Turn Check

A turning attempt is a burst effect with a radius of 60 feet. The cleric sets the DC of a turning by making a turn check:

d20 + cleric turning level + Charisma modifier

Saving Throw

Undead in the range of a turning must make a Will save against the DC set by the cleric’s turn check. An undead can Take 10 on this saving throw. Turn resistance is added as a bonus to this roll.

Effects of Turning

Even if an undead succeeds at their saving throw, they are still shaken as long as they remain within 60 feet of the cleric (-2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks) for the duration of the turning attempt.

Any undead affected by a turning attempt cannot approach within 60 feet of the cleric, nor can they take any action (direct or indirect) against the cleric or anyone within 60 feet of the cleric. Any undead affected within 60 feet of the cleric must immediately back away to a minimum of 60 feet. If the cleric approaches affected undead, the undead must back away as soon as possible.

If an undead fails their saving throw by 10 or more, they are frightened and must flee for 1 minute (as per the normal turning rules).

If an undead fails their saving throw by 20 or more, they are controlled or destroyed (as per the normal turning rules).

Duration

As long as the cleric concentrates, a turning attempt lasts for 1 minute (10 rounds) per turning level of the cleric. Any new undead coming within 60 feet of the cleric during this time are affected by the turning unless they make the Will saving throw.

A cleric can use additional turning attempts to force new saving throws for undead previously unaffected, or to extend the duration of the turning. As long as no lapse in concentration takes place, these additional turning attempts do not allow a new save for any undead already affected by the turning.

DESIGN NOTES

In my experience, the by-the-book turning rules are broken. When it works, it either makes an encounter too easy or its completely useless. Worse yet, this tends to shift with level: At low levels, turning generally makes undead encounters too easy and anti-climactic. At high levels, it’s useless for anything except cleaning up mooks who are almost incapable of touching the PCs. And there’s no meaningful “sweet spot” in the middle because any given turn attempt is binary: Either its completely meaningless or it ends the encounter.

The problem, as I see it, arises from the twice decisions to (a) make turning dependent on the undead’s Hit Dice; and (b) have no Constitution score for undead. Without a Constitution score, designers need to pump up an undead’s HD in order to give them enough hit points to survive against the increasingly powerful attacks of the fighters and arcanists. But, as a result of these extra HD, the higher-CR undead simply outstrip the cleric’s turning ability.

These optional rules try to address these problems in three ways:

First, by having the cleric’s check set a Will save DC for the undead. This not only causes the ability to scale better against undead with higher CRs, it also creates a varied reaction: Some undead will make their saves, others will not.

Second, by having a range of possible reactions (depending on the margin of success for the check), it makes turning more dynamic and (again) helps to scale the ability with level: A high-level cleric taking on mook skeletons will unleash a wave of divine force strong enough to turn their undead bones to dust. But when that same cleric faces off against a lich with a CR equal to his level, he’ll still be able to have some success (even if may need to struggle for that success).

Third, by designing the default level of success into an ability which allows the cleric to control a battlefield, but not instantly end an encounter. (The goal here was to create something that looked more like the bog-standard Hollywood version of turning: The vampire must avoid the holy symbol, but is not driven into a mindless panic by it.)

The disadvantage of this system is the variability of results: By having both the cleric and the undead roll 1d20 with opposed results, you’re introducing a 40-point range of possible results. Even with these results on a bell curve, this wide range causes some problems (particularly because the range of effects only covers a 20-point difference).

This high variability is combated in two ways:

First, the undead is allowed to Take 10 on its Will save. This is a non-standard exception to the normal rules, but it means that a powerful undead will never be forced to tuck its tail between its legs or be turned into a dust by a much-less powerful priest due to the random capriciousness of the dice.

Second, the cleric is allowed to bolster his previous turn attempts by burning another turn attempt. Clerics typically get a lot more turn attempts than they will use in a day anyway, and this gives a practical use for those “wasted” resources.

Obviously one of these reduces the variability of the undead’s results and the other reduces the variability of the cleric’s results, so overall balance is maintained.

I’ve been using these rules with great success in my campaigns for more than half a decade now.

