More Treasures of Galadria

I’ve just returned from an extended trip to London, which provided plenty of inspiration for posts.  While I’m getting some of them in order, though, I figured I should post an update, since it’s been quite a while.  Here, then, are some more magic items from my long-running Galadria campaigns.  These span the various editions; I haven’t gone through the process of  updating all of them to 4e, or even to 3e, so I’ve stripped things like cost/gold value.

These particular items originate from the Mythic Asia portion of my campaign world.

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The Rules Gap

In my experience, people who play D&D — and roleplaying games in general — have two ways of looking at the rules.

Some try to make their games fit the rules.

Others try to make the rules fit their games.

Tales of the Rambling Bumblers touched on this in an excellent post about two months ago, but it comes to mind now because of what I wrote about in my previous post, and because of several unrelated recent conversations I’ve had with other gamers and bloggers.  My take on it is slightly different from Joshua’s; for one thing, I’m coming at it from the player perspective instead of the system perspective.

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Zero Level, Revisited

A little over a month ago, I proposed a “Zero Level” for 4e for those who would enjoy using the fourth-edition rules yet starting the game at a lower power level.  4e is a minor paradigm shift in that even first-level characters are heroes — it’s the name of the tier.  If a character wasn’t to be a hero, then, he must be somewhere prior to the heroic tier.  Borrowing the zero-level idea from a few editions back and tweaking it to 4e seemed to make sense.

I’m pretty happy with the general idea, but the zero-level I came up with wasn’t quite what I’d wanted.  There was still a pretty stark jump in power level, as several people noted, particularly in the “half hp” to full-first-level-hp switch.  I tried to smooth the progression out a bit, while keeping in mind what the system was representing:  growth of a character from a relatively-normal person (though one with great potential) to a full-fledged hero.  I came to the conclusion that several different points in that continuum needed to be represented in order to fully achieve what I’d pictured.  A pre-heroic tier, if you will, though a very short one.

Initiate

The initiate character is a trained member of his class, but he isn’t yet a hero.  This might be the fighter during his mercenary days, or the wizard after completing his apprenticeship but before embarking on studies of his own, or the paladin newly knighted and not yet tested.  He’s still quite competent in his field, but he lacks the lessons of personal experience that make a first-level fighter, wizard, or paladin what they are.  This level is very similar to my earlier proposal; generation follows the same basic pattern:

1. Choose Race. No changes.
2. Choose Class. Choose a class as usual; however, you lack one of the class features of the class you choose.  See below.  Additionally, you have 2 fewer healing surges.
3. Determine Ability Scores. No changes.
4. Choose Skills. You know one fewer skill.  For example, a cleric knows Religion plus two (rather than three) skills from the list of available class skills.
5. Select Feats. You do not select a feat.
6. Choose Powers. You select at-will powers normally.  You may select an encounter power, but you may only use that power once per day until you reach level 1.  You do not select a daily power.
7. Choose Equipment. The GM may choose to restrict beginning equipment options.
8. Fill in the Numbers. As below.

Your hit points are equal to those of a first-level character minus the amount you would normally gain each level.  For instance, a paladin with 10 Constitution would normally have 25 hit points at first level, and gain 6 for each level thereafter.  Therefore, an Initiate Paladin with 10 Constitution has 25 – 6 = 19 hp.  At first level, he gains 6 hp, bringing him to the normal total of 25.

Your bonuses are affected by your status.  Treat “half your level” as “-1.”

You are “missing” one class feature.  It is up to the player and GM to agree on which one, but it’s best to try to ensure that the character will be able to perform the basic functions of his role.  For instance, a cleric should probably not “lose” Healing Word.  The GM may wish to restrict Ritual Casting at this level, since you’re technically not level 1 yet.  If he does, this does not count as the class feature you “lose” — you must still choose a different class feature to “give up.”

You must gain 500 xp to become a first-level character.  At that time, you gain your “missing” class feature and all of the other benefits of being a first-level hero (extra hp and healing surges, a feat, the “missing” skill, etc.)  You may also retrain when gaining first level, as you normally would when gaining a level.

