Starting Friends

The first session of my new 5e Waterdeep campaign is tonight - getting excited!  Just finished up a table for determining some random "starting friends" that each PC will already know in the city.  Here is it in  one page .PDF format.

Table headings: You became friends how?; How would you describe the relationship?; Something unusual?; Useful contact that they have?; What physical features stick out?

Here is the .PDF printable version of the massive list of THOUSANDS of canon NPC names from Forgotten Realms novels that someone at Candlekeep compiled and I formatted to print out for the names I need to generate in game:  Forgotten Realms Name List .PDF Format

Three Magical Items

Pouch of Concealment

Twisting the jewel clasp of this pouch in a particular pattern creates an illusory double of the pouch’s contents at that moment.  This illusion will persist even if the contents are removed or other items are added.  The illusion is all that can be seen if the pouch is opened, and a save is granted only if an item is placed into the pouch or it is reached into (Intelligence Save DC12).  Twisting the clasp again will dispel the illusion.

Crossbow of Illumination

Bolts glow brightly for one hour after being fired from this crossbow, shedding bright light in a 20’ radius and dim light for an additional 20’.

Quarterstaff of Pain

This staff does not do real damage, but on a successful hit causes intense hallucinatory pain, requiring a CON save at DC = unmodified attack roll to take any action the following round except writhe in pain.  If the save is failed by 2 or more the victim also drops prone to the ground.

All Art By Moi

5e Dungeon Master's Guide and 5e mini review

I picked up my pre-ordered DM's Guide at my local game shop the day before Thanksgiving. First a mini review of 5e, then some random bullet points from the DM's Guide that stood out to me.

Color me thoroughly impressed with D&D 5e now that I have the three core rulebooks in my possession. Compressing the modifier range, AC and to hit bonus across levels almost makes it more old school than old school, but there are plenty of cool options available to appeal to new school players.  Compared straight across, 1st -3rd level 5e characters will be much more powerful than their B/X or AD&D equivalents, but that quickly evens out and probably even flips towards the older systems being more powerful at higher levels.  Consequently, converting B/X or AD&D material to 5e looks to be extremely easy.

 I still had some unanswered questions and gripes about the game after reading the PHB and MM, but the DM's Guide really took care of most of these for me.  If I had to choose my top D&D edition just based on the core rulebooks, I would have to take 5e at this point (although 1e still gets the nod for best DM's Guide even with it's Gygaxian organization).  Player options are presented without being overly complicated or resulting in too much power inflation.  Monsters strike a nice balance between simple to run and having some memorable and unique abilities (I particularly like the lair based powers of the legendary creatures). The core system is very solid, as is the treatment of the planes and the cosmology presented in general. There are an awful lot of rule variants and DM's tools provided that allow you to customize the game in many different ways.  If you don't want to play with skills, the DM's guide gives you a purely attribute based resolution system for a more old school feel. The default, relatively "heroic" (read practically superheroic) out-of-combat healing presented in the PHB is now just one of many options available to the DM.  Tools for running a Call of Cthulhu style campaign (Sanity attribute) fit in nicely with the focus on factions, organizations and secret societies.  High marks for consistently emphasizing that the game can be customized, and providing many extremely useful examples of how you can do so.

Also, laser guns, antimatter rifles and frag grenades.  Need I say more?

Of course this is not a perfect game.  I have many small quibbles. Some areas of the DM's guide seem like unpolished, hasty add-ons that could easily have taken up the same amount of space and accomplished so much more  (e.g the hodge podge of maps that is Appendix C) and almost every single random chart should have been expanded upon significantly.  Maybe I am spoiled from years of browsing the amazing (and free) online content produced by D&D players and DMs, but I expect a lot more than 10 results for a "Short-Term Madness" table (especially when two of those results are stunned and unconscious - p.259) or 9 entries on a "Lingering Injuries" table (p.272).  Rolling on a table to see what kind of injury your PC gets should be one of those awesome d100 moments where the world stops and hangs on the rolling dice, all manner of calamities looming, not "Oh I lost another (insert 'eye' or 'arm/hand' or 'foot/leg')" or "I got another scar".

The art is also all over the place between and within the core rulebooks, and ultimately that is good and bad for me because I don't trust the art direction at WotC enough to want them to go all one direction or another.  This way I at least get some stuff that I enjoy.