INTERESTING VARIATION: Have the turn apply as a 180-degree cone, so that it only affects undead in the direction the cleric is facing. Allow the cleric to switch the direction of this cone as a free action (on their turn) or an immediate action (when it’s not their turn).

TURNING FEATS: Many official sourcebooks for the game now have feats that allow a cleric to use their turning attempts to produce other effects besides repelling undead. These are another great way for clerics to use their turn attempts as a valuable resource.

The rules for how to handle the beginning of combat, awareness, surprise, initiative order, and flat-footedness are some of the sloppiest and most poorly written rules I’ve ever seen in an RPG. A recent forum discussion at Giant in the Playground got me thinking about these rules again, and so I went through the muddle mess of the Dungeon Master’s Guide and tried to pull out all the actual rules for starting combat.

STARTING COMBAT – BY THE BOOK

Combat can start in one of three scenarios:

Scenario 1. Only one side is aware of the other.
Scenario 2. Both sides become aware of the other at the same time.
Scenario 3. Some, but not all, creatures on one or both sides become aware of the other side.

Determining Awareness: Use sight ranges, Spot checks, Listen checks, and so on to determine when combatants become aware of each other.

This is one of the places where the rules are vague: A multitude of sins can be covered by the phrase “and so on”. I would argue that the phrase is specifically there in order to allow for things like Mexican stand-offs, unexpected assaults during social events, and the like. If you walk up to a guy with a big smile on your face and then punch him in the gut, he may be aware of your presence but he is not aware of the combat. I would argue that a Sense Motive check, rather than a Spot check, is the appropriate way to determine awareness in this scenario.

Preparing for Combat: If one side is unaware of the other, the side that is aware may make preparations before combat begins. The DM may track this time in rounds to determine how much the aware side can accomplish before the unaware combatants become aware of them. If the unaware side becomes aware, combat begins normally. If the unaware side remains unaware, the aware combatants still gain a surprise round (see below).

So when, exactly, does combat start? Basically, there are four scenarios: (1) If both sides are aware, combat starts immediately without a surprise round. (2) If only some creatures on both sides are aware, combat starts immediately with a surprise round for the aware creatures. (3) If one side is completely unaware, then the aware side can choose when to start combat. And they can either choose to start it with a surprise round or they can all delay their actions and start it with a normal round in which they all get to go first. (4) If one side is completely unaware and only some creatures on the other side are aware, then the aware creatures make the choice of when to start combat (and they can wait to start combat while they make other creatures on their side aware).

Surprise Round: If only some creatures are aware at the beginning of combat, the aware creatures roll initiative and can take a single standard action during the surprise round. The unaware combatants are considered flat-footed during the surprise round. Once the surprise round is completed, everyone else rolls initiative and combat continues normally.

Couple of notes here: First, the rule that unaware combatants don’t roll initiative until after the surprise round is completed is an unnecessary rule. You can roll initiative for everyone at once and it won’t make the slightest difference in how combat plays out. In fact, I roll initiative for the PCs at the end of combat and use those initiative results for the next combat — this speeds up the beginning of combat, instead of immediately deflating tension by having everyone roll their initiatives.

Similarly, the rule that initiative is rolled at a different time depending on whether the two sides can immediately interact with each other or not — the only distinction drawn between these scenarios — is a waste of paper.

Second, the rules on being flat-footed are contradictory. The rules for the flat-footed condition in the DMG reads “a character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed”. Following this rule, once a character has taken an action during the surprise round they are no longer flat-footed.

But the PHB says you’re flat-footed “before your first regular turn in the initiative order”, which means that EVERYONE is flat-footed during the surprise round.

According to the rules for errata, the PHB rule supercedes the DMG rule in this respect. But, of course, the PHB rule doesn’t make a lick of sense. It also makes it so that the last person to take action in the surprise round is highly motivated to simply delay so that they can take the first action in the regular round of combat — a decision which only makes sense at a metagame level.

This also points out another disparity in the rules: If the PCs completely surprise another group, they CAN’T delay their actions into regular combat because they haven’t rolled initiative yet. But if one of their opponents is aware of them and can take an action during the surprise round, they can now delay their actions and act first in the regular combat. So, literally, you are MORE capable of taking a full round action before your opponents do if one of your opponents is capable of shouting a warning to their friends.

