multiple units, they had nowhere to flee. Not so for the wizard, however, who has broken off and run for freedom alone! Here you see me finishing off the last of the pikes, and I've also eliminated a second figure of elephants, although I've taken a lot of casualties in return.

Turn 11 -- The wizard commences a run-and-gun strategy. My skeletons are trying to chase him, but he fires off some fireballs and then runs back past them. I do, however, manage to finish off the last elephant figure.

Turn 14 -- I tried to trap the wizard in the top-right corner of the board, but he's too fast for me. Here he turns around and lights up my remaining skeletons again with more fireballs.

Turn 16 -- There goes the wizard past my encirclement again, dammit! At this point it's clear that my slow skeletons can't catch him, so I concede the game. Victory for the wizard, standing alone on the smoking field of battle!!

Commentary -- This was partly a test of the skeleton units for a game that would come later. One of the extremely important results of the test is that they quasi-break the overall structure of a Book of War game.

The important realization is this: Perhaps the greatest part of the pacing and tension in BOW flows out of the Morale checks; based on a single dice roll, a player may or may not lose an entire unit of figures. Thus, both players are eagerly watching for those rolls, and the game usually tips one way or another in response to them. But with the undead having no morale checks, the game frankly turns into a fairly predictable "grind" of attack-dice and a few figures lost each turn. You might say that a good part of the "fun" was lost. (And the game went long in turns, if not in actual time played.) Not something I realized before this game.

The secondary issue here was the bit at the end with the solitary wizard being able to hold off all my remaining skeletons. That's a weird corner case in that (a) skeletons have the slowest move of any basic footman, (b) the wizard has the highest, (c) the hero-type can make turns without any move penalty, and (d) the wizard can make wand-missile attacks with presumably no limit on charges. If you'd taken out any one of those items, this would not have worked out this way; or if my opponent had made any mistake in the endgame, I might have still caught her (but: no such mistake). Looked at another way, in D&D, this would probably be an opportunity for a wizard to start flying and blasting fireballs freely from the air. But in reality, you probably wouldn't really want to come to the table with absolutely nothing but basic skeletons, anyway.

So about the undead: if you're a DM and you want to use them in your game, then you should be cognizant that using them very much changes the flavor and flow of the game. Option #1 would be to accept that flavor, and commit to a drawn-out war of attrition against a rampaging wave of mindless bodies, something like you'd see in a Dawn of the Dead movie or whatever. Option #2 would be to make sure and add some other spice for interest, like necromancer wizards, other high-level monsters, interesting terrain features, or the like. That's what we decided to do in the later follow-up game, and I was very glad that we did so (more on that later).

Book of War Expansion: Lesser Undead

2012-01-23T08:00:00.003-05:00

I didn't include any undead in the published Book of War rules. There are a few reasons for that (like: they're not classically in the D&D men-at-arms tables available for hire), but nonetheless, let's fix that right now. Here are some undead you might think about fielding in your campaign (text between the rules is Open Game Content, per the OGL):

Unit	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Notes
Skeletons	4	6	4	1	Fearless
Skeletons, Archers	7	6	4	1	Fearless, shortbows
Zombies (1HD)	4	6	4	1	Fearless
Zombies (2HD)	6	6	4	2	Fearless
Ghouls	9	9	5	2	Fearless, paralysis, −1 in sun

Undead, General Notes: We assume that all undead are fearless (no morale checks ever), and also immune to death spells.

Skeletons and Zombies: Note that skeletons and zombies are indistinguishable at this scale! (Assuming stats of HD 1/2 and 1 respectively.)

Ghouls: These hideous creatures are likely to paralyze and consume their targets. On hits against mass creatures, check 1d6 ≥ HD/2 to convert any hit to a full figure kill. Against 1HD heroes, attacks roll 3 dice; against HD2+ heroes, attack rolls are as normal, but any such hit is a hero-kill. Elf targets are immune to this effect.

Commentary: Note that skeletons and zombies actually have different hit dice in OD&D (½ and 1 respectively) versus anything that came after that (1 and 2 respectively). Now, for skeletons, it turns out that there's no statistical difference at BOW scale between their having ½ or 1 Hit Dice, so the numbers above are applicable in either case (more on that in the future). But zombies will present a difference, so I've included both types above, appropriate for whichever variety you prefer. Another thing: Advanced D&D bumped the skeleton move up to 12", whereas Basic D&D instead accelerated zombies up to 12", so pay attention and modify for whichever edition you're playing under. (Myself, I prefer them both to be slow as in OD&D.) I don't think that the zombies-attack-last qualifier in those later editions makes any statistical difference in sustained mass combat; and I've also included and priced skeleton archers above, because a lot of people have miniatures of that type.

Ghouls are a uniquely odd (and dangerous) unit type; the mechanic above took quite some time to nail down. The thing is, the chance for paralysis (and subsequent auto-hits or however you play it) is almost totally inconsequential against basic 1HD troops -- a single hit usually kills them anyway, so succumbing to paralysis on top of that is just academic. What the ability is really deadly against is higher-HD types, who might get paralyzed from one hit, effectively lose the benefit of all their higher HD, and wind up horribly consumed. So against mass troops at BOW scale there's a die-roll to turn any hit into a full figure kill, regardless of HD. And against hero troops there are either additional dice, or an automatic figure-kill, depending on how strong they are. Damnation! That's pretty scary, if you think about it, and accurate to how D&D would play out against a whole slavering army of ghouls in melee; in some sense, ghouls have the special ability to dissolve the value of opponents' higher hit dice.

Finally: I include the −1 to hit in sunny weather for ghouls in the tradition of OD&D and Chainmail saying that they, and other types, are weaker in sunlight (e.g., "... must subtract 1 from any die roll they roll when in full light" [CM, p. 37]). I think that's a nice segue into the higher-level undead who are totally incapacitated in light (spectres, vampires), but you might disagree and wish to strike that out. Also, if you want to include the possibility of victims killed by ghouls rising again later as undead themselves (OD&D/AD&D), then you should do that yourself in post-hoc fashion (and outside the scope of an active battle, I would recommend).

[Photo by zen under CC2.]

Book of War Review: Swords Against the Outer Dark

2012-01-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Another great overview of Book of War from Shane over at the Swords Against the Outer Dark blog. If you haven't visited yet, he has one of the greatest subtitles in the entire blogosphere -- "Sword & Sorcery Gaming Meets Cthulhiana and Yog-Sothothery". Here's part of what he wrote this week:

All in all, I highly recommend Book of War to anyone needing a simple, yet solid, set of mass combat rules for their D&D campaign. What Delta has delivered with this book epitomizes the do-it-yourself spirit the Old-School Renaissance is supposed to be about. BoW is exactly the kind of product that I love seeing come out of the OSR. Personally, I plan to use these rules in an upcoming game, and can't wait to see them in action.

How cool is that? If he can find use for Book of War in the context of desperate battles against slavering legions of the Old Ones, then I'll have to say that all of my hopes for the product have come true. (And of course it should be compatible with any close fork off the classic D&D path like his -- Original D&D, B/X, Swords and Sorcery etc. -- as long as you've got Hit Dice, Armor Class, Movement scores, and a comfort with adding some numbers to dice-rolls, then you've got the basics assumed by the system.) Thanks for the kind words, Shane!

BOW Review at Swords Against the Outer Dark

Poll Results: Dragon Extras

2012-01-18T08:00:00.002-05:00

Last week I asked the question, "Should OD&D Dragons Require Magic to Hit?". A majority of respondents said "no" by more than a 2-to-1 margin. (Although a few people in the comments said they'd be okay with a magic-missiles-only requirement, as was done in 2E, for example.)

Therefore, I'll be following suit, still not having any such requirement in my OED house rules, and also I won't plan to include that in any foreseeable revision to the Book of War mass-warfare rules. I do think, however, that I'd lean towards including the other "extras" of cause-fear and see-invisible that seemed consistent throughout the Chainmail, OD&D (by reference) and AD&D lines. (Not that I'm 100% happy with the way it introduces a morale-check without loss of figures; although I suppose that's got the BOW un-rout rule as precedent for that already. Will need to think on that.)

Thanks to all who responded!

Original Monster Elegance

2012-01-16T08:00:00.003-05:00

One of the many striking things that occurred to me when I got my Original D&D set (see very first blog post here) was the lovely and informative elegance of the monster roster. For those of you with OD&D, this will be old hat, but for those who've never seen it, I simply must share. As you open D&D Vol-2, Monsters and Treasure, the first thing you encounter after the Index is the "Monster Reference Table, Hostile & Benign Creatures", as follows (tables reproduced for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and scholarship).

First, page 3. Without anywhere explicitly saying so, this page is predominantly all the "Hostile" stuff, i.e., Chaotic monsters that you're expected to fight:

Now flip over to page 4. This page is mostly all "Benign" entities; all of the fey woodland-type creatures, mounts (ground and aerial), creatures you might summon with magic, etc.... and also the "clean up crew" mindless oozes that got squeezed in here, too.

Now, a couple things you won't see, of course: stats for Attacks and Damage. As you probably know, by default everything originally did 1d6 damage, with exceptions called out in the text paragraphs that follow (like giants and elementals for 2d6, black pudding for 3d6, etc.) This was perhaps a big oversight; with the first supplement (Sup-I, Greyhawk), rosters of different damage stats for all the monsters were provided, but then you needed to flip between two books to synch them up, and this required the later Monster Manual before it was fixed. Personally, in my copy of Vol-2 here I jot down an Attack & Damage stat in the margin for each type (in whole-number of dice, following the OD&D precedent).

But look a little bit more closely. For my purposes, I think it's a huge benefit that different monsters of the same type have all been listed and described together, in order of increasing hit dice, so that at a glance I can get a sense for the overall monster world ecology and interrelationships. For example, here are the "giant class" humanoids at the start, and you can see at a glance that across the category, numbers appearing are always going down, while armor, movement, and hit dice are always improving (in math we'd say "monotonically increasing"):

Even better is the list of undead. So simple: There's just one undead type created for each hit die number from 1 to 7! (And also skeletons starting at one-half.) Recall that in later Advanced D&D all of these undead got their hit dice bumped up by one place (with the odd exception of ghouls), whereas in the Basic D&D line they just bumped up skeletons & zombies, leaving the rest unchanged (i.e., with ghouls being the switchover point):

After that you get a block of chimerical and serpent-like monstrosities, culminating with dragons, purple worms, and (on the flip) sea monsters. Actually, in the extra Reference Sheets that come with the original game, they managed to fit Sea Monsters and Minotaurs on the first page, so that's even better. Another thing you don't see: Look very closely and you might notice sort of an extra-sized gap right under Dragons. That's where Balrogs were listed in the first printing -- taken out later, and the gap sort-of closed but not perfectly -- and there's a full-sized gap in the Reference Sheets so it's easier to spot there.

So: A great piece of work, and these two pages alone have given me a better, more immediate and visual sense of the core monster ecology of D&D than anything I had in the prior 25 years or so of gaming. In this particular case it really was better the first time.

Super Saturday: Superhero Non-Simulatability

2012-01-14T08:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a real problem for superhero-based gaming -- whether you're talking tabletop RPGs, computer games, massively multiplayer online stuff, etc.). The problem is this: So many (most?) stories achieve a conclusion by means of a one time "gag" of a superhero surprise-revealing a new power, effect, or interaction -- one that has never been shown before, and will likely never be used ever again. In a regular rule-driven system (not one of those player-narrative-driven doohickeys), this seems like an insurmountable problem.

Also: Consider the variant to rock-paper-scissors in which "fire" may be thrown once in your lifetime. How do you really adjudicate/enforce that fairly?

A couple of examples from early classic Lee-Kirby Thor issues (maybe not the most perfect of case-studies, but what I have at hand here):

Journey Into Mystery #85 -- Thor's first clash with Loki (encompassing the whole issue) ends with Thor dunking him in the East River. "According to legend, Loki's magic powers are useless in water!" he says. Obviously, that was never effective again.
JIM #93 -- Thor's first battle with the Radioactive Man. Among the unexpected one-off things that happen here are that (a) Radioactive Man would "blow up like an H-bomb" if subjected to any physical violence, and (b) the issue ends with Thor summoning a tornado in New York that can blow the Radioactive Man all the way back to China, where he then mushroom-cloud explodes as predicted.
JIM #114-115 -- The Absorbing Man is another good example of a seemingly unstoppable foe who is basically never beaten the same way twice. His first dramatic appearance ends with Thor "spinning my enchanted hammer at cyclotronic speed, [so that] I have the power to transmute the elements themselves!"; after which a bystander says "It was like a nuclear explosion! Even the ground is glazed!". Thus Thor has created helium gas, forced the Absorbing Man to change into it, and floated him into space. This will never happen again.
Thor #171 -- Here, a long battle with the Wrecker ends with Thor throwing him onto the powered third-rail of the New York subway system, and then connecting Mjolnir to it to drain away all of the Wrecker's supernatural strength (allegedly de-powering him "fore'er"). I'm particularly uncertain how you'd ever deal with circumstantial power-changes or de-powering of different characters (pretty common in the comics) in the game setting.

Thoughts? Have comics gotten away from that kind of deus ex machina over time? Is that just a hopeless thing to try and recreate in a rule-driven game system?

Book of War: Hero and Wizard Specs

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

Short post today -- Here's a new version of the OGL "Hero Specification" document (this time including Wizards) showing D&D-style statistics in case you opt to use the Book of War "Special Combat" rule (1:1 combat for opposing heroes). Click on the image below for a PDF:

Dragon Extras Through the Ages

2012-01-09T08:00:00.006-05:00

One of the key lessons from Book of War play (for example) is that OD&D dragons are quite distinctly not Smaug-like. They are hittable by normal men (AC2), and their breath weapons really aren't large enough to hit hundreds at a time, so they are quite vulnerable to a mass of human archers, say. And thus: They are best used tactically against some other type, best of all as a pouncing anti-hero weapon, say.

But the other day, commentator UWS Guy asked one of his usual troubling questions. So I figured I'd look at the "extra" abilities of dragons in different versions of D&D -- not the primary stuff like toughness, flight, and breath-weapons, but the other little gifts that dragons get (and that you might overlook).

Chainmail Fantasy -- There are three notable extra benefits for dragons in Chainmail fantasy, which I quote here:

They cause enemy troops within 15” of them to check morale just as if they had suffered excess casualties. Dragons have the power to detect any hidden or invisible enemies they are within 15” of... They melee as if they were four Heavy Horse being impervious to missile or melee hits in normal combat (see Hero and Super Hero sections for the only exceptions). [CM, p. 35]

The latter part, "impervious to missile or melee hits in normal combat", is enforced by not giving them any combat stats except for their appearance on the Fantasy Combat Table, where they might be eliminated by other exceptional beings (such as Heroes, Superheroes, Giants, etc.) Note that the defense here is practically identical to that of Elementals: "impervious to normal attacks against them" [CM p. 36], again appearing on the Fantasy Combat Table, etc.

Original D&D -- None of the abilities listed above are mentioned in the OD&D writeup on dragons. However, recall that all of Chainmail is supposed to be incorporated into OD&D by reference. At the start of Vol-2 Monsters and Treasure: "Special Ability functions are generally as indicated in CHAINMAIL where not contradictory to the information stated hereinafter..." [p. 5]. Moreover, you can see the effect of their detection power in the OD&D description of Pixies, for example: "They [pixies] can be seen clearly only when a spell to make them visible is employed, although certain monsters such as Dragons and high-level fighters will be aware of their presence." [p. 16]

But the "impervious to... normal combat" is quite troublesome indeed. In the case of Elementals, this was converted explicitly in OD&D to a hit-only-by-magic requirement: "Only magical weapons/attacks affect Elementals." [as underlined on p. 18] But no such conversion or reference was made for dragons, and without it, the status of the Chainmail rule seems difficult to adjudicate in the new context. If one were to use it, one might ask: What now counts as "normal" (under the unified, d20-based Alternative Combat System)? If Heroes at 4th-level can clearly hit a dragon, where is the cutoff from 1st-3rd? Is the magic-weapon requirement implied by the example of Elementals? Etc.

I didn't include the three special abilities above in Book of War, and I can't say that it was intentional -- frankly, I just overlooked the implied reference. But you can see if we did include them, that OD&D dragons suddenly really would look Smaug-like -- detecting hiding/invisible halflings, menacing to human armies, killed only by a magic arrow. Was that the intention?

Advanced D&D 1E -- If it was the intention, then Gygax again acknowledges the first two, but not the last one, in his AD&D work. The Monster Manual -- whose prime directive was to consolidate the scattered monster entries from OD&D, after all -- says nothing about any magic-to-hit requirement, but it otherwise provides continuity by saying this:

Because of these keen senses, all dragons are able to detect hidden or invisible creatures within 1" per age level. Dragons also develop the power to panic enemies as they mature... [several paragraphs regarding fear-aura follow; p. 29]

So at this point we have two editions in sequence written by Gygax which provide evidence of having scrubbed or discarded the hard-to-hit quality that dragons formerly had in Chainmail.

Advanced D&D 2E -- 2E usually copies things like spells, magic, and monsters forward from 1E pretty directly, but due to overall power inflation, it specially rewrote dragons (and giants) in numerous ways, so as to keep them atop the heap of the monster ecology -- giving them multiplied Hit Dice, extra defenses, and about a dozen new attack forms each. Separate sections, each a few paragraphs long, are included on both "Dragon Senses" (detect invisible and hidden, as well as clairaudience and even telepathy) and "Dragon Fear" (with a somewhat consolidated mechanic compared to 1E). In addition, a requirement for magical attacks starts to creep back in, but only at the topmost levels, and only for missile attacks (perhaps to specifically counter the case of masses of human archers being deployed against them):

Old dragons or older dragons are immune to normal missiles; their gem-encrusted hides deflect arrows and other small projectiles. Large missiles (from catapults, giants, etc.) and magical missiles affect them normally. [2E MM, Dragons]

Dungeons & Dragons 3E -- 3E retains all those attacks and special abilities, and again boosts Hit Dice, etc. It includes the abilities of "Blindsight" and "Frightful Presence" which duplicate the see-invisible and fear-aura abilities which have been a constant. And it also includes a general Damage Reduction defense which requires magic-to-hit or else a penalty to damage is applied (and not just for missiles). For example, from the entry for Black Dragons:

Young adult... Damage reduction 5/+1
Mature adult... Damage reduction 10/+1
Very old... Damage reduction 15/+2
Wyrm... Damage reduction 20/+3 [3E SRD]

Basic D&D -- Interestingly, there is no evidence of any of the dragon's "extra" abilities (fear, detection, or hit-ability) in any version of the D&D "Basic" line -- including Holmes Basic D&D, Moldvay Basic D&D, Mentzer Basic D&D, or the Allston D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

This is pretty easy to explain, actually, if we look back to the legacy above. In the aftermath of the bifurcated Basic-versus-Advanced D&D lines, the start of the "Basic" line was kept more firmly rooted in the OD&D texts, ignoring most of what Gygax did with AD&D. But again, the problem here is that dragon "extras" don't appear anywhere in the OD&D text itself, but only by reference back to Chainmail -- so inasmuch as Gygax was mentally cognizant of that, he kept continuity by copying them into the AD&D line (at least for fear & detection), but the B/X authors kept a different kind of continuity, one where the OD&D LBB text was taken in isolation (and so missing any of the "extras").

Therefore, it seems like we have a steady tradition of dragons with special fear and detection abilities throughout OD&D/AD&D, and a parallel fixed tradition lacking those abilities throughout the OD&D/Basic line. Meanwhile, magic-to-hit wasn't included anywhere except piecemeal in 2E and 3E. But again we note: To the extent that any of these abilities are included for our D&D dragons, they look more and more like a Smaug-type creature from the works of Tolkien.

Poll Question: Should OD&D Dragons require magic to hit? Feel free to interpret that question any way you wish. (See poll results here.)

[Photo by Falashad under CC2.]

On Burning Oil, Part 2

2012-01-06T08:00:00.003-05:00

Here's a little "myth-busting" experiment you can do easily in your own home. Recall that medieval lamp oil was just olive oil (or more rarely some other vegetable, fish oil, etc.). Here I've put together a "flask" of such oil, some matches, a little bit of string, and poured some of the oil on a plate:

Consider the following as representative of a torch applied to a pool of oil on a dungeon floor. Is it possible to get that pool ignited by applying a flame? No way! I emptied a whole book of matches on multiple attempts (photo shots) like this:

But if I take a little bit of string, dip the end in some oil, and light it like a wick, can I use it as a lamp? Quite easily!

I left this burning away happily for the better part of an hour. I can carry it around the house and even light up my always-dark bedroom with it reasonably well. (Actually, it's still going next to me as I write these words.) I've really got no idea how long it would take to burn away (can't see any noticeable difference in the wick or the pool). After an hour, for argument's sake, I tried to ignite the whole pool again -- Not gonna happen!

See also:

Book of War Expansion: Cold

2012-01-04T08:00:00.007-05:00

We had a pretty good cold snap in the northeast this week, so I figured it was a good opportunity to write about adding cold powers to Book of War play. It's something I kind of wanted to do for symmetry's sake in the system, but it requires you to bend a few of the core principles in order to make happen. For example -- Fire Giants get an advantage in being immune to the powers of Red Dragons and Fireball-wands in the game; Storm Giants can say the same against Blue Dragons and Lightning-wands; but Frost Giants are left out in the, um... cold. So let's give them something to be awesome against:

White Dragons

If you've got the BOW rulebook, you might wonder why I only included 3 kinds of dragons: Adult Blue, Red, and Gold. As you might guess, space was an issue, and 3 types seemed enough to suggest the overall flavor of the possibilities. It also seemed nice to include the first 2 types given detail in Chainmail Fantasy (Red & Blue), plus the one Lawful type as a counter.

But the other thing is that those 3 types are the only ones that qualify to appear as solo Heroes at the Adult age level. Recall that a major principle is that creatures need 10 Hit Dice minimum in D&D to appear as Heroes (and this is already being generous, so I tend to uphold it strictly). Consider the OD&D Adult Blue Dragon (medium size): hit points are 9 dice × 4 points per die (for age) = 36 hit points. Pro-rated, that's the equivalent of 36/3.5 (expected value of d6) = 10.28 hit dice -- just enough. Red and Dragon Adults have a bit more, so they're in too, but the rest all fail the test.

So if you want to see a White Dragon in your game -- the weakest of all dragon types -- it has to be nothing less than Very Old (the topmost category) in order to qualify as a Hero. Then you'll have 6 dice × 6 points per die = 36 hit points (the same as the Adult Blue above), and it just squeaks in 1 point over the cutoff. (Note that this "pro-rated" hit dice analysis is systematized in the AD&D Monster Manual as the way to adjudicate Dragon Saving Throws: "When a dragon attains 5 or more hit points per die, its saving throw is calculated by dividing its total hit points by 4, thus giving a higher number of hit dice than it actually has..." [MM p. 31]). So the result follows (text between horizontal rules is Open Game Content per OGL):

Hero	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Atk	Dam	Notes
Dragon, Very Old White	40	24	6	1	3	2	Flying, breathe cold

Dragon, Very Old White: This type functions as other dragons, but has a cold-breath attack for damage 9.

Walls of Ice

While Book of War directly provides only for the top 6th-level spells in play, you can of course dig down into the lower levels and have your wizards use all that other stuff, if they have the opportunity and you're so inclined (like: conjuring elementals). So the 4th-level wall of ice (or anything else: fire, stone, iron) might be considered as a barrier-making mechanism. But if we apply the AD&D-explicated rule that areas stay in feet-scale outdoors (all-caps on PHB p. 39; and really the only rational way to deal with it in my opinion), its effect might be more limited than first hoped for.

In OD&D, the magic walls of both ice and fire have the same options for area: either (1) a standing plane of 6"×2", or (2) a circle of 3" diameter and 2" height (later editions make this latter a hemisphere, but here it's easy to read it as an uncapped cylinder). Using the Book of War rule to divide areas by 3 (p. 16), we get a straight version that's 2" long, and a circular version that's just 1" diameter (enough to contain one figure, really). A more technical conversion of the former, using our preferred 1"= 5 feet scale for man-to-man D&D (i.e., taking the inches literally compared to standard miniature figures), would give 6" × 5 ft/dnd-inch × 1/20 bow-inch/ft = 1½" long -- but the approximating rule in BOW is so much simpler to use that there's really no need for all that. (Almost all distances in OD&D are divisible by 3, so that's why I round in that direction.) Or if you prefer the 1"=10 feet scale then you get a 3" long wall instead.

So either way you slice it, the wall of ice (and the rest of its family) is not very big on the mass-combat tabletop. Maybe it's just enough to wall off a narrow passage between two terrain features that get set up close to each other (perhaps pre-planned on game start), or maybe stop up a gap in a castle wall made by your opponent's disintegrate spell. Personally, I don't mind that, as at 4th level, it really shouldn't be something that rivals the power of the "greater spells" at 6th level. And the other thing that's funky about wall of ice is that in OD&D, it seems to mimic wall of fire with its concentration-based duration, but every other edition gives it a fixed duration instead. I think I agree with the change; it seems like an active, flickering fire with no fuel source is more in need of infusion with energy than an unmoving block of ice. I converted it to a 6 turn duration in Book of Spells, for example. Thus we get:

Wall of Ice (Range: 12", Duration: 6 turns). This spell creates either a 2" long wall, or a 1" diameter circle of ice. It can be broken through by 4HD troops or greater, or any Hero, who then take a damage 1 cold attack (2 for fire-users).

Cold Wands

Following Chainmail Fantasy (where all wizards have an at-will attack form of either fireball or lightning bolt), wizards in BOW all come prepared with either a wand of fire or a wand of lightning. Again for symmetry, I came very close to suggestion an option for an equivalent cold wand, but ultimately didn't keep it in the book (I actually went back-and-forth, inserting and deleting text to that effect a few times).

OD&D has a cold wand, but as written, it simply won't cut the mustard. The effect is what we'd call in later editions a "cone of cold" (5th-level spell as of the 1E PHB). Instead of having the fireball/lightning missile tradition of a long 24" range, it only creates a 6" long cone emanating from the user; see above for what happens when we convert that area-effect to BOW scale (becomes just 2", more-or-less). That's a whole hell of a lot less threatening. Perhaps the cold wand and similar-acting devices (fear, paralysis) are really more specialized to dungeon adventuring than the fireball/lightning attacks -- (1) the area is really sufficient for most purposes there, (2) it has more control, in that there's no legacy of variable targeting error, and (3) no one ever suggested the need for any "blowback" in constricted areas. But outdoors, by the text-as-written, it's clearly deficient.

So part of me wants to go off-book and permit a wizard to appear equipped with something like a wand of ice storms that has the equivalent effect to the other spells, but as cold instead of fire/lightning, at no additional cost. A few problems with that: (1) Obviously there's no such actual item described in core D&D. (2) Even the book effect for ice storm is always shown as shorter range than the other missiles, like 12" when it appears as a 4th-level spell in Greyhawk (Sup-I, p. 23). (3) In addition, I have a much harder time visualizing a cold effect shooting in a line over the battlefield, compared to fireballs/lightning. The ice storm description asserts that a localized storm pounds down out of nowhere, which is frankly a little silly compared to the other stuff. So this is actually the kind of thing that I would criticize other RPG designers for: creating new feature via mere game-mechanical symmetry, even when the modeled concept doesn't really stand up as a thing-in-the-world. I don't know; I guess you could do that if you want to, but I haven't really been able to make myself comfortable with it.

[Photo by sgetliffe under CC2.]

Flying Through the Ages

2012-01-02T08:00:00.009-05:00

Having discovered how very powerful dragons are in Book of War (largely due to their immense maneuverability), I started digging into the flying rules for classic D&D.

Partly the lesson here is that nothing is really a tabula rasa ur-source, not even Original D&D. On the contrary, one of the ways that OD&D is so commendable is precisely in how it makes its mechanical predecessors explicit, in a fashion that was mostly wiped out in later editions. For example:

In the OD&D "Recommended Equipment" section you're supposed to have a copy of the Outdoor Survival game by Avalon Hill (coming even before suggestions for dice and Chainmail [Vol-1, p. 5]), and it gets used & referenced as the basis for D&D's Wilderness movement and adventuring rules [Vol-3, p. 14-17].
The OD&D section on "Aerial Combat" begins with a reference to another work, as well -- "Many of the most interesting battles take place in the air, so we offer you 'Battle in the Skies' or 'BITS' (with no apologies to Mike Carr, creator of Fight in the Skies)" [Vol-3, p. 25]
In the OD&D section on Naval Combat, the situation is somewhat more obscured, but the suggested scale for action exactly matches Gygax & Arneson's earlier work, Don't Give Up the Ship! -- "For movement purposes 1:1200 scale models can be used, so a playing area about the size recommended for aerial combat will suffice." [Vol-3, p. 30]

Now, never once in all my years of playing D&D have I actually made use of the flying rules in any way. But one interesting thing -- In Gygax's works of OD&D and AD&D , the Aerial Combat section actually appears before Naval Combat. (As opposed to how you'd intuit the presentation would run, starting from the mundane and proceeding to the more-exotic: presumably standard wilderness, then land combat, naval combat, aerial combat, possibly extra-planar, etc.) So this, combined with the line above on the "most interesting battles", suggests that Gygax was more personally intrigued and invested in Aerial action rules than even something presumably more common like Ships. Therefore, it's a case especially worth considering.

