BASIC CROWDS

Crowds are treated as difficult terrain (movement is at half speed). Characters in a crowd benefit from soft cover (+4 bonus to AC).

A character in a crowd may also become entangled by the crowd. When moving through a crowd, a character must make a Reflex save (DC 12) or become entangled. A character can take a move action on their turn to attempt a new Reflex saving throw or Escape Artist check at the same DC. If they are successful, they are no longer considered entangled.

(An entangled creature suffers a -2 penalty to attack rolls and a -4 penalty to effective Dexterity. An entangled character’s speed is halved again, resulting in movement at one-quarter speed within the crowd, and they cannot run or charge. An entangled character who attempts to cast a spell must make a Concentration check (DC 15) or lose the spell.)

MOVING CROWDS: Crowds can move on initiative count 0 at the base speed of the creatures making up the crowd. When a crowd moves, characters in the crowd must make a Reflex save (DC 12) or become entangled by the crowd (see above).

In addition, moving crowds create a flow of traffic within the crowd which lasts until the crowd’s next turn. Moving perpendicular to the flow of traffic inflicts a -2 penalty on the character’s Reflex save to avoid becoming entangled. Moving directly against the flow of traffic inflicts a -4 penalty on the character’s Reflex save to avoid becoming entangled by the crowd.

Characters entangled in a moving crowd are carried along by the crowd’s movement. At the end of the crowd’s turn, they are moved in the direction of the flow of traffic one-half the distance traveled by the crowd. Entangled characters can attempt to resist this movement by making a Fortitude save (DC 12) as a free action, but on a failure they are knocked prone.

PANICKED CROWDS: When presented with an obvious danger, a crowd will move away from that danger with a base speed of 30 feet. If someone is actually injured or attacked, however, a crowd will generally panic. A panicked crowd will run away from the danger at four times their base speed.

If a panicked crowd cannot flee, characters within the crowd must make a Reflex save (DC 12) each round to avoid being crushed in the panic. On a failure, the character is knocked prone.

Characters who are knocked prone in a panicked or running crowd risk being trampled: On its turn, the crowd makes an attack roll against each prone character inside of it. Crowds are considered to have an attack bonus of +0, modified by the size of the creatures making up the crowd. If the attack is successful, the prone character suffers bludgeoning damage based on the size of the creatures making up the crowd (1d6 for medium creatures, see table).

Characters in a running or panicked crowd suffer a -4 penalty on checks to avoid becoming entangled or knocked prone by the crowd.

CROWD DAMAGE

CROWD MODIFIERS

CROWDS AND SIZE: Characters larger or smaller than Medium size should add their special size modifier for grapple checks to any check made to avoid becoming entangled or knocked prone by a crowd. The special size modifier for grapple checks of the creatures making up the crowd should be added as a modifier to the DC of those checks.

The special size modifier for a grapple check is as follows: Colossal +16, Gargantuan +12, Huge +8, Large +4, Medium +0, Small –4, Tiny –8, Diminutive –12, Fine –16.

HEAVY CROWDS: As a general rule of thumb, a crowd is considered a heavy crowd when there is an average of more than one creature per 5 feet. Characters in a heavy crowd benefit from cover (instead of soft cover), but suffer a -2 penalty when making checks to avoid being entangled or knocked prone by a crowd.

MANIPULATING CROWDS

You can attempt to direct a crowd’s movement by making a Diplomacy check (DC 15) as a full action or an Intimidate check (DC 20) as a free action. These checks are modified by the crowd’s general relationship with the character attempting the check (see the Diplomacy skill). If the crowd is panicked, the check is made at a -10 penalty.

OPPOSED ATTEMPTS: If two or more characters are trying to direct a crowd in different directions, they make opposed Diplomacy or Intimidate checks to determine who the crowd listens to. The crowd ignores everyone if none of the characters’ check results beat the minimum DCs given above.