Physically the books themselves are relatively impressive but I have some complaints here.  My MM is the best quality with no obvious printing errors, but there are noticeable problems with my PHB and DM's Guide.  My PHB had numerous instances of smeared ink from illustrations blurring text on facing pages and in several places there is fuzzy text in side bars (which almost seems like a layout error not a printing error, it seems like digital fuzziness).  The only printing flaw I noticed in my DM's Guide was that the black ink from the illustration on page 124 bled all over the text on page 125, smearing and blurring the entire first column.  I can still read everything on that page but it is a very noticeable smear.  I like the look and feel of the books, especially their heft in my hands when holding all three together, but I do not like the red and white Dungeons & Dragons logo on the spine and front cover and the white lettering for the book name.  I'm not sure why, but I just really don't like the new red and white banner logo.  I think it is mostly the red color, and now that I am focusing on it and asking myself why I don't like it, I think the stylized tearing at the end of the banner also grates on me.

Now for some bullet points from the DM's Guide:

• The generally flattened power curve of 5e is reflected in the bonuses for magic weapons and armor, which only range from +1 to +3 in this edition.
• Speaking of magical items, the magical item creation rules on pages 128-29 make it impractical for PCs to make anything but a common or uncommon magical item.  It would take a single PC 200 days of working 8 hour days to create a rare magical item (+1 armor or +2 weapon are rare magical items for reference).  It takes 2000 days of working 8 hour days to create a very rare item (+2 armor or +3 weapon) and 20,000 days (54 years!) to create a legendary item (e.g. cloak of invisibility or iron flask) .  Multiple PC spellcasters can split this time up, but I don't see any party using the rules as written to craft anything but common or uncommon items.  It takes 4 days to craft a common item and 20 days to craft an uncommon item (potion of healing is common, broom of flying is uncommon - illustrating a seemingly arbitrary assignment of rarity to magical items, as the broom of flying is pretty bad ass, carrying up to 400 pounds and coming with the ability to park itself anywhere within 1 mile and then come when summoned - compare with the carpet of flying which is nearly identical in terms of flying and lifting capacity, does not have the 1 mile self park and summon ability, and is rated as very rare!).
• Still on magical items, some of my favorite illustrations in the book are of the items but I go back and forth on their inclusion.  The item illustrations are awesome and mostly very well done. I really enjoyed seeing familiar items from my gaming past rendered in full color.  On the other hand there are a LOT of them - if the magic items were presented sans illustrations, it would have opened a lot more space for even more content. And ultimately, as cool as it is to see one artist's rendition of a Ring of Feather Falling, magical items have to be unique in appearance in game and are probably better left the province of the imagination.  I would have loved to see a lot more space allotted to random encounters and honestly if those had been lavished with illustrations instead of the magic items, they probably would have been the showstoppers for the book!