Original D&D

OD&D has a very nice and fully-developed mini-game for aerial combat (presumably inspired in some way by the Mike Carr game, as we see above). It suggests either miniatures or paper counters on a hex-grid specifically at least 48×48 inches (or 6' square for miniatures), with written orders from each side per turn. There are specific move rules for Climbing, Diving, Crashing (including the 1-die-per-1" falling rule, "i.e., a crash from 12" means twelve dice"), Bombing, Melee, Air-to-Air, and Ground-to-Air Fire (specifying catapults with a load of small stones acting as a "shotgun effect"). Here's the table for turning (presumably with "moves" technically in rounds and "turns" [pivots] in number of hex-sides, i.e., 60-degrees each):

(Note that Dragons are in a separate category from "Giant Reptile" at the end of that table -- representing a flying dinosaur, I suppose?) And here's a specialized system for "Critical Hits" on flyers, by which a partly-damaged aerial combatant might be forced to crash or land:

One critique here: Note that the chance to critical-hit a flyer out of the game doesn't account for individual toughness in any way. A single sling-stone is just as likely to take down a dragon as a hawk!

Advanced D&D

As usual, the word-count in AD&D expands greatly, and here you get long passages on training, feeding, and resting different types of aerial mounts in the campaign; issues of thrust and balance on different types of creatures; seating and restraints for mounted fighters, etc. Each separate flyer type now gets a separate entry with a few lines on individual powers & tactics in the air. The specialized "Critical Hits" system is stripped out here, and replaced with a more abstract rule of "Any winged creature which sustains damage greater than 50% of its hit points will be unable to maintain flight and must land" [DMG, p. 53]. The Bombing system is missing, but we are introduced to new rules for diving attacks (double damage), and under the levitation/flying notes, a special accumulating penalty for firing missiles without a stable platform (OD&D just said: "Missile Fire, Air-to-Air: Treat as normal missile fire..." [Vol-3, p. 27]). But the core of changes is to systematize flyer maneuverability into new lettered classes A through E, which looks like this:

Class A: Creature can turn 180° per round, and requires 1 segment to reach full airspeed. Creature requires 1 segment to come to a full stop in the air, and can hover in place. Class A creatures have total and almost instantaneous control of their movements in the air. Examples: diinn, air elementals, aerial servants, couatl.
Class B: Creature can turn 120° per round, and requires 6 segments to reach full airspeed. Creature requires 5 segments to come to a full stop in the air, and can hover in place. Examples: fly spell, sprites, sylphs, giant wasps, ki-rin.
Class C: Creature can turn 90° per round, and requires 1 round to reach full airspeed. Examples: carpet or wings of flying, gargoyles, harpies, pegasi, lammasu, shedu.
Class D: Creature can turn 60° per round, and requires 2 rounds to reach full airspeed. Examples: pteranodons, sphinxes, mounted pegasi.
Class E: Creature can turn 30° per round, and requires 4 rounds to reach full airspeed. Examples: dragons, rocs, wyverns. [DMG, p. 50-51]

Holy smoke -- look at how much maneuverability was reduced between OD&D and AD&D! As one example: In OD&D, Dragons could make 3×60° = 180° turns each round (that is, wheel around in one half-circle). Here, reduced to a 30° pivot each round, it would now take 6 rounds to make the same turnabout (i.e., 6 minutes in AD&D alleged 1 round=1 minute time scale). The same can be said for all the rest -- the OD&D range was from 120° to 360° per round; in AD&D it's 30° to 180° (generally halved or quartered). However, the minimum-spaces-between-turns rule from OD&D is now gone.

To my eye, the OD&D system looks like a mini-game that was actually used in play at some point; the AD&D version looks like -- as can be said for many other parts of the advanced game -- an abstracted model that was never actually play-tested. Questions: (1) How many AD&D combats even last more than 6 rounds to allow a Dragon to turnabout in the air under this mechanic? (2) Can a Dragon just land on the ground, immediately turn around for free (bypassing these rules), and then take off again in a different direction?

Expert D&D

The next place that aerial combat shows up is in Dave Cook's D&D Expert Rulebook (in the 1980 B/X line, the follow-up to Moldvay D&D Basic). What you get here is a clearly cut-down version (24 lines total), emphasizing shortened versions of the new AD&D rules. You get mechanics for: Surprise (diving/swoop for double damage), Spell Casting (stable platform or no spells: a harsh new restriction!), Missile Fire (stable platform or -4 to hit), but we also reach back to OD&D for the delightful Bombing rules. What's been sliced out are any of the other rules, in particular all of the rules for maneuverability and critical hit-locations (as seen in the tables above). These considerations are, perhaps quite reasonably (again, I never used them, so arguably they're a waste of space), punted off to the DM:

The DM should feel free to add to these guidelines as needed; for example, rules for climbing, diving, turns, crashing, and so on can be added. [D&D Expert, p. X25]

Battlesystem

The other place I thought to look (granted my particular interest in their use for a mass-combat game), was in Doug Niles' Battlesystem rules. In the first edition (Battlesystem Fantasy Combat Supplement, 1985), Niles explicitly refers back to the AD&D text, using the exact same Maneuverability Class ratings and rules as seen above (which is maybe a bit sketchy, since the mass time scale has converted to 1 turn=3 rounds):

Basic rules on flying movement and combat for the AD&D game are listed in the DMG, p. 49-53. Those rules apply in the BATTLESYSTEM game except as specifically noted below. For the D&D game, use the rules given below only. [Battlesystem FCS, p. 29]

One thing that Niles does here is to abstract altitude (in previous system, recorded as inches in paper, counters, or with a dowel) to simply 3 categories: Low, Medium, and High. Other than that, he hews pretty closely to AD&D, presenting conversions for the Aerial Fire (stable platform or penalty), Forced Landing (flying creature takes partial damage), and again the Bombing rules, as seen above.

In the later edition, however (Battlesystem Miniatures Rules, 1989), Niles allows his ruleset to evolve into something beyond the original basis. He keeps the same maneuverability classes (A to E), but wisely multiplies the turns allowed for his mass-combat game (A has no limit, B is 360 degrees/turn, etc., down to E at 60 degrees/turn). The abstracted height categories are gone, and altitude is recorded by a d20 placed next to a unit, showing height in actual inches. There are specialized rules for Changing Altitude, Ground Attack, Pass-By Attack, Vertical Envelopment, Dogfighting, Setting Spears/Pikes Against Flying Creatures, Falling Damage, Flying Units and Missile Combat (negate wall bonuses), Range Effects (shortcut rule for triangulating height & ground distance), and Morale and Flying Units (aerial units suffer morale penalties and are harder to rally). What's out are: the Dive bonus to attack, Hits forcing flyers to the ground, and the Bombing rule. Largely this puts this system in a different class than what has come before.

Here's a summary table of notable Aerial Combat mechanics throughout the different editions of classic D&D:

Which of these rules do you prefer in your own D&D games? Do you think it's preferable to let Dragons and similar creatures turnabout in the air within 1 round, after 6 rounds, or some number in between?

Good Grounding Point

2011-12-28T22:11:00.007-05:00

Well, I said I wouldn't blog this week, but it turns out that's hard to do. Without too much analysis from me, I just wanted to highlight a most excellent comment from Robert Fisher over at Grognardia today (which other posters have also applauded):

Now, the world has both fantasy and common (i.e. mundane) elements. For me, a large portion of what makes the fantasy elements work is their juxtaposition against the common elements.

With the fantasy elements, sometimes we work to learn the rules that govern them in game, which can be a lot of fun. Sometimes they’re enigmas. It can be fun to have enigmas that we have to reason around, but too much of that gets frustrating. The common elements give us a good grounding point. Stuff we can reason about fairly reliably and that we don’t have to discover the rules governing first....

To me, though, one of the “side benefits” of this hobby has been the way it encourages me to learn more about various topics. Whether it is the history of coinage or the physics behind the weight, volume, and how efficiently objects pack into a container.

That's a great post, and it very nicely lays out some stuff that I've felt just the same but perhaps not expressed as eloquently in the past. It's synchronous with the AD&D mission statement (attempt the highest degree of realism, as long as it's compatible with flow of the game) and the fact that looking to real-life research solves game design problems. It explains why so much of this blog is spent lobbying for fix-ups to the major-oversight parts of original D&D -- like Money, Encumbrance, and Scale (see sidebar). It's a great reply to the occasional critics who say "the game has magic, so ignore all realism" (not to say that James M. is asserting that in his blog). And it's something that's pretty unique to RPG's, something that could never be completely codified or game-abstracted away.

Thanks, Robert! And Happy New Year everyone. :-)

Week Off

2011-12-26T08:00:00.001-05:00

I'm taking the week off from blogging between the holidays. Hope everyone has a great New Year!

Friday Night Book of War

2011-12-23T08:00:00.003-05:00

Here's a Book of War game from last weekend where I decided to field a force of Elves and the new Treant figure -- gambling big that I'd get some Woods terrain, obviously. Well, I got not one but two Woods tiles, as well as Rainy weather (which helped to shut down opposing archers) -- but my opponent just coincidentally picked this game to bring a fire-using Wizard and Gold Dragon to the game (the first time she ever opted for a Wizard, in fact). Let's see how that played out:

Start -- Advanced Rules with All Unit Types Allowed (incl. Expansions); Optional Rules for Weather & Morale; 300 points. At the far top of the board, you'll see my opponent's two solo-hero figures: a Wizard (Rank 3, i.e., 13th level; with a wand of fireballs and two 6th-level spells that I don't know yet) and a Gold Dragon (charmed into service, perhaps?) In front of them are sizable units of Goblin Infantry and Archers, along with a figure representing a squad of Trolls (a perennial favorite of my opponent). At the bottom, I have only 7 figures on the table -- a half-dozen Light Cavalry, and the single figure of Treants (all I could afford). I also have 5 figures of Elf Archers, but they're currently hidden from view... somewhere.

I can't help but relate the terrain-placement phase, because this itself had us yelling at each other, and the dice, back-and-forth. I'm first-mover, so initially I rolled Rough and placed it center of the enemy, hoping to disrupt her movement. Then she rolled Woods and put it top-left, as far from me as possible (days earlier in my price-balancing for Treants, I'd sketched out a hypothetical game board that looked exactly like that placement, as expected opponent behavior). Hoping for my own Woods tile, I instead rolled a Marsh -- and after some consideration and trash-talking, I decided to put it top-right, on the very slim chance she would get another Woods on the final roll, thereby blocking its placement and forcing it towards my side. Well, that's exactly what happened, and after much rejoicing (huzzah!), she put it far right, as distant from the first Woods as possible. Armies were then placed -- and of course this allowed me to start my Treants already within 6" of those right-hand Woods. Random weather came up "Rainy" (-1 to hit with missiles), which, as noted above, was another point to my advantage, because the enemy was bringing twice as many archers to the table as I was (and I suppose in principle it might serve to dampen her fire-powers, though that's not simulated in any way).

Turn 1 -- On my first turn, the Treants immediately use their animation power, such that a new unit of two powerful Trees (really 20 huge trees, of course), step forward out of the Woods on my behalf. Cavalry also advance, getting into range for a fast charge on the next turn; and Elves appear from the edge of the Woods on the right, trying to get a shot at the Trolls (but between long range and rainy weather, it's an impossible shot; oops!!). On the enemy turn, the only movement she's made is to fly her Gold Dragon across the board, attacking my Treants in the bottom-right with fire breath, instantly and automatically burning them all to cinders. Holy crap! That was like 2/3 the value of my army right there, dead on the first turn -- thank goodness I got the animated trees out first (and as noted Wednesday, they remain in the game even with Treants gone).

Also: Compare the top-right of the picture to what came before. The other thing my opponent did was to have her Wizard cast Move Earth at the Marsh tile, so as to shift the whole terrain piece, along with the Elves now on it, towards the board edge. This caused a major argument: She thought she could slide the whole terrain piece (and my Elves) right off the table and out of the game, whereas when I'd pulled similar tricks in the past I mentally assumed that I had to keep it on the table somewhere (largely for manipulative purposes; half-off and it would probably fall awkwardly to the floor). Neither option is specified in the rules, so at an impasse, we went to rock-paper-scissors. First try: scissors/scissors. Second try: rock/scissors, with me winning, and thus the Marsh stayed on the edge of the board. (Phew!)

Turn 2 -- My Elves about-face and wheel out of the Moving Marsh, back into the Woods; my leftmost Light Cavalry charge the Goblin Infantry, and with some very nice rolls, actually run the whole unit down. I'm also compelled to try and wipe out the Dragon if I can, so my other Cavalry wheel rearward and charge; I've got 2 dice (1 figure) to attack, and if either one comes up 5+ the Dragon is dead -- but I fail to do so. Thus, on the enemy's turn, her Dragon takes off again and slams into my first Cavalry from the back, killing two figures and routing the unit. Also, the Wizard lobs two fireballs at my Trees, connecting with one for a full 6 hits (painful, but it takes 8 hits before I lose a figure).

Turn 4 -- On the 3rd turn, all I could do was partial-moves with my Elves, Trees, and remaining Cavalry, trying to get them forward into position to threaten the enemy. Then the enemy Dragon attacked and routed my second Cavalry; the Wizard fireballed my slow-moving trees again, burning up one figure; and the Trolls charged around the Trees into my Elves, killing a figure. Now I get a chance to respond -- Trees are in range to unleash their powerful melee attacks on the Trolls (2 dice which hit on 3+, for potential 2 damage each), and the Elves strike back as well. But the Trees roll snake-eyes and I score no hits at all!

Turn 5 -- The enemy Goblin Archers make a second move forward into the Rough; the Trolls kill another Elf figure; and the Dragon attacks my Trees, but fortunately it's out of dragon-breath for the day, and only scores 2 damage from tooth & claw. The Wizard also misses with both fireballs. On my turn, the Trees turn around and kill the Dragon (finally!), while the Elves wrap around the Trolls (still no hits!). Meanwhile, in a stroke of luck, my remaining Cavalry figure has managed to un-rout while fleeing through the Woods, and now moves to the edge of that grove of trees, aiming at the enemy Wizard.

Turn 6 -- On the enemy's 5th turn, the Wizard takes a risk to stand motionless and fireball my remaining animated Trees, incinerating them at last. The Goblin Archers (who haven't accomplished anything so far) about-face, and Trolls kill one more figure of Elves (but morale is still good). Then I attack: Elves score 2 hits on the Trolls, and my Cavalry unit charges out of the Woods at the Wizard. This is a dicey prospect -- I get 2 dice and one needs to show a "6" to succeed -- and that's exactly what happens (ding-dong, the Wizard's dead!). However, the enemy responds with a fusillade against my Cavalry -- she starts rolling 20 dice for the attack, but due to range & inclement weather she needs two 6's to kill my guys. Towards the end of the dice-rolling, she accomplishes this, and the Cavalry are now dead.

Turn 7 -- As you can probably guess, about a turn later the Trolls finish off the last of my Elves. Victory to the forces of Chaos!

Postscript -- This was a really interesting game to play: well-paced, constantly tense, with new unit-types on the board, and unforeseen rules debates to iron out.

My major mistake in this game (there's usually one) was to move my Elves out of the Woods on Turn 1 and try shooting the Trolls. By underestimating the distance (or simply not thinking it through), with the Rainy weather, that was an impossible shot, and the turn was wasted. Moreover, as I found out later, my opponent was guessing that the Elves were actually in the other Woods, and she was about to use the Move Earth spell over there instead (which would have wasted it entirely). So by revealing my Elves, it relieved her of that, making it doubly dumb on my part.

The other thing is that this caused both of us to re-evaluate the price of the Treants unit. Not wanting to overreact, but previously my thinking had been that as long as I had a Woods tile accessible I'd be a shoo-in to win -- whereas in this game I had that twice over, plus a Rainy weather advantage, and I still basically got stomped-on. So whereas earlier I had scored them at 200 points, this ignored the very potent value of Heroes & Wizards against them, and made them clearly over-priced (although -- isn't that a Christmas tradition, too?). After running the simulation in BookOfWar.java again some more times (adding code for the effect of fire on Tree-kind), and setting up a spreadsheet of hypothetical army weighted-values, I've now updated the price for a figure of Treants to 140 (as seen in Wednesday's post). That seems more likely to be about right.

Final thought: Look back at the dispute we had in the 1st turn over the Move Earth spell (which serves to shift one existing terrain tile, 6" per turn). What's you're opinion on that -- should Move Earth be allowed to slide terrain (and any supported units) right out of the game, or not? I suggest "no", but my worthy opponent argues that you should vote "yes". (Quoted argument: "Nobody likes elves! Nobody! That's right, you can quote me on that.") So, which seems preferable to you?

Book of War Expansion: Treants

2011-12-21T08:00:00.006-05:00

That's right, your holiday gift for today is: The Christmas Treant! Speaking more generally, Treants in the Book of War game look like this (mass scale of 1 figure = 10 treants; text between rules below is Open Game Content per the OGL):

Unit	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Notes
Treants	140	6	6	8	2 attacks, 2 damage, animate trees, fire vulnerability

Treants: These are enormous sentient-tree creatures. At the start of a turn they can animate a section of woods within 6" range to join them; this creates a new unit with twice as many figures, fighting the same except for 3" move rate (use this ability only once per game). If attacked by magical fire, they receive no saving die.

Treants were a great challenge to price correctly -- I recently reduced them after a playtest, but even so, they're the highest-priced units in the game so far (and for the foreseeable future). They have excellent armor, pretty awesome attacks, very high hit dice (almost Hero-level), and the potential to effectively triple their starting numbers. However, this is offset by their slow movement rate, their vulnerability if the opponent takes a fire-using Wizard or Dragon, and the great gamble you're taking for a Woods tile to appear in range on the table (about 1-in-2, and so about half their value comes from the ~50% chance to animate trees).

A couple things that I considered but rejected (although you might re-institute them as variants): (a) Possibly simplifying the tree-animation to triple the size of the treant unit, instead of creating a new unit (this was discarded because slowing all of the treants to 3" would be a huge loss in attack potential); and (b) Enforcing a command/control requirement that the treants stay within 6" for the animated trees to remain active (a complicated kind of rule that I've avoided on principle for BOW, and would permit killing the treants to wipe out the trees as well, greatly devaluing them; contrast with 3E).

Consider altering the value for a campaign-game in which you have advance knowledge regarding the type of terrain in which they'll be fighting (i.e., if you're not using the standard Book of War random terrain frequencies): If you know that there will not be any Woods on the battlefield, then their value is only about 80. If you know there will definitely be Woods accessible on the battlefield (like in a deep-forest battle), then value is estimated to be about 220. (Possibly subject to future revisions -- tell me how they work out for you!)

[Illustration by ^Sandra^ under CC2.]

Elves Through the Ages

2011-12-19T08:00:00.004-05:00

This week, a Holiday-themed Hotspot. First up, I thought it would be interesting to look at the state of Elves throughout different editions of D&D. For a few reasons, the ways in which they have evolved have left a few recurring "rough spots" on their profile. (Mom, this toy has a bunch of proud nails!) One of the places where cohesion sometimes gets lost is in the difference between player vs. monster description, so sometimes we may have to look at each.

Chainmail Fantasy

ELVES (and Fairies): Armed with deadly bows and magical swords, Elves (and Fairies) are dangerous opponents considering their size and build. They can perform split-move and fire, even though they are footmen. When invisible Elves (and Fairies) cannot attack -- or be attacked unless located by an enemy with the special ability to detect hidden or invisible troops -- but they can become visible and attack during the some turn. Those Elves (and Fairies) armed with magical weapons add an extra die in normal combat, and against other fantastic creatures they will perform even better... [CM p. 29]

Per the Fantasy Reference Table [CM p. 43], we see the following: Elves have a 12" move rate. They have special abilities A, B, and C (ability to become invisible [Halflings only in brush or woods]; see in normal darkness as if it were light; and split-move and fire). They have missile fire range of 18"; they attack as Heavy Foot, and also defend as Heavy Foot.

So, you see -- Elves as they first appear in Chainmail, following their Tolkien inspiration, are simply uber-everything. Their speed is equal to the fastest men afoot; their armor and hitting power is the same as heavy foot; their missile range is better than normal archers; they can see in darkness; and by default they are invisible and simply cannot be attacked by normal troops unless they wish it. That's a very powerful troop type! (Point value is quadruple standard light foot; double that of dwarves, for example.)

Original D&D

Elves: Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells. They may use magic armor and still act as Magic-Users. However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock). Elves are more able to note secret and hidden doors. They also gain the advantages noted in the CHAINMAIL rules when fighting certain fantastic creatures. Finally, Elves are able to speak the languages of Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Gnolls in addition to their own (Elvish) and the other usual tongues. [Vol-1, p. 8]

This is the OD&D player's description for elves, with its infamous "switch class" language that so many of us have struggled to interpret. Presumably the magic-user class access is what explains how they might get the invisibility power after a few levels. Also, they are given special dispensation to "use magic armor" and still function as magic-users. In addition to this, they also get special detection abilities, numerous extra languages, and a fold-in of their Chainmail special attack abilities. Now for the monster side:

ELVES: Elves are of two general sorts, those who make their homes in woodlands and those who seek the remote meadowlands. For every 50 Elves encountered there will be one of above-normal capabilities. Roll a four-sided die for level of fighting and a six-sided die for level of magical ability, treating any 1's rolled as 2's and 6's (magical level),as 5's. For every 100 encountered there will be a Hero/Warlock. One-half of the Elves in any given party will be bow armed, the other half will bear spears, and all will have swords in addition. Elves have the ability of moving silently and are nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks. Elves armed with magical weapons will add one pip to dice rolled to determine damage, i.e. when a hit is scored the possible number of damage points will be 2-7 per die. Elves on foot may split-move and fire. Mounted Elves may not split-move and fire, for they are not naturally adapted to horseback. [Vol-2, p. 16]

From the Monster Reference Table [Vol-2, p. 4] -- Elves have AC 5, MV 12", and HD 1+1. So: Very much following the precedent of Chainmail, with directly converted armor (as chain-type mail, i.e., same as heavy foot), identical movement, and a special hit dice bonus. Their combined armor & movement seem to violate the rules for player encumbrance, however (and this will be basically carried forward into future editions, as well).

Many of their listed abilities are further reminiscent of the Chainmail text (magic weapons, split-move and fire, etc.) One thing that jumps out for me is the language on being "nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks", which reads like a naturalistic retcon of their earlier invisibility power (and a quite defensible one). Also, it's a bit unclear if all of the elves in a group have spell ability, or if the player's "switch class" language should mean that they are currently "switched" to fighters-only, or even if they are intended to have no relation at all. One other thing you see in the opening line is the first hint of different "sorts" of elves, which later on will explode into sheer craziness (IMO).

Also, in the magic items section, we see:

Elven Cloak and Boots: Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible, while the Boots allow for totally silent movement. [Vol-2, p. 37]

How invisible is "next to invisible"? Are these meant to be the exact same "gray-green cloaks" worn by all elves in the monster description (or, instead, a magic facsimile for non-elves)? Does the color detail mean they only work as camouflage in woodsy surroundings (like the restriction for Halflings from Chainmail)? [Shaking Magic 8-Ball] Reply hazy, try again.

But then, the Greyhawk supplement to OD&D (Sup-I) did a pretty comprehensive re-tooling of all the demi-human races. They all get access to the new thief class (in various multi-class combinations); XP is now mandated as split equally between all classes all the time (a patch over the original "freely switch"?); the level-limits start to be tinkered with in relation to high ability scores. It doesn't explicitly say that elves can wear armor and still act as magic-users, although it does say "When acting in the thief capacity the elf can wear only leather armor." [Sup-I, p. 5] On top of all their other pre-existing abilities, the attached Corrections also give Elves "+1 to their hit probabilities when using sword or bow" [p. 68 in my copy].

Finally, looking at the Swords & Spells mass-combat supplement by Gygax (which I hold in moderately low repute), we see that the fine print for men & elves flip-flop their armor and relative move rates; here, elves are by default more lightly armored than men, and also slower for the same armor type. From the Movement table under the Mass/Line entry, we see: "Elves 9, Lt. Armor 12, Hv. Armor 7... Men 9, Lt. Armor 12, Hv. Armor 6" with this footnote:

The base movement for elves assumes that they have full leather armor and shield or the equivalent. Elves in chainmail are considered as heavily armored. The base movement rate for men assumes chainmail and shield. Men in leather armor, with shield, are lightly armored; men in full plate are heavily armored. [S&S, p. 3-4]

To clarify: Wearing leather & shield, elves move 9" but men move 12". With chain & shield, elves move 7" but men move 9". (And it's unclear how elves would even qualify for the "light armor" rate.) This detail isn't something that really synchs up with either earlier or later works.

Advanced D&D (1st Edition)

As always, the text swells in Advanced D&D. Player elves are given the same general abilities as they existed as of the OD&D Greyhawk supplement -- including basic class access, level limits based on abilities, +1 with swords and bows, extra languages (increased some more), infravision, and detection. On top of that, here are some other additions and clarifications:

Although able to operate freely with the benefits of armor, weapons, and magical items available to the classes the character is operating in, any thieving is restricted to the armor and weaponry usable by the thief class...

Elven characters have a 90% resistance to sleep and charm spells (if these spells are cast upon them a percentile dice roll of 91% or better is required to allow the magic any chance of having an effect, and even then the saving throw against spells is allowed versus the charm spell)...

If alone and not in metal armor (or if well in advance- 90' or more - of a party which does not consist entirely of elves and/or halflings) an elven character moves so silently that he or she will surprise (q.v.) monsters 66 2/3% (d6, 1 through 4) of the time unless some portal must be opened in order to confront the monster. In the latter case the chance for surprise drops to 33 1/3% (d6, 1-2). [PHB, p. 16]

Here we have the first clear indication that elves can wear armor as fighters and still perform as magic-users (even without the need for magic armor as in OD&D) -- and if the line above isn't totally explicit, then the example at the end of the two-classed humans section makes it so: "Note that this does not allow spell use while armor clad, such as an elven fighter/magic-user is able to do." [PHB p. 33] The special move-silently-and-surprise ability reads to me as yet another reworking of their original invisibility power (although it won't work in their default "heavy" chain mail, and the ability is explicitly the same as for halflings now). And the near-total resistance to sleep and charm person -- by far the most useful 1st-level attack spells in the game -- is a very potent one indeed!

The Monster Manual entry for Elves spans about a page-and-a-half, so I won't replicate the whole thing here. Suffice to say, their basic stat block is again just copy-pasted from prior sources: AC 5, MV 12", HD 1+1, etc. Here, the special surprise ability is at last explicitly linked to woodsy surroundings: "When in natural surroundings such as a wood or meadow, elves can move silently (surprise on a 1-4) and blend into the vegetation so as to be invisible (requiring the ability to see invisible objects to locate them) as long as they are not attacking." [MM p. 39] In addition to the default High Elves ("the most common sort of elf", per player's description [PHB p. 16]), you also get paragraphs on 5 other special types -- the Aquatic Elf, Drow, Gray Elf (Faerie), Half-Elf, and Wood Elf.

Did you notice that second one? A short and cryptic note is all you get here:

Drow: The “Black Elves,” or drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good. Tales picture them as weak fighters but strong magic-users. [MM, p. 39]

I think this deserves additional commentary. First, this is why some of us had unforgettable nerd-gasms when the drow actually appeared in the subsequent G3 and D1-3 modules. There may be no better example of such perfectly dovetailed marketing in D&D (intentional or not), with an irresistibly enticing hint in a hardcover rulebook, referring to details that were in fact already complete for adventure purposes, and just awaiting publication thereafter. (There are just a few other examples from the same adventure series, like the mezzodaemons and nycadaemons that also get referenced in the DMG.) I suspect that this mystery-connection in the core rulebooks is a major part of why the Drow cast such a permanent, influential shadow on D&D culture and design ever-efter.