MOB TEMPLATE

Unlike a generic crowd, a mob takes action (usually violent action). You can create a mob by applying a template to a base creature representing the typical member of the mob (see below). A mob is made up of approximately 12 creatures of the base type. Larger mobs are made up of many smaller mobs.

A mob uses all of the base creature’s statistics and special abilities, except as noted here:

Size: A mob takes up a space four times larger than the base creature and is considered a creature of the resulting size. (For example, a mob of Medium-size creatures would take up four 5-foot squares and would be considered a Large creature. A mob of Large creatures would take up sixteen 5-foot squares and would be considered a Gargantuan creature.)

Unlike other creatures, a mob’s space is shapeable. It can occupy any contiguous space and it can squeeze through any space large enough to contain one of its component creatures.

A mob has the same reach as the base creature.

Type: A mob gains the Mob subtype with the following qualities.

• A mob can move through squares occupied by enemies and vice versa without impediment, although a mob provokes an attack opportunity if it does so.
• A mob has no clear front or back and no discernible anatomy, so it is not subject to critical hits or flanking.
• A mob’s hit points represent its cohesion. Reducing a mob to 0 hit points or lower causes it to break up, though damage taken until that point does not degrade its ability to attack or resist attack. Mobs are never staggered or reduced to a dying state by damage.
• Mobs cannot be tripped or grappled.
• A mob takes half damage from all attacks and effects, except for spells and effects which affect an area (such as splash weapons and many evocation spells).
• A mob is immune to any spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures (including single-target spells such as hold person) unless the spell causes damage (in which case it deals half the damage it would deal to a single target) or is a mind-affecting effect (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).

Attack: A mob retains all the attacks of the base creature and also gains a slam attack if it didn’t already have one. This slam attack uses the base creature’s melee attack bonus and causes bludgeoning damage based on the size of the base creature (see the Crowd Damage table) plus the Strength modifier of the base creature.

Special Attacks: A mob retains all the special attacks of the base creature and gains those described below.

Improved Grab (Ex): When a mob hits with its slam attack, it can attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Trample (Ex): A mob’s trample attack deals bludgeoning damage equal to the mob’s slam attack + 1 ½ times its Strength modifier. Targets may attempt a Reflex save with a DC equal to 10 +  ½ the base creature’s HD  + the base creature’s Strength modifier.

Special Qualities: A mob retains all the special qualities of the base creature and gains those described below.

Heavy Crowd (Ex): A mob is considered to be a heavy crowd except that they take action on their own initiative count (and not initiative count 0). Characters in a mob are affected as if they were in a heavy crowd in all ways. Characters attempting to manipulate a mob suffer a -4 penalty to their check.

Mob Members (Ex): Although a mob is immune to any spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures, a character can use such an effect while targeting a specific creature within the mob. If the effect causes the target to die, fall unconscious, become paralyzed, or suffer similar incapacitation, the mob suffers 1d6 points of damage. Otherwise it has no effect on the mob.

Mob Qualities: See above.

Abilities: Str +4

Challenge Rating: +1

FATE OF A MOB: When a mob breaks up, each member must make a Fortitude save (DC 10). If the mob was broken up using nonlethal means, a failure on this saving throw indicates the member is unconscious (as a result of nonlethal damage). If the mob was broken up using lethal means, a failure on this saving throw indicates the member is unconscious and reduced to 1d4-2 hit points.

Design Notes for Advanced Rules: Crowds

I talked about my frustration with the DMG II a couple of days ago: It’s a book that has rules for a lot of situations that I find it useful to have rules for, but most of those rules are either needlessly complicated, unbalanced, incomplete, or some combination of three. One example of this, in my opinion, are the rules for burning buildings, which I’ve already discussed.

Another example are the rules for handling crowds, mobs, and traffic.

The most glaring problem is that there are different rules for handling crowds, mobs, and traffic. These are all obviously different facets of the same phenomenon (large groups of people), so it would make sense for them all to be based on the same mechanic. Instead they’re all based on different mechanics, which makes the rules more difficult to use and more difficult to master.