Newcomers – Aware: If new combatants join the combat, and they are aware of the combat when they join it, they take their actions before everyone else in the round. The order in which they take their actions is determined by their Dexterity scores.

This is a bad rule. The reasons for having them act first in the round make sense — they can, after all, choose the moment when they enter combat if they’re aware of it. But the order in which they take those actions should either be determined by opposed initiative checks or, failing that, their initiative bonuses. Bypassing both of those mechanics and going straight to their Dexterity scores doesn’t make any sense.

Newcomers – Unaware: If new combatants join the combat,and they are unaware of the combat when they join it (e.g., opening a door and unexpectedly finding people fighting behind it), they roll initiative checks and take their actions normally during the initiative sequence.

I would argue that these rules should be scrapped entirely. The proper way to handle this is for ALL new combatants to roll initiative checks normally. (With a “new combatant” being defined as either someone who is aware of the combat or someone who the other combatants are aware of.) New combatants who are unaware, however, cannot take any action during the first round.

This rule neatly models all scenarios: When new combatants and old combatants become aware of each other at the same time, their ability to react to each other depends on their initiative checks. When new combatants are aware of the combat before they join it, they can choose when to join in at a time of their choosing (and will not be flat-footed when they do). And when the existing combatants become aware of the new combatants before the new combatants become aware of them, they have a chance to react to them before the new combatants can take an action against them.

Simultaneous Action: The DM can attempt to cope with the consequences of simultaneous action in a completely ad hoc fashion if it seems appropriate (e.g., having a trap triggered by a character during the round not take effect until the end of the round).

And that’s it. As you can see, my snide comments aside, the actual rules for handling this scenario only comprise about seven paragraphs of text.

STARTING COMBAT – THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

BEGINNING COMBAT

The way in which a combat begins depends on the awareness of the participants. If only some of the combatants have awareness, then combat begins with a surprise round (see below). There are four basic ways in which a combat can begin:

(1) If everyone on both sides are aware of the other side, combat starts immediately without a surprise round.

(2) If only some creatures on both sides are aware of the other side, combat starts immediately with a surprise round for the aware combatants.

(3) If one side is completely unaware, then the aware side can choose when to start combat. They can also choose whether to start it with a surprise round or they can all delay their actions and start it with a normal round in which they get to take the first actions.

(4) If one side is completely unaware and only some combatants on the other side are aware, then the aware combatants make a choice of when to start combat (and they can wait to start combat while they make other combatants on their side aware).

DETERMINING AWARENESS

A combatant has awareness if they know that combat is about to begin. At a bare minimum, this requires that the combatant be aware of the presence of their opponents. In most cases, therefore, awareness can be determined by using Spot check and Listen checks. In some cases, a Sense Motive check may be appropriate.

Spot Checks: A simple Spot check

Concealment: Even if a Spot check is successful, if the opponent has concealment the percentage concealment chance applies each round. (For example, if a party of orcs is approaching the party through a foggy forest, there is a 20% chance that — even if the Spot check would normally succeed — the orcs will not be seen.)

Cover: If a creature has total cover, it cannot be seen. (For example, if a party of orcs is on the other side of a solid wall, a Spot check cannot be used to become aware of the orcs.)

Sight Ranges: Use the tables below to determine the maximum range of sight in different terrains.

Listen Checks: If an opponent is not detected through a Spot check, it may still be possible to become aware of them with a Listen check. (Whether this results in an awareness that combat is about to begin will depend on how accurately the character identifies what they’re hearing and what action they take in response to it.)

Sense Motive: If a non-hostile encounters suddenly becomes a violent one, a Sense Motive check opposed by the Bluff check of the person initiating hostilities is the most appropriate way to determine if a character is aware that combat is about to begin. (The character initiating hostilities, of course, is automatically aware.)