Novice

The novice is the fledgling adventurer, possessed of the rudiments of training in his class but lacking the sheer skill or power that even a first-level hero wields casually.  There is still some quality that sets him apart — he learns quickly, perhaps, or has a great degree of natural talent — but he has yet to refine his abilities.  This is the wizard as an apprentice or the knight as a squire.

A novice character is created in a similar manner, but the restrictions are even harsher.  A novice has only one class feature — a defining one, as agreed upon by the player and the GM.  (Classes with particularly weak features that are nevertheless central to their concept may have two, if the GM permits.  For instance, the Bard should probably have Skill Versatility in addition to another feature.)

A novice also has two fewer healing surges than an initiate (four fewer than a first-level character), and “loses” another level’s worth of hit points.  The 10-Con Paladin above would possess 25 – 6 – 6 = 13 hp as a Novice Paladin.  A Novice Wizard with 8 Constitution would possess 10 hit points (18 – 4 – 4 ).  Clearly, novice characters are extremely fragile and will have to be very careful about adventuring.  If you use a character-creation method that would allow a lower Constitution score, then 1 hit point is a minimum.

A novice character has one at-will power — he’s mastered one basic trick of his profession.  He also knows one encounter power, but he may only use it once per day, and only after spending an action point during the encounter; he is pushing himself to his limits in order to pull off an advanced technique that he hasn’t quite mastered yet.  At the GM’s option, the character may use this power without spending an action point, but with the addition of some adverse or unforeseen side effect.

As a novice character, you treat “half your level” as -”2.”

The GM may wish to remove an additional trained skill from a novice character, but I don’t recommend it; they’re pretty limited already.

You must gain 250 xp to become an initiate character.  At that time, you gain all of the benefits of an initiate character, and you may retrain.

What D&D Is (To Me)

Bookending my previous post, in which I speculated about what D&D means to different groups of players.  I didn’t think this post was necessary, originally, but a comment by Brian Gleichman has convinced me otherwise.  Tempting as it was to dismiss it, between the veiled insults and a self-evident failure on Brian’s part to read the page very carefully (in case any of the rest of you were wondering:  I am not Ambrose Bierce, the renowned satirist who died in the early 20th century), I think it’s probably better addressed, because he raises at least one good point.  I spent a fair amount of time talking about what I think D&D isn’t, but I left what I think it is mostly between the lines.  It’s probably better to be clear, especially when making statements such as “the import of mechanics is limited.”

As an initial clarification, I’ll say:  That’s not the same as “the rules don’t matter.”  More on that in a little while, though.

What is D&D?  To me, it isn’t any of those rules in my last post.  It’s not 3d6 chargen, or 4d6, or point-buy.  It’s not level draining, or lack thereof.  It’s not wandering monsters and random treasure, or the absence of same.  Those are just elements, and every one of them is dispensable.  To re-use a metaphor I threw at Brian, they’re like team uniforms in baseball.  It might (arguably) not be the Yankees without the pinstripes, but it’s still baseball.  It might not be OD&D without level drains (at least, some people would say it wasn’t), but it’s still D&D.

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What is D&D, Anyway?

Jeff Rients of Jeff’s Gameblog, who ordinarily has interesting things to say, recently decided to instead rant about 4th edition in a couple of posts, starting with positing an unbridgeable gap between old-school and new-school.  All of this was founded, mind you, on a misinterpretation of a single post by Trask of Living Dice.  (Later he added a second post based on an editorial by someone at Wizards of the Coast.)  Buried in the comments, though, he said something that’s actually thought-provoking and worth responding to:

3d6 chargen. Wandering monsters. Save or die. Rust monsters eatng my sword. Level draining. Random treasure (possibly no treasure). Dave the Game may be right and what I’m talking about is a ‘playstyle’ issue, but the playstyle that I learned from D&D is no longer one supported by D&D.

I find this interesting because it is, for the most part, a list of those things that I found most senseless and annoying as both a player and a GM in past editions.  If this is how the “old school” contingent (and we really need a better name for them — too many of them, judging from other comments on Jeff’s post, are too ignorant or too vested in the One True Way of Gaming to allow them to co-opt “old school”) defines D&D, then I think it’s no surprise that the game no longer feels like D&D to them.

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