For example, traffic is supposed to be a “specific type of crowd”. But the rules for traffic alter the standard rules for crowds in about a half dozen different ways until they have fewer things in common with crowds than they have things not in common with crowds. (And even though traffic is a “specific type of crowd”, there are some forms of traffic which aren’t crowds. Yeah, that’s not confusing in the slightest.)

Meanwhile mobs are handled with a completely different mechanic which can basically be summed up like this: Apply a template to the base creature making up the mob in order to make the base creature more powerful than an an ancient red dragon.

Mobs are ridiculously overpowered. This not only makes it difficult for the DM to use the rules to construct interesting scenarios, it becomes completely untenable if the players decide to use the rules to their own advantage: There are a wide variety of ways for characters to accumulate a couple dozen people under their control or influence.

Mobs are also unnecessarily complicated. The description of the template alone takes up a page and a half of text — and applying it requires you to essentially create an entirely new stat block from scratch. This means that the rules can never be effectively used on-the-fly.

In the end, I decided to simply scrap the DMG II rules entirely. The rules I’ve devised for handling crowds can be found here. They’re designed to use existing abilities and conditions as much as possible, and to keep the rules simple enough that you can use them quickly and efficiently use them during play even if you’ve never looked at them before. They have only been playtested once — resulting in a very memorable experience — so I’d love to get feedback from anyone who uses them. The rules are also being released under the OGL.

I’ve found the DMG II to be a fairly frustrating supplement. It has rules for a lot of situations that I find it useful to have rules for, but I’ve found that essentially all of those rules are either needlessly complicated, unbalanced, incomplete, or some combination of the three.

Take the rules for burning buildings, for example: These rules have a marginal utility in designing an encounter with a building engulfed in flames. But they noticeably lack any rules for how such a fire might be started, prevented, or put out. The rules for how such a fire spreads are minimalistic almost to the point of non-existence (the fire spreads to a new 10′ by 10′ area every minute — which, paradoxically, means that the larger a fire is the longer it will take for it to spread outward). The rules also suggest reducing PC interactions with a burning building to a series of abstract skill checks encompassing several rounds at a time, oddly distancing them from what should be a fast-paced and dangerous encounter.

The rules I’ve devised for handling fires can be found below. They are being released under the OGL. Some of the material simply gathers existing rules for catching on fire, heat dangers, and the like from the DMG. The core of the rules are inspired from another source (check the Section 15 of the OGL), but I’ve significantly revised them with an eye towards streamlining them for easier use and reference.

ADVANCED RULES: FIRE

BASIC FIRES

A large fire is treated like a mindless construct with the following stats:

• Construct [fire]
• 1 HD (1d10) for every 5 ft. square it occupies (plus bonus hit points per a construct)
• Size determined by the number of squares it occupies
• No ability scores except for Dexterity 15
• BAB = ¾ HD (per cleric) (do not apply size modifier to attack bonus)
• Weapon Finesse (bonus feat)

A fire is immune to all attacks except water, cold, and smothering attacks.

• 1 gallon of water causes 1d6 points of damage
• Smothering a fire with a blanket causes 1d6 points of damage
• A quench spell destroys it completely

A fire can attack adjacent creatures, objects, or squares each round. It can make a number of attacks based on its size (see table).

SPREADING THE FIRE: When the fire attacks an adjacent square, it hits automatically and deals 1d6 points of damage. This is energy damage and is therefore halved against inanimate objects (although the DM can rule that certain materials are more vulnerable to fire and double this damage back to normal). The hit points of a square are determined by either its floor, wall, or ceiling (whichever is lowest).

Any items in the space being attacked are also struck by the fire and probably catch on fire. If an object in a space is on fire, the space it’s in also takes 1d6 points of damage each round.

As a special exception to the normal rule, accumulate all damage from a spreading fire into a single total for the round before applying the space’s hardness.

Once a square has lost half its hit points, the fire spreads to that square (increasing its size). However, once the square loses all of its hit points, the fire will burn out in that square (decreasing its size).