One example: These variant Elves were so popular, successful, and powerful, that you got more and more Elven sub-races in later supplements, monster books, etc. By Unearthed Arcana you have all the sub-races open to player characters, including the added Wild Elves and Valley Elves. (Wild Elves in particular got a game-topping, unique +2 to generated Strength, which got noticed once by a player in my campaign, and then banned by yours truly after the single character.)

Also, in the DMG's piece on "Armor, Armor Class & Weapons", you get the first reference to "Elfin Chain" -- a special armor with Bulk: non-, Weight 15 pounds, and Base Movement 12". (Compare to normal Chain with Bulk: fairly, 30+ pounds weight, and Base Movement 9", listed in the PHB for 75 g.p.)

Chain, Elfin, is a finely wrought suit of chain which is of thinner links but stronger metal. It is obtainable only from elvenkind who do not sell it. [DMG p. 27]

And on the next page:

Magic Armor: When magic armor is worn, assume that its properties allow movement at the next higher base rate and that weight is cut by 50%. There is no magical elfin chain mail. [DMG p. 28]

Keep in mind that the DMG came out fully 2 years after the Monster Manual, and numerous sections read as revisions or errata to the earlier works. Is this another retcon to explain why Elves have had their encumbrance-rule-breaking AC 5 and MV 12" all along? Are all Elves encountered in the wild presumed to be wearing this special armor? Again, the material is suggestive but not completely forthcoming.

In the magic items section, the magic cloak & boots have been split into two separate entries (boots of elvenkind; cloak of elvenkind). In regards to the cloak (usually the more desired of the two items):

Cloak of Elvenkind: A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around the head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings. The invisibility bestowed is: [DMG p. 141]

So we see that the cloak is now explicitly chameleon-like in its functioning, it is now "plain neutral gray" in color (to make it harder to identify as treasure, I suppose), and the "near invisibility" is given specifics via the attached table. Based on the text that we saw earlier in the Player's and Monster's books, either this item is nearly useless for actual elves, or else all elves are presumed to be wearing them by default (which seems ludicrous, except that drow elves in module G3 et. al. are in fact said to be uniformly garbed in analogous magic garments). Has this item evolved from a core explanation for special Elven abilities (as of OD&D), to a near-orphaned status (here in AD&D)? Perhaps.

In the supplement Unearthed Arcana, for what it's worth, use of the Elfin Chain armor was expanded to thieves (allowing them to operate in it with a bit of an extra penalty), it is included in the magic item treasure tables at bonuses from +1 to +5 (overwriting the previous DMG restriction; in fact, no non-magical type appears in the tables here), and an option is even given for barding unicorns and griffons in it. Slightly different descriptions appear in the sections for thieves, normal armor, and magical armor; here's the last of them:

Elfin Chain Mail is magical armor of a sort that is so fine and light that it can be worn under normal clothing without revealing that it is there. Because of its incredible lightness and flexibility, thieves can utilize it, though it may slightly hinder their activities. However, it is rare for such mail to be sized to fit anyone other than an elf or a half-elf. If a suit of this mail is discovered, roll to ascertain what size of character it will fit... [table follows; UA p. 104]

And I can't resist looking at one other Gygax book from this era: the Glossography for the World of Greyhawk (in the 1983 boxed set). The Encounter Tables there include Knights of the Hart of Highfolk, elves and half-elves, mostly mid-level Fighter/Clerics with some Fighter/Magic-Users for support. (Note that in OD&D Sup-I, elven F/MU/C are NPC-only; in the PHB, there can be NPC elven clerics, with PC half-elves as F/C; but by UA errata basically any combination of Cleric is open to PC elves.) Among the notes here are these tidbits:

Elven clerics can and do wield all forms of edged and piercing weapons... Magic-users are armored as esquires but typically carry no shields and use bow and long sword. [Glossography for the Guide to the World of Greyhawk, p. 4]

The language about elven clerics using edged weapons at first seems like some special and noteworthy allowance, except that if they're all multiclassed F/C (as shown here), then that's already covered in the PHB: "Cleric combinations (with fighter types) may use edged weapons." [PHB p. 32]. And it also seems reasonable for fighter/magic-users to go without a shield, assuming that they need that hand free for component manipulations during spell-casting.

Advanced D&D (2nd Edition)

Looking at the 2E PHB, we see a cut in the proliferation of different sub-race types from Unearthed Arcana: "Elf player characters are always assumed to be of the most common type -- high elves -- although a character can be another type of elf with the DM's permission (but the choice grants no additional powers)." Class combinations are likewise trimmed back to something like their 1E PHB status: an elf can be a cleric, fighter, wizard, thief, ranger, fighter/mage, fighter/thief, mage/thief, or a fighter/mage/thief. (Note: No combining clerics with anything else, whereas in OD&D Sup-I and the Glossography, elven clerics were required to be multiclassed with something else. Wow, those clerics just drive me nuts sometimes!).

But other than that, the sum total of all the abilities we've added over time is still included: (1) lots of languages, (2) 90% resistance to sleep and charm, (3) +1 with bows and swords, (4) surprise bonus in non-metal armor (in a group of all elves/halflings), (5) infravision, (6) detection of secret doors, et. al. Still a very desirable racial choice!

The special armor type, now "Elven Chain", is mentioned and given extra allowances in several places in the PHB. A thief is allowed to function in it, with certain penalties (this is a carryover from 1E Unearthed Arcana rules). And now it is the key to multiclass wizards being able to function in armor (which is a pretty big change!):

Wizard: A multi-classed wizard can freely combine the powers of the wizard with any other class allowed, although the wearing of armor is restricted. Elves wearing elven chain can cast spells in armor, as magic is part of the nature of elves. However, elven chain is extremely rare and can never be purchased. It must be given, found, or won. [2E PHB]

In the Monstrous Manual, Elves still have the same fixed AC 5, MV 12, HD 1+1, etc., that they've retained ever since their original appearance in Chainmail/OD&D. And likewise, their description is largely the same as what came before, with their abilities basically a restatement of what appears in the player's book. It even includes the same surprise-in-wilderness language with a line about wearing "greenish grey cloaks to afford them quick camouflage" that has been there since OD&D. And then you have the copious 2E extensions on Habitat/Society and Ecology for each of the several different types (Aquatic Elves in particular).

The 2E DMG includes Elven Chain on its treasure list:

Elven Chain Mail: This is magical armor so fine and light that it can be worn under normal clothing without revealing its presence. Its lightness and flexibility allow even bards and thieves to use it with few restrictions (see Chapter 3 in the PHB). Elven fighter/mages use it without restriction. However, it is rarely sized to fit anyone other than an elf or a half-elf. Roll percentile dice and consult the following table to ascertain what size character elven chain mail will fit... [table follows; 2E DMG]

Note, as is the case more often than not, that the 2E text is simply a copy-and-paste from the 1E UA text above, with the sentences ever-so-minimally tweaked in places. The table that follows is also perfectly identical to the one in the 1E UA magic items section. However, in a reversal from the 1E UA (and a return to the 1E DMG rule), it does appear in non-magical form, and no magic versions appear. And note that due to changed location of the text, the material has gotten a bit better: the "so fine and light" language that UA reserved only for magic elfin chain is now par-for-the-course for any elfin chain.

d20 System D&D (3rd Edition)

Designers for 3E started being pretty liberal with their changes, keeping some of the flavor with what's come before, and modifying it pretty heavily in places. The elven character race in the PHB includes these listed abilities:

Immunity to magic sleep spells and effects.
+2 racial saving throw bonus against Enchantment spells or effects.
Low-light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
Proficient with either longsword or rapier; proficient with shortbow, longbow, composite longbow, and composite shortbow.
+2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks. An elf who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for the door. [3E SRD]

So: Instead of infravision we have low-light vision (which won't be of any use in a dark dungeon). Instead of a bonus with sword & bow we have a simple proficiency allowance. Instead of a large 1-in-6 bonus to find secret doors, we have a fairly meager 2-in-20 addition to searching. Instead of 90% immunity to charm, there is a +2 bonus vs. enchantment magic. The resistance to sleep, however, is now complete (and expanded upon in the elven background, speaking of them as never-sleeping). There are also several bonus languages permitted, and Wizard is the "favored class" (removing an XP penalty that otherwise arises from unequal multiclassing). But the special and powerful move-silent/surprise ability is no longer present.

The monster entry is also a bit different. The basic elf is listed as wearing studded leather and shield, with longsword and longbow (which might make using that shield tricky, but with +1 Dexterity bonus works out to AC15, i.e., the same as AC5 in prior editions). Whereas Elves in all prior editions were uber in the sense of getting HD 1+1, here it is flip-flopped, with Elves by the rules only getting HD 1-1 -- the only creature type in the entire ruleset to get a hit dice subtraction! (This is explained by Elves getting a Dex bonus and Con penalty -- ever since 1E -- here doubled to +/-2, and with the new modifier table now creating a hit-point penalty. But again, they are the only creature type in the entire game to suffer this way, a stark contrast from everything that came before.) And again, pointedly: No special hiding or surprise capacity, which was a core ability since Chainmail (at long last: no mention of the "gray-green cloaks").

Speaking of Wizards and permitted armor: In a reversal from 2E, Elven Chain no longer has special status as the only armor-type that Fighter/Wizards can casts spells in (nor are Elves the only Fighter/Wizards; as you probably know, in 3E any multiclass combination imaginable is openly available to any racial type). As per its mission statement, 3E has generalized armor usage, such that a Wizard with proficiency can now wear any armor s/he wishes, incurring an escalating percentage chance of "Arcane Spell Failure" (from 5% for padded to 40% for half-plate, plus more for a shield). Here is what Elven Chain looks like (from the DMG treasure table):

Elven Chain: This very light chainmail is made of very fine mithral links. Speed while wearing elven chain is 30 feet for Medium-size creatures, or 20 feet for Small. The armor has an arcane spell failure chance of 20%, a maximum Dexterity bonus of +4, and an armor check penalty of -2. It is considered light armor and weighs 20 pounds. [3E SRD]

So notice that's not terribly "special" anymore; the language has removed the previous strictures about how incredibly jealous the Elves are of it, and now it is basically just an example of the "mithral" special material type, into which it has been folded:

Mithral: Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 2, and armor check penalties are decreased by 3. Nonarmor or nonshield items made from mithral weigh half as much as the same item made from other metals. Note that items not primarily of metal are not meaningfully affected. [3E SRD]

Note that "mithral" was mentioned as far back as the 1E DMG, but in a very different usage: any magical armor of the +4 bonus level was noted to be made of "mithral alloyed steel" (whereas the +5 level was "adamantite alloyed steel") [1E DMG p. 164]. So we see the the "Elven Chain" type, which started out looking closely connected to the special armor and move rates of uber elves, went through an evolution arc that seemingly grew away from that close connection, and then was finally eclipsed by a different, unrelated mechanic (and the same can be said for the elven cloak and boots, perhaps?).

Book of War

So granted all this complication, and seemingly vast differences between editions of D&D, what was I to do for Elves in my own Book of War mass-combat game? Well, I instituted two different types of Elves: (1) a low-level type similar to standard men (thinking of later AD&D, 3E, or Swords & Spells; appearing in leather at 12" MV or chain at 9" MV), or (2) a higher-level elite type (similar to Chainmail Fantasy, complete with Elfin Chain for MV 12"). Regarding the usual surprise power, I decided to give the low-level type a mundane "hide in woods" ability (as suggested by various language up through 2E), whereas the higher-level elite type are full 3rd-level Fighter/Wizards with the invisibility spell available to all of them (exactly as stated back in Chainmail). There are analogous "elite" types for men, dwarves, and halflings as well, so it makes for a nicely balanced set of options. I figure that whichever "sort" of elf you prefer (pastoral or superhuman), Book of War supports your need out-of-the-freshly-unwrapped-box.

Here's the specific "hiding" ability as it appears in BOW (text between the rules below is Open Game Content as per the OGL):

Hide in Woods: Halflings and elves can be secretly setup in any woods tile. The controlling player makes a note as to location, and then waits to place them at the start of a later turn. If enemies move into that location, then they are placed immediately.

So the idea here is to give elves (and halflings) some kind of hiding ability, but not to ever require adjudication of movement while unseen on the board (assuming a standard game with no 3rd-party referee); once they actually appear, the figures stay on the board for the rest of the game. Obviously, the value of this ability is dependent on terrain -- using the basic random generation, whether any woods tiles appear. The 3rd-level elite elves with their synchronized invisibility magic can be placed basically anywhere on the board without this terrain limitation.

My customary opponent has used these abilities (especially the elites) to devastating effect on me several times. Among the many intriguing lessons from the Book of War game is this: I never truly understood the "orcs hate elves" detail until I was running an orc army and the main force all got shot down by a bunch of sneak-attacking, invisible elves; in my competitive spirit, I suddenly "got" what that animosity really feels like. Also: The elite's ability developed a restriction "excluding the enemy setup zone", because otherwise every game would start off with the elves on the far edge of the board, ambushing the enemy on the second turn from behind (usually a key hero figure).

Hope your Elves aren't working too hard this week!

Related links:

[Photo by essgee51 under CC2.]

Super Saturday: Avengers on XD

2011-12-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

So just recently, the new cartoon that I've been watching is Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which I've been viewing piecemeal on YouTube (apparently all of the episodes are available there). I've basically fallen in love with this cartoon, and it's quite rapidly catapulted itself into the league of my top-ever-favorites, like #1 X-Men Evolution, and #2 Justice League. The fact that it has "Disney XD" branding initially made me very skeptical (along with, I suppose, the art style), but it's turned out to be extraordinarily satisfying.

It's actually quite mature in terms of character, plot, and theme. Probably the strongest element is that it pictures a very large world (in fact, I'm becoming convinced that this is the single strongest advantage that Marvel has in any of its best incarnations), with lots of different characters and conflicting power-centers, many of whom are untrustworthy, shadowy, and ambiguous (especially SHIELD and the rest of the American industrial-military structure). It's honestly surprising who's allied with whom -- and sometimes who is disguised as what. I love the fact that the story starts in media res, with a legion of supervillains who obviously have their own pre-existing (but left offscreen) backgrounds, with the whole lot staging a massive super-prison breakout at the start of the series -- and thus setting up a totally compelling long-term plot for the show. The episodes are not self-contained, as this larger plot continues to drive the action forward. I adore the fact that there isn't just one, but a whole bevy of "mastermind" super-villains who are all around trying to hatch their own competing conspiracies.

I'm really impressed by the characterizations I've seen so far, particularly of the Hulk and Thor, my top-two favorites superheroes. Some pieces of business are delivered very crisply and tellingly. Example: In one episode, Thor tells Jane Foster about the Odinsleep, in which his father is helpless for a week each year in Asgard, and the ongoing argument over whether Thor should be there at that time. Jane asks why he doesn't go: "It is... complicated," says Thor. "Really?" says Jane, "Because it just sounds like you're mad at your dad. There's nothing less complicated than that." I think that's a surprisingly poignant line for a kid's cartoon.

Some other stuff: My girlfriend almost burst into tears at how they told the tale of Wonder Man in episode #10. After the "Gamma World" story (hey: RPG shout-out) in episodes #12-13, we were both so terrified, amazed, and jazzed up that we almost couldn't sleep that night. The show also uses a lot of unconventional (for a cartoon) storytelling techniques, like flashbacks, flash-forwards, parallel locations, unusual perspectives, and occasionally running part of the same story twice from a second character's point-of-view. It also seems like someone gets their face melted off about once an episode, yowch!

One downside is that the show started with 5 episodes which set up the main characters individually, and these are a bit slow-going. The real fireworks start when the top characters come together and start sparking off each other; but you will probably still want to watch the setup episodes, or else the "Breakout" story with about 500 different characters all running around may be overwhelming. (When consolidated for "Season 1", the setup stories are episodes 3-7, and the Breakout which happens chronologically later is shown as episode 1-2.)

I guess one other thing is near the end of Episode 2, where my #1 favorite hero does this in an attempt to take down the master villain:

Dude, you just blew up the entirety of Downtown Brooklyn! Oh well, I guess that would've gotten me out of jury duty the other week.

Anyway, for those of you still alive, if you like Marvel comics, then you should definitely watch Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Highly recommended (caution: very habit-forming!)

[Top picture by edwick under CC2.]

Friday Night Book of War

2011-12-16T08:00:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, we played a game in which I crafted an army around a high-level Wizard character. He didn't bring any elementals to the table, but he did bring a Gold Dragon with him, which I thought rather clever. Imagine my surprise when I found out my opponent had brought three dragons to the fight! Here's how that played out:

Start -- Advanced Rules with All Unit Types Allowed; Optional Rules for Weather & Morale; 300 points. My opponent has selected 3 dragons (across top edge of table; one each blue, red, and gold; note fill-in figures we're using for 1:1 scale dragons), as well as figure of trolls (she loves them; extremely tough), and then rounded out those high-cost units with two big masses of goblin infantry (the cheapest unit type in the game). On the lower extreme edge of the table, you can see my wizard with 3 figures of pikemen guarding him. There are two long lines of pikes in the advance, followed by a row of crossbows; plus, I've got another unit of crossbows and my gold dragon positioned a bit to the left. My wizard is rank 3 (i.e., level 13), with a wand of fireballs and the 6th-level magic death spell and move earth.

Terrain, as you can see, is highly unusual. My opponent rolled not one but two streams, and she positioned them in a way that makes for a very tight bottleneck in the center of the board. I've placed the one wood and one hill tile. Finally, weather has come up "Sunny" (you can see the card hanging under the lamp in top right of photo), which is good news for me: No penalties for my crossbows, and the opponent's goblins will be at an extra -1 to morale checks.

Turn 1 -- I go first, pushing my forces as far forward as possible to get over the high ground, fill in the center bottleneck with pikes, and get my wizard on top of the hill. Then on my opponent's turn, the only movement she makes is to send two of her dragons roaring over my forces and attacking my rear (this is fairly standard usage for the dragons). Fortunately, her rolls are below average, and I lose only a single figure from each unit due to dragon breath (and also pass the morale checks).

Turn 2A -- I push most of my forces further forward -- in fact, more than I intended with the front pikes (I underestimated the distance and said "these pikes move forward full"). The main crossbows shoot goblins on the left, avoiding the overshoot penalty by virtue of being on the hill, but half the dice go against my own pikes because they're now so close to the enemy (hence, just 1 goblin figure down). My wizard has sent two fireballs crashing into the goblins on the right, automatically removing two figures. In the rear, the other crossbows have counterattacked the red dragon (no success), while the gold dragon has attacked and killed the opposing blue dragon (and also survived the hero's "dying blow" rule in return).

Turn 2B -- Stuff gets ugly. My opponent has charged my single row of pikes with all of her goblins and trolls. On contact, my pikes got their double-dice defensive interrupt attack, killing 7 of the goblin figures on the right (and routing them; so they get no attacks), plus 2 hits on the troll figure (of course, they have 6HD). They goblins on the left have wrapped around my rear, and they plus the trolls have killed 4 of my 7 pike figures, causing them to rout (although they're pinned in and unable to flee on the next turn). Elsewhere (not in the picture), the enemy red dragon has routed my secondary crossbows, and our gold dragons have fought, managing to kill each other simultaneously.

Turn 3 -- On my turn, all of my missile units (crossbows on the hill and two wizard fireballs) shot into the leftmost unit of goblins, managing to rout them. On the opponent's turn, both of those goblin units are now fleeing from the field, while the trolls have finished off my forward pikes (and are also regenerating their damage -- damn, how I hate that). Her remaining red dragon also just slammed into the rear of my second pikes, killing two figures (passing morale -- and that was the third and final fire-breath of the day). A bit out of the picture to the left, my other remaining crossbows routed across the stream, but then made a difficult morale check to un-rout and get back in the game. (Theme: Lucky morale checks for me.)

Turn 4A -- On my turn, instead of engaging the solo dragon figure, the pikes move forward, so the crossbows and wizard can get full unhindered shots -- and thus succeed in killing the last red dragon, which was a real concern for me. My other crossbows in the stream score one hit at long range on the goblins, so they can't un-rout before fleeing the table. However, the powerful trolls remain and are now undamaged.

Turns 4 to 6 -- The question now is basically: Can my massed missile troops shoot down the trolls before they get in contact (including my wizard on the hilltop who has only a 2-in-6 chance to accurately hit a lone figure with a fireball)? I'll probably only get 2 turns at most to succeed at it -- once the trolls come in contact, the missiles can't shoot, and generally not enough standard figures can melee them to overcome their regeneration and hellacious attacks (trolls roll 2 dice at +2 to hit each). This is a tense situation for me. I'll let pictures tell the story without further comment:

Postscript -- Victory for the forces of the wizard! In spite of the very unusual terrain setup, you can see a couple of regular things with Advanced Game play (including all the high-level monsters, heroes, wizards, etc. from the D&D game). One is that hero-types are very high-value targets, and tend be attacked quickly (perhaps desperately?) at the start of the battle. The dragons in particular, with their very high movement rate, and ignoring terrain penalties, often get used as fast-strike anti-hero assassins. Once hero-types are neutralized, the regular troops tend to battle each other in the standard fashion.

So, I was rather lucky that my wizard didn't get directly assaulted by a dragon (for example) in this engagement. One problem I've found with wizards on the battlefield is that in addition to their high price, you also need to budget for a good number of guards to protect them (perhaps more than I used here) -- they can't move too much if you want to use their full spells, so they wind up in a defensive, artillery-like position.

My one glitch for the game (there's usually one) was the move on turn #2 where I over-advanced my pikes, leaving the narrow bottleneck between the streams that they filled, and getting in the way of my own missile shots. Fortunately my opponent then somewhat underestimated the effect of charging them frontally in open terrain, so I still got good effect from them. Lesson: Estimate the distance before making some glib declaration like "this unit moves full".

The other thing is that trolls are truly ferocious opponents, and I needed half my starting army in position shooting at the single figure over a few turns at the end to take them down. Fortunately, I knew that massed missile fire is key, and I'd also chosen the wand of fireballs, granted my opponent's propensity for using trolls. If not for that, there were lots of opportunities for her to win.

Book of War Expansion: Elementals

2011-12-14T08:00:00.002-05:00

Here's another "Hero" type that for a long time was included in the Book of War text, but towards the end of the design process was taken out (I'll explain the reasons why in a minute): Elementals. (Text between the rules below is indicated as Open Game Content, per the OGL):

Unit	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Atk	Dam	Notes
Elemental, Air	-	36	6	1	5	1	Magic to hit; whirlwind
Elemental, Earth	-	6	6	1	5	3	Magic to hit; battering ram
Elemental, Fire	-	12	6	1	5	2	Magic to hit; fire attack
Elemental, Water	-	18	6	1	5	2	Magic to hit; water domain

Elementals: Elementals can only be hit by those wielding magic attacks (any hero listed qualifies). Air elementals can form a whirlwind each turn and automatically eliminate one 1HD-figure. Earth elementals do damage to castles and other structures. Fire elementals do flame damage (e.g., deadly to trolls). Water elementals outside a stream or pond are reduced to 6" move and 1 damage.

Additional notes: The statistics above assume elementals of either 16HD (conjured), or possibly 12HD (device) size. While totally invulnerable to any normal troops, it's accurate to allow any heroes to hit them (big monsters like dragons & giants can hit them in any of Chainmail, OD&D, and AD&D, under a variety of different text language). There may be other restrictions, possibly dependent on your particular ruleset (like earth and fire elementals not crossing water, per OD&D Vol-3 p. 18), which can be adjudicated at your discretion. Note that no cost is given to elementals by themselves (the same as in Chainmail p. 36; see more below).

Why was the decision made to leave elementals out of the published book? Early play-testers pointed out a couple ways in which they were problematic (especially, my very perceptive friend Paul). In particular: (a) Conjure elemental is a 5th-level spell, and thus missing from BOW, which focuses only on top-level (6th) spells. I was instead giving elementals a fixed cost, and it was pretty dissonant to have them in the game but not summoned by wizards. (b) More generally, with elementals able to wade through any standard troops and completely ignore their attacks, pricing them was very much guesswork (I've estimated them at about value 40 each?). I became worried that in the absence of an opposing hero-type (esp., a wizard or dragon), they would be unbalanced and wind up breaking the game. (c) Earth elementals have the special "super battering ram against walls" power, but I didn't include any wall-destruction rules in BOW, so this particular rule was unsatisfyingly vague. Stuff like that; so in the end it seemed best to remove them and give a fuller treatment of options as an expansion option (with castle destruction yet to come).

So let's fix this now: here's conjure elemental as an optional spell for wizards in BOW:

Conjure Elemental (Range: 24 inches, Duration: Concentration). This spell summons an elemental of any one type. It appears within range from a large body of the appropriate elemental material. If concentration is lost (the wizard moves, casts another spell, or is the target of any feasible attack), then the elemental switches sides -- but assume the wizard can dispel the elemental if needed (as a half-move action). At most, one elemental of each type can be conjured per day.

Other notes: The fact that the elemental locks down the casting wizard from any other movement or action, by concentration, is a big balancing factor (thanks, Paul!), and you may consider giving this power to wizards, in addition to those already specified in the book, for free. However, I'm a big fan of charging for any increase in options/flexibility, so I would add +5 to the price of a wizard with this spell available. If you further introduce a full complement of 5th-level spells (around 4 for any BOW-level wizards: perhaps conjure elemental, animate dead, transmute rock to mud, and cloudkill), then I would suggest maybe a total +10 price increase for that. However, granted how long a standard game lasts, it's borderline unlikely that a wizard will actually get to use any of these lower-level spells.

In addition, I would be strict about the need for "a large body of the appropriate elemental material". This is generally trivial for air and earth elementals. Water elementals should be limited to a "pond, stream", etc. [OD&D Vol-2, p. 19 -- also the last two terrain types in BOW]. Fire elementals will be more troublesome -- either a large bonfire must be set in advance, or perhaps fireballs can set an area of woods on fire, etc.

I'd recommend that concentration be lost as soon as any attack is launched at the wizard that has a possibility for success -- this from closely reading text for elemental monsters like "being attacked... will tend to break this concentration" [OD&D Vol-2, p. 19], as well as similar text in 1E, etc. This also simplifies the abstraction at our chosen scale. However, if you prefer to have concentration lost only from a successful attack, then be sure to switch to Special Combat (1-to-1) for any such concentrating wizard!

One final thing (I think): This is rather dissimilar to how I presented conjure elemental in my earlier OGL Book of Spells. There, I downplayed the ongoing concentration requirement; had a very short duration of 3 turns (translated from 3E); and also required a single control check at the very start of the spell. This latter I was thinking to fill in for the automatic AD&D 5% chance to lose control every round (see insightful comments by Jerry here) -- and for what it's worth, the exact language was copied from 3E's pipes of the sewers (which is possibly the only piece of text remaining in 3E with a chance for a PC power to backlash against them).

What I didn't realize until I recently went through the copious text on elementals was how unusual that roll-for-loss-of-control is, if we compare different D&D editions (it's only in 1E & 2E). Now I see that the real common core of the spell is (a) the daily type limitation, (b) need for concentration, and (c) raw material requirement. At some point I'll get around to updating Book of Spells, and that's one of the adjustments I plan to make, so as to bring the spell more in line with classic D&D.

Spells Through the Ages -- Conjure Elemental

2011-12-12T08:00:00.003-05:00

The conjure elemental spell has gone through many modifications through the various D&D editions, and in this case we frequently need to look in at least two different places: both the player's spell description, and also the monster description itself.

Chainmail Fantasy

Conjuration of an Elemental: Wizards can conjure Elementals, but no more than one of each type can be brought into existence. (Note: This does not apply to Djinn and Efreet.) If the Wizard who conjured the Elemental is disturbed (attacked) while the Elemental is still in existence, he loses control of it, and it will then attack the conjurer. An Elemental created by a Wizard who is subsequently killed will attack the nearest figure. Such Elementals must be dispelled by a Wizard or (killed) by combat. (Complexity 5) [CM p. 32]

ELEMENTALS... impervious to normal attacks against them... Only one Elemental of each kind may be brought into any game in play at the time. If an Elemental is uncontrolled by the Wizard who summoned it, it will attack the Wizard who conjured it, moving towards him in a straight path, attacking any figures in its path. [CM p. 36]

So, in its initial form the primary characteristics of the spell are (1) a per-type limitation on conjuring, and, importantly, (2) the wizard must avoid being disturbed or be attacked by their own elemental (what we'll call "concentration" in editions hereafter). The elementals are invulnerable any "normal attacks" (i.e., basic-level troops), and can only be defeated on the Fantasy Combat Table by some heroic type (like dragons, giants, superheroes, etc.). There is no specified duration limit to the spell, but then, only a minority of spells in Chainmail have one.

