The beautiful abstraction of inflationary hit points is an efficient, streamlined, and (most importantly) fun way of handling combat damage.

Once you get outside of combat, however, they do take a toll.

Falling damage is oft-cited, but doesn’t really bug me any more: If your character is capable of punching out a dragon (and they are), the fact that they can jump off a skyscraper doesn’t really seem that implausible. My philosophy is let the demigods be demigods.

But the one tack-on effect that does bug me is the loss of stealth-based play. You can’t just sneak past the guards, because in practice that usually just means that you end up with enemies in front and behind you. And since the system is designed to make it difficult to take out your typical opponent in one hit (because that doesn’t make for a fun combat), it’s impossible to execute a “quiet sweep” (by taking out opponents without raising the alarm). So, in general, your only viable option within the mechanics is to go for a full breach every time. And this is a problem that is typically exacerbated as the PCs gain levels.

(You’d think that having a wider range of weaker opponents would counteract this trend, but in practice it doesn’t because the players don’t have a reliable way of knowing which opponents are weak enough for the “guaranteed take-out”. Since a failed stealth attempt will generally put you in a bad position and the group can usually just overwhelm targets they could successfully take-out during a stealth op, my gameplay experience suggests that they’re rarely willing to take the gamble with the odds stacked so heavily against them. This could be addressed by adding a mechanic that would allow PCs to figure out “how tough is this guy?”.)

Another solution, of course, would be to increase the lethality of the system. The D20 version of Call of Cthulhu, for example, lowered the Massive Damage Threshold to 10. This encourages stealth-focused play from both sides — it makes the PCs vulnerable in open melees and makes it possible for them to take out opponents in a single, stealthy blow.

Of course, in D&D, setting the MDT to 10 would simply turn the game into a big crap shoot of save-or-die. Not much fun. I’ve long been tempted to play around with setting the MDT to a character’s Constitution score + HD in a D20 game just to see what would happen. That might work for an E6 game; although beyond that point the lethality would start creeping back up into save-or-die territory.

But I digress. My point is, using MDT to solve the problem will also impact how combat itself plays out. Which may not actually be desirable. So let me tweak it a little bit and propose something different.

SURPRISE DAMAGE THRESHOLD

Create a “surprise damage threshold”. If a flat-footed character suffers more damage than their surprise damage threshold during the surprise round, they are knocked unconscious.

This rule allows the PCs to dogpile a single sentry or small group to help guarantee that their stealthy behavior pays off. And by requiring the damage to be dealt during the surprise round, you’re eliminating random knock-outs at the start of every fight. (The flat-footed requirement is there to make this strictly about achieving surprise.)

What value should the SDT be set at? That’ll probably require some tweaking and playtesting, but Constitution score + HD might not be a bad place to start. You could also add a Fortitude save like the regular MDT rules require.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 1D: THE COMMON ROOM AT NIGHT

March 10th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1D: The Common Room at Night

In which further friends are met as strangers, recompenses are paid for a broken door, and the matter of several strange documents become of quizzical importance…

As I’ve mentioned before, the players for my Ptolus campaign were originally scattered to all corners of the country: Indiana, Iowa, Arizona, and Minnesota. The group included my oldest friend, one of the players from my original 3rd Edition campaign, my brother, and my girlfriend. This was, in short, the only way I could play with these people.

Today we’re fortunate enough to have a plethora of online game tables to choose from. Back in 2007, there weren’t as many options to choose from. And most of them were expensive. IIRC, one involved purchasing a $50 piece of software for the GM and then $25 licenses for all of the players. With 5 players it would have set me back $175, which I considered to be a fairly ridiculous price.

The solution I eventually settled on was ScreenMonkey: It had the dual advantages of being affordable and not requiring any special software for my players. ScreenMonkey allows the GM to host a session that can be accessed through any browser. That being said, it’s not a great piece of software and — at least when I was using it — prone to severe lag. But it handled dice rolling, let me display maps, and allowed the players to move their miniatures around.

To supplement ScreenMonkey we also used Ventrilo and, later, Skype for voice-chat. And we used the SSA-X2 PDF character sheets to conveniently swap standardized character sheets.

Which basically sums up what you need for a virtual tabletop:

• Ability to share graphics (preferably with battlemap and miniature support).
• Dice roller.
• Ability to talk to each other.

With that being said, I’d also like:

• Ability to tab and/or splitscreen multiple graphics.
• Integrated private messaging.
• Fog of war. (Customized to individual PCs would be great.)

I know lots of people also like to see integrated mechanical support for their systems of choice (character sheets, initiative trackers, etc.). But I’ve found they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth: I’d rather keep the digital interface clean and simple and let people manage initiative and character sheets and all that the same way they do at the physical table.

PREPPING THE ELECTRONIC TABLE

With that being said, I haven’t done a lot of gaming at electronic tables. Partly this is because I don’t do a lot of gaming with strangers. Partly this is because my gaming schedule is already filled beyond capacity with face-to-face games.

But largely, speaking as a Game Master, it’s because prepping for an electronic table requires a lot more work than prepping for a table game.

Largely, this is because I’ve found that people tend to have very different standards for what they consider “graphically acceptable” on a computer screen. When I scratch out some lines using colored markers on a Chessex battlemat, players at the table tend to simply provide closure and imagine vast halls of cyclopean majesty. When I’ve taken the same players and shown them the same chicken-scratchings on a virtual tabletop, however, it doesn’t seem to work.

(I eventually started using Dundjinni with the Old School map pack. This is the only mapping software I’ve found that lets me crank out polished maps in about the same time it takes me to sketch them out by hand. It’s not glitzy and it still needs to pre-prepped for a digital table, but it’s of a high enough quality that my players stopped getting perceptibly yanked out of the game.)

But this also goes beyond battlemaps: Stuff that can be quickly shown at the gaming table without any effort at all requires special prep for the virtual environment. Something as simple as holding up a bestiary and showing the picture of a monster requires scanning the image and getting it into a format (and location) where it can be displayed to the players. (This is becoming less of a hassle as more and more of my RPG library becomes digital, although I still need to get the picture out of the PDF.)

The net result of all this is not only that prepping is more labor-intensive for a virtual tabletop, but that I also find the virtual tabletop inhibits improvising. If my tabletop players unexpectedly go into a random building, it’s not hard for me to whip up floorplans on the fly. On the digital table, however, there’s just no way for me to pull that off in any sort of smooth or effective way.

In many ways I find this similar to using detailed miniature terrain like DwarvenForge. It’s fabulous. And if I was independently wealthy I would hire somebody to make and customize miniature terrain for my campaigns full-time. But it’s too time-consuming for me to use it on a regular basis.

BABBLE
Level: Brd 2, Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: Up to 3 creatures + 1 creature per level
Duration: 1 hour/level
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

This spell curses those afflicted by removing their ability to speak, read, or otherwise communicate in the language they share most in common. (This will most typically be the common tongue itself.) This is not limited merely to communication with  each other — rather, the language itself is stricken entirely from their minds for the duration of the spell.

The babble cannot be dispelled, but it can be removed with a break enchantment, limited wish, miracle, remove curse, or wish spell.

Material Component: A lump of clay which transforms into a small model of a ziggurat if at least one target fails their saving throw.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 1C: MEETING ELESTRA

March 10th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

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