CHALLENGE RATING: A fire of size Large or smaller is CR 2. Larger fires are CR 4. Collapsing attacks or dangers increase the Challenge Rating by +1.

BUILDING COLLAPSE

Characters in a building with wooden ceilings and floors that have been burning at least 10 rounds may face collapse. There is a 20 percent chance each round in such a burning building that a character faces a +10 attack from a falling rafter or bit of ceiling; an attack that hits inflicts 2d6 points of damage.

If the fire has been burning for ten minutes or more, the entire ceiling might collapse instead (20 percent chance). In such a case, no attack roll is needed—all characters within suffer 8d6 points of damage (Reflex save, DC 15, for half damage).

CHARACTERS IN A FIRE

CATCHING ON FIRE: Creatures or objects struck by a fire suffer 1d6 points of damage. They are also at risk of catching on fire and must make a Reflex save (DC 15) to avoid this fate. If a character’s clothes or hair catch fire, they take an additional 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means they takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out. (That is, once they succeed on their saving throw, they are no longer on fire.)

A character on fire can automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse themselves. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like as a full round action permits the character another save with a +4 bonus.

Those unlucky enough to have their clothes or equipment catch fire must make a Reflex save (DC 15) for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character.

Objects on fire do not benefit from their hardness.

IN A FIRE: Characters moving through a fire provoke an attack of opportunity from the fire (there is no limit to the number of attacks of opportunity a fire can take). Characters who end their turn in a fire are automatically hit by the fire.

HEAT DANGERS: Characters in a burning building are considered to be in severe heat. Those standing close enough to the fire are considered to be in extreme heat (see table for the danger distance, depending on the size of the fire). See Heat Dangers in the DMG for more information.

Severe Heat: In severe heat (above 110° F), a character must make a Fortitude save once every 10 minutes (DC 15, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. Characters wearing heavy clothing or armor of any sort take a –4 penalty on their saves. A character with the Survival skill may receive a bonus on this saving throw and may be able to apply this bonus to other characters as well. Characters reduced to unconsciousness begin taking lethal damage (1d4 points per each 10-minute period). A character who takes any nonlethal damage from heat exposure now suffers from heatstroke and is fatigued. These penalties end when the character recovers the nonlethal damage she took from the heat.

Extreme Heat: Extreme heat (air temperature over 140° F, fire, boiling water, lava) deals lethal damage. Breathing air in these temperatures deals 1d6 points of damage per minute (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save every 5 minutes (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. Those wearing heavy clothing or any sort of armor take a –4 penalty on their saves. In addition, those wearing metal armor or coming into contact with very hot metal are affected as if by a heat metal spell.

SMOKE INHALATION: Characters close enough to be suffering extreme heat from a fire are also close enough to be breathing heavy smoke. They must make a Fortitude save each round (DC 15 +1 per previous check) or spend that round choking and  coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Smoke obscures vision, giving concealment (20 percent miss chance) to characters within it.

One of the nits that seems to get perennially picked in D&D is the Tumble skill. Specifically, the uses of the skill which allow a character to avoid attacks of opportunity: The DC 15 check to avoid attacks for moving through threatened areas and the DC 25 check to tumble right through an opponent’s space.

There are generally understood to be two shortcomings to these rules:

1. The game already makes it relatively difficult to control territory. For example, there is no effective way for a single person to guard a 10′ wide hallway — no matter how skilled they are and unskilled their opponents are. The Tumble skill exacerbates this because now you can’t even control the space you’re standing in: Say the PCs want to prevent someone from reaching the Lever of Doom at the end of a hallway — it doesn’t matter how many demigods you cram into the hallway, a 1st level tumbler can still move past them like water through a sieve.

2. The idea that some skill in tumbling would allow you to dextrously move past a slower and clumsier opponent is not problematic in and of itself. The problem is that the DC for check is flat: It would be fine if the 5th level rogue could tumble past a whole brigade of 1st level warriors, but it shouldn’t be possible for that same rogue to tumble past Cyrano de Bergerac or Benedict of Amber.