Original D&D

Conjure Elemental: A spell to conjure an Air, Water, Fire or Earth Elemental. Only one of each type can be conjured by a Magic-User during any one day. The Elemental will remain until dispelled, but the Magic-User must concentrate on control or the elemental will turn upon its conjurer and attack him (see CHAINMAIL). Conjured elementals are the strongest, with 16 hit dice as is explained in Volume II, MONSTERS & TREASURE. Range: 24". [OD&D Vol-1, p. 28]

ELEMENTALS: There are four types of Elemental: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Each will be dealt with separately. There are variations of strength (hit dice) within all four types:
Conjured Elementals 16 Hit Dice
Device* Elementals 12 Hit Dice
Staff Elementals 8 Hit Dice
*Those from medallions, stones, gems, or bracelets.

Regardless of the strength of an Elemental, only one of each type can be brought into existence during any "day". Thus, if a character possessed a device to call up an Air Elemental, but before he could employ it an opponent conjured an Air Elemental, another could not be created until the next day. Only magical weapons/attacks affect Elementals...

[Fire Elementals] are brought forth from flame of considerable heat, i.e. a large fire, lava pool, etc.... Water Elementals can only be brought forth from a considerable body of water, i.e. a pond, stream, or larger body of water...

All elementals must be controlled at all times by the persons who have called them forth. Failure to control any elemental will result in its turning upon the one who called it up and attacking. The returning/attacking Elemental will move directly toward the one who summoned it, attacking anything that gets in its path as it returns. Note that once control is lost it can never be re-established. Control consists merely of the summoner maintaining undivided attention upon the Elemental; and being attacked, moving, or any other action will tend to break this concentration.

No Elemental may be hit by normal men unless magically armed. [OD&D Vol-2, p. 18-19]

This is a 5th-level spell (as usual, the Chainmail "complexity" rating has translated directly into the D&D spell level). It's mostly the same as before, with very slight fleshing out to the restrictions of (1) the per-type limitation, and (2) keep-concentration-or-be-attacked. There's a new easy-to-miss detail at the end of the elemental type descriptions that (3) you need a significant body of the fire or water element to conjure an elemental of those types (but, technically, not air or earth). There is still no hard duration limit.

What has changed is that (instead of being simply invulnerable to attacks), the elementals are given different Hit Dice classes (8/12/16), with the strongest coming from the normal spell itself. And the invulnerability is translated via the underlined section, that "magical weapons/attacks" (i.e., +1 or better bonus) are required to hit them.

As a side note, in Original (White Box) D&D, the only wizard spells that could "summon" any monster type on the players' behalf are this spell, and invisible stalker (6th level; 8HD). In that context, these are among the toughest monsters available -- the 16HD elementals have flat-out the highest listed HD of any creature in the game!. (Possibly you might also include a spell like animate dead, and on the cleric side, there's sticks to snakes and insect plague.) All of these spells are in the top 1-2 spell levels for either class, and they all have very specific, heavily-themed effects -- which is to say that, in Original White Box D&D, summoning monsters is a big, even world-shaking, deal.

However, with OD&D Supplement I (Greyhawk), we see a new type of spell: the various monster summoning spells, in variations from spell level 3 to 9, which might randomly create any monster in the game ("By employing this spell the magic-user calls to his aid a monster appearing on the MONSTER LEVEL TABLES, level 1, i.e. kobolds, goblins, skeletons, etc...." [Sup-I, p. p 23]). Obviously, this is a far more abstract and self-referential game mechanic, and much more low-powered, than what we see for the earlier conjure elemental and its ilk.

Basic D&D

What I'll generally call the "Basic D&D" line -- the Holmes/Moldvay BX/Mentzer BXCMI/Allston Rules Cyclopedia product line -- branched off from the OD&D game and generally had only subtle changes to the spell system, so I'll treat that at this time:

Conjure Elemental
Range: 240’
Duration: Concentration
Effect: Summons one 16 HD elemental

This spell allows the caster to summon any one elemental (AC -2, HD 16, Damage 3d8; see the description of elementals in Chapter 14). The caster can only summon one of each type of elemental (earth, air, fire, water) in one day.

The elemental will perform any tasks within its power (carrying, attacking, etc.) as long as the caster maintains control by concentrating. The caster cannot fight, cast other spells. or move over half Normal Speed, else he will lose control of the elemental. If he loses control, he cannot regain it. An uncontrolled elemental will try to slay its summoner, and may attack anyone in its path while pursuing him.

The spell's caster may return a controlled elemental to its home plane simply by concentration. A dispel magic or dispel evil spell can return an uncontrolled elemental to its plane. [RC, p. 51]

Elemental*...

To summon an elemental, a character must have a large amount of the element nearby (such as open air, bare earth, a pool of water or a bonfire). When the elemental arrives, it is hostile, and must be controlled by concentration at all times. The summoner's concentration is broken if he takes damage or fails any saving throw. The summoner can move only up to half normal speed while concentrating.

If the summoner's concentration is broken, the elemental will attack him. Once lost, control cannot be regained. The elemental can attack any creature between it and its summoner if it desires.

If summoned in an area too small for it (see size notes below), an elemental will fill the available area - sideways, for example - possibly damaging the summoner in the process (and thus breaking the summoner's concentration). However, an elemental cannot pass a protection from evil spell effect.

An elemental will vanish if it or its summoner is slain, or when the summoner sends it back to its plane (which requires control), or if a dispel magic is cast upon it... [RC, p. 175]

This is fundamentally the same as in OD&D -- there aren't any big changes here. There is still no hard duration limit other than "concentration". Elementals are still hit by any magic weapon (noted by the asterisk after the name). The only new things I see here are: an explication that the elemental can be used for tasks other than just attacking; a highly reasonable expansion of the basic material requirement to all 4 types; and a novel addition that "An elemental will vanish if it or its summoner is slain, or when the summoner sends it back to its plane (which requires control" (in addition to the usual dispelling method). You can contrast these with the AD&D line, below.

Advanced D&D (1st Edition)

Conjure Elemental (Conjuration/Summoning)
Level: 5
Range: 6"
Duration: 1 turn/level
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 turn
Saving Throw: None

Explanation/Description: There are actually four spells in one as respects conjure elemental. The magic-user is able to conjure an air, earth, fire or water elemental with this spell - assuming he or she has the material component for the particular elemental. A considerable fire source must be in range to conjure that type of elemental; a large amount of water must be likewise available for conjuration of a water elemental. Conjured elementals are very strong - see ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, MONSTER MANUAL - typically having 16 hit dice (16d8). It is possible to conjure up successive elementals of different type if the spell caster has memorized two or more of these spells. The type of elemental to be conjured must be decided upon before memorizing the spell. The elemental conjured up must be controlled by the magic-user, i.e. the spell caster must concentrate on the elemental doing his or her commands, or it will turn on the magic-user and attack. The elemental, however, will not cease a combat to do so, but it will avoid creatures when seeking its conjurer. If the magic-user is wounded or grappled, his or her concentration is broken. There is always a 5% chance that the elemental will turn on its conjurer regardless of concentration, and this check is made at the end of the second and each succeeding round. The elemental can be controlled up to 3" distant per level of the spell caster. The elemental remains until its form on this plane is destroyed due to damage or the spell's duration expires. Note that water elementals are destroyed if they move beyond 6" of a body of water. The material component of this spell (besides the quantity of the element at hand) is a small amount of:

Air Elemental - burning incense
Earth Elemental -soft clay
Fire Elemental - sulphur and phosphorus
Water Elemental -water and sand

N.B. Special protection from uncontrolled elementals is available by means of a pentacle, pentagram, thaumaturgic triangle, magic circle, or protection from evil spell. [AD&D 1E PHB, p. 79]

ELEMENTAL... As elementals are stupid and resent being summoned, the conjuring party must concentrate upon controlling the creature. Failure to do so will result in the elemental turning upon the summoner 75% of the time and attacking. The turning elemental will come directly towards the conjuring party, attacking anything in its path along the way. Control can never be regained, and an uncontrolled elemental will always return to its own plane in three turns after control is lost. If an elemental does not turn (25% chance), it simply goes immediately to its own plane. Control concentration requires that the summoning party remain stationary and be neither physically nor mentally attacked, including attack by missile or distraction. In any event, only one elemental at a time can be controlled. Elementals are impervious to attacks by normal weapons and even magical weapons under +2 bonus. Creatures without magical ability of some sort cannot harm elementals unless the creatures have four or more hit dice. Magical ability includes paralysis, poison, acid, breath weapons, and even the characteristic of not being subject to attack by normal weapons. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc. are all powerless to affect elementals because they have neither magical property nor four or more hit dice. Ogres, however, could attack an elemental with effect as they have the necessary strength (four hit dice in this case). Note, however, that if a kobold with a +2 magic sword attacked an elemental the weapon would be effective.

A conjured elemental can be taken over and controlled by a magic-user casting a dispel magic spell (ratio dispeller's level over conjuring party's level to determine chance of success), and deliberately aiming it at dispelling the control rather than the elemental. However, if the spell fails, the effect is to strengthen the elemental to a full 8 points per hit die, double the controller's ability to concentrate, and make the elemental resent the one attempting the take-over, so that if it becomes uncontrolled it will go after that magic-user. [AD&D 1E MM, p. 37]

So: To begin with, we're starting to see a whole lot of text in the Advanced D&D line to wade through. All the usual Gygaxian AD&D additions are here: school of magic, component types, casting times, etc.

Consider our "top 3" restrictions on casting the spell: (1) The per-type daily restriction is still in place; (2) the concentration/control requirement is still there, but if lost, attack by the elemental is now only 75% likely instead of automatic (otherwise returning to its home plane; or else in 3 turns in any event); (3) the basic material requirement is still explicitly in place, just for water and fire.

New issues as far the casting of the spell are as follows: (4) the type of elemental desired must be pre-memorized at the start of the day (something I think was ignored in most published adventures with NPC wizards); (5) there is a 5% chance-per-round to lose control regardless of caster concentration; (6) it's possible to have your elemental taken over by an enemy magic-user with a dispel magic, and (7) for the first time, there is a hard duration limit of 1 turn/level.

The other thing is that the elemental special defense has been boosted from just anything "magic" (i.e., +1) to requiring a "+2 bonus" -- although that is mitigated somewhat by the fact that AD&D provides for alternatives to bypassing that defense, namely either having the same defense yourself, or simply very high Hit Dice. (Note that there's a contradiction in the example in the text above: while the MM states that ogres with 4 HD can hit an elemental, the DMG would have it otherwise -- the combat tables there show HD4+1 good to hit vs. +1 defense, but HD6+2 needed to hit +2 defense [AD&D DMG p. 75]).

And one more thing: In every edition, the protection from evil spell was noted as keeping away "fantastic" [CM] or "enchanted" [OD&D] monsters, and I would read that as including elementals. Here that detail is noted directly in the conjure elemental spell -- along with the possibility of using a non-spell-related "pentacle, pentagram, thaumaturgic triangle, [or] magic circle". The DMG Spell Explanations section (a source of quasi-errata to the PHB spells) has a note for "Conjure Elemental: See the cleric spell, aerial servant, for details of protective inscriptions." [DMG p. 45] , which in turn illustrates actual images for the different protective circles, saying, "The spell caster should be required to show you what form of protective inscription he or she has used when the spell is cast." [DMG p. 42] Based on the presumed usage of the DMG at the time (that players were not supposed to have access to its contents), this raises the fascinating possibility that players might have been required to actually, independently research one of those occult symbols (pre-Internet, of course), prior to being granted protection from their out-of-control elementals. (And if you happen to be in that situation now, you're in luck -- I've presented the images from the DMG below.)

Advanced D&D (2nd Edition)

Conjure Elemental
(Conjuration/Summoning)
Range: 60 yds. Components: V, S, M
Duration: 1 turn/level Casting Time: 1 turn
Area of Effect: Special Saving Throw: None

There are actually four spells in the conjure elemental spell. The wizard is able to conjure an air, earth, fire, or water elemental with this spell--assuming he has the material component for the particular elemental. (A considerable fire source must be in range to conjure a fire elemental; a large amount of water must be available to conjure a water elemental.) Conjured elementals have 8 Hit Dice.

It is possible to conjure successive elementals of different types if the spellcaster has memorized two or more of these spells. The type of elemental to be conjured must be decided upon before memorizing the spell. Each type of elemental can be conjured only once per day.

The conjured elemental must be controlled by the wizard--the spellcaster must concentrate on the elemental doing his commands--or it turns on the wizard and attacks. The elemental will not break off a combat to do so, but it will avoid creatures while seeking its conjurer. If the wizard is wounded or grappled, his concentration is broken. There is always a 5% chance that the elemental turns on its conjurer regardless of concentration. This check is made at the end of the second and each succeeding round. An elemental that breaks free of its control can be dispelled by the caster, but the chance of success is only 50%. The elemental can be controlled up to 30 yards away per level of the spellcaster. The elemental remains until its form on this plane is destroyed due to damage or until the spell's duration expires. Note that water elementals are destroyed if they are ever more than 60 yards from a large body of water.

The material component of the spell (besides the quantity of the element at hand) is a small amount of one of the following:

Air Elemental--burning incense
Earth Elemental--soft clay
Fire Elemental--sulphur and phosphorus
Water Elemental--water and sand

Special protection from uncontrolled elementals is available by means of a protection from evil spell. [AD&D 2E PHB Appendix 3]

Elemental, Generic Information... Summoning an Elemental: There are three basic ways to call an elemental to this plane, and the strength of the conjured elemental depends on the method used to summon it:

Conjured by spell 8, 12, 16, or 21-24 Hit Dice
Conjured by staff 16 Hit Dice
Conjured by summoning device 12 Hit Dice... [AD&D 2E MM]

I've omitted a lot of the MM text (mostly copied from 1E, as usual), so as to focus on the changes in 2E. What's shared are the same seven restrictions present in 1E: (1) per-type daily restriction, (2) concentration required or 75% chance to be attacked (returning to plane sooner or later), (3) basic material required for water & fire (but not air/earth), (4) type of elemental pre-memorized, (5) 5% chance per round to lose concentration, (6) possibility of hostile takeover by dispel magic, (7) duration limit of 1 turn/level. Elementals are again hit only by +2 or better weapons, possibly overridden by similar defense or large Hit Dice.

The single great change here is that the 5th-level conjure elemental spell now only brings a creature of 8HD size (i.e., half-strength what it was in prior editions); this while keeping all of the copious restrictions and risks present in 1E. As you can see, the precedence of summoning tools is exactly reversed: staffs are now best (16HD), followed by special devices (12HD), and the basic spell (8HD). Some other possibilities for spell conjurations are shown in the monster listing, accounting for possible use of the stronger priest (druid) spells of conjure fire elemental and conjure earth elemental (6th- and 7th-level, respectively). That said, the primary spell is now clearly much weaker.

And finally, the use of specific occult symbols (magic circle, pentagram, triangle), as presented in 1E AD&D, has been removed. Now your only defense against a rampaging elemental is the basic protection from evil spell.

d20 System D&D (3rd Edition)

Summon Monster III
Conjuration (Summoning) [see text]
Level: Brd 3, Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, F/DF
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect: One or more summoned creatures, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart
Duration: 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell summons an outsider (extraplanar creature). It appears where the character designates and acts immediately, on the character’s turn. It attacks the character’s opponents to the best of its ability. If the character can communicate with the outsider, the character can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions. Summoned creatures act normally on the last round of the spell and disappear at the end of their turn.

The spell conjures one of the creatures from the 3rd-level list on the Summon Monster table below, 1d3 creatures of the same type from the 2nd-level list, or 1d4+1 creatures of the same type from the 1st-level list. The character chooses which creature to summon, and can change that choice each time the spell is cast.

3rd Level
Celestial bear, black LG (animal)
Celestial bison (animal) NG
Triton NG
Celestial dire badger CG
Azer LN
Elemental, Small N
Thoqqua N
Fiendish dire weasel LE
Fiendish gorilla (animal) LE
Fiendish snake, constrictor (animal) LE
Fiendish boar NE
Fiendish dire bat NE
Fiendish lizard, giant (animal) NE
Salamander, Small NE
Fiendish shark, Large (animal) NE
Fiendish viper, Small snake (animal) CE
Fiendish crocodile (animal) CE
Dretch CE
Fiendish leopard (animal) CE
Fiendish wolverine (animal) CE

When the character uses a summoning spell to summon an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type. [3E SRD: Magic]

As you can see above, the conjuration of elementals was given a radical changeover in 3E D&D. First of all, all of the summoning-type spells were folded into a combined family called summon monster, which serves to summon fiendish animals, salamanders, tritons, demons, etc., as well as elementals. There is a version at every spell level (1-9; the one shown above is the first to include elementals). And there is now a wide variety of elementals that can be summoned by means of magic spell (from "small" with 2HD and no resistance to weapons, up to "elder" with 24HD and damage reduction of 15/+3; monster text omitted above).

Practically all of our characteristic risks and restrictions have been wiped out entirely. This includes: (1) no per-type daily restriction, (2) no concentration requirement, (3) no basic raw material needed for any type of elemental, (4) no type pre-memorization, (5) no chance to lose control, (6) no possibility of hostile takeover by spell.

The only restriction that remains, and has been greatly tightened, is number (7): duration is now only 1 round/level (instead of the previous 1 turn/level = 10 rounds/level in AD&D, or unlimited prior to that). As has been widely noted, this drastically restricted the usage of elementals for non-fighting tasks, such as digging, travel, burden-carrying, etc.

There was a time (when I initially saw 3E) that I thought this folding-in and increased abstraction to the summoning operation was a fine thing; but now I think that it was a big mistake. That's the kind of move that lost all of the character and danger of elementals (arising from a great body of the elemental material itself; enormous strength through AD&D 1E; risk of possibly being attacked by your own elemental, etc.). In retrospect, there's a level of abstraction, a loss of specificity, which irreparably damages the game for me, and the 3E summoning system was a case-in-point.

Below I include a summary table of selected characteristics for this spell through the different editions:

[Illustration by nsjmetzger, under CC2.]

Super Saturday: People in Your Neighborhood Pt. 3

2011-12-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

One more entry in the "superheroes around my neighborhood of Bay Ridge" category -- just recently I was re-reading Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns:

Did you notice where that dastardly deed took place? Bay Ridge, of course.

... Hey, wait a minute. That's supposed to be Gotham City.... Oh my god!

Attention! Important observation of interest to all comic fans -- Is it possible that Gotham City is actually just a stand-in for New York? And did I just blow your freaking mind!?

[Page from The Dark Knight Returns, p. 117, by Frank Miller]

New-School Operation

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, a friend had a birthday out at a local bar. We pulled up some tables, had drinks and socialized, and also played a few games: including Jenga and Operation -- the latter, of course, being a Milton Bradley game (now owned by Hasbro) that originally dates from 1965. But the current version was revised in 2008 and is marketed as the "Operation Silly Skill Game".

Observation One: The new game is much easier (or: much harder to fail at). The slots for the pieces that you try to remove seem to be significantly larger than they used to be. We played a few rounds -- in a bar, with dim lighting, with most everyone having a few drinks in them -- and no one ever set off the buzzer. If that weren't enough, there's a switch for an "easy/hard" version of the game (the former delays any buzzing until you've made contact for an extended period of time). The game was on because it regularly plays sound effects for what piece to take next (and we tested it a few times, too).

Observation Two: The old version had pieces based on actual physiology or at least common slang or punning references (Adam's Apple, Broken Heart, Spare Ribs, etc.). The new version seems to have changed most of this stuff to just arbitrary nonsense (a Clock, Smiley Face, Cell-Phone, etc.)

Also: In recent years they've released a bunch of branded versions of the game (Hulk, Spider-Man, Disney/Pixar Cars 2, etc.)

Why do games apparently always have to evolve like this? Namely: (a) easier to succeed at (or harder to fail at), and (b) becoming purely abstract and self-referential (when originally they modeled or referred to something externally)?

Operation at Hasbro.

Book of War: Wizards

2011-12-05T08:00:00.004-05:00

Wizards from D&D present a special difficulty in "abstracting" them down to a reasonable mass-warfare game; they're something that I struggled with for some time in designing Book of War. Of course, they have lots and lots of different available powers, and this quantity grows quadratically with level, such that high-level wizards have encyclopedic rosters of spells available (note that in almost any D&D players' book, the plurality of the page count is taken up by magic-user spells; which can be taken as a great strength of the D&D system, for those players who at their option wish to pursue a deep level of game mastery, but a drawback for us here).

In particular: Among my design goals for BOW were that it should be short, concise, stand as a coherent game unto itself, and still be manageable by complete newcomers -- high-level D&D wizards seeming to contradict all of these points.

But granted that (working at 1:10 scale) individual heroes really have to be over level 10 in order to appear on the board as specialized figures, it dawned on me that this synchronizes with the original D&D rules in some very nice ways. First: If we require that any heroic magic-users be level 11+ before we deal with them, then this is exactly "name level" in OD&D, and calling them and treating them as "wizards" is in fact accurate. Second: If we restrict ourselves only to the top-most level of spells (6th) -- the ones most likely to be used in extremis -- then we see that OD&D wizards gain exactly 1 of these spells per level above our basis (0 at 11th, 1 at 12th, 2 at 13th, etc.*).

Therefore, restricting BOW wizard powers to only 6th-level spells has the following advantages: (a) It reduces the spells that we need to present to a single, easily-digested page. (b) It throws a spotlight specifically on those powers which include most of the great battlefield-changing effects (lower water, move earth, control weather, etc.). (c) I'm able to entirely avoid referencing the D&D experience level tables, and instead simply refer to wizards of "rank" 1 or more (really levels above 10), with an associated number of "greater spells" (6th level spells: of number one less than rank).

This started to make me very happy. Now, 6th-level spells are not purely what we limit BOW wizards to: We also give them certain low-level protections by assumption (shield, protection from evil, detect invisible, and some sort of magical escape ability). And furthermore: Assume that any of them bring some sort of wand of fireballs or lightning bolts to the battle -- such that we can generally assume their ability to sling one of these 3rd-level spells at-will for the length of the battle. In other words: Their profile looks very much like it did in the original Chainmail Fantasy.

So, here's the core of the rules for Book of War wizards, with their three main categories of powers. (Text between the rules below is indicated as Open Game Content per the OGL):

Basic Abilities: We assume that any Wizard has a number of low-level spells active or available on the battlefield. Each has a magic shield (AH 6+), a protection from evil ward (cannot be hit by enchanted monsters, etc.), and can detect invisible (see any hidden or invisible creatures within 12"). All have at least one of invisibility, flying, or polymorph, so they can escape from the battlefield whenever they wish.

Magic Wands: Wizards are further assumed to have either a wand of fireballs or lightning bolts. This gives the Wizard a magic area attack that affects one figure, with range 24", damage 6, and firing 2/turn (or 1 with up to a half-move; blocked by woods and hills). Roll one die for accuracy: 1-2, 1" short; 3-4, on target; 5-6, 1" long. Assume that wands have sufficient charges to last the length of a normal game.

Greater Spells: Wizards above the 1st rank can prepare a number of "greater spells" (6th-level) equal to one less than their rank number; e.g., a 4th-rank Wizard has 3 greater spells. The Wizard can cast one of these spells per turn, standing motionless to do so. All effects commence on the Wizard's attack phase. Choose from this list...

The list that follows includes the 6 topmost spells from OD&D that I felt most applicable to the battlefield (affecting large terrain or many men, etc.), each with a tactical effect described in three lines. The fireball effect shown above was developed after lengthy consideration here.

As you might expect, this is one section in Book of War that concludes with an open-ended option to the effect that "you're free to use the full arsenal of D&D spells in your game", so long as you take the initiative in converting all those other (non-fireball, non-6th level) spells, and also to increase the cost-value of your wizards appropriately (although that can be a non-issue if you're playing a campaign game, instead of standalone points-based battle). Perhaps this might be an area where we could consider a further expansion in the future: a book that converts all OD&D wizard spells to Book of War statistics.

However, in practice we've found that this model (a) provides as much as a wizard gets or wants to use during a standard battle, (b) is tractable to a balancing analysis the generates a useful cost-value, and (c) is comprehensible to new players who are using or confronting wizards for the first time (those completely unfamiliar with high-level D&D play, or even players predisposed against complicated magic rules based on prior experience). Hopefully, you will, too.

* Fine print in OD&D text indicates that after 16th level, wizards gain an extra 6th-level spell every 2 levels [OD&D, Vol-1, p. 19].

[Photo by fuzzcat, under CC2.]

Super Saturday: People in Your Neighborhood Pt. 2

2011-12-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last week we saw that my favorite superhero, Thor, lives in my neighborhood of Bay Ridge. Here's someone else who visits from time to time:

Crikey, Punisher, did you really have to gun down everyone in that restaurant? Oh, well, I guess there's plenty of other Italian places around here...

[Page from Marvel Super Action Featuring the Punisher #1, p. 1, by Archie Goodwin and Tony Dezuniga.]

Book of War Expansion: Knight Exemplar

2011-11-30T08:00:00.002-05:00

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]

The Book of War Heroes section has details and pricing on a sample selection of individual knights, barbarians, dragons, and giants; each, of course, tenth level or above.

Now, by "knights" I'm indicating high-level pure fighting-men, and these were actually statted out with an eye towards the AD&D Deities & Demigods Arthurian Legends section (including "Knights Renown" at 10th-level, and "Knight Commanders" at 15th-level, like Arthur himself). With "barbarians" I meant fairly high-level multiclassed fighter/thieves, in the same vein that Gygax statted out Conan at various ages in Dragon Magazine #36, April 1980 (including the "Barbarian Lord", Ftr12/Thf8, as Conan age 25; and the "Barbarian King", Ftr16/Thf12, as Conan at age 30).

In each case, I transformed the characters into my OED minor house modifications to OD&D, and tried to make some reasonable interpolations for magic gear and the like. Because of this, even with very conservative assumptions for magic arms and armor (like just +1 plate and shield for Fighters level 10), most of these characters get converted to Book of War at AH7, i.e., nominally unhittable by any normal men rolling the usual d6 to attack (as is correct in OD&D for any AC lower than -1; and even if you use an "extended natural 20" rule from AD&D or the like, then the chance to hit is still statistically negligible).

But fortunately, this is balanced by the fact that if a lone hero confronts a mass of men, they'll be surrounded, with every edition of D&D giving bonuses for rear attacks in such a situation. Hence the key rule: "acting solo, heroes can be meleed by only 1 normal figure at +1 to hit (due to rear attacks from being surrounded)" [BOW p. 13], which allows normal troops to hit even AH7 solo heroes if they roll a 6. Here's a spreadsheet where I did the analysis in both OD&D and AD&D to see that +1 in BOW was the appropriate bonus in this case (.xls format):

HeroMeleeDef.xls

Now, as careful as we might try to be with those statistics, things can still get a bit wonky when you face off hero-against-hero in our reduced BOW mechanic -- especially since heroes can have so many special abilities and varying attacks and armor (the "heroes ignore armor" simplification does break down a bit when confronting other heroes with really out-of-this-world AC values). Therefore I include the suggestion for "Special Combat" on p. 14: when heroes contact other heroes, it might be best to switch back to regular D&D-scale combat and play out that particular engagement at full precision (an idea common to both Swords & Spells and Battlesystem, for example).

I actually don't do that in my own standalone games (particularly with non-expert gamers, it's simplest to just resolve everything with the one BOW mechanic, instead of additionally instructing them in more detailed and time-consuming D&D play). I think that you would especially want to do that in the case when you've got important backstoried PCs and NPCs taking part in the battle. In any event, if you want to run "Special Combat" you'll need detailed statistics in order to run the man-to-man battle. To that end, here's a document specifying stat blocks for each of the human Heroes appearing in Book of War, along with research notes on where they come from (.pdf document; stat blocks within are Open Game Content):

OED_BookOfWar_HeroSpecs.pdf

So finally, looking closely at those preceding documents, you'll see another hero type that was included for a while, and then finally cut from the official release. This would be the "Knight Exemplar", representing the world's finest fighting man of 20th level or so -- either Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad, and none other, per the AD&D Deities & Demigods book.