INITIATIVE

Once combat has begun, all combatants roll an initiative check (1d20 + Dexterity modifier + initiative modifiers). Characters act in order, counting down from highest result to lowest. In every round that follows, the characters act in the same order (unless a character takes an action that results in his or her initiative changing. If two or more combatants have the same initiative check result, the combatants who are tied act in order of total initiative modifier (highest first). If there is still a tie, the tied characters should roll again to determine which one of them goes before the other.

SURPRISE ROUND

If some but not all of the combatants are aware of their opponents, a surprise round happens before regular rounds begin. Any combatants aware of the opponents can act in the surprise round, so they roll for initiative. In initiative order (highest to lowest), combatants who started the battle aware of their opponents each take a standard action during the surprise round. You can also take free, immediate, and swift actions during the surprise round. If no one or everyone is surprised, no surprise round occurs.

FLAT-FOOTED COMBATANTS

Combatants are flat-footed until they take an action during combat (either during the surprise round or during regular rounds). A flat-footed combatant loses their Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), cannot make attacks of opportunity, and cannot take swift actions.

NEW COMBATANTS

If a new combatant becomes aware of the combat after it has begun, the new combatant immediately rolls an initiative check. The new combatant takes their turn normally in the initiative order, but cannot take any action during their first turn. (Note that a new combatant may become aware of the combat without the existing combatants becoming aware of them. If this happens, the new combatant may be able to safely “burn” their turn of inaction without revealing themselves.)

As part of the Ptolus campaign I’ve been running, my players have recently been running through Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies. Basically the entire complex has become part of Ghul’s Labyrinth (specifically, it’s where the tunnels leading from the “Trouble With Goblins” adventure from the Ptolus sourcebook end up). As part of this I replaced the large iron door in area 10 of the complex with a door of blue steel and then put the password for opening the door safely on the other side (essentially creating a dead-end for the adventure).

But, because I like to be prepared, I did make a decision regarding what the password would be. In my notes for the dungeon I wrote:

PASSWORD: Athvor Krassek (the name of the head researcher, although there’s no way to know that)

LOCATION OF THE PASSWORD: The password is located in the relief work on the other side of the door. The goblins know it (which is how they accessed the compound).

I figured there was an outside chance that the goblins might get captured and, therefore, be available for interrogation. Since the goblins must know the password (since they came from the other side of the door), there was a chance (however slim) that the PCs might get the password out of them.

I didn’t think that particularly likely, though.

What I didn’t anticipate, however, was the unlikely synergy that would develop between area 11C and a particularly clever player. In the adventure, this area is described like this:

Stasis Box (C): There is a chest in this room with a false botoom (Search check, DC 16, to find). Inside the false bottom there are two items:

First, a packet of badly baded love letters written by a woman named Athaya and addressed to a man named Oliss.

Second, a small and perfectly preserved box of cherry wood with a mosaic design of inlaid jade. This is, in fact, a stasis box (see sidebar). Inside the stasis box there is a manuscript entitled Observations of Alchemical Reductions and the Deductions Thereof by Master Alchemist Tirnet Kal. A Craft (alchemy) or Knowledge (arcana) (DC 22) reveals that this was once a well-known alchemical text, but that the last copy of it was thought lost several centuries ago. The book would be worth 3,000 gp to the proper collector.

So the PCs encounter the blue steel door and they make a few Knowledge (local) checks to determine the properties of the door — including the need for a password in order for the door to open. They shout out a couple of likely possibilities, and then one of the players says:

“I start reading the love letters out loud in front of the door.”

… son of a bitch.

I didn’t really want them to get past that door. So I figured that: (a) These letters might not even have been written when Athvor Krassek was the administrator here. (b) Even if they were, it’s quite possible that neither member of the couple would have mentioned their boss by name in their love letters.

I didn’t want to ignore the fact that this was a pretty nifty idea. But I did assign it a ridiculously low chance of happening, picked up the percentile dice, and rolled…

… 01.

So after 4d20 minutes of reading (which turned out to be about 22 minutes), the door of blue steel swung open.

I would never intentionally design an adventure with the expectation that the PCs would take a bundle of love letters from location A and use them to open a locked door at location B. But watching that kind of unexpected success materialize out of seemingly thin air is the reason I love roleplaying games: There is a magical creativity which only happens when people get together.