Essentially, the Tumble skill needs to somehow take the skill of the person you’re tumbling past into account.

SOLUTIONS

Over the years I have seen several attempted solutions (and attempted many myself). These include:

1. Opposed tumble checks.
2. The tumble check is opposed by a Reflex saving throw.
3. The tumble check replaces your AC.
4. The tumble check is added to your AC.
5. Add your tumble bonus (sans Dex) to your AC (either with or without a flat-DC check).
6. Add the level of the character you’re tumbling past to the DC of the check.
7. Add the BAB of the character you’re tumbling past to the DC of the check.
8. Add the melee attack bonus of the character you’re tumbling past to the DC of the check.
9. The tumble check is opposed by a melee attack roll. (If the target succeeds at the opposed check, a new attack roll is made to resolve the AoO.)
10. A flat-DC check grants you a flat +4 dodge bonus to AC. (The Mobility feat either makes the check unnecessary or stacks.)

PROBLEMS

None of these are entirely satisfactory, in my opinion. The reasons include:

1. Tumbling is not a required skill for being a highly-skilled swordsman. Not only doesn’t it make sense for my ability to hit your with a sword to be dependent on my ability to (literally) jump through hoops, it also doesn’t solve the inherent imbalance you’re trying to correct: The tumbler will still be able to tumble past the finest swordsmen in the world (since it’s unlikely they’ve taken ranks in Tumble).

2. This mitigates the problem better than an opposed Tumble check (since Reflex saves improve automatically). And although Reflex saves still aren’t tied to melee prowess, the conceptual match is slightly better: It makes sense that quick reflexes would allow you to react quicker to a tumbler. But this solution doesn’t actually fix the game balance issues: Saving throws simply don’t advance as quickly as skill ranks do. The tumblers still outstrip the abilities of the fighters, it just takes them slightly longer to do it.

3. Tumbling should never make you easier to hit than if you just casually strolled by the person you’re attacking. It is relatively trivial to come up with situations where replacing your AC with your Tumble check would result in precisely that.

4. One interesting facet of the 3rd Edition rules is that a character’s AC is, essentially, a special case of the central resolution mechanic in which you take 10 and then add your various bonuses. (In fact, many variants exist where you roll a d20 instead of effectively taking 10 to determine your AC against any particular attack.) But when you think of AC in this way, the problem with this solution immediately becomes apparent: In addition to your own tumbling skill, you’re also adding a second d20 roll to your total. This is obviously not balanced.

5. But simply adding your Tumble bonus doesn’t work, either. It eliminates that second d20 roll, but you’re still faced with the fact that this would become a huge bonus. Consider the fact that the game is obviously balanced so that two characters of the same level both have at least a decent opportunity to hit each other. Tacking on a +20 bonus to AC obviously throws that out of whack. If that doesn’t convince you, simply consider the fact that a magic item conferring a +10 bonus to Tumble costs roughly the same as a +3 bonus to AC.

6. Adding the level of the character you’re tumbling past to the DC of the check at least takes some measure of the skill of the opponent you’re facing. But level is only proximate to combat, and the system begins suffering some real problems when you try to use it with monsters (many of which have HD higher than their CR).

7. Adding the BAB, on the other hand, is a much better solution. I would recommend lowering the base DCs slightly to compensate in the tumbler’s favor here (so the checks would DC 10 + BAB and DC 20 + BAB). The only problem with this is that BAB, while a better proximate of combat prowess than level, is still only proximate: There are many, many things which improve your ability to make an attack. But this is definitely a workable solution.

8. Adding the full melee attack bonus, on the other hand, doesn’t work. The problem simply becomes that the resulting DCs end up being far too high to be reasonable for a character of the same level. You can mitigate this somewhat by stripping away most or all of the base DC of the check (so the DCs become equal to the melee attack bonus and the melee attack bonus + 10 for the two checks), but this only mitigates the problem. And, at low levels, it results in check DCs which are too low.