This is a problematic figure for the game, because his armor winds up converting to AH8, that is, truly unhittable by any normal man (notwithstanding the rear-attacks bonus mentioned above). So the "Knight Exemplar" is a hero who really can smash through a mundane army of practically any size, with standard troops utterly helpless to do anything about it. This presents a real price-balancing dilemma: regardless of cost, this guy wins versus any normal men; and the game is then really dependent on whether the enemy can bring elite-types or opposing heroes (or a dragon or wizard?) into play against him. It seemed pretty likely that this august personality could possibly break the whole game if players had unfettered access to him, which is why he was removed from the final publication.

But here he is presented below, for your consideration, if someone like this comes into play in your battles. The cost is possibly tentative, but it's the best that I could extrapolate. Note that, like other knights, he is given the best possible attack score due to his "Great Cleave" -- ability to hit as many normal men as he can reach (i.e., D&D attack rate as 3+/round, and so score a hit on 1+, as shown in the hero's "Atk" column). Use with caution! (Text between the rules is indicated as Open Game Content, per the OGL.)

Hero	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Atk	Dam	Notes
Knight Exemplar	80	12	8	2	1	4	Magic sword, lance, horse

Book of War: Heroes

2011-11-28T08:00:00.003-05:00

Here are the key parts to an extremely important section in Book of War: the rules for Heroes. (Text between the rules below is indicated as Open Game Content per the OGL).

The term "Hero" refers to any special, high-level creature represented by an individual figure on the tabletop. This can include a fighting-man warlord, a fully-grown dragon, an advanced giant-type, and so forth. Creatures should have at least 10 HD to appear as a hero figure at this scale, and characters are assumed to have several bonuses from magic, weapons, and abilities...

Armor: Use the table in the Core Rules to find the hero's AH value; characters with negative ACs are given AH 7. In addition, heroes embedded in a larger unit are effectively immune to non-hero attacks (both melee and missile); acting solo, heroes can be meleed by only 1 normal figure at +1 to hit (due to rear attacks from being surrounded), or missile attacks as usual. Finally, some creatures will be unhittable due to the need for magic weapons (such as elementals, lycanthropes, undead, etc.)

Hits: Compute a hero's HD rating by taking their D&D Hit Dice and dividing by 10 (rounding down); usually this results in just 1 HD. (More precisely, you can divide hit points by the average of 10 hit dice, e.g., 35 for six-sided dice.) Also note that heroes will never check morale.

Attacks: For high-level heroes, the most salient single factor in mass combat is simply their attack rate per round. (At this level, one almost always hits any normal creature automatically, and does at least one full HD damage; therefore, factors such as armor and attack level become irrelevant.) Consider the character's D&D attack rate and see the adjacent table; the result is the number the hero needs to roll on a 6-sided die to score one figure hit. This ignores target AH.

Now, I have long assumed that this section would be the most contentious part of the Book of War rules. The reason is simple: Many players expect that mid-level PCs (say: 4th-8th level or so) can appear on the tabletop as solo figures, and to fight at an advantage against many normal figures. But that's not the case when "normal" figures are at 1:10 scale. Simply put: if a standard figure represents 10 Hit Dice of men, then a Hero must have 10 Hit Dice minimum before they have the equivalent staying power of even 1 "hit" of damage.

Or actually, it should be even worse than that: we've seen that higher Hit Dice are actually devalued in terms of real hits taken (proof one, proof two). Looking at those prior statistics, if we were being completely honest, then it should take a hero of at least 15 Hit Dice to have the equivalent staying power of 10 separate, normal men (i.e., a standard figure with 1 hit). But let's be generous to a fault towards our Heroes, and also for simplicity, we'll just divide D&D hits by 10 and round down. I don't think that many people will complain about giving them this benefit-of-the-doubt.

So in practice, almost all heroes (10+ level knights, barbarians, giants, dragons, etc.) will appear in the game with just 1 hit; although they might have fairly high armor, they will be eliminated as soon as they take a single hit in the Book of War 1:10 scale. Lone heroes (esp. in melee) go down about as fast as any other figure type; the game is quickly lethal to them, so you should plan on protecting heroes with an entourage, or using the monstrous types -- especially dragons -- as a powerful single-shot attack mechanism. (Also: Treating dragon breath as an area-of-effect attack, then at this transformed scale they effectively need to be in contact with the enemy to make a useful special attack.) If your expectation is that a pricey hero is going to mow down dozens of figures (i.e., hundreds of normal men), then you'll be a bit disappointed when that doesn't occur.

Why is the standard player expectation any different than this? Well, I would assert that almost all previous D&D-type wargame rules have more-or-less intentionally obscured the facts of hero efficacy, in the interest of artificially inflating the importance of these fantasy great men. Here are some ways in which that was done:

First, Chainmail Fantasy rules (1975) were really at man-to-man scale (1:1). Therefore, the heroes and superheroes found there (4th and 8th level fighters) could reasonably take out many of the normal men against which they faced, and this tradition colored what came later. But at 1:10 scale it would be a very different situation. Gygax was always consistent about this (see here).
Although you wouldn't know it from the trade dress or artwork, the Warhammer Fantasy wargame is also based on a man-to-man, 1:1 scale, and so again individual heroes can make a significant difference. Quote: "Scale: In Warhammer each model represents a single warrior, monster, machine or whatever, whilst an inch on the tabletop is equivalent to about five feet in real life -- the same as the scale height of the models themselves." [Warhammer 6th Ed., p. 279, 2000]
Gygax in the 1:10 scale Swords & Spells rules said this: "So if one opponent has a lone hero (4th level fighting man) facing several figures of men-at-arms (or orcs or similar 1 hit die creatures)... the hero will... sustain damage until sufficient hits are scored upon the figure to kill the hero." [S&S, p. 1, 1976] But what's left hazy and unsaid is that this will occur automatically on the very first turn of combat (if you do the math; noting that there is no random method in core S&S).
Doug Niles in the Battlesystem ruleset was at least a bit more honest about the situation: he wrote, "From a mathematical perspective, the attributes of heroes in a BATTLESYSTEM scenario are inflated beyond those of creatures in the units surrounding them. However, the conversion is based on the assumption that there is an intangible quality to heroism that exceeds the hero's worth as a fighting machine." [Battlesystem Miniatures Rules, p. 106, 1989] By my calculations, Niles' heroes have been multiplied by about ×5 the endurance from what they really have in D&D.

I suppose an additional reason why people might presume super-powerful hero-types, especially for monsters, is that you may be using very large miniatures for creatures like giants and dragons (that is, in the same scale as the other miniatures that we use to represent 10 men each). These very-large miniatures will visually give the impression that they should be worth the same as many normal figures, when that's not really the case. Suggestion: You may want to procure smaller-than-normal figures (10mm scale?) for the solo giant monsters you'll be using in your game, to more accurately reflect the actual space taken and overall power level. Of course, that's not a requirement as long as all players understand their actual profile.

But where are all the 4th and 8th level "heroes" in BOW, then? Well, if you read my Design Notes in the book (or really, any classic edition of D&D), you'll note that fighters of about that level are already presumed as leaders, scattered among the normal men on a pro-rated basis anyway. For example, looking at the 1E AD&D DMG p. 30-31, we see that there is a serjeant of 1st-level for each 5 or 10 men (i.e., 1 or 2 included in each of our figures at BOW scale); a lieutenant of 2nd-3rd level per like number of figures (20-30 men); and a captain of level 5-8 for each 100-160 men (10-16 figures). Broadly similar numbers can likewise be seen in the monster listings for men in OD&D (Vol-2, p. 5), 1E (MM p. 66-69), and even 3E (MM, various humanoid entries).

Surely, we're not going to individually simulate the large number of officer-level types included among all of our normal troop figures; and so, it would be artificial and silly to include a single fighter of 4th level on the table just because they're a favored PC (and also they don't have the staying power of even a normal 1-HD figure; and they would also have a attack output deficient when compared to 10 men fighting normally). So on top of the statistical endurance issue described further up, it also seemed to be in synch with the D&D demographic tradition to abstract away all of these automatic officer-types, and only feature solo heroes when the get to 10th level or above. And one more thing: restricting ourselves to such high levels made for the very elegant attack mechanic (effectively ignore all enemy armor) seen above.

So, in contrast to the long tradition of artificially-inflated and obscured "hero" types on the wargaming table, I've written this part of Book of War -- in accordance with my own demeanor and interests -- as a bit of a "brutal truth" in regards to how D&D heroes would function on the large-scale battlefield. Among other things, it satisfied my personal curiosity as to "what would really happen", whereas the prior D&D-branded products always raised my hackles that something didn't quite add up right. It's actually been quite a relief and a satisfaction to finally see how those interactions would play out, and even if it's surprising to you, I would recommend that you try it out by the book if at all possible.

If you then still have an overwhelming urge to see epic "above and beyond" heroes, even in contradiction to their D&D-specified power levels, then you can of course follow the path of Doug Niles and the others above and arbitrarily inflate hero powers to whatever level you find satisfactory -- although you'll need to change all of the price-balancing yourself. I'm hoping, however, that you'll see the many good reasons to avoid that kind of artificial bias in your D&D-based fantasy wargaming.

Super Saturday: People in Your Neighborhood Pt. 1

2011-11-26T14:09:00.009-05:00

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day

It's been about 5 years now since I moved from New England, where I grew up, to Bay Ridge Brooklyn. Obviously I was pretty ignorant of the whole concept of different New York neighborhoods, locations, and geography until I moved here -- and so all of the New York references baked into classic superhero comics, by the original creators who were born and bred here, were entirely lost on me growing up. It's only in the last few years when I go back and re-read some of the classic issues that can I pick up on all of the local color and specifics: sometimes it's even a bit jarring how close to home they hit, literally.

Here's one, a discovery from my favorite run of my favorite creator with my favorite superhero -- In Walt Simonson's 1980's run on The Mighty Thor, one of the very first things he does is to discard the mortal identity of lame-legged doctor Don Blake (giving the transformation power instead to newcomer Beta Ray Bill), and then he has Thor turn to SHIELD for a new civilian identity (which is just Thor in work clothes and glasses). He also needs a new job and dwelling: although as Nick Fury tells him, "I got an apartment for ya, but ya haveta settle fer Brooklyn. Even SHIELD can't find nothin' in Manhattan". [Thor #341, p. 7].

So he winds up in Bay Ridge:

He's in a third-floor apartment (just like I am), off an avenue that looks pretty much just the same as the one near me (maybe a bit wider):

Now, one of the freaky things around here is that this fall, a new guy started waiting tables at the bar/restaurant on the corner of our block, and this guy is totally the spitting image of Chris Hemsworth. It's so completely uncanny that I'm entirely distracted whenever I go there to eat now:

So apparently that's one of the super-people in my neighborhood, and I've got to say that's pretty darned cool.

Hey, come on now -- my bedroom looks exactly like that and you don't hear me complaining!

[Pages from The Mighty Thor #343, p. 24; #344, p. 6; #373, p. 4 by Walt Simonson]

Book of War: Unit Setup

2011-11-23T08:00:00.004-05:00

The Book of War Basic Rules start play like this (text between rules is indicated as Open Game Content, per the OGL):

Initially, units are selected for each player. Initiative is rolled by 2d6 for each player (high roller acts first in each stage of setup; re-roll any ties). Terrain is set up on the playing surface, units are placed in formation, and then the first turn begins.

The way I've got it written in the book, terrain is determined by random method, and goes back-and-forth between the players, as they roll and place each piece of terrain. After that, I can think of perhaps 3 different ways to handle placement of each player's army:

All At Once: One player sets up the entirety of their army on one side of the table, then the other player does the same. This is actually what's intended in the book.
Screen In Middle: A screen could be temporarily set up in the middle of the table, blocking the view from either side; then players setup simultaneously and unseen.
Piecewise Placement: One player places a single unit; then the opposing player places one unit; and so forth until all units have been placed.

Sometimes experienced wargamers are a bit surprised that what I'm officially suggesting is go with method #1, All At Once. For example: to my understanding, Warhammer usually uses a method like #3 -- and in fact that's what I originally started doing in early drafts and playtests for the Book of War game.

But that was found to have several drawbacks. First and foremost, it creates a delay in starting the game that I personally found quite aggravating; as each unit is placed, a lot of chess-like thought and time can possibly be spent as each player analyzes the evolving setup and decides on their next placement (by instead doing it "all at once", each player does a single step of board analysis, and then deploys one coherent setup strategy). Secondly, you basically need another side table to stage the miniature figures of each army beforehand, so that you can keep track of what has and what hasn't been officially placed yet (we found that trying to do it all on one table was confusing and error-prone; whereas with the "all at once" method a player can just move all their units to the desired start locations and then announce "I'm done"). Third, if you were to go in unit-by-unit sequence, then that requires advance specification of exactly what "unit" groupings will be used, which is a further complication and delay (as opposed to method #1, in which a player can just take a pile of figures, setting them in units and location as desired in the single step).

Obviously, the intent behind the Warhammer-style method like #3 would be to smooth out and balance army setup, such that neither side gets a big advantage (especially, by seeing how the first side deploys, and the second responding to it); but as I say, when we playtested it, we got really impatient, because that phase of setup took so much longer than any other (like on the order of the actual gameplay itself!). So then I suppose you could do what I suggest for #2 above; use a screen for simultaneous setup, which is certainly a balanced method, but requires some kind of large screen, and is perhaps logistically not very practical.

So the final thing about using method #1 is that any advantage to the second-deployer (and surely, there is one) is inherently counter-balanced in that the other person then gets first move, which presents its own significant benefits in Book of War play (as I've written before, getting first strike is very desirable, and sometimes even the very first move-attack sequence will serve to rout units of the opponent). In fact, to date, I certainly don't have any strong evidence that one is significantly better than the other. Granted, most of the games I play are on a relatively small table (3×3 feet), and thus it's sometimes possible for missile attacks to reach a target on the very first turn -- but I presume that a longer table would wind up reducing the benefit from both first move and second setup (not able to attack on first turn; but each being able to change configurations before contact the enemy).

In any case, all of methods #1, #2, and #3 seem completely reasonable depending on different players' tastes, and should certainly be accepted as possible variants for Book of War play. Me, I like to get to the action as soon as possible, and the "all at once" method even has its own balancing benefit, as we've found. Can you think of any good alternatives that I missed?

First Google+ Game

2011-11-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

Subtitle -- In Which Delta Actually Plays D&D (And Not As DM)

So last weekend I queued up for my first old-school D&D game via the Google+ video chat facility. Very nice; technically it worked without a hitch for me, and was much smoother and easier to run than I expected. This was with my good friends from Boston, with whom I had my longest-running regular weekly D&D game from 2000-2005 or so.

Familiar Feelings:

D&D really is goddamned fun to play!
I think we all continue to become better D&D players, and it's really a pleasure to watch happen. Truly it has been said, "Superior play makes the game more enjoyable for all participants" (Gygax in the AD&D PHB, p. 109)
One of the key play tips that I'm reminded of: Don't keep any surprises from your fellow players. When we were first playing together about 10 years ago, many of us (including me) we fall prey to a "cinematic" desire where we'd pull some special tactic in a fight that no one else knew about, and get some spotlight moment where everyone was agog at our PC. Don't do that. Like any sporting group, the rest of your team needs to know about any special moves, feats, spells, secrets, equipment, or plans that might come into play: that way, they can plan and likely improve on your idea. We're so much better at this now than we were before.

New Observations:

I spent some time playing solo D&D in the last year, and I think that very much paid dividends in how I built and equipped my PC. If possible, I might recommend that anyone go through the old-school meat grinder in which they expect to lose a score of PCs or more, very quickly. I've got a whole folder-full of dead solo PCs that I used up -- and every time I did so, I picked up some new lesson that I should keep in mind while playing D&D, or the surprising effectiveness of some minor item on the OD&D equipment list.
Target 20 doesn't look any different to the players than 3E-style ascending armor class. I was somewhat surprised that I've been using "Target 20" for a few years now, and this never occurred to me until another DM ran it, with me as a player. In either case, the player rolls d20, adds attacks bonus, and tells that to the DM, who does the rest. The difference is really in whether the DM utilizes old-school, one-digit AC stats (adding & comparing to 20 on the fly), or new-school, double-digit AC stats (subtracting old AC from 20 and documenting that in advance).
Roles are not synonymous with classes. Of course, the new-new-school rage is to talk about WoW-style "roles" -- which aggravates me right off the bat, because it's yet another step away from concrete, in-world language and descriptions ("tank" and all that). But even if you accept that, what struck me in this game is how it's a misunderstanding to think that original D&D classes were locked into any particular party roles. In our game, we had two 2nd level dwarven fighters -- one a heavily-armored, slow, front line shield man; the second lightly-armored, quick, crossbow-focused, and highlighting dwarven scouting/ listening/ detection abilities. Exact same OD&D race and class; two totally different party roles.

Technical Items:

In setting up a webcam for the very first time ever, I was somewhat frustrated by my inability to find any way to technically test it before going online with others. After the fact, I found a very nice website that would do that: TestMyCam.
Knowing that Google now wants to force consolidation of all your accounts with them, I actually made a new email address just for use with Google+ to prevent that. Call me a privacy nut if you like; it's not paranoia if they're really out to get ya. :-)

A very nice game, and a very nice tool! Unfortunately, due to time constraints a computer setup issues in my apartment, it's unlikely that I'll be able to do this on a "constant" basis. But hopefully some more games will occur in the future.

Read the other guys' takes:

Friday Night Book of War

2011-11-18T08:00:00.005-05:00

Here's a Book of War game from earlier this summer, in which I opted to use a bunch of "giant class" monsters (orcs, ogres, and hill giants), while my opponent fielded an army of normal men. See how that worked out:

Start -- Basic Rules with Advanced Fantasy Troops; 200 points. At the top you can see my opponent's army -- she's decided to take a large number of regular crossbows, plus some horse archers on the far end. The random terrain has come up with a Stream, a Marsh, and a patch of Rough ground. At the bottom you see my army: A spearhead of 4 Ogre figures (40 ogres), 1 Hill Giant figure (10 giants), surrounded by groups of Orcish Medium Infantry (chain mail, AH 5).

Terrain was set up first, then my opponent's army (she won initiative), and then my army set up in response. My army is all-melee, my opponent's is all-missile troops, and the terrain very much favors the missiles (all of it slows me down, but none of it provides any cover, as opposed to a wood, hill, etc.) I've decided to set up my ogres as a "blocking" force, with the giants behind, and hoping that I can punch through with that group and into contact before they're all shot down.

Turn 1 -- Opponent goes first; she charges ahead with the horse archers, and shots from them and some of the crossbows have already knocked out several figures of orcs, and in fact routed two of those units. Not cool.

Turn 2 -- Here I've moved ahead, with ogres & giants trying to march through the easiest corner between the marsh & rough; while my orcs on the far right are halfway wading through the stream (and you can see the remnant of one of the groups routing off the table). My opponent has mostly remained still so she can freely shoot at my approaching monsters -- crossbows slightly repositioned so as to form a "circle of death".

Turn 3 -- Two moves later, and I've finally gotten the ogres into contact with the enemy, delivering a single hit. I've lost two ogre figures along the way, although the giants have been protected from hits so far. Meanwhile, the enemy horse archers have mostly devastated the orcs in the stream; one unit has advanced through the stream and is circling around the back of the field. I also have a unit of orcs struggling through the bad part of the marsh.

Turn 4 -- The enemy fires. Something that my opponent does regularly, which I try to avoid at all costs: Fire into melee at her own troops. Per the Book of War rules, this splits the shooting attack dice against each unit involved in a melee (anyone within 3"). So I don't like to spend half my attack against my own guys, but my opponent routinely does this and accepts the collateral damage. Here she's charged crossbows into melee, getting their attacks, and then following up with shooting (from both crossbows and horse archers), getting more hits against both me and her own forces in red. I'm down to one unit of ogres; the hill giants have taken 4 hits (out of 8); and the orcs in the marsh are all dead, too.

Turn 6 -- With the opponent's aggressive stance, every one of her figures is getting to make attacks against my remaining forces each turn. The giants go down one turn, and the ogres the next. Victory for the opponent! And disaster for me.

Postscript -- This was a fairly lopsided game, and pretty much a "perfect storm" against the monster army that I was trying to test out. My opponent: (1) made a brilliant meta-game decision to pick all missile troops, (2) received completely ideal terrain, that slowed down my movement, while giving her free range of fire, and (3) had pretty much perfect setup and tactical use of her forces (no mistakes that I could spot). End result: All my guys got mowed down pretty mercilessly. So I guess that's exactly the position you want to be in if you're leading an army of men against primitive monsters; but I can think of plenty of other situations in which things would have been more dangerous for the men. We shall see.

Book of War Expansion: Giants Galore

2011-11-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

In the published version of Book of War, in the Advanced Rules section on fantasy troop types, there is only one generic type of giant listed (i.e., hill giants). For some time I had other types of giants included there, but relatively late in the process I decided it was better for thematic and space purposes to replace them with other stuff. Below, you'll see the other giant types that appear in the OD&D Vol-2, Monsters & Treasure book. Perhaps what's really interesting here are the prices; most of the other statistics are converted directly from by-the-book D&D. (Text between the rules below is hereby indicated as Open Game Content.)

Unit	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Notes
Giants, Stone	60	12	5	9	Throw stones, damage 2
Giants, Frost	65	12	5	10	Throw stones, damage 2, cold-immune
Giants, Fire	70	12	5	11	Throw stones, damage 2, fire-immune
Giants, Cloud	80	12	5	12	Throw stones, damage 3, detect invisible

Giants: Most giants throw stones at ROF 1, range 20", damage 2. Stone giants specially have damage 3 on throwing attacks. Cloud giants can detect any hidden or invisible foes within 6" with their keen sense of smell.

Keep in mind: Each type above represents a mass troop at 1:10 scale -- that is, as usual, each figure purchased represents a team of 10 giants working together. Solitary giants should cost about one-tenth as much -- and in fact, several such types do appear in the published book section on Heroes (where I felt they were a better fit for the advanced giant types of Frost, Fire, etc.; and where they play off nicely against special attack forms such as dragon breath and wizard spells). We've analyzed the giants' throwing stones ability before (here, here, and here). Also, I've used the mass Frost Giants to attack the Keep several times in my Siege on the Borderlands using these rules (here and here). And finally: Storm Giants are a special case -- they did not appear in D&D until Sup-I Greyhawk; they have special abilities beyond the scope of the ones above; and I'll leave their discussion for a later time.

Book of War: Advanced Rules

2011-11-14T08:00:00.004-05:00

The Book of War Basic Rules present a simple, complete game on their own that can be played without any advance knowledge of D&D (although it is a product of extrapolating from those rules). The Advanced Rules basically provide a mechanism to take any D&D creature type and more-or-less instantly start running it in a mass combat situation -- for example: when you are surprised by a random encounter roll with 40-400 goblins or the like. Here you'll see the kernel of those conversion rules from page 10. (Text between the rules below is hereby indicated as Open Game Content.)

One of the guiding principles of this ruleset is to make converting any creature type from the FRPG as simple as possible. Many of the most notable types are presented further below, with appropriate costs. Here are the primary guidelines for such conversions:

Movement Values and Hit Dice are the same as presented in the FRPG rules (and recall that all large creatures gain +1 to hit per 3 HD, as per the Core Rules). Armor Hit values can be converted by looking at the table in the Core Rules section and correlating AC to equivalent leather, chain, or plate types (or alternately, see Optional Rules: Exact Armor). Ranges for missile attacks are also as per the FRPG.

Monsters with extra attacks gain an equivalent number of dice when attacking. Likewise, creatures that do 2 or more dice of damage (say, giants) score that number of hits with each successful attack, but this is limited by the target's HD. For example, a 2-dice attack against a 1-HD target scores just 1 hit; that is, a normal man can't be squashed more than once by a giant's melee attack.

So I think that's pretty simple, in that the game fundamentally just uses the same stats that you'll already be looking at in places like OD&D Vol-2 (with a switch from AC→AH for the easy-to-apply-in-mass ascending target on d6). Note that for simplicity, I just ignore any incremental hit point bonuses (e.g., ogres just appear as HD4, trolls as HD6). The damage-limitation above has come to be referenced as the "no rollover minutes" rule. Also: In the book, this section presents the rule for converting cavalry, which we discussed previously.

Special abilities may require some further thought or massaging in order to elegantly play out in our wargame scale. For example, orc/goblin types have "light weakness" which indicates a -1 to morale in sunny weather (the D&D -1 to hit is negligible at our divide-by-3 scale). Regeneration such as for trolls it accounted by removing 1 hit per figure engaged in combat (at the time of the trolls' morale phase; which is sort of in exchange for them being fearless by default). And of course, the infravision possessed by all non-men/halflings can be extremely important during a night or underground engagement.

I included details for a stock variety of fantasy soldier-types -- specifically, I wanted to at least cover all the types that appear as men-at-arms options in D&D (such as OD&D Vol-3, p. 23 and other places). Divided into alignment categories, and each with a few different equipment profiles, they include: Lawful -- Halflings, elves, and dwarves; and also elite (3rd level) men, halflings, elves, and dwarves; Chaotic -- goblins, orcs, gnolls, plus (elite) bugbears, ogres, trolls, and hill giants. That's actually all I could fit in the pages devoted to fantasy types, but the primary idea is to serve as examples for the conversions you can do for any type from D&D. We do assume that larger types will be fitted with correspondingly larger, square bases (generally following what you see in Battlesystem or Warhammer or whatever you've already got them on).

Of course, while the initial creature-conversion is pretty close to being trivially easy, the correct pricing of each type is a completely different story. Special abilities may require some subjective judgements; for example, I made sure that any orc/goblin types were at least 1-point cheaper than equivalent men (in light of their special morale-weakness); and likewise elves/dwarves were required to be at least 1-point more expensive than men (respective of their special abilities). If creatures appear naturally in your campaign (such as by random encounter roll), then accurate pricing is likely a non-issue; but if you want to accurately balance combats for a standalone game, then I would again direct you to the Book of War Java pricing simulator program (or wait for me to expand to certain other types here on the blog).

Review: Maze of Peril

2011-11-09T08:00:00.003-05:00

I just got done reading Maze of Peril by John Eric Holmes, editor of the first D&D Basic Set, and a D&D aficionado who based the book on games played with his sons. The book is still available by mail from the publisher, New York-based Space & Time (here). I was impressed.

First, there's something very satisfying about the book having monochrome blue artwork for the cover -- the same as Holmes' classic "blue book" D&D rules. According to the author's biography, he also published short stories in a magazine called Bluebook, so I guess there's some sympathetic magic tied into all of his works in this way.

I would call this a very well-written book: Like the pulp short stories which I have come to prefer -- Conan, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, early Elric, etc. -- stuff happens rapidly, the plot barrels forward with intensity, and internal monologues and motivations are almost always left off-screen (perhaps they are deeper for being left unsaid, in a Hitchcockian sense). It's not like the bloated fantasy novels that are common today, and quite unlike, say, the Thomas Covenant novels that I more-or-less grew up on. (An aside: Shouldn't the short story format be ideal for this age of size-is-irrelevant digital readers, Twitter, and micro-messaging? Does a successful venture for that exist and I don't know about it?)

To whatever degree Holmes based this on his home game, I'd have to say that it's flat-out the best conversion from game to written story that I've ever read. Somewhat surprisingly, given the title, perhaps 1/2 or more of the story takes place outside the dungeon (with various scenes in a town, tavern, and nearby cemetery). The story follows the point-of-view of a halfling adventurer, which is much more satisfying and works better that I would have expected; the character here feels very much in the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser mold -- amusingly self-interested, jaded in a casual fashion, and like a lot of old-school D&D characters (although the name "Boinger" is really the one thing in the book I wish could be changed). Despite the back cover copy, the characters are at no point working to "... perhaps... save the world", which is actually quite preferable in my mind.

D&D Adjudications

Now I'll spend some time thinking about the rules of the D&D world as fleshed out here by Dr. Holmes (again: editor of what might possibly be the single best-selling version of D&D ever). First, the milieu is extremely well-textured, and in its way, believable (the D&D rules are interpreted with great verisimilitude). Perhaps the only thing that struck me as wrong was the "wahoo" population of the town tavern scenes, including all the usual PC races, plus centaurs, fauns, etc., apparently as standard patrons. Almost everything beside that I could at least consider using in my own games at some point. Warning: Some spoilers below.