In 2006, Wizards of the Coast unveiled a revised format for 3.5 stat blocks. James Wyatt explained the logic behind the new form in a Design & Development column in July 2006. Basically, the new stat block was designed around two principles:

1. All the information you need to use the monster should be present in the stat block.

2. The information in the stat block should be organized around the way in which the information is actually used in an encounter.

The new stat block featured five “sections”.

Section 1: The information you need to begin an encounter. (What is the monster? How does it detect the PCs? Will the PCs be able to speak to it? What’s it’s initiative? And so forth.)

Section 2: The information you’ll need to know about on the PCs’ turn. (What’s its AC? Hit points? Saving throws? Resistances and immunities? And so forth.)

Section 3: The information you’ll need to know on the monster’s turn. (What can it do? What attack options does it have? What special actions can it take?)

Section 4: The information you don’t need to know during combat. (Or, at least, generally won’t need to know.)

Section 5: Explanatory text. If an unusual ability is mentioned in the first four sections, it’s given a full explanation at the bottom of the stat block.

CRITICISMS

This new stat block did exactly what it was supposed to do: It made it easier to use the monster, particularly during the high-stress period of combat.

But it wasn’t without criticism. These criticisms generally fell into one of two categories:

1. IT TAKES UP TOO MUCH SPACE!

There is both a legitimate and a non-legitimate side to this critique.

Let’s start with the legitimate critique, because it’s easier: There is no doubt that the new stat block takes up more space in published adventures than the old adventure stat block. The old adventure stat block was literally a stat block. The information was all crammed into one big paragraph.

By separating the information out into separate sections and giving it some air to breathe, the WotC designers made it easier to use, but also made it take up a lot more space.

The non-legitimate critique was that the new stat block also took up more space in the Monster Manual products.

For example, take a look at the magmacore golem from Monster Manual V. This creature is very similar to a flesh golem from the original 3.5 Monster Manual.

The magmacore golem stat block requires 22 lines. The flesh golem stat block requires 27 lines.

This is one of the cases in which the new stat block actually requires less space than the old stat block. In some cases the opposite is true. But the difference is never particularly large or significant.

Now, what is true is that the newer Monster Manual entries include a lot of new information outside of the stat blocks, most notable Knowledge check DCs for monster lore and sample encounters.

But the real reason that a lot of people think that the new stat blocks take up more space is because they take up more space on the page. But this isn’t because of the stat blocks: It’s because WotC increased their font size. The original Monster Manual, for example, has 67 lines to the page. Monster Manual V, on the other hand, only has 55 lines to the page.

2. THEY LEFT OUT INFORMATION!

There’s no mitigation for this complaint. (Most notably, the Hit Die type and full hit point calculation for each creature was removed. ) And, frankly, it leaves me scratching my head. The WotC design team trumpeted the idea of making sure that all the information you need to use the monster is in the monster’s entry… while simultaneously rolling out a revised stat block that removed essential information and forced you to look for it elsewhere.

3. INFORMATION HAS BEEN DUPLICATED!

This is true, but it’s not a meaningful critique.. For example, a creature’s Spot and Listen modifiers are included in both the first section of the stat block (because that determines when and how they detect the PCs) and in the fourth section of the stat block (in the complete list of the creature’s skills).

There are not many examples of this duplication, and wherever it occurs it makes sense: The information belongs in both locations. If this were causing the stat block to bloat in size, it might be problematical. But, as we’ve discussed, this isn’t actually the case.

REVISING THE REVISION

I think the revised stat block was generally a move in the right direction: Breaking the information down into utility-based sections make the new stat blocks considerably easier to use in play.

However, by leaving out essential information, the new stat blocks became more difficult to use in prep (and even more difficult to use if you wanted to make adjustments on-the-fly). And using what was essentially a full-blown Monster Manual stat block for every NPC that appeared in an adventure did, in fact, chew up a lot of space and result in less detailed and elaborate adventures (on a page-for-page comparison).

So I’m revising the revision. Basically I’ve made two major changes:

1. I’ve used tabs to introduce more white space and make the stat blocks even easier to read. For example, instead of:

Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

My version of the stat blocks reads:

Space: 5 ft.                Reach: 5 ft.