9. This is the solution proposed by Monte Cook in Arcana Evolved and then later picked up by Mike Mearls in Iron Heroes. Cook makes the basic “avoid AoO” a straight opposed check, while effectively giving the tumbler a -5 penalty on a check to tumble through someone’s space. Cook and Mearls are both savvy game designers and, as one might expect, this is probably the best solution we’ve looked at so far: It turns out that attack bonuses and the skill bonus of a specialist tend to stay within reasonable distance of each other at any given level. And by making the check a gatekeeper for the actual resolution of the AoO (the check doesn’t determine whether the AoO succeeds or not, it determines whether the AoO can be attempted), Cook makes sure that tumbling never makes it more likely for the tumbler to be hit.

The only criticism of this method is that it essentially doubles the amount of time it takes to resolve the action. This is not necessarily the end of the world, but whenever you add a die roll to the game you’re slowing it down. Slow it down enough and it’s no longer fun to play.

10. This is a fairly elegant solution, but suffers from two shortcomings. First, it fails to address the “move through their space” element. Second, the lack of scaling with skill has simply been moved from the person being tumbled past to the person doing the tumbling: No matter how skilled you are at tumbling, you still get nothing more than that flat +4 bonus to AC. Tying the size of the AC bonus to the result of the Tumble check can solve the second problem, but only clumsily or through the use of a chart look-up (neither of which, in my opinion, are desirable).

DESIGN GOALS

So, taking all of that into consideration, is there a solution which works? For me, a successful rule would need:

1. To take into account the skill of both the tumbler and the person being tumbled past. Highly skilled swordsmen should be tougher to tumble past than neophyte warriors; highly skilled tumblers should be better at tumbling past people than amateur acrobats.

2. Never result in the tumbler being easier to hit than if they hadn’t tumbled.

3. Be simple to use and easy to remember. And, to that end, consistent with other skill checks. (In general, if three or four different tasks use the same mechanic, it’s easier than if those tasks each use different mechanics.)

4. Minimize the number of rolls needed to resolve the action.

THE SOLUTION

I’m going to make the rather radical suggestion that part of the problem in trying to solve this problem is that there are actually multiple actions trying to be resolved simultaneously. In reality, there are three things these Tumble checks are attempting to handle:

1. The ability to move around the battlefield quickly and nimbly (minimizing the risk posed from people taking shots at you as you run by them).

2. The ability to dextrously move through someone’s space.

3. The ability to nimbly avoid a specific attack aimed at you.

I’m going to sugggest that the solution is to split these different actions up and resolve them independently of each other.

TUMBLING MOVE: By making a Tumble check (DC 15) you gain a +4 dodge bonus to Armor Class against attacks of opportunity caused when you move out of or within a threatened area. You can move up to half your speed without penalty. You can move at your speed by accepting a -10 penalty to this check and you can run by accepting a -20 penalty to this check.

TUMBLE PAST: You can attempt to tumble through an opponent’s space as part of normal movement. Because you are entering an opponent’s space, this provokes an attack of opportunity from the opponent. You must make a Tumble check (DC 25). If the attack of opportunity is successful or the Tumble check fails, you move back 5 feet in the direction you came, ending your movement there. Otherwise, you move through the opponent’s space and can continue your move normally.

AVOID ATTACK OF OPPORTUNITY: When you are hit as a result of an attack of opportunity you provoked, you may use an attack of opportunity or swift action to attempt a Tumble check to negate the hit. The hit is negated if your Tumble check result is greater than the opponent’s attack roll. (Essentially, the Tumble check becomes your Armor Class if it is higher than your regular AC.)

DESIGN NOTES

This solution keeps most resolutions to a simple skill check vs. a flat DC (the easiest of all possible skill checks), but it never negates the opponent’s ability to interfere with the tumble. In one key regard it borrows Cook’s solution of opposing the Tumble check with an attack roll, but by borrowing from the Mounted Combat feat mechanic of negating a hit it simplifies Cook’s solution: Instead of two separate resolutions, there is essentially only one resolution point (nobody is ever asked to roll more than a single check to resolve the action).