There is an elf character (the boon companion of the protagonist after the initial chapter). Normally he is a stealthy fighter; there is just one point where he casts a spell, in the privacy of his quarters, and to do so he must strip off all of his armor and equipment. "'Can't have iron touching the body anywhere,' he explained, 'no iron, even nails in the boot heels. It drains the flow of force from the other world.'" [p. 34] Now, that's actually a really attractive (and mythologically compatible) explanation for the troublesome OD&D language on how elves "switch" between fighters and magic-users. However, on second thought, that's contradicted by the standard D&D appearance of elves in chain mail, even when casting spells (as early as OD&D Vol-2); and also by magic-users in general being customarily armed with daggers (and usually carrying spikes, lanterns, etc.) At one point, the elf succumbs to a sleep spell, so pretty clearly the AD&D-line's elven resistance to the spell is not being used here.

Other details: A lot of play is given to the sense & stealth capabilities of the halfling and elf. There are no thieves explicitly called out in the book (and the halfling is wearing chain mail), yet at one point this pair stage an infiltration and theft in town -- climbing up a tower quietly by rope-and-grapple, sneaking in a sealed window -- and at another point the halfling goes checking for pit traps with a regular pole (so obviously, this can bolster the argument of those who think that the thief class is extraneous in D&D). Significant attention is paid to the one knight character in "full armor" (the only person who appears in plate mail). Locked doors are broken open by force; serious planning takes place before a swim (all armor off and given a flotation device); and much care is given to keeping the elf's bowstring dry and unslung during travel. There are some great scenes with a group of Amazon warriors.

There are possibly some liberties taken regarding the power-level of the characters in question. Early in the book, a hard-won fight takes places with a handful of orcs; the wizard is described at one point as being second level; all of the party except one is felled by the aforementioned sleep spell; and the characters seem to have at most one or two signature magic items among them (which is actually well-focused, for storytelling purposes). Yet at the same time the group winds up engaging huge lycanthropes, a golem, a purple worm, etc.; they survive being directly blasted by a fireball spell (just barely); and the wizard casts a spell that certainly appears to be cone of cold or something very similar.

Spells end when the casting magic-user gets killed. Now, this is a pretty common feature in fantasy stories (for example, I just read the same thing last night in the Conan story by de Camp & Carter, "Red Moon of Zembabwei"), and in fact, I find that this is frequently a standard expectation of those new to the D&D fantasy game. But of course it's not a feature of any officially published version of the D&D rules, and I could imagine some problematic side-effects if this were a standard ruling (like: how it exponentially makes the PC wizard a preferred target of foes, and moreso with every spell they cast).

Something happens to a golem which is so extraordinary, I would never have thought to allow it under standard D&D rules. But it's rather brilliant in execution, and my instinct is to accept it with great amusement and salute the DM for it (from the perspective of a player-in-the-game, say). This particular bit I'll leave off for you to find elsewhere.

On Clerics

Now, here's a meditation devoted to the status clerics within Maze of Peril (knowing that D&D clerics are a super sore spot from me; deleting them is at the top of my major house rules in the right sidebar here).

First and foremost, the cleric and the knight in the story are explicitly and prominently Christian. The cleric's spells are in Latin and named as such [p. 46-47]; he says, "I must do morning mass" [p. 51] and "Lord of Hosts, aid me!" [p. 119]; his healing spell is triggered by the words, "In nomine Patrie, in spiritus sanctu, de reart invisium..." [p. 115] (a minor modification to the trinitarian formula), etc. The knight calls himself "Sir Geoffrey Haymort of the Cross" [p. 69]; he is described by the cleric as, "the flower of Christian knighthood" [p. 100]; he argues for "the finer Christian spirit of fair play" [p. 116], etc.

Now, as much as I have a problem with the D&D cleric, I find this to be totally acceptable. Obviously the original D&D cleric description is shot through entirely with Christian details (crosses, Catholic level titles, Biblical-origin spells, etc.), and this coloring-in from those details is actually a very great relief. Among my biggest problems with the D&D cleric is its sublimated "quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian" status as James Maliszewski attributes to Gygax (in his excellent post on The Implicit Christianity of Early Gaming) -- which specifically allowed it to evolve later in a direction of supposed-pantheism, and for me, compounded the problems and frustrations and nonsense, over and over again. (For example: "Cleric blunt weapon restrictions make no sense for non-Christians!" it was argued 30 years ago, and still today on Grognardia.) For me, it's a much better option to fully embrace what appears in OD&D (Christian clerics) and make those details consistent and strong (either that, or ditch the whole class -- for which there are yet more reasons -- but not to transform it into a mangled, unhinged fantasy pantheism). Holmes' success here actually made me re-think for a day or two whether I should bring clerics back to my games (Christian ones, exploring and facing off against the horrors of a more ancient world).

Now, other pagan gods are mentioned in the book, always by non-humans, at least in passing as oaths or curses. The elf utters "Crom's devils!" [p. 35] (from Conan); the halfling says, "Mithra save us!" [p. 85] (which is pretty similar to the Conan deity Mitra); an Amazon refers to "the Goddess" [p. 82]. Furthermore, the elf asserts that he can tell time underground by sensing the position of the moon above: "'I can feel the pull of the goddess once her silver orb clears the horizon line"... The cleric cleared his throat, embarrassed at the mention of his companion's pagan goddess." [p. 112] A cult of frog-men worship a huge demonic idol straight out of Lovecraft and/or Howard: "Dagon fatahgan! Ia Ia Dagon", they chant [p. 120].

And yet, none of these non-humans or their gods are described as having clerics at any point. The frog-men are described as having "priests" with magical powers -- but I keenly noted what one of these powers was: a "priest" of Dagon casts the aforementioned sleep spell, indicating that he's actually a magic-user. All of this I am also perfectly fine with. I expect to use demonic "priests" who are actually wizard/sorcerer/magic-users, myself. And I think that you could run a campaign very nicely, as Holmes suggests here, with the only functioning clerics from a human, Christian society -- other gods being ambiguous, or false, or cast down, or Crom-like in their uncaring. That's how the cleric class worked in original D&D (and the B/X line), although it was overturned as of Supplement-I (Greyhawk permitting NPC clerics to dwarves and elves).

Picture this -- The game's play takes place almost exclusively in a "Borderlands" area, in an explicitly medieval time period. Off-screen there is a civilized human empire of some size, Christian, but we don't expect to ever spend time there (after all: it's staid, settled, and boring). In this borderlands area, Christian adventurers rub shoulders with older races who maintain memories of otherwise forgotten pagan gods (and thus having no standard clerical magic). Consider the reason Holmes gives us for the adventuring cleric here: "the man started to tell a long story about his abbot, who was it seems, most unreasonable, and sent members of his order off on long quests as punishment for the most insignificant of offenses" [p. 36].

Some other details which are intriguing, if nonstandard by the D&D rules: Trapped underground, the cleric's spell-powers return after a day, without any preparation on his part, and apparently without even certain knowledge of whether or not he has them back yet (the elf says, "Brother Ambrose, a day has passed, see if you can heal the magic user" [p. 130]). Near the end, a scroll described as "resurrection" is used by the wizard (!) -- at which point the cleric removes himself, because "traffic with the dark powers offends my clerical composure" [p. 145] . And perhaps the single most sharp break with any PC cleric I've seen: the clerical party member is apparently totally unarmored at all times (e.g., he "trudged along in his leather sandals" [p. 45]) -- which is certainly a standard expectation of the non-D&D holy man that I've pointed out before (here, cleric items #10, 11, 14), and one which even the creator of "blue book" D&D could not resist in his own story-telling.

A Compilation of D&D Miniature Scales

2011-11-07T08:00:00.001-05:00

Suggested man-to-man/dungeon action board scale when using miniatures for different iterations of classic D&D:

Chainmail Man-to-Man Combat (1971, p. 25): Undefined.
Dungeons & Dragons, Vol-3 (1974, p. 8): 1" = 10 feet.
OD&D Sup-III, Eldritch Wizardry (1976, p. 7): 1" = 2 feet.
Holmes Dungeons & Dragons (1978, p. 9): 1" = 10 feet.
AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979, p. 10): 1" = 3⅓ feet.
Moldvay D&D Basic Rulebook (1981, p. B61): 1" = 5 feet.
Mentzer D&D Players Manual (1983, p. 57): 1" = 10 feet.

Any others from this era that I missed (official D&D rulebooks only)?

Friday Night Book of War

2011-11-04T08:00:00.002-04:00

Here's a Book of War game from a few weeks ago, when my girlfriend decided to try using the option of war elephants with archers mounted on the back:

Start -- Basic Rules; 300 points; War elephant option. At top in red, opposition has selected crossbows, 3 figures of war elephants with archers, and medium infantry. At bottom in blue, I've chosen medium infantry, regular archers, and two groups of horse archers. I've batched my infantry & archers into two big units in the hopes of surviving morale checks; except that I placed a small unit of 3 infantry as a feint/delay tactic near my right side. Terrain are 2 areas of woods surrounding a hill in the center of the board. Red has set up first and will take the first turn.

Turn 2A -- On the first turn, opponent moved full, while I moved full on either flank (note horse archers galloping into enemy rear in top-right), and moderate half-moves in the center (no shooting because the hill crest was blocking us). Now, opposition has come through the woods, taken the top of the hill, and makes the first missile attacks of the game. Each of my lower units have lost some figures, but my horse archers there have routed. This sucks; they'll flee off the table in the next turn. (As we've seen, getting the first attack in BOW is highly desirable.)

Turn 2B -- Now I move forward and make my counterattacks. I'm trying to clear out all the supporting crossbows before taking on the elephants in the center. This goes well; infantry attack on the left, archers, in the center, and horse archers also get attacks around the woods to the rear; crossbows take heavy hits and they're all routed. I've also sent my small unit of infantry into combat in the woods on the right, and this will delay the enemy infantry there for a turn or two. Already, things look much better for me.

Turn 3 -- Well, this sucks. While enemy crossbows flee to the rear, elephant-back bowmen on the hill have shot at my archers, killing 4 figures, and the unit has now routed. Also, on the right, her infantry are finishing off my small unit there.

Turn 4 -- My big infantry continued into the woods, getting more hits on the retreating crossbows there before they could get away; also, there was another fleeing crossbow unit that got shot down by my waiting horse archers. Opponent has turned her forces around, and elephant archers have scored one hit on my horsemen. But, luck smiles on me -- my archers have managed to un-rout just before they escape from the table (scoring exactly the minimum requirement of 9 here) -- so now they'll get to turn around and harass the enemy from a direction she thought was secure.

Turn 5 -- What's happened here is that my horse archers ran into melee against fleeing crossbows at the edge of the woods, finishing them off; and my big infantry unit has done an about-face and started to wheel out of the woods (planning to charge up the hill en masse and catch the elephants on rough terrain). Before I can complete this, on opponent's turn, the elephants get just 1 figure of attacks (4 dice), because the other figures are blocked by the top-crest of the hill, and scores of 5+ are needed to hit my medium infantry in chain mail. But most grievously, all of those dice have come up 5 or 6, killing 4 of my figures, and then I've also lost the morale check. Even 1 pip higher would have succeeded; but now my whole infantry force is going to turn tail and run off the side of the board. Dammit!

Turn 8 -- Three rounds go by, and the elephants have shot at my retreating infantry to make sure they don't come back. Meanwhile, my horse archers have come forward through the woods, shooting at the elephants as they ride by (as long as they keep the target to their left-hand side, they can shoot even 180 degrees to the rear in the middle of their move). Foot archers are firing everything at the elephants in an attempt to degrade them. Here, with some good rolls, I manage to take out one of the elephant figures. Huzzah! But, with the elephants' high hit dice, that's not enough to force a morale check, and the opponent's infantry has maneuvered into position on the hill for an attack.

Turn 9 -- Opponent tried to position her infantry near the edge of the hill, out of my archers' range, but close enough to charge in the next turn. Unfortunately for her, she's miscalculated, and my archers have opted to shoot at them, with devastating results. In that infantry unit, 7 of the 8 figures have just died -- and yet they've heroically succeeded at the morale check, and on the next turn will in fact charge my archers, preventing them from firing in the next turn as they are forced to melee the lone infantry (much like how I used my rogue infantry unit back in Turn 2B). And on the next turn I actually make the same mistake, getting my horse archers too close to the elephants, after which they also get shot down. (Lesson: Trying to be fiddly and overly clever in Book of War rarely pays off.) This leaves the elephants against my foot archers.

Turn 12 -- The End. Once the elephants finish off my horse archers, they turn to my footmen with devastating results. Here, my archers are fleeing off the board -- but opponent is not letting them rest, as inflicting further hits prohibits any attempt at un-routing (a lesson she's taken to heart from Turn 4). Victory for the opponent! The war elephants have won the day.

Postscript -- We like to call this game "Killing Me Softly with Her Elephants". Turn 5 was probably the pivotal moment in this game, in which I suffered hits on every single enemy attack die, and then had my largest unit miss morale by 1 point.

One thing I did not do in advance of this game was check simulated unit matchups against elephants before selecting my army, and as it turns out -- horse archers are actually the very worst unit you can field against elephant archers. So recommendation is not to repeat that if you think you might be facing off against war elephants (even though my horse archers did a fair job in the rear of the enemy position against already-damaged crossbows). Our consensus is that the elephant archers played out a lot like tanks here -- big, hard to put down, and with a fairly crushing ranged attack. But maybe if I'd been smarter with my army selection, and a bit more dice luck, things could have turned out differently.

Book of War Expansion: War Elephants

2011-11-02T08:00:00.006-04:00

There was one obvious historical unit type that I was on the cusp of including in the Book of War Basic Rules, but ultimately I decided that they didn't fit for space, complexity, and thematic (medieval European) concerns -- War Elephants. Here are two different types that you can add to your BOW games. (Text between the rules below is hereby indicated as Open Game Content.)

Unit	Cost	MV	AH	HD	Notes
War Elephants, Spears	45	12	5	6	Spearmen (2 per howdah)
War Elephants, Archers	50	12	5	6	Shortbows (2 per howdah)

War Elephants: These elephants each have a mahout (driver) and 2 men in an armored howdah (tower). They count as cavalry for most purposes. Spearmen melee as normal (total 2 dice per elephant figure), and archers shoot as normal (total ROF 4 per elephant figure), although they can fire in any direction at will. Elephants themselves melee at 2 dice, bonus 3, damage 2. All melee attacks are halved in non-open terrain or stormy weather; also, archers can still shoot in melee at half-dice (figures in contact only, i.e., at most one rank of elephants).

Design Comments: You'll see that a force like this is a little bit more complicated to handle than other stuff, which is one reason why I didn't want them in the Basic Rules (actually, the mount-with-many-riders is unique and makes them a bit more complex than pretty much anything even in the Advanced Game). The elephant stats are based on the 1E Monster Manual p. 38 (either Asiatic 10HD or African 11HD); and again I think that Gygax went overboard with the attacks there, so I've reduced them to 2 attacks for elephants here (although even that work has a "no more than two" attacks per target rule, which should arguably apply in close-ranked mass combat anyway).

There was some consideration as to exactly how the mechanics of fighting war elephants should work in D&D (can you melee the guys in the tower? does it suffice to just kill the driver?), but ultimately it seemed best to simply apply the BOW standard cavalry rule. I treat elephants as "not naturally aggressive", since there's so many reports of them being frightened off from certain historical battles. Therefore we double the sum riders hit dice (3 men × 1 die each × 2 on mount = 6HD); and this gives at least a chance of their failing a hit-dice-based morale check, as desired (even if it will be a small chance). And elephant figures are presumed to be on some larger base size; my own are 1½×2½ inches (about 40×60mm), but whatever you get yours on is probably okay, too.

The 2 men in each figure-howdah basically act as normal, with the above-noted advantages for archers (note: half-dice missiles in contact are the result of only the front 1:1 howdahs having a shot; and the tactical result, ROF2, is actually the same as they'd get in normal melee, as per spearmen). And the other thing you see here is that if the mount is entirely more powerful than the riders, then we have to track their attacks separately. For example: In a standard melee in open terrain, these figures will roll 2 attack dice each normally for the spearmen, and a further 2 dice with a bonus of +3 each for the elephants, these causing up to 2 hits damage (see MM, taking one-third hit dice for the bonus, and following the 2 dice damage indicated for attacks there as well). This extra damage is capped by the target HD, so it does not apply to enemies with only 1HD (see the BOW Advanced Rules p. 10).

The actual hard part of the design process, setting the price, came last: By adding them to the BookOfWar simulator program and hand-tuning until they were approximately balanced with other basic types, as usual (note: they've been playtested somewhat less than other core types, so pricing is possibly more tentative). Possible further options: Consider giving the elephants themselves heavy armor (total AH6; cost for that armor currently unknown); and possibly force routing elephants to flee in a straight-line-away path only, and attack any friendlies they contact there (try to avoid that at all costs!).

Therefore, if they make sense in your campaign, and you've got the money to spend, these war elephants can make a very powerful addition to your Book of War armies.

(Picture detail from "Schlacht von Zama" by Henri-Paul Motte, circa 1890.)

Book of War: Pricing and Simulation

2011-10-31T08:00:00.017-04:00

I'm guessing that price-balancing the different unit types took about 80% of the overall work effort in the Book of War project. Something like that. (Note: Halloween content at the bottom of this post.)

Previously I pointed out I how I felt compelled to write a simulator program for mass D&D combat at the man-to-man scale, so that we could carefully investigate what the overall trends of that kind of action would be. (Here.) But even more importantly than that, and in fact predating that by a few years, I also wrote a simulator for the full Book of War game itself. While I was working on the game, I was usually ping-ponging between book text and simulator program, to make sure that things were working out in a reasonable way. This allowed me to run lots of head-to-head battles at proposed price levels, to try and get things cost-balanced as much as possible -- like, my estimate is that approximately 2 billion simulated games of Book of War have been run to date for that purpose. Here's the simulator program, for your consideration (in Java; under GPL v.2 license):

BookOfWar-v120.zip

Now, pretty much everything I could practicably include from the game is in that simulator program. It handles all the the different unit types, figure sizes, terrain, weather, morale, most special attack forms, monsters, heroes, wizards, etc. There are switches for different core assumptions and optional rules, and the ability to either look at one detailed game at a time, or assess the overall results of several thousand battles (with some statistics thrown in to make it more efficient). Some limitations: It only throws one homogenous unit type face-on at another unit type at a time; it presumes a board covered with just one terrain type; it doesn't handle wrapping around unit edges; and stuff like that. As usual, there's no GUI, so you'll need a Java development kit to tinker with it. But I think as a primary first-pass for checking unit prices it's a pretty powerful tool.

My primary strategy when price-balancing was something like this: Initial values were set as per the Internet Medieval Sourcebook (currently offline), which are also quite close to the classic D&D men-at-arms costs (Vol-3, p. 23). Simulations used a random budget for each side in the range of 50-200 points (you need a variable range, because a fixed price-point will show biased artifacts from one unit type having a disadvantageous remainder). For a particular group of units, create a cross-matrix of every unit battling every other unit type some thousands of times (in each case with starting range, terrain, and weather randomized). At the end, report the percentage of times that each unit beats every other; and add up the number of favorable matchups (i.e., cases where a unit wins over 50% of the time). I generally wanted these "win" matchups to be about half the number of opposing unit types -- but arranging exactly that was impossible, and even getting them vaguely close was pretty hard. There was a lot of tweaking a unit type by 1 or 2 points, which would change all the other matchups, finding one or two that were then unacceptable, and needing to re-tune again and again. If I ever changed an actual game rule, then the whole balancing process had to be re-done again from scratch. This was certainly the hardest part of the game-design process, but at the end of it I was pretty happy with the results.

For example, here is the output from the matchups among just our "core melee types": pikes (P), medium swords (S), and heavy cavalry (C). Percentages of 50 or more are shown when the unit on the left tends to win against the unit on top:

Assessed win percents (budget 50-200):

.. P. S. C. Wins
----------------
P. -- -- 62 1
S. 52 -- -- 1
C. -- 55 -- 1

So what this shows is that, as desired, there is no single "best" unit type in this trio. Probabilistically speaking, on a pro-rated-cost basis, cavalry tends to lose to pikes (62% of the time); pikes usually lose to swords (52%); and swords generally lose to cavalry (55%). Compare to the desired "Close Combat Trinity" graphic from the post last Jan-3 (which really laid out our game-design goals for the year, as it were; shown again to the right).

An important part of these results is that they assume the terrain and weather percentages as shown in the Book of War rules. Terrain frequency has been carefully set so as to have this balanced trinity appear in the results (for example: rolls for terrain are fixed at one-quarter of the table space in square feet, which is actually based on both core unit balancing and aesthetic considerations for how the board would best look). Cavalry does best in open terrain, and so do pikes; but swords gain an advantage fighting the others in any kind of unusual terrain. (Or in other words, dial up the rough terrain frequency and swords appear to do better against the other types more of the time.) There's also an estimated probability for opponents flanking pikes and avoid their defensive benefit (dial this assumption up and pikes do less well against any other type). Over all possible combinations of these factors, we get the win probabilities shown above.

Next, here are more assessment results when we add some missile troops to the mix: longbows (L) and horse archers (HA):

Assessed win percents (budget 50-200):

.. P. S. C. L. HA Wins
----------------------
P. -- -- 63 -- 50 2
S. 53 -- -- 50 -- 2
C. -- 55 -- 70 66 3
L. 59 50 -- -- 51 3
HA 51 56 -- -- -- 2

If we analyze this under the game-theoretical principal of strategic dominance, then we are again happy, because no unit type is "dominated" by any other -- that is, there is no clear "suboptimal" choice (in fact, every type is the "best"response to some particular selection by the opponent, except for swords, which are themselves the only type that can generally beat both pikes and longbows).

And here we look at all 12 historical types in the Book of War "Basic Game" rules (4 types of infantry; 4 types of archers; and 4 types of cavalry):

Assessed win percents (budget 50-200):

.. LI MI HI P. A. L. C. HC LC MC HC HA Wins
-------------------------------------------
LI -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0
MI 67 -- 50 53 -- 50 -- 50 55 51 -- -- 7
HI 64 51 -- 56 -- 54 -- 51 51 -- -- -- 6
P. 57 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 70 68 63 50 5
A. 62 57 53 62 -- -- 80 83 -- -- -- 52 7
L. 55 50 -- 58 63 -- 72 79 -- -- -- 51 7
C. 68 63 59 65 -- -- -- -- 54 52 -- 63 7
HC 57 -- -- 55 -- -- 66 -- -- -- -- 60 4
LC 52 -- 50 -- 51 62 -- 61 -- -- -- 61 6
MC 55 -- 51 -- 54 63 -- 57 51 -- -- 61 7
HC 61 55 59 -- 63 70 56 65 67 61 -- 67 10
HA 61 56 56 51 -- 50 -- -- -- -- -- -- 5

Now, in this case, some types are "dominated" (apparently always-bad choices), and it was impossible to avoid that. Here's one example: In the first row, light infantry generally lose to any other unit type; this was unavoidable, because if we reduce the cost of light infantry in the game by even 1 point, then suddenly they'll actually beat every other unit in the game (an issue with the granularity of a unit that cheap). But even with the price at which we set them, they're still potentially useful in the game as a scouting, delaying, rough-terrain force (in fact, my girlfriend has used them to excellent results several times).

Nonetheless, let's go through a process of taking out units that clearly have some other unit with better results in all cases (that is, IEDS -- iterated elimination of dominated strategies):

Assessed win percents (budget 50-200):

..    MI    HI    P.    A.    L.    C.    HC    Wins
----------------------------
MI    --    50    52    --    50    --    --    3
HI    50    --    56    --    53    --    --    3
P.    --    --    --    --    --    --    63    1
A.    56    53    62    --    --    80    --    4
L.    50    --    58    63    --    73    --    4
C.    62    60    65    --    --    --    --    3
HC    55    59    --    62    70    57    --    5

So what's been eliminated here are: Light infantry, light cavalry, medium cavalry, horse archers, and heavy crossbows -- these types are not optimal in a frontal clash, while the remaining types clearly have some kind of sticking value in that situation. But do notice that even the types we apparently eliminated under this analysis generally have high mobility, and might be useful in strategic ways outside the scope of our simulator (like splitting multiple enemy units apart, or hit-and-run tactics, or gaining the flank or rear of an enemy, etc.) . So you should consider using these results as one tool in your game strategy guide, but certainly not the only one.

Another thing to take into account: The indicated win percentages skew differently for higher or lower budget sizes. For example, I picked the base budget size of 50-200 as a guess for the nominal largest single unit size that you'd see for the basic game. (Although when pricing more expensive monsters, heroes, and wizards, I had to increase the budget amounts or else in some cases you couldn't afford even a single figure!) Here's a look at some other budget levels and the effects thereof, just for the "core +2" unit types:

Assessed win percents (budget 20-100):

..    P.    S.    C.    L.    HA    Wins
----------------------
P.    --    58    66    --    --    2
S.    --    --    50    --    56    2
C.    --    50    --    68    66    3
L.    63    57    --    --    --    2
HA    52    --    --    50    --    2


Assessed win percents (budget 50-200):

..    P.    S.    C.    L.    HA    Wins
----------------------
P.    --    --    65    --    --    1
S.    52    --    --    --    61    2
C.    --    55    --    74    78    3
L.    62    54    --    --    50    3
HA    51    --    --    50    --    2


Assessed win percents (budget 100-500):

..    P.    S.    C.    L.    HA    Wins
----------------------
P.    --    --    64    --    --    1
S.    58    --    --    --    57    2
C.    --    72    --    67    74    3
L.    67    57    --    --    50    3
HA    52    --    --    51    --    2

So some of the balancing might be off if the assumptions regarding total unit and army size are wrong, but that was unavoidable lest we mandate some fixed unit point size. In any event, the overall tactical situation, unique placement of terrain, and combination of forces within an army will present nearly endless opportunities for finding new ways of units interacting with and against each other. That said, the price-balancing simulator provides a pretty solid initial foundation to the game.

As a final thought, this simulator program is intended to stand as the "acid test" for pricing new units in the Book of War game. (In general, converting from D&D stats to BOW is absolutely trivial -- but getting the price correctly balanced is entirely a different story.) I would never want to present a table of abilities and piecemeal values to be added up; the ways in which different stats and abilities synthesize pretty much totally preclude that. (See Monte Cook's famous lesson in that regard as to the 3E new-magic-item table.) What should be done, at least as a first pass, is to run new units through this simulator and see how they match up against existing types; manual tweaking for novel abilities and playtest feedback can then follow. (Now that I think of it, with some work the simulator probably could be adjusted to take a new unit and spit out a recommended price value, granted the existing basic types as known baseline; but it couldn't be done for the initial group, which would be inherently self-referential; and that particular work will have to wait for another day.)

Here are text-file versions of the assessment results shown above:

Scary Halloween Special!: Check out the OEDGames.com website for some free "routed" markers for your Book of War game. Put one of these down next to an enemy unit, and watch how fast they run off the board in abject terror! (Offer not applicable in states with trolls or the mindless undead.)

Friday Night Book of War

2011-10-28T08:00:00.007-04:00

Here's the household game from last weekend, which happened to involve a lot of pikes and missile units:

Start -- Basic Rules; 200 points. What I've done (at bottom, in red) is take 25 figures of pikes and 15 light crossbows. These are among the cheapest units in the game (cost 5 each), so there's a good many figures on the board for this point-level. I used the same army previously against my good friend BostonQuad, serving him one of the most crushing defeats seen to date (he came at me using all light cavalry, with bad results). Opposition has actually guessed what I might use tonight (based on my blog topics for the week), and has therefore entirely forgone any cavalry -- she's picked a big unit of heavy crossbows (top left) and a whole bunch of light infantry, arranged in small skirmish-type units (top right). Terrain is 1 Hill and 2 units of Woods (plus one "Open" result, which had no effect on the board). I have set up and will move first.

Turn 1 -- At bottom, I've pushed all of my units as far forward as possible. In response, opposition has brought the heavy crossbows a full move forward (they're a bit slower, so couldn't entirely get up the hill), and something unexpected -- the light infantry have all done a right-face and moved in that direction, towards the heavy crossbows on the hill. No attacks were possible on this turn.

Turn 2 -- Disaster for blue! On my turn I've again pushed the pikes forward as far as possible -- in particular charging over the hill to attack the heavy crossbows. Note that in this location, pikes have no capacity for any special defensive strike (although they get the usual 1-die per figure attack on my turn). Crossbows on the right have made partial moves forward, shot down a few light infantry figures at medium range, and those units have both routed. Much more horribly for my opponent, the charging pikes eliminated 2 heavy crossbows, and they routed as well (their morale dice of 3 are shown in the picture; any roll of 4+ would have succeeded).

Turn 3A -- Blue is now in an atrocious position. Two units have run off the table, her other units are all clogged up in the top-left corner of the board (blocking each other), and I've struck the rear of the routing heavy crossbows, eliminating about half of them. Crossbows are picking off more infantry, and other pike units are boxing off any escape.