2. Information that was removed from the WotC stat block — like the HD type and full hit point calculation — has been restored in my stat block.

Minor differences? Sure. But every little bit of utility helps.

My revised stat block is available as an RTF file, which includes the blank template and two samples (a goblin and a balor):

Revised Stat Block

SHORT STAT BLOCK

To address the concern that the full version of the revised stat block unnecessarily devours space for stat blocks that don’t require that level of detail, I have also designed a short stat block. It looks like this:

NAME (CR #) – [Gender] [Race] – [Class] [Level] – [Alignment] [Size] [Type]
DETECTION – [special], Listen +#, Spot +#; Init +#; Aura …; Languages [list], [special]
DEFENSES –  AC #, touch #, flat-footed #; hp # (HD); Miss #%; DR #; Immune …; Resist …; Weakness …
ACTIONS – Spd # ft.; Melee attack +# (damage); Ranged attack +# (damage); Space # ft.; Reach # ft.; Base Atk +#; Grapple +#; Atk Options …; SA …; Combat Feats …; Combat Gear …
SQ …
STR #, DEX #, CON #, INT #, WIS #, CHA #
FORT +#, REF +#, WILL +#;
FEATS:
SKILLS:
POSSESSIONS:

And here’s an example using a lesser bloodwight, a creature which can be found Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies:

LESSER BLOODWIGHT (CR 2) – Always NE Undead
DETECTION – Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +7, Spot +7; Init +1; Aura bloodsheen 30 ft.; Languages: Infernal
DEFENSES – AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 14; hp 26 (4d12); DR 5/slashing; Immune undead immunities (death effects, disease, mind-affecting, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, stunning)
ACTIONS – Spd 30 ft.; Melee claw +3 (1d6+2 plus blood welt); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +2; Grapple +3
STR 14, DEX 12, CON –, INT 11, WIS 13, CHA 16
FORT +1, REF +2, WILL +5
FEATS: Ability Focus (bloodsheen), Combat Reflexes
SKILLS: Hide +8, Listen +7, Move Silently +16, Spot +7

And here’s an elite city guard from Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist:

ELITE CITY GUARDS (CR 4) – Human – Fighter 4 – LN Medium Humanoid
DETECTION – Listen +5, Spot +9; Init +1; Languages: Common
DEFENSES – AC 17, touch 10, flat-footed 17; hp 30 (4d10+8)
ACTIONS – Spd 20 ft. (run 60 ft.); Melee greatsword +8 (2d6+6, 17-20/x2); Ranged heavy crossbow +4 (1d10, 19-20/x2); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +4; Grapple +7; Combat Feats: Rapid Reload (heavy crossbow); Combat Gear: alchemist’s fire (x2), potion of cure light wounds (x2), smokestick (x2)
STR 16, DEX 11, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 12, CHA 10
FORT +5, REF +3, WILL +1
FEATS: Alertness, Improved Critical (greatsword), Rapid Reload (heavy crossbows), Skill Focus (Spot), Weapon Focus (greatsword), Weapon Specialization (greatsword)
SKILLS: Climb +5, Intimidate +2, Listen +5, Spot +9
POSSESSIONS: masterwork greatsword, half-plate, heavy crossbow (12 quarrels), 3d8+10 gp in loose change

This short stat block, along with the examples, can also be found in RTF format:

Short Stat Block

These stat blocks have also been placed under the OGL for your convenience.

I spent this past week working on Rule Supplement 2: Flight. When I was first looking through this material, I thought that this was going to be a relatively short supplement. Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat had clocked in at 90 pages, but it looked like Flight was going to be a comparatively thin 20-30 pages of material.

But as I began collating and collecting the material I realized that, like Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist, this project was going to be more complex than I had anticipated. Material that works just fine as bullet-pointed lists in a playtest document don’t work that well once they’ve been divorced from the playtest environment.

One of the most important things I look at in the development of RPG material is the utility of that material. “Utility”, in this case, has two meanings:

First, is the material useful?

Second, is the material easy to use?

USEFUL

A rule can be meticulously researched, mathematically perfected, and seamlessly integrated with the the rest of the game system and still be completely useless.