We’ve also made a successful use of this ability more useful, because it actually uses up the opponent’s attack of opportunity. As a result, the character must burn a limited resource (either an attack of opportunity or a swift action) in order to perform the attempt. Any character with basic training in tumbling can attempt to dodge their way nimbly through combat (by making a flat DC check to receive a bonus to AC), but if a character wants to be able to really dance through a mob of opponents, they should pick up the Combat Reflexes feat.

Those flat DCs also hide another useful design feature: Eventually the tumbler won’t have to actually make those checks. At that point, the only check which becomes important is the opposed check to negate the hit. This further speeds up gameplay while satisfying our design goals.

I have a general design philosophy of creating widely useful abilities. There are several reasons for this:

It tends to create simpler and more useful rules. When you aren’t trying to narrowly tailor a rule to model a very specific situation, you can usually leave a lot of the special case rules — the little nitpicky rules that make it difficult to remember or apply the rule on the fly — by the wayside.

It leads to emergent behavior in the system. This is where complex strategies and long-lasting appeal come from. Games like Candyland or Monopoly which can essentially only be played in one way successfully (“roll the dice” or “roll the dice and buy every piece of property you can”) are relatively boring games. Games like Chess or Go, on the other hand, have only a handful of rules, but those rules lead to emergent behaviors that lead to complex and varied strategies.

It usually empowers the players. Some designers tend to forget that roleplaying games are, fundamentally, about letting the players do really cool things. The definition of “really cool things” will depend on the game you’re playing and the genre you’re aiming for (in some cases “really cool things” will include “dying horribly at the hands of creatures from beyond time, space, and human ken”), but roleplaying games are still fundamentally about players doing things.

The problem with this design philosophy is that sometimes it will lead to an unbalanced rule. In the interests of keeping a new rule flexible and useful, the rule will end up being too useful. There are basically two forms of this:

An ability becomes so useful that every character ends up having it. This is generally undesirable because it reduces the complexity and variety of the game. When every character looks like a cookie-cutter copy of every other character the game has lost its dynamic quality.

An ability becomes so widely applicable that it is constantly being used. Since using any rule tends to take a certain amount of time, this tends to bog down gameplay in an undesirable way.

(There are exceptions to these rules, but they tend to be core components of the system. For example, saving throws are so useful that every character has them. Making a melee attack is so widely applicable that attack rolls are constantly being made. You’ll notice, however, that the basic rules for these widely useful and widely applicable abilities are as simple as they possibly can be: Roll a single die, add modifiers, compare to a difficulty class.)

The fact that my design philosophy can occasionally lead to problematically over-powered rules is not a problem. Or, rather, it’s not a problem as long as you have a chance to properly analyze and playtest the rules. (This is, sadly, not as common in the RPG industry as it should be. I remember one product I worked on with a dozen other writers. Towards the end of the design cycle, the editor asked the writers to submit a list of their playtesters so that they could be properly credited. I promptly sent in my list of a five playtesters. When the book was published there was a grand total of six playtesters listed.)

This is all one long prelude to saying: Upon playtesting and analysis, my initial “Thoughts on Tumbling” (posted March 28th) had two problems:

First, a stupid mistake. In translating my thoughts on tumbling from my house ruled version of D&D back to the normal version of the game I messed up some terminology. I said “swift action” when I should have said “immediate action”.

Second, the ability to use tumbling to negate any hit is too widely useful once you add in Combat Reflexes. Combat Reflexes basically becomes a must-have feat.

So, in fact, my mistake in using “swift action” instead of “immediate action” actually becomes prophetic in a sense: You should only be able to use tumbling to negate hits resulting from attacks of opportunity you provoke. (Which means that “swift action” is, in fact, the correct terminology.)

I have revised the essay as it appears on the Creations page, but I am leaving the original posting of the essay intact so that the two versions an be compared (if anyone should so desire).