Turn 3B -- Blue's heavy crossbows have now routed off the table. Purely in desperation, she has sent several units of light infantry at my pikes, just off the northern edge of the hill. The infantry on the left flank managed to kill 2 of my figures; but the infantry from the right-front ran into my double-defensive attack, and they all perished.

Turn 4 -- Those hard-charging pikes have now attacked towards the top left, and killed all of the light infantry unit there. Crossbows have killed all of the unit that tried to attack my rear at the base of the hill, and other units are closing in, too. Opposition has only one unit of light infantry remaining, near the left edge of the board. With blue in a clearly hopeless position, we agreed to end the game at this point (presumably that last infantry escapes off the board-edge). Victory for me! Although, in compensation I have to pay for Chinese tonight, do all the dishes, and clean the cat's teeth.

Postscript -- What you've just witnessed is the single most-lopsided Book of War game that any of us have ever seen. Ultimately it was that abysmal morale-check for the big heavy crossbow unit on Turn 2 that snapped the opposition's backbone, and her best chance against my pikes. I think the main lesson we can take from this game is that (a) the combined pike/crossbow force is clearly the best in the game, and (b) I am a frankly brilliant strategist and wargamer. (Although there's some disputing opinion that I've gotten immensely lucky 2 weeks in a row; keep in mind that over the summer my girlfriend won 10 games in a row without me being able to beat her once. But I'll call that a minor detail.)

There are, however one or two other lessons here about Book of War play. In most cases, aggression is rewarded; getting the first hit and at least forcing the opponent to roll a morale check is very desirable. And regarding pikes, although their listed special ability is purely defensive, this actually makes them a fantastic offensive weapon. Their move rate is high (12") , so you can rapidly close towards the enemy (like here: getting through the woods before they could be caught there), and the opposition rarely wants to deal with them frontally. So although the defensive benefit is almost never actually triggered (think Chainmail), the enemy tries to get away from them and is thus thrown into disarray. Frequently you get a free single attack by the pikes, and then the enemy opts to run instead of fighting back (and this is exactly the sort of action described by Plutarch at the Battle of Pydna, etc.).

Note that I was even willing to send the pikes attacking up the hill, where they would lose their defensive benefit, which tends to surprise opposing players. In this particular case that shouldn't have worked; I expected the heavy crossbows to succeed morale and then melee, with greater numbers and heavier armor, winning the hill from the pikes. But while that played out they wouldn't have been shooting, and I could move against the rest of her army. As it turned out, that one aggressive stroke was fundamentally all that was necessary to win this particular game.

One other thing: For simplicity, Book of War handles only homogenous units (no mixing different types in the same unit), but you can still arrange a line of missile troops behind infantry and get them to work together, as an emergent property of the archery rules (see how I arranged pikes & crossbows on my starting left in the first picture). Archers can fire over another unit at -1 to hit (and this penalty would go away if they get on a hill at a higher altitude, which you may notice I was running for; see BOW p. 7). Missile attacks back would be at -1, and also have half the attack dice applied to the infantry close in front (acting by default as a kind of "shield man"). But this happened to not come into play in this game.

Maybe I shouldn't be publicly releasing my strategy tips like that, but feel free to thank me later if they work to your advantage. :-)

Book of War: Archery

2011-10-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

Here's another callback to the "Basic D&D" discussions last spring, this time to the now-infamous "On Archery" blog, which generated a lot of really great comments (and is currently #4 on the list of all-time top read posts for this site). In some sense this issue was a little bit easier to deal with (somewhat fewer moving parts/coupling issues) than either cavalry or pikes. Questions posed at the end of that presentation (commentator consensus in bold):

Would you consider using modifiers of -10/-20 or the like for man-to-man archery? Yes.
Can we use the same modifiers indoors as outdoors (assuming that melee movement counteracts reduced range)? Yes.
Should handheld missiles be without penalty? No.
Should we totally forgo ranged modifiers in mass combat rules? Yes.
Should creatures like giants get separate melee and ranged attack scores? No.

In general, I agreed with these opinions, and I was happy to build them into the way that Book of War works. For example: I suggested Question #5 as an option (giants should have crappier to-hits for missiles than melee), but that was decisively rejected, and it meant one less detail for me to include in BOW.

One other thing: At mass scale, Questions #1 (increase range penalties) and #4 (decrease range penalties) sort of cancel each other out. I actually tested Book of War with no ranged penalties at all, which is something that previously I argued for from a realism perspective, but it didn't make great gameplay in BOW. In particular, it made archers much too strong, or in other words, they had to be crazy-expensive to be balanced with other types (like: priced similar to cavalry), which itself is not terribly realistic. Therefore I decided to go with a middle ground like AD&D penalties of 0/-2/-5, which (divide by 3 and round to closest in this case), turns into 0/-1/-2 in the BOW d6 core mechanic. This made for some very nice play.

Other Archery Issues

To the right you'll see the Book of War missile-weapons table, including rate-of-fire (ROF), and maximum standard range in inches. Rate-of-fire is the number of dice one archer figure rolls in an attack -- when motionless; or, you can make a half-dice attack with up to a half-move. These are both similar to what you'll see for classic D&D (in particular for ROF, see text of Chainmail p. 11).

But here's an interesting observation about rate-of-fire: This does not imply or require that man-to-man rates of fire be the same. In fact, in my actual D&D games, I still run archery wherein bows get 1 shot per round, and crossbows 1/2. So why do they get effectively doubled at mass scale? Well, that's a function of the presumed internal formation of each 1:10 figure. Since the 10 men are usually arrayed in 2 ranks, a missile unit with everyone firing effectively gets twice as many attacks over the same time as a melee unit (with only a front of 5 men fighting at once). Or in other words: We've established that a single die-roll in BOW represents 15 attacks across 3 rounds of D&D (link). For a full figure of bowmen shooting over 3 rounds, that's 3×10=30 attacks, or 30/15 = 2 die-rolls in BOW. (Half that for crossbows.)

Conclusion: We might say that AD&D giving multiplied shots per turn for missiles (duplicating Chainmail) was actually in error, and the Basic D&D (Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer) rule of just 1 shot per round for bows was, in this case, both more elegant and a more clear-headed model of what should be happening. (And as usual: Scaling issues are key.)

Another thing that I was compelled to consider: Mass archery at a distance is incapable of picking out individual opponents, and should have targets picked randomly (as per DMG p. 63, and plain common sense). So: Perhaps over the course of a round, so many arrows hit duplicate (already-killed) targets, that the overall effect is reduced to some degree? This prospect was investigated by simulation in the RPGBattle program. Fortunately, the "redundant shot" effect turns out to be significant in only one case -- if there are a great many archers, and very few potential targets, i.e., the victims are about to be all wiped out anyway. So it's an effect that is relievedly negligible for our purposes. See here for the spreadsheet analysis:

ArchersV109.xls

Something else that was quite popular in the earlier post comments (re: Question #5) was the idea of treating giants throwing stones as a kind of shattering/shrapnel area-of-effect weapon. Now, this was indeed what happened in Chainmail -- but it's ambiguous in OD&D, one of two options in Holmes, and then never again treated that way in any other edition of D&D (discussion here). So in light of this, and for balance and simplicity sake, I share the latter interpretation of Holmes -- giant stones are treated as a single-target weapon for 2d6 damage, and are treated by the system the same as any other missile-fire. (Rate-of-fire is 1/2 at man-to-man scale, and thus ROF 1 in BOW.)

Finally, one detail to keep in mind about the decision to use range modifiers that look like 0/-1/-2 in Book of War (analogous to AD&D mods): Note that the scale-switch from classic AD&D 1"=10 yards outdoors to BOW 1"=20' means that using the same range-in-inches (like 18" for a light crossbow) actually discounts the "real" distance for missile attacks by 2/3. As a result, the basic rule in BOW is that we really only deal with only two possibilities: under half range (no to-hit modifier) and over half range (at -1). For simplicity, in both gameplay effect and conversions using identical numbers, this was considered very desirable. The Optional Rules section contains the possible variant of extending out to long range (add another half-range, like a further 9" for crossbows), although at -2 to hit that makes for impossible shots in most cases anyway, so there's yet another reason to not worry about the missing extreme range.

And as a final final detail note this important item: Targets in heavy armor (plate, AH6 in BOW) are effectively immune to normal D&D missile attacks beyond short range (with -1 to hit, it's like AH7 versus d6). So keep that in mind for your tactical play.

Book of War: Pikes

2011-10-24T08:00:00.018-04:00

Pikes are particularly nebulous in the D&D man-to-man rules. In OD&D (Sup-I) they are simply listed as being flat-out inappropriate for dungeon work; the effect of their reach has no rule specified until the AD&D DMG; and at no point are any rules given for the effect of mass pikes (except, perhaps, for Chainmail mass-combat, where they simply cannot be attacked by any non-pikes). We discussed that here as part of last spring's "Basic D&D" posts -- below you'll see the outstanding questions I asked at that time (with apparent commentator consensus in bold):

How many ranks of pikemen can strike offensively, say 3? Yes.
How many ranks of pikemen can strike defensively, say 3? Yes.
How many ranks of pikemen can "set" for double damage, say 3? Yes.
Do we allow an attack by pikes to "interrupt" the movement action of an opponent (even by a pikeman not individually the target of the attacker)? Yes.
Can pike "interrupt attack" any number of attackers during a turn (versus some limited number, say, 1 as in 3E)? No.
When used against charging cavalry, can the pikemen all opt to strike against the riders? (Or is it 50/50 riders/horses? Or more likely against the horses?) No (average response 75% to hit rider).
Do pikemen get a "formation bonus" to hit defensively due to closely-packed spikes? No.
Does a strike by a pike vs. an attacker end the attacker's move? Yes.
Does a kill by a pike block other attackers moving through the same zone (either by piling up bodies or "skewering" upright)? No.
Do we need to establish special rules to simulate the organization/formation requirements of properly using pike? Mixed.
Do we permit heterogeneous formations (pike & halberd, pike & crossbow, pike & shot, etc.)? Yes.
If a man drops the pike to use sidearm sword, can he later pick the pike back up? Yes.
Do pikes cancel the cavalry rider AC bonus? Yes.

So clearly we all agree that about 3 ranks of pikes can strike (whether on attack or defense), that all of those can make an interrupting attack against enemy movement (obvious, but even that not explicated in D&D until 3E), and that pikes cancel the rider AC bonus from height (which syncs up with what we said for cavalry, here). Those are Questions #1, 2, 4, and 13 above, which are included in the Book of War rules. Ironically, if you dig into the details of the RPGBattle simulator here, you'll see that almost everything else got baked in exactly opposite to those responses. Ha! Let's see if I can explain why:

Problems With Pikes

The main problem (as discussed last spring) is that core D&D hit chances are really quite low, too low to provide much of a defensive benefit, in the absence of some other to-hit bonus from a massed pike wall (and absent it is from any classic D&D rules). Look at Questions #6-7 above; these are sticking pretty close to published D&D, with no formation bonus like I'm suggesting, and a significant chance to hit the horse instead of rider (note that that decision itself almost winds up negating/replacing the "pikes cancel AC bonus" decision in Question #13).

Consider a line of heavy cavalry charging into our massed pike wall, 3 ranks deep (all normal men). To-hit against AC2 is 17+ (4 pips). If there's a 25% chance to hit the horse (Question #7), then this is reduced to 3 pips in 20, i.e., probability 3/20 = 0.15. Hence the following is the chance for the rider to get through the thicket totally unscathed:

(1-0.15)^3 = 0.85^3 = 0.61 = 61%

So unfortunately, that doesn't serve the historical strategic purpose of pikes definitively holding off a cavalry charge from heavy cavalry (and in many sources, being almost totally invulnerable to such attacks; see also the Chainmail mass rules comment). Almost 2/3 of heavy cavalrymen can run through a pike thicket without a scratch! When I simulate this rule in RPGCombat, it turns out that the pikes actually suffer more casualties than the cavalry when they get charged. So I think we have to say that the existing (very sketchy) D&D man-to-man rules for pikes are simply insufficient for this project.

Of course, AD&D establishes the "set pikes do double damage to charging attackers" rule, but if you think about it, that rule does surprisingly little good for our purpose. The problem is really that the to-hit rate is too low to connect with most of the men charging through the pike wall. You could increase that damage multiplier to ×100 and still the majority of heavy cavalry will move through the pikes without taking any hits. And this non-relevancy is compounded by the fact that against normal men, a single hit usually kills them anyway, whether damage is single or double or anything else. (Note: The response to Question #3 -- all ranks can set against a charge -- seems counter to the rule on DMG p. 66, where the pike butt must be set on hard ground surface; to me that seems doable only by the front rank. But as we see here, the difference is of mostly academic interest anyway.)

Also, regarding Question #8 (yes, a defensive pike hit stops the enemy move forward), this is something that seems pretty reasonable if we picture the enemy as only a normal man. But we also need to deal with things like a charging horse, or in our fantasy game, things like lumbering ogres, giants, and dragons (far more likely to have inertia to snap the pike and keep coming?). So I'm very hesitant to establish that as a general rule (and it's not in D&D, and it's the same problem as Chainmail flatly disallowing anything to attack pikes -- okay for normal men, but doesn't scale to fantasy monsters).

And here's another counter-intuitive result that comes out of the simulator: the more you dial up the pike damage multiplier, the more casualties the pikes themselves take. This is because to whatever degree an attacker might take a hit and stop coming, yet survive and block the attackers behind him -- now turns into a downed attacker, and an opening for other attackers to keep charging (no further pike interrupt per Question #5; and no blockage from dead bodies per Question #9). That's a result that really boggled me when I first saw it.

One more thing: 3E gave a cover penalty to any reach weapons wielded from the back rows (+4 to AC; PHB p. 132), but that would immensely exacerbate these problems. (Like, for us, men in heavy armor would be totally un-hittable by anyone in the back ranks). Therefore that rule was never on the table, either.

Solutions in Book of War

So this was one of the few places in BOW where I was willing to switch significantly away from by-the-book D&D man-to-man rules (in that quite defensibly, it avoided mass pike issues in the first place) and come up with something that made our game play out reasonably well as a priority (which was the core of the crisis that I had last fall). The primary thing I did is to institute a "formation bonus" (Question #7), which is to say, a hefty "you can't dodge this" modifier when you get into a restricted space with a bunch of pike-shafts hemming you in on all sides, which I ended up setting at +4 bonus value for the mass pikes (or, +1 in BOW d6 space). This made it at least possible for pikes to hold off an charging enemy, even if it's still not a sure thing (it's possible in BOW for heavy cavalry to attack pikes, and with some semi-lucky die rolls, still manage to get through). Again, the to-hit level is really more critical than any damage multiplier.

Here's another thing I had to consider: We now have a whole litany of if-then situations we could theoretically apply for the pike attacks rule. Such as the following:

One rank, or many ranks of pikes? (If a BOW player sets up one figure-rank of pikes, that's only 2-man ranks, so they don't get the full force of the pike benefit; two or more figure-ranks, however, is more than the 3 man-ranks we agree can all strike.)
Infantry, or cavalry target? (Per Question #13 here, we all agree that the cavalry AC/target modifier needs to be washed out when the target is attacking cavalry.)
Defensive, or attacking use of pikes? (The pikes could theoretically set for double damage in the first case but not the last; and also there's a difference in commitment to the opponent willing to run themselves through the pikes.)
Rough, versus open terrain? (In our mass combat, we also want to reflect the decreased utility of pikes in irregular, rugged terrain.)

So if we directly handled all of that in BOW, there would be at least 4 if-then clauses to the pikes rule that you'd have to parse every time they were used -- equivalent to a 4-dimensional matrix with 2^4 = 16 different individual use-cases. (And if Question #10 had gone "yes", then that would have added a "5th dimension", which is then not even a game from TSR.) For playability and brevity I found that some of this stuff simply had to get cut out.

Now, IF we had gone directly with the results from the prior blog commentators' consensus (none of my alterations), then we could technically have had effects something like this: Pikes in full ranks against infantry get ×4 attacks in the first turn on defense, ×3 in later turns; against cavalry they get ×3 attacks in the first turn and ×2 in later turns.* Pikes in a single figure-rank get ×2 attacks versus infantry in the first turn on defense, ×1 versus infantry in later turns or against cavalry all of the time.

* Visualize: Most of the time, enemies are taking attacks from one lead guy pike-down with a sword, plus one further-back guy with the pike, for 2 attacks per turn. Add another attack per turn on average when someone moves through the pike field; and more on the first turn when that's definitely necessary. Cavalry dial it down a bit from the 25% of hits that would go against the horse instead. This always assumes a rational strategy of opponents hanging back beyond the pike field until there is a gap for them to advance into (i.e., never just hanging out in the pike field taking hits for no good reason).

No matter how we slice it, by D&D man-to-man rules, within the first turn an enemy will be able to get under the pikes and start delivering hits on the pikemen (the pike defense doesn't make the pike unit appreciable harder to hit in BOW scale). So in the interest of brevity, I've basically taken the extremes of the results above and cut the pike rules down to those: ×4 attacks on the defensive interrupt-attack, ×2 for same in a single figure-rank, or ×1 attack in any other situation. This specifically highlights the defensive mechanic of pikes; the model is, like, after the first turn, the enemy has gotten in "under" the pikes, there is a swordfight at the front rank while back pikes are not really usable, and meanwhile further ranks of the enemy hang back out of range until an opening appears. Pikes get the +4 defensive formation to-hit (+1 in BOW) versus everyone, and an additional +2 to hit (also rounded up to +1 in BOW) versus cavalry to reflect their lost AC bonus. Those modifiers are sufficient to score at least some hits against even charging heavy cavalry, and then by giving a morale check in that situation, there is some good chance to turn aside the attack; and the mechanic deals smoothly with huge monsters like giants and dragons (unlike the Chainmail mass rule that simply prohibits any attacks on pikes).

The final published rule for pikes in Book of War winds up looking like this:

Pikemen: Footmen with long pikes have a special defensive advantage: when an enemy first makes contact from the front, the pikes get an immediate free attack. This attack is at double dice in a single rank, or quadruple dice in multiple ranks; with an attack bonus of +1 vs. infantry, +2 vs. cavalry. The enemy checks morale immediately, and if failed, gets no attack. Pikes lose this benefit in any non-open terrain, or when routed. Pikes can also attack enemies up to 1" away, without making direct contact. [BOW, p. 7]

The additional things you see here are a loss of the defensive benefit on non-open terrain or when routed (to give the flavor of pike organization issues and the historical cases of losing when pushed into bad terrain, without creating any brand-new mechanics just for this purpose; see Question #10). And the 1" attack range at the end is both realistic, and a nice way of signaling whether the "interrupt strike" has occurred yet (in synch with our desire to have all information visible directly from the figures on the table; if pike figures are in direct contact with an enemy, then it's past the first turn and the interrupt strike is over). Tactically what usually happens is that pikes get 1" away and make an initial, single attack (from the front man-ranks only), giving the enemy the opportunity to flee away from that challenge. However, if on the next turn the enemy presses the attack, then they'll suffer the whole ×4 attack routine with bonuses, if so committed to that course.

That's as short, concise, and playable as I could make that rule -- I went around with numerous different formulations last fall and got feedback from my primary testers before settling on it. (I think somewhere I have a text file with about a score of different possible permutations.) I've found that it works out extremely well in play, and it even has some nifty "emergent behavior" that winds up playing in ways different than what you might expect at first blush (although I've given some hints in the paragraph above). More on that a little later.

If you want to see it, below you'll find a version of the RGPBattle program with the blog commentators' consensus options all switched in, and a spreadsheet of results for pike attacks in that scenario:

RPGBattleV113.zip
PikesV113.xls

Friday Night Book of War

2011-10-21T08:00:00.008-04:00

As I think I've mentioned previously, my girlfriend I now have a regular Friday "date night", which involves ordering Chinese food, watching a TV show on Hulu, and then playing Book of War. It's actually our favorite game at this point, which is rather surprising because: (1) I was never a wargamer as a younger person (although the idea was vaguely attractive to me), and (2) she was outright traumatized by her older brother demanding that she play various complex Napoleonic wargames when she was a girl. Here's a game from last Friday that just happens to involve a lot of cavalry of different types:

Start -- We agreed to play by Basic Rules only, at 200 points each (the minimum we play with; game takes about 1 hour). Opposition at the top has selected light infantry, heavy cavalry, and heavy crossbows; at the bottom, I've selected a more lightweight force of light cavalry, light infantry, and horse archers. We play on a smallish table, 3×3 feet, which generates a total of 4 rolls for terrain. Surprisingly, the only terrain that showed up was one section of woods; this probably benefits my army. Opposition has initiative and will move first.

Turn 1 -- In this turn, opposition moved forward, with crossbows taking a half-move to shoot at my horse archers, scoring 1 hit (white die shows damage; another hit will remove a mounted figure). I've charged forward on the left, and managed to rout her light infantry there immediately. I've also sent light cavalry into the woods (an unusual and risky move), while my horse archers on the right shot at her central light infantry, routing those as well. (Note that shooting at heavy cavalry at this distance was a non-option, since I can't penetrate their AH 6 armor beyond short range.) That's a good turn for me.

Turn 2 -- Opposition heavy cavalry now charge my infantry in the center, immediately killing 5 of the figures (50 men). On the morale dice, I need at least 9+ in order to avoid routing -- which I succeed at (shown in picture)! This is fortunate for me, since it means her heavy cavalry will be hung up for at least one more turn dealing with those infantry.

Turn 3 -- A turn-and-a-half later, and I've first charged my horse archers into melee (versus both crossbows & heavy cavalry), followed by my light cavalry and infantry units from the woods (with light cavalry finding the rear of the enemy for +1 to hit). The crossbows have been totally destroyed, but I've only managed to score 1 hit against the heavy cavalry. In response, my already-damaged light infantry have now been routed from the table (see tag at bottom edge), I've lost a horse archer figure from each unit, and her 2nd unit of heavy cavalry is now in the fight. Opposition calls this action in the center "a big pukey mess".

Turn 5 -- In the prior turn, I managed to maneuver one of my light cavalry units into the center melee, scoring another hit on the heavy cavalry (one figure lost), and forcing a morale check. This was disastrous for the opposition -- she could pass the morale check on any 6+ (2d6), but only rolled a 5! Thus, you see the heavy cavalry unit running away from the action. Meanwhile, I've lost the remaining horse archers and most of my infantry in the center. In subsequent turns, my light cavalry will pursue the routing heavies to the edge of the table, getting rear attacks each time.

Turn 7 -- More crazy good luck for me and French-idiom curses from the opposition. Her remaining heavy cavalry (yellow) is scoring hits on me, but in the picture you see my morale checks for the turn (all 6's!). In particular, those two infantry figures had been routed, but now they'll get to turn around and re-join the fray.

Turn 8 -- I'm trying to beat down those remaining heavy cavalry, but it's never easy; again, only die-rolls of 6 score hits (except for rear attacks). Here I manage to eliminate one figure, although her morale is still good. On the next turn she'll rout the near unit of light cavalry (green) off the table, but I have another unit circling around the woods after finishing off the heavy cavalry that routed earlier.

Turn 10 -- The End. Here I needed one more hit to finish her off, and although my attack roll was not great (pictured; almost all 1's and 2's), there is a single 6 in there that does the job. Victory! This was actually a more lopsided game than most, definitely owing to several unlikely morale checks that all went in my favor (my light infantry saving, and her heavy cavalry routing); plus, the terrain was to my advantage, and I didn't make any egregious mistakes. I wouldn't expect to beat heavy cavalry quite so easily a second time, but I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Book of War: Cavalry

2011-10-19T08:00:00.009-04:00

Once you get past the Book of War Core Rules, then there's a "Basic Rules" section which covers historical types of normal men, terrain setup, basic formation and movement issues, and a simple morale mechanic new to the game. To some extent this is an homage to how Chainmail was set up, but more importantly it's just a really good way to introduce the game in a way that's both short and coherent (both thematically and mechanically).

Let's talk about how cavalry work. Last winter I asked some questions here about the preferred adjudications for some of the parts of D&D which are ambiguous in this respect. Here are those questions again, and the apparent consensus that I could see from the comments section (in bold):

Should the modifier for mounted-vs-foot be doubled (+1 to +2) if we use it in the context of D&D? Mixed.
Can any of the following ignore the rider AC bonus: (a) footmen with polearms, (b) archers, (c) giants? Yes.
If a footman's attack misses because of the mounted modifier, does it hit the horse? No.
Can men opt to intentionally attack the horse instead of the rider (and is there any symmetric modifier or chance to hit the rider)? Yes.
Can unhorsing be accomplished with any weapon type in OD&D? Yes.
Should there be some radical change to how charge attack to-hits are adjudicated (i.e., no lance exceptionalism, use horse attack level, speed indicator, re: to-hit and damage)? Yes.
How many attacks per round should horses be given -- just one? Yes.
Should horses continue to be barred from any attack in the charge round? No.
Should there be an "overrun" capacity in which cavalry can move/attack/move (and possibly more) within a single charge round? Yes.
What level of AC should barded horses be given? Mixed.
Should riders be positioned at the front or rear of the horse (i.e., can they sword-attack an enemy in front of the horse)? Varies.
Do we use the "rider stun" chart from Chainmail? What if the horse is dropped in a non-intentional-unseating attack? Yes.
Do warhorses attack on their own if the rider is killed or unhorsed? Do they run from the line of battle, or stand motionless? Varies (suggest morale checks).
Should we use a +4 to-hit bonus for charging cavalry (doubled from Chainmail's cavalry-first-turn-bonus, p. 25), and a separate +2 bonus for anyone else charging (as per AD&D DMG p. 66)? Varies.

Fortunately, I also agreed with all of those definite answers above -- it was already being baked into the game that way, so it was nice to have additional confirmation that those were reasonable rulings. Here are some more observations:

On Cavalry Attacks

First of all, it's a complete non-starter for me to give mounted horses in combat something like 3 attacks per round. The problems with that are legion: (1) it's complicated and fiddly to roll all those dice for fairly small damage amounts, (2) it really seems unrealistic that a horse can strike with all those weapons all at the same time while the rider also strikes *, (3) it actually makes the cavalry charge less damaging than sustained combat, really missing the whole point to cavalry on the battlefield, etc., etc. For reasons like these, I'm deliriously happy to stick to OD&D with its one-attack-per-round system (and reiterated for mounts in Swords & Spells p. 18), avoiding the whole Greyhawk/AD&D attacks system in this regard.

(* Growing up on a farm, I've been knocked on my ass by horses & oxen several times. But every time it was from a single hoof shooting out in a quick, solid blow. Getting kicked twice & bit all at the same time just couldn't happen.)

So what occurs in BOW is that a rider/mount unit gets 2 attacks per turn (1d6 damage each), effectively one from the rider and one from the horse. For the horse, maybe that's one kick, or an overrun/trample type attack. You also get this same "overrun" attack from the horse even in the first round/turn of combat, which simplifies things, and basically splits the difference between the more-significant charge attack (historical?) and the more-significant sustained combat (AD&D). However, in any bad terrain (woods, hill, swamp, etc.) we assume that the horse doesn't have its footing to accomplish this, and cavalry attacks are thus halved to just 1 per turn for the unit. (See Questions #6-9 above.)

On Cavalry Defense

The defense capabilities of cavalry are a little more complicated to analyze. In short, what BOW does is give every normal man/horse combination 2 hit dice. More generally, most riders on horses double their hit dice; or for mounts that are naturally aggressive -- like wolves or dragons -- you'd add the rider & mount's hit dice. Below we'll consider some issues that led to this. (For the complications in D&D regarding cavalry defense, see survey questions #1-5, 10, 12, and 13 above.)

For Question #1 (appropriate rider AC bonus; Chainmail gives +1 on p. 26), we've said previously that Chainmail bonuses should be doubled for D&D play. Indeed, a D&D +1 bonus would be too small to make any difference at the BOW d6 scale (we usually divide modifiers by 3 and round down), although I'm willing to round up from +2 in certain special cases. I ran simulations in RPGBattle of possibly using a +2, +4, or +6 rider AC bonus; one problem that came out of that is the heavy cavalry types (in plate & shield, AC2) would become totally invulnerable to normal men at anything over +2 (like, +4 bonus = AC -2), so I decided to assume a +2 AC rider bonus.