For example, FATAL (a fantasy roleplaying game) has a disturbingly over-detailed system for determining the size of your character’s nipples. This system could be the most incredibly accurate method for randomly determining the size of a character’s nipples and it would still be utterly useless.

As a more marginal example, Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat included a system for handling contest jousting. This system is necessary and useful if you want to include a jousting tournament in your campaign because the default D20 combat system was designed for lethal combat, not contests of arms. As I described in the supplement:

The standard combat system is not designed to handle contest jousting: The scoring system for jousting depends on a variety of conditions (such as staying on your horse) which the system doesn’t cover at all. Therefore, the rules found here use the basic attack roll mechanic as a basis for a system which will allow you to incorporate the thrills of a jousting tournament into your game.

These rules are not designed to handle typical combat jousting — that’s still done best using the normal combat system. These rules are designed to handle a structured jousting duel.

For similar reasons, the default D20 combat system is not well-designed for boxing matches or football games. (It doesn’t do a half-bad job at wrestling, although if you were going to do some sort of wrestling-focused campaign you’d probably want more detail.)

But there came a point in designing the contest jousting rules where I faced a choice: I could add significant complexity to the rule in order to handle situations like the breaking of a lance or hitting the tilt (which are essential elements of historical scoring in jousting tournaments), or I could keep the system for simple.

In the end I included those additional details as optional rules: Useful if you’re going to have a tournament as the center-piece of a particular adventure, but not particularly useful if the contest jousting has a less important or enduring role in your game.

EASY TO USE

In some ways, this is just a specific type of usefulness: The easier a rule is to use, the more likely it is that you’ll actually use the rule, and the more useful those rules become.

A good counter-example are the 3rd Edition rules for grappling: These rules are difficult to use and, as a result, many gaming groups simply don’t use them. There’s a mutual and unspoken agreement in these groups that no one will ever try to grapple anybody else because nobody wants to deal with the consequences.

The ability to easily use a rule, of course, has something to do with how that rule has been designed. But, in my experience, the ease or difficulty of using a rule often has as much to do with how the rule is presented as it does with the actual rule itself.

If you’re looking for a good example of how presentation can make a rule more difficult to use than it actually is, you don’t have to look any farther than the entire combat chapter in the PHB: Whether you’re looking at the order in which the various rules are presented; the way each rule is described; or the layout of the page… pretty much everything about that chapter makes the rules harder to use. (The 3.5 PHB was a slight improvement over the 3.0 PHB, but only slight. It’s still pretty dire.)

Here’s an example from my work on Rule Supplement 2: Flight. This is the Flight Maneuverability table as it appears in the DMG:

And here’s the Flight Maneuverability table as it will appear in Rule Supplement 2: Flight:

The second table has the exact same information as the first table. (With one exception: The fact that only flying characters with perfect maneuverability can gain altitude at full speed is handled by a footnote.) Despite this, we’ve gone from 12 rows of information to only 7 rows of information by removing two areas of inefficiency:

First, we’ve focused the table so that it describes only the differences between the classes of maneuverability. For example, look at the entry for “Down speed” on the original table. It’s not summarizing a difference between flying characters with different maneuverabilities. It’s describing one of the general rules for flying: When you fly down, you move at twice your normal flying speed.

Second, we’ve removed redundant information. Look at the entries for “Minimum forward speed” and “Hover” on the original table. They’re the exact same information. The first line says, “If you don’t have a minimum forward speed, you don’t have to move every round while flying.” The second line says, “If you can hover, you don’t have to move every round while flying.”

These types of inefficiencies not only make the flying rules look more difficult than they really are (by cluttering the table), they actually make them more difficult to use.

DESIGNING EASY TO USE RULES

There are several ways you can make a rule easy to use:

1. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER.

The minute you have to reach for a rulebook and start flipping through it to figure out what you need to do, you’re burning time that you could be using to actually play the game. If you don’t have to look the rule up, then its much easier to use and much more likely to actually get used.

Making a rule easy to remember means making it simple and straightforward. Properly designing and developing a rule is a constant battle between necessary detail (which adds complexity) and the desire to make the rule easy to memorize (which requires simplicity).