• There are some strange/illogical decisions made on the many (otherwise helpful) charts provided as DM's tools.  For example "Improvising Damage" (p.249)suggest being struck by lightning is equivalent to falling into a fire pit (2d10 damage), while I would have guessed a lightning strike to be at least worth 5d6 if not more.   Also the "Maintenance Costs" (p.127) of an abby or keep seem extremely high (20gp/day for an Abbey and 100gp/day for a keep) considering that any money the property could earn to offset maintenance costs by charging fees, collecting tithes or donations or selling goods is supposedly taken into account on the table.  You have to spend 3000 GP a month to have a keep on top of sinking all the taxes you take in for protecting the surrounding lands back into upkeep and on top of what you save by consuming what your own fields produce?  Ouch!  
• I like the quick resolution rules for mob/group attacks (p.250).  Large groups of low level combatants are much more of a threat to even high level PCs than they have been in any other edition with the compressed AC ranges and attack modifiers, and this is a great way to run that style of combat quickly.
• The "Epic Boons" (p.231) are a cool variant to allow progression past level 20, for those who like a high powered end game.  E.g. "Boon of Planar Travel" allows plane shifting once a combat (once between short rests) to one specific plane (and back to the Material Plane); "Boon of the Fire Soul" grants immunity to fire and the ability to cast burning hands at will.
• I wish Appendix C Maps had been replaced with something more closely tied in to the content generators provided for dungeons, settlements and wilderness areas.  I am probably spoiled by Dyson Logos and many more, but 6 full pages dedicated to maps could have delivered a lot more content.  Two pages each of dungeon, settlement and wilderness geomorphs comes to my mind.  
• The "Random Settlements" generator (p.112-114) is great. The PCs are wandering up to a town that is not detailed.  Let me roll a few d20s and give you an example: Mostly wealthy townsfolk, known for its flowers, with tension between races, ruled by a religious leader. Undead are stirring in the cemetery.  A tavern named "The Mysterious Lamb" is a gathering place for a secret society.  All in all a relatively uneventful set of rolls but they would give me plenty to riff on.  A few ideas that these rolls prompted in me just now:  While the undead stirring in the cemetery is beyond hackneyed, the detail about flowers made me think of tulips, then bulbs, and I think the secret society is developing new varieties that required the bulbs to be planted in undead flesh but produce stunning flowers which are upsetting and outcompeting the established, racially divided flower growing guilds; and the undead flowers probably also have magical properties that allow the secret society to manipulate people (pollen emitted in the homes of the wealthiest and most fashionable).  
• The chase rules (p.252-254) are simple but seem like they would work well, and I hope to see some bloggers publish expanded chase complications charts because I think they are a cool idea.
• I really like the illustration on page 248 that shows examples of creature sizes Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge and Gargantuan:

D&D 5e New Class - Old School Fighter

I want to take a stab at something I feel is lacking in 5e.  I love the design decision to allow completely different mechanics from class to class, but despite all the options there really isn't a completely basic fighter for those people who really just want to play an old school fighter. In the older editions of D&D if you chose the fighter class your character build choices were extremely simple (determine ability scores, HP, weapons and armor).  Your special powers were pretty much limited to having more HP and being better at attacking than other classes.  All you had to know how to do was get in a fight and roll d20s.  This is my stab at a similar "old school" Fighter class for 5e that is balanced for play alongside other 5e classes.

Why do I feel 5e has not provided such a character option?  Even the basic fighter class features will raise some old school players' hackles.  Second Wind is the first example - every fighter has a "limited well of stamina" that restores 1d10+fighter level HP.  Second wind can be used once between rests.  Next, fighting style - at 1st level every fighter also has to choose a fighting style.  There are six options here, ranging from Archery (+2 to ranged attacks) to Protection (Tank anyone? 5e allows one "reaction" per round, and Protection allows the fighter to impose disadvantage on any creature that attacks a target within five feet of the fighter as a reaction provided the fighter is wielding a shield).  At second level, all fighters gain a new ability called action surge - once between rests the fighter can take an extra action. At 9th level fighters can reroll a missed save (once between long rests at 9th level, twice at 13th and three times at 17th level). And of course one feature of all 5e classes is regular ability score increases.  In the case of the fighter, seven times total, between 4th and 19th level, one ability score is raised by 2 or two ability scores are raised by 1.  No ability score can be raised above 20 in this fashion.  And that just covers the basic class features.

Every 5e fighter has to choose a martial archetype at third level. The closest 5e comes to an old school fighter is the "Champion" martial archetype fighter. The champion archetype scores critical hits on a 19-20, at 7th level grants 1/2 proficiency bonus to any STR, DEX or CON check that does not already use the fighter's proficiency bonus, at 10th level chooses a second fighting style from the first level list, at 15th level crits on 18-20, and at 18th level a 4e-ism creeps in.  In 4e any creature is bloodied when it is reduced to half it's original HP or less.  The 18th level class feature of the champion archetype  allows the fighter to regenerate 5+CON mod HP per round while bloodied but not dead.  (to be clear 5e does not name this condition, but it is the bloodied condition from 4e)

So that doesn't sound very old school, right?  The other two martial archetypes are even less so.  The "Battle Master" martial archetype gets special dice called superiority dice which are used to perform special combat maneuvers (there are 16 different combat maneuvers to choose from here!).  The "Eldritch Knight" martial archetype casts spells (from the schools of abjuration and evocation only).  Need I say more?  