But what does that indicate, really? For standard melee types, it's a +2 AC bonus for reach/cover from the horse itself, while trying to strike the rider. (Note, however, that we do not assume resulting misses effectively strike the horse -- Question #3 came out "no" -- and similarly, the original Chainmail rule doesn't have any comment or method for handling hits on horses.) However, for missile attacks falling from above, we don't assume that cover applies, but instead that we're rolling a randomized 50/50% chance to target either the rider or the horse (similar to missile discharge in DMG p. 63). Fortunately, either mechanic is approximately the same: Say, for the heavy cavalryman (AC2), normal men have 4 pips to hit on d20 (to-hit 17+), so reducing that by 2 points is the same as a 50% hit reduction. For other armors it's skewed differently, but still approximately correct, so we're comfortable assuming this for either type of attack.

One alternative we considered is to use the +2 AC bonus directly (rounded up, so +1 AH in BOW), but the problem with that is that it makes heavy cavalry AH 7 (i.e., D&D to-hit 19, about one-half chance in d6). If we did that, then we'd need a mechanic that says something like "AH 7 means a hit roll of 6, followed by a 2nd confirm roll of 4-6", which is something they actually do in Warhammer. But (a) my playtesters didn't like that, (b) the extra-die rolls seem complicated, clunky, and inelegant, and (c) the mechanic doesn't scale smoothly to ultra-high ACs you'll have to deal with for high-level heroes. So that was rejected in favor of the 50/50 hit assumption, i.e., cavalry act as though they have 2 Hit Dice, which is statistically about the same anyway.

On the other side of the equation, you have to ask: What's the best strategy for people attacking cavalry; should they target attacks first at the rider, or the horse? One assumption we make is that if the rider goes down, then the horse either stands nearby quietly or runs off (i.e., doesn't actually press the assault while riderless). So the question is really what eliminates the rider faster; perhaps killing the horse first and removing the +2 AC bonus (or whatever) is the better strategy? So that's a strategy question I ran though RPGBattle -- and as might be expected with a 2HD or 3HD horse in D&D, it turns out not to be the case. See the spreadsheet below for results of that analysis; even if we engage both the Chainmail rider-throw table (stun thrown riders for 0-3 rounds; p. 26) and AD&D stunned-to-hit bonus (+4), it's still always better to attack the rider directly than to kill the horse first. ** (And therefore, those latter mechanics [available by switches in the RPGBattle program], and any option to attack the horse [Question #4 above], turn out to be of academic interest only.) The only time when that wouldn't be the case is if we dialed up the rider AC bonus so high (+4 or +6) that the rider is actually immune to attacks entirely. Fortunately, that's also in synch with Chainmail, which as we said before has no comment on any option other than attacking the rider in a cavalry-melee situation (p. 26), bolstering our model here as true to the core D&D system.

SwordVsCavalryV107.xls

(** Now, my dad, who's a large-animal veterinarian, will watch a Western chase scene with me and claim that "it would be much easier to stop that guy by shooting at the horse's leg than the rider", but I'm not so sure about that, since it seems like a really small target. But I wanted to consider it for D&D nonetheless.)

So that's where our BOW model of cavalry hit dice comes from; per D&D, it's really about twice as hard to hit the rider, and therefore effectively takes twice as many good hits to eliminate the unit. Two other details: (1) Barding, following Chainmail, will be assumed to be of only one type that gives +2 AC to the horse, in use for heavy cavalry (see Question #10); therefore horses are all within 2 points of the rider AC, and we say that's "approximately equal" for our purposes at mass scale (and even if doubled to +4, it would be an irrelevant change anyway). (2) Pikes will be given a D&D +2 to hit cavalry (+1 in BOW) to reflect the fact that their long weapons negate the reach/cover bonus that riders normally get from melee-types (see Question #2).

Compare what we've done here to other D&D-branded wargames: Gygax's Swords & Spells directs you to add up all of the hit points of riders & mounts [p. 17], and to defeat them, you've got to degrade all of those summed hit points; personally, I think that's a grave mistake, as you clearly don't need to murder every single limb and cell of a cavalry unit in order to defeat it (again, if you knock off all the riders, the horses -- the majority of the summed hit points, after all -- aren't going to keep leading the attack against you). From my youthful play experience, cavalry in Swords & Spells took enormous, crazy amounts of damage before you could defeat them. In contrast, Doug Niles' Battlesystem instead gives a rule of "average the rider's HD and the mount's HD; round up" [1st Edition p. 19; 2nd Edition p. 105]. That's a distinct improvement, but I think it still runs into problems if you have a very large, non-aggressive mount (like an elephant, perhaps) and a normal man riding it; really, all you have to do is kill the 1 HD man to defeat the unit, and it seems like an overinflated bonus to give him half the mount's HD as a modifier. So that's why I prefer the rule in my Book of War: double the rider's HD for non-aggressive mounts (bonus capped by the horse's HD; reflecting a +2AC or 50% targeting miss chance), or sum the rider & mount HD only in cases of naturally aggressive, monstrous-type mounts. I'm hoping that you'll agree.

Book of War Review: La Marca del Este

2011-10-18T08:00:00.001-04:00

The first review for Book of War that I can confirm went up late last week at the excellent Spanish-language RPG site, Aventuras en la Marca del Este. Very kind things to say (via Google translate):

[A] great little extra... extremely interesting indeed... elegant... In short, a great contribution, fantastic, compatible with Adventures in the East Mark and highly recommended.

One of the very satisfying observations here is how compatible the work is across a lot of different D&D-inspired game systems, including their own system over there at Aventuras en la Marca del Este. The more, the merrier!

Book of War Rules Justification Part 3

2011-10-17T08:00:00.002-04:00

Previously I've shown two different ways of confirming the core Book of War combat mechanic (one, two) -- let's try a third and final way, just to be sure.

This actually came about approximately one year ago. I'd been tooling on the game for some time (years), and last fall I had something of a panic attack/realization that the special types of cavalry, pikes, and archers might not be functioning as I expected in the underlying game. So I took a few months and dug into the RPG-level details of each, and resolved to write a larger simulator program that actually throws large units of D&D guys at each other, tracking the details of each. Here it is (Java in a ZIP file; released under GPL v.2):

RPGBattle.zip

The prior program (link "one" above) was a short little thing that, for brevity, only looked at the front file of 5 guys on one side and filled in gaps from "somewhere" as needed (also, it only handled men wielding a normal hand weapon). This new one's a bit more extensive: 14 files and about 1,700 lines. It will track all the individual men involved, move them forward as needed, separately handle mount & rider stats/attacks, let you swap in different AI to compare best strategies, allow men to switch weapons during the fight (needed for cavalry, pikes, archers), etc. By default, it runs 1,000 separate battles and outputs total individual men killed per round, which we can then load into a spreadsheet for mass-level analysis. (There's no GUI, so as usual, you need a Java development environment if you want to tweak or double-check my work).

For example, here's what you get if you just run big units of swordsmen at each other; once again, we see the 4/5/6 target on a d6 for armor types of leather/chain/plate (.xls spreadsheet here):

My point here isn't to be needlessly repetitive. The important thing is that we can use this as a platform to test out the more exotic troop types (pikes, cavalry, archers) and the various interpretations that are necessary for those parts of classic D&D combat that are left ambiguous or undefined (and: to explicate my assumptions in this regard). For example: The effect of mass pikes on closing & sustained combat; the best strategy for attacking a mount/rider, or approaching a unit of pikes; possibly throwing & stunning riders from a downed mount (as in Chainmail); etc., etc. This ties back to some of the "Basic D&D" questions I was posting here last February/March; more on that next time.

On Talking Concretely About Games

2011-10-16T08:00:00.007-04:00

Which is to say: without relying on that hollow word, "fun". From a great anti-"gamification" article by Ian Bogost at Gamasutra earlier this year, a passage that I found particularly useful:

... key game mechanics are the operational parts of games that produce an experience of interest, enlightenment, terror, fascination, hope, or any number of other sensations.

(The fun-word-fails-us manifesto, here.)

Book of War Figure Zoom-In

2011-10-14T08:00:00.002-04:00

When you see a Book of War figure that looks like this:

Sometimes it helps to keep in mind that it really represents this:

That is: 10 individuals at man-to-man scale, arranged in 2 ranks of 5 files each. Grid spaces in the picture above are 3 feet each (or 3⅓ feet per DMG p. 10, if you prefer). Total length on one side of the formation is 5 spaces × 3 feet/space = 15 feet; i.e., the same as one figure in BOW scale (top picture), ¾ inch base × 20 feet/inch scale = 15 feet.

Early Scaling

2011-10-12T08:00:00.006-04:00

As I was forced to dig deep into the Moldvay Basic D&D (1981) rules for the prior blog post, I was surprised to find this at the very end of the book (in Moldvay's 2-page "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art" section; literally the last thing in the book before the Credits):

PLAYING SURFACE: Combats are easy to keep track of when large sheets of graph paper, covered with plexiglass or transparent adhesive plastic (contact paper), are used to put the figures on. The best sheets for this use have 1" squares, and the scale of 1" = 5' should be used when moving the figures. [p. B61]

Is this the earliest use in any official D&D rules of the 1" = 5' scale? Both Holmes (earlier; p. 9) and even Mentzer (later; Player's Manual p. 57) still suggest using the 1" = 10 feet scale for miniature play.

I must say (having played by these rules quite a bit back in the day, but not having looked at them in many years) that I'm quite impressed by Moldvay's grasp of the math behind the game. If only he hadn't instituted race-as-class...

On Expected Treasure and XP

2011-10-10T08:00:00.006-04:00

Tom Moldvay wrote in his D&D Basic Rulebook (1981):

... most of the experience the characters will get will be from treasure (usually 3/4 or more) [p. B45] *

I think that many old-school players take this as a statement of original design intent regarding the old D&D treasure types and experience system. I'm going to disagree with that, and claim: (a) this statement by Moldvay is descriptive and not normative, and (b) while it's accurate for Moldvay's B/X rules, it does not match other editions of D&D. (Note: All discussion below is in terms of by-the-book D&D gold-standard economy.)

Arneson's OD&D

Let's look at OD&D first. Below you'll see a table of all the hostile monster types (those appearing in dungeons) from Vol-2, p. 3. Each has its standard number appearing, experience point value (per Sup-I, Greyhawk), and expected value from its treasure type (including the requirement that the in-Lair % chance be rolled; as stated on Vol-2, p. 23). Then a ratio for expected value of the treasure versus monster XP is made. (Download full .xls spreadsheet here.)

The end result: Over all of these monster types, there is a GP:XP ratio of 1.5; that is, only about 3:2 in favor of the treasure XP. A clear majority of monsters actually give more XP from the monster than the treasure (about 20 of 30). Note that there are two extraordinary outliers: Dragons (ratio 8:1) and Medusae (ratio 23:1!); if you remove these two outliers from the list, then the overall ratio dips to just 0.8 (i.e., actually less treasure than monster XP). Another way of looking at this, perhaps -- roughly 40% of all the available treasure in the game comes from Dragons, and until the PCs are high enough level to be hunting dragons, their XP will mostly not be coming from treasure. (If played purely according to these random charts.)

Side observation -- The majority of most treasure value comes solely from the Jewelry component. By my calculations, almost all of the OD&D treasure types have between 55% to 85% of their average value coming from Jewelry (average 70%; with outlier Type G, a low 20% of its value from jewelry). Or in other words: If you miss the Jewelry component roll for a treasure type, then you've missed about 2/3 of the nominal value of that treasure type, on average. Or again: Making the Jewelry roll approximately triples the total value from any treasure type.

Other note -- You might look at the XP example of the troll in Vol-1 ("7,000 G.P. + 700 for killing the troll = 7,700" [p. 18]) and say, "hey, that's evidence that OD&D gives about 10% XP for monsters". Except that the example is doubly impossible from the listed monster/treasure tables: (a) trolls number appearing is 2-12 (1 being impossible), and (b) troll treasure type D has at best 1-6 thousand gold pieces (7,000 being impossible). According to my stats, the average result would be to get 7 trolls for 4,550 XP (7×650 per Greyhawk) and a total 3,743 gp value, i.e., as we're saying, expect more XP for the trolls than the treasure. (Also: This example refers to trolls as being "7th level", whereas the monster levels in Vol-3 only go up 6th, so the example is pretty disconnected from the rest of the rules.) Keep in mind that if we used pre-Greyhawk XP (HD×100), then things would be even more skewed in favor of the monster XP.

Moldvay's B/X

Let's try this again for Moldvay's B/X rules. Now, two huge changes will occur at this point. One: The large-scale numbers appearing have been dramatically reduced for the numerous humanoid types (usually dividing by about ten; e.g., men/bandits from 30-300 in OD&D to 3-30 in B/X, etc.). Two: The Lair % statistic has been entirely removed, so presumably any time the larger number of creatures appears, they get their full treasure type valuation. See the results of that below (or spreadsheet for this here):

Now: Over the same core hostile monster types, the GP:XP ratio is close to 3; i.e., a 3:1 relationship of treasure to monster XP -- or in other words, exactly the "usually 3/4" from treasure as Moldvay asserted (see quote at top). Most monster types (about 25 of 30) do indeed give more XP from their treasure than from the monster. While dragons and medusae still have excellent GP:XP ratios, now the far and away outlier is actually Men, with an astounding 108:1 ratio in favor of their treasure! (Analysis: Type A is an excellent type of treasure;the number appearing was divided by 10 from OD&D; and the frequency of treasure was multiplied 6-fold by dropping the low 15% Lair chance.)

Side observation -- Moldvay presents a list of "average values (in gold pieces) of each treasure type" [p. B45], and Moldvay's averages are extremely accurate. (They match very nicely to my numbers in the linked spreadsheet.)

Other notes -- In general, the following are all copied directly from OD&D: (a) Monster treasure types. (b) Treasure type contents (with the addition of new electrum & platinum categories). (c) Monster numbers appearing, for types other than the multitudinous humanoids. (d) The XP values for monsters. (e) Dungeon unguarded treasure tables. However, gem and jewelry values have distinctly dropped by abandoning parts of the generation procedure (gems in a batch "increasing value", and jewelry high-end exceptional rolls).

Treasure in the Dungeon

Now, the preceding was based just on looking at the core "numbers appearing" and "treasure types" from OD&D, which are generally supposed to be just for wilderness encounters. We might ask the obvious question of what's supposed to be the case in the dungeon, but the situation there is enormously more murky. Unfortunately, all of the classic versions of D&D leave this issue almost entirely unspecified and in the realm of pure DM fiat.

OD&D states multiple times that monster numbers should be scaled to size of the PC party (Vol-2, p. 4; and Vol-3, p. 11). The listed numbers should be "primarily only for out-door encounters" (Vol-2, p. 4); and treasure types are only applicable to "those cases where the encounter takes place in the 'Lair'" (Vol-2, p. 23). In the dungeon, all we are given is that creature numbers are "modified by type" (Vol-3, p. 11; more discussion here). Dungeon treasure might possibly be generated on level-based tables (Vol-3, p. 7), although in later editions of D&D, those tables are generally indicated as for unguarded treasure only. (Note: If used for that purpose, then the average GP:XP is even lower, 0.7 by my calculations, i.e., about the same as the treasure types sans dragons: spreadsheet here.)

Holmes D&D keeps the same treasure types; he removes all of the numbers appearing in the monster entries (esp., all of the hundreds of humanoids); but he adds specific numbers for the dungeon wandering monster tables (usually on the order of 1d6 or so). But as far as dungeon treasure goes, he gives a short nod to OD&D and then punts to another product entirely:
The TREASURE TYPES TABLE (shown hereafter) is recommended for use only when there are exceptionally large numbers of low level monsters guarding them, or if the monsters are of exceptional strength (such as dragons). A good guide to the amount of treasure any given monster should be guarding is given in the MONSTER & TREASURE ASSORTMENTS (available from TSR or your retailer). [Holmes D&D, p. 22]

Moldvay's B/X still maintains the same treasure types; and he merges the numbers appearing into two high/low categories (but again: dividing the truly large numbers by about 10). He says that the higher numbers are for when "met in in the monster's lair (home) or in the wilderness", and regarding treasure types, "in general, treasure is usually found in a monster's lair (home)" [p. B30]. This linkage is reiterated again later:
Treasures A through O are large, and generally only for use when large numbers or fairly difficult monsters are encountered. The lairs of most human-like monsters contain at least the number of creatures given as the wilderness "No. Appearing" (the number in parentheses). [p. B45]

However, having said that twice so far (that full Treasure Types are for large, lair-wilderness numbers only), Moldvay then contradicts this with his dungeon stocking procedure. Having rolled a small, random dungeon-wandering sized encounter, he says, "If treasure is in a room with a monster, use the Treasure Type for that monster (given in the monster description) to find the treasure in the room.)" [p. B52] Zounds!

Frank Mentzer's DM's Rulebook basically copies the Moldvay language on treasure types. "When the Treasure Type is a letter from A to O, that should only be the treasure found in a full lair (the Wilderness No. Appearing -- the number in parentheses in the monster description)" [p. 40]. However, his dungeon-stocking procedure apparently switches back to the OD&D rule -- it deletes any mention of monster Treasure Types, and instead references the same short level-based random treasure table: "The amount of treasure can be determined by using the random Treasures Table..." [p. 47] (I guess I would consider this a proper fix to the overly-generous and contradictory Moldvay rule.)

So we see that in most versions of D&D, the preponderance of the evidence is that Treasure Types are actually not to be used for standard dungeon-based small numbers of monsters, but only for large wilderness-equivalent numbers in the "lair". Which is a rather significant misstep, based on our standard dungeon-centric use case. But that data is the best we have for expected XP ratio from treasure/monsters -- and as we've seen for OD&D, if we use the dungeon level-based treasure tables, then the ratio is even lower (more from monsters than treasure). In neither case does it seem like this was an advance design consideration.

(Notice that I haven't worked out AD&D numbers for this discussion: it would be quite a bit harder, since in that work Gygax switched from one-letter-type-per-monster to a mixture of several different combined letters per monster. That said, I'm assuming that the ratios are about the same as in OD&D, since the numbers appearing, in-lair %, etc., are generally copied directly from that work. With the possibly large wild card of awarding XP for usage of magic items.)

Conclusions

Here are some conclusions that I would offer, based on this evidence:

Arneson probably didn't plan out any statistics like this in advance for the original system. And probably Gygax never actually used random treasure tables at all in his games. (I'd say they're both notorious for not actually using the published rules; and the vagueness of dungeon numbers and treasure speaks to the lack of any specific system for that in the first place.)

Moldvay, however, shows an exquisite awareness of the average results produced by the treasure table system (as evidenced by his correct 3/4 ratio statement; and listing the correct average values for each treasure type, unique to his rules). That said, this could not have been an advance design decision, because he simply copied all the legacy types and valuations from OD&D (and does an across-the-board deletion of Lair %, and reduces the larger numbers appearing).

Let's accept that the D&D treasure and experience amounts were not initially designed with any particular ratio of XP from treasure versus monsters. But let's say that you want that, to promote certain desirable types of gameplay (such as rewarding treasure-acquisition from stealth and trickery, for example). Then you might select from one of the following possible options: (a) Follow Moldvay in deleting in-Lair % checks, and dividing humanoid lair numbers by about 10. (b) Ignore the in-lair dictums for treasure types entirely, and award the whole Treasure Type even for small numbers like 1-6 orcs. (c) Boost the XP value from treasure, perhaps awarding 10 XP per GP, or something like that (also accelerating advancement). (d) Shift all of the XP away from monster-killing, adding the same value to their treasure-acquisition awards (if that's what you want to promote, might as well go whole-hog, eh?)

* Thanks to Tavis and Kipper at the ODD boards for reminding me where this statement came from.

And additional thanks to UWS Guy and DHBoggs for informing me in the comments that the OD&D treasure type system was the work of Dave Arneson.

(Photo by Falashad, under CC2.)

Testing Balanced Dice Power

2011-10-07T08:00:00.007-04:00

The point of this not too far-fetched scenario is that chi-square is a test of rather low power; its ability to reject the null hypothesis, even when the null hypothesis is patently false, is quite weak. And the smaller the size of the sample, the weaker it is. -- Richard Lowry, Vassar College

One of the things that's gotten a lot of interest on this blog is my presentation of how to test for fair (balanced) dice -- a statistical application of the well-known Pearson's chi-square test. (See prior posts on the subject here, here, and here.) One of the things I said about the test, early in the first post was this:

It has a significance level of 5%; that is, there's a 5% chance for a die that's actually perfectly balanced to fail this test (Type I error). There's also some chance for a crooked die to accidentally pass the test, but that probability is a sliding function of how crooked the die is (Type II error). A graph could be shown for that possibility, but I've omitted it here (usually referred to as the "power curve" for the test).

And when I said, "a graph could be shown for that possibility, but I've omitted it here", that was, of course, code-speak for "I have no f*ing idea how to compute that or what it would look like". At least one person later expressed interest in seeing it, so at that point my goose was cooked, so to speak. (Thank you very much, Mr. JohnF.)

Therefore, what I did recently was sit down and write a short Java program to simulate the appropriate power-test results by random simulation, and I'll present them below. This investigation was quite instructional to me personally, because it was a significant step outside my comfort zone, and not something that I could find explicitly done anywhere online or in any textbook I could access.

Let me first explain some testing terminology, so that we can be careful with it. In statistical hypothesis testing, there is defined a "null hypothesis" (nothing is changed from normal), and a competing "alternative hypothesis" (something is changed from normal). Usually we, the experimenter, are in some way rooting for the alternative hypothesis (as in: this drug makes sick people recover faster, so now we can build a manufacturing plant and start selling it). To be safe, hypothesis tests are therefore set up with a very high burden of proof for the alternative hypothesis. The end result is technically one of either "reject the null hypothesis" or "do not reject the null hypothesis" -- and without extraordinary evidence to the contrary, we "do not reject the null hypothesis" (i.e., assume nothing has changed by default: compare to other notions like burden of proof and Occam's razor).

Mathematically for us, the null hypothesis will be a specific fixed number (probability distribution), and the alternative hypothesis will be that something varies from that expected number. For dice-testing, therefore, the null hypothesis is actually that the die is perfectly balanced (no face different than the others; e.g., 1/6 chance each for a d6). The alternative hypothesis is that the die is malformed in some way (i.e., at least one face with an altered chance of appearing). So based on what I just said above, if the test says that the die is unbalanced (reject the null hypothesis), then you can pretty much take that to the bank. But if the test fails to say that -- then we've got an open question as to what, exactly, that tells us. (Hence, this investigation.)

Here are three important terms in a hypothesis test: n, α (alpha), and β (beta). The value n is the sample size; how many times we roll the die for our test (previously I'd said the test is justified for a minimum of n=5 times the faces on the die; i.e., 30 rolls for a d6, 100 rolls for a d20). Value α is the chance of a false positive (Type I error; rejecting the null hypothesis when it's true; apparently getting evidence of an unfair die when it's actually balanced; also called the "significance level"). Value β is the chance of a false negative (Type II error; non-rejection of the null hypothesis when it's false; finding no evidence of an unfair die when it's actually unbalanced; also 1 - "power level"). More on these error types here.

Going into the test, you can pick any 2 of the 3 (the last term is logically determined by the others). Obviously, we would like both α and β to be as low as possible, but neither can be zero. A higher sample size n, of course, always helps us. But for a fixed sample size n lowering α increases β and vice-versa (it is, therefore, a balancing act). In practice, you usually set n to whatever size you can best achieve (time and grant-money permitting), and α to the industry-standard of 5%.

In theory you could solve for the resulting β value -- except that to do so would require perfect knowledge of the balance of the die you're testing -- and of course, that's what you're trying to determine in the first place with the hypothesis test.

So: here's what you'll be getting below. Assume that your die has a single odd face that is biased in some way (different probability than the others: I'll call this special probability P0), and that the other faces all have equal probability from what's left. We'll make a graph for every possible value of P0 (on the x-axis), and compare it to the simulated value of 1-β (so that higher is better, on the y-axis), and see what that looks like. This is called the "power curve" for the test; it's an important analysis, but usually glossed over in introductory statistics courses.

(Side note: Is the "one odd face" model realistic? Probably not: if you shave down one edge, then you'll change the likelihood of at least two faces appearing. If one face appears less, then the opposite face should come up more. But at least this model gives us an impression of the test's power.)

This is accomplished by the following Java program (GPL v.2 license). The program takes a certain type of die and fixed levels for n and α, and outputs a bunch of (x,y) values, where x = P0 and y = Power of the test for that odd-face-probability value. These values I copy into a spreadsheet program and then generate a chart from the results. (The program only makes one table at a time; to change die-sides, n, α, or anything else, you've got to manually edit & recompile).

DicePowerCurve.java

Below are the results for a d6, across several increasing values of n (number of rolls we might perform). Or click here for a PDF with some additional charts:

This shape is basically what we expect from a "power curve" chart: something of a "V" shape, with the bottom-point at the value of an actual balanced face (here, 1/6 = 0.17). The y-axis shows the power of the test: the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis in the test (i.e., a finding for the alternative: that the die is unbalanced). It's more likely for this to happen the more skewed the die is (further left or right). It's less likely for this to happen if the die is minimally skewed or actually balanced (near the center). The fact that in each case it actually bottoms out at a value of approximately 0.05 -- that is, the α value: what we initially chose as the chance of a Type I error (rejection when it's balanced) -- gives us confidence that the simulation is giving us accurate results.

So, what is the major lesson here? At moderately low values of n, this test freaking sucks. Look at the chart for n=50 (first one above) and consider, for example, the case where one face never shows up at all (P0=0.00). The test only has an 88% chance of reporting that die as being unbalanced. It's even worse at n=30 (not shown here), which we previously said was a permissible number of rolls for the test; then the power is only about 40%. That is, for n=30, the test only has a 40% chance of telling any difference between a d5 and a d6!

The n=50 d6 power curve has a very gentle bend to it, and what we would like is something with a much sharper dip -- ideally a low chance of rejection at P0=1/6 (17%), a high chance away from it, and as rapid a switchover as possible. For that purpose, n=100 looks a little better, and n=200 even better than that. At n=500 we've really got something: nearly 100% chance of rejection if the special face comes up less than 10% or over 25% of the time. (The PDF shows even sharper power curves for n=1000 and n=2000.)

Let's try that again for a d20 (which would be balanced at a value of P0=0.05):

Here, I didn't even bother to show anything less than n=500, since the curves below that point are just dreadful (shown in the PDF again linked here). For example, at n=100 (previously the nominal minimum number of rolls), the chance of the test detecting the difference between a d19 and a d20 (i.e. one face missing) is only 16%! So in this case, although we have the same low false positive rate of α=5%, we have a sky-high false negative rate of β=84%. While a finding of "unbalanced" is one that we can count on, a finding of "not unbalanced" tells us almost nothing: it would usually do that anyway, even for a die entirely missing one or more faces.

This is honestly not something that I realized before doing the simulation experiment.

Take-away lesson is this, I think: The bare-minimum number of rolls given previously (5 times faces on the die) is pretty much useless for the test to be powerful enough to actually detect an unbalanced die. For a d6, I wouldn't want to use any less than n=100 as a minimum (and ideally something like n=500 if you're serious about it). For a d20, n=500 would be a useful minimum (and at least several thousand to find reasonably small variations). So realize that it takes a lot of rolling to have a chance of actually detecting unbalanced dice; look at the charts above and decide for yourself how small a bias you want to have a chance of identifying.

Postscript: Again, this is an analysis that is frequently overlooked, and if you got through this whole post, then you probably have a deeper understanding of the power of Pearson's chi-square test than even some professional statisticians (I dare say). For example, in the old Dragon magazine article on the subject (Dragon #78, Oct-1983), writer D.G. Weeks completely screwed up on this point. He wrote:

If your chi-square is less than the value in column one (labelled .10), the die is almost certainly fair (or close enough for any reasonable purpose).

Well, that's just totally false. At minimal sample sizes, the test is of such low power, that the die can be almost certainly unfair and still pass the criteria. Furthermore, Weeks presented the possibility of a test for a given suspected die-face frequency and included it in the attached BASIC computer program, in doing so vastly confusing the issue of what's the null and what's the alternative hypothesis. To wit:

In this case it might make more sense to test directly whether this observation is really accurate, rather than simply making the general test described earlier. If what you suspect is true, a specialized test will show the bias more readily...

What I would say is that this would actually prove the bias LESS readily, since your suspicion has now become the null hypothesis, and non-rejection of the null hypothesis tells us next to nothing about the die -- because that's what happens by default anyway, and the test is so very low-powered. In fact, Weeks is making precisely the mistake that we are being warned about by Professor Lowry in the quote at the very top of this blog post (read more at that link if you like: "it is a terrible idea to accept the null hypothesis upon failing to find a significant result in a one-dimensional chi-square test..."). Don't you make the same error!