New Class:

 Old School 5e Fighter

 (all design decisions explained below)

 Hit Dice: 1d12 per fighter level

Hit Points at 1st Level: 15 + CON mod*

Hit Points at Higher Level: 1d12 (or 7) + CON mod per level after 1st **

Proficiencies: All armor, shields, simple weapons, martial weapons, Strength and Constitution Saving Throws (at 11th level add 1/2 proficiency bonus to DEX, INT, WIS and CHA Saving Throws as well)***

Skills:  Athletics and all other Strength based skill checks****

Old School 5e Fighter progression chart*****

Level	Proficiency Bonus******	AC Bonus*******	Damage Bonus********	Number of Attacks*********
1	+2	+1	-	1
2	+2	+1	-	1
3	+2	+1	+1	1
4	+3	+1	+2	1
5	+4	+1	+2	2
6	+4	+1	+3	2
7	+4	+1	+3	2
8	+4	+2	+4	2
9	+5	+2	+4	2
10	+5	+2	+5	2
11	+6	+2	+5	3
12	+6	+2	+5	3
13	+7	+2	+5	3
14	+7	+2	+5	3
15	+8	+2	+6	3
16	+8	+2	+6	3
17	+8	+2	+6	3
18	+9	+3	+6	3
19	+9	+3	+6	3
20	+9	+3	+6	4

[I had to make some hard decisions (e.g. including baked in AC and damage bonuses) but my main criterion was simplicity of mechanics in play.  A level based bonus to damage or AC is definitely not old school, but in play the bonus is just recorded on the character sheet and no further action is needed.  The player does not need to learn a new mechanic.  I tried to balance each point of variance from the standard 5e fighter as detailed below.]

* +5 starting HP to balance out the 1d10 HP restored by Second Wind

** d12 for HP: Average increase of +1 HP per level to balance out the + fighter level HP restored by Second Wind

*** +1/2 Proficiency Bonus to DEX/INT/WIS/CHA saves at level 11 is intended to balance out two things: the Indomitable 5e fighter class feature (at 9th level reroll any failed save, usable once between rests, twice between rests at 13th level and three times between rests at 17th level); and one set of ability score increases in a non-STR/DEX/CON stat (level 19 increase) not accounted for in the AC, Damage and Proficiency bonus increases detailed below.  

**** Without houseruling out Skills altogether, I felt giving proficiency on all STR based skills was the closest to Old School I could get.  At lower levels this might outweigh the second skill choice of a regular 5e fighter, but at 7th level the Champion archetype fighter gets 1/2 proficiency bonus on any STR, DEX or CON check which probably outweighs the full proficiency bonus on just STR skills up through 10th level.  Close enough for me.  

***** Please note there are no ability score increases for this class.  What you start out with is what you end up with as far as ability scores if you play an Old School 5e Fighter.  I have attempted to bake in equivalent bonuses to the class progression chart to account for the ability score increases of the standard 5e fighter (as detailed below).

******Proficiency Bonus: Increased +3 over 20 levels compared to standard 5e fighter to roughly balance out stat increases (assuming standard array fighter at 1st level [STR15 CON14 DEX13 INT12 WIS10 CHA8]) - Standard 5e fighter's STR mod and CON mod would both go from +2 to +5 with STR increased to 20 max (by level 8) and CON increased to 20 max (by level 16), and I pretty much ignored the level 19 ability score increases (which would not directly impact combat anyway as STR and CON are maxed out and DEX at +2 mod after level 8 ability score increase is the highest mod allowed by medium armor anyway) 

******* AC Bonus:  +1 At 1st level to balance out the Fighting Style (rough equivalent to Defense fighting style which grants +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor); +1 at level 8 to account for DEX bonus increase from standard 5e fighter stat increases;  +1 at level 18 to balance out Champion archetype fighter's regeneration while bloodied ability.

******** Damage Bonus to all attacks:  +1 at 3rd level is intended as a rough balance to the critical on 19-20 of the Champion archetype fighter; +1 at 4th, 6th and 8th level balances out STR mod increases from regular fighter's stat increases; +1 at 10th level is intended as a rough balance to the second fighting style selection (roughly balanced with dueling, which grants +2 to damage while wielding only one weapon); at 15th level +1 to balance out crit on 18-20

********* Number of Attacks is unchanged from base 5e Fighter