It should also be noted that there are two types of rules: There are rules that you commonly use at the tabletop (like an attack roll) and rules which you commonly only have to worry about during prep (like calculating the effects of encumbrance). Its less important for the latter type of rules to be easily memorized because it’s not a big deal to be flipping through the rulebooks during prep (in fact, it’s almost impossible to avoid). It’s only during the time-crunch of actually playing the game that you want to avoid page-flipping and rule-reading.

(Of course, that being said, you have to be careful. Some of the most painful bogs of complexity in D20 are the result of effects which suddenly force you to make prep-time calculations in the middle of play. Spells like polymorph and enlarge person are obvious problem areas. But take a look at the seemingly innocuous ray of enfeeblement: How many groups, rather than flipping through the PHB looking for the encumbrance tables, simply ignore the fact that the fighter who has been knocked down to a Strength of 2 is probably no longer capable of lifting the full plate he’s wearing?)

2. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S EASY TO REFERENCE.

Sometimes you simply can’t design a rule so that it can be easily memorized. Maneuverability for flying characters is like that: You can certainly design flying rules which don’t take those differences into account, but then you end up with dragons flying like hummingbirds. And, for a lot of people, that causes suspension of disbelief problems.

(On the other hand, keep an eye out for the “Quick and Dirty Flying Rules” that will be part of Rule Supplement 2: Flight. These easy-to-remember rules for flight give you some distinction between a dragon and a hummingbird, while still remaining simple enough that you can quickly memorize them and avoid the page-flipping.)

And, actually, no matter how simple you make a rule it will need to be looked up and read at least once while people are learning the rules.

Making a rule easy to reference means a lot of things: It means a comprehensive index and/or detailed table of contents. It means the type of robust cross-referencing sidebars that we pioneered in Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat to make sure that the rules you need are always right at your fingertips. It means making sure that, whenever possible, the description of a rule or monster or spell is not split up across two different pages.

One of the things it means for Rule Supplement 2: Flight is that we include a cheat sheet so that you don’t have to go flipping through the book trying to find the particular chart or diagram that you need.

One of the most important — and most overlooked — elements of making rules easy to reference is how your organize the sequencing of material in your rulebooks. For example, here’s an outline of the first three pages of the chapter on combat in the PHB:

Chapter 8: Combat

The Battle Grid
How Combat Works
Combat Statistics

Attack Roll
Attack Bonus

Strength Modifier
Dexterity Modifier
Size Modifier
Range Penalty

Damage

Minimum Damage
Strength Bonus
Multiplying Damage
Ability Damage

Armor Class

Armor and Shield Bonuses
Dexterity Modifier
Size Modifier
Other Modifiers
Touch Attacks

Hit Points
Speed
Saving Throws

Saving Throw Types
Saving Throw Difficulty Class

The thing that immediately strikes me is that this outline claims that the game mechanics for attack rolls and saving throws are not, in fact, mechanics… they’re statistics.

The other thing that strikes me is that the order in which the various “statistics” is presented is essentially random: It’s not alphabetical for easy reference. But it can’t have been organized for easy comprehension by the first-time reader, either, because the first thing on the list is the attack roll… which is defined before any of its constituent components (like the attack bonus and the opponent’s AC) are discussed.

OK, maybe the idea was that you’d discuss the attack roll first so that its components would have a context. But this idea is almost immediately shot down. Yes, they go from the attack roll to the attack bonus (one of the things that make up the attack roll). But then they segue off to damage (which is the consequence of the attack roll), before going back to Armor Class (the other component of the attack roll). And then it’s like they remember that they weren’t done talking about damage, because now they talk about hit points. (Notice that ability damage was discussed in a sub-heading of the “Damage” section, but hit points — the primary form of damage — is split off into its own, completely disconnected section.) Then they toss in speed and round the whole thing off by talking about another mechanic (instead of a statistic) that is only tangentially related to combat.

One could go on: They’ve got the discussion of the “Battle Grid” on one page and the diagram that accompanies it on the opposite side of the same sheet (so that you’ve got to turn the page to follow along). (And why isn’t the discussion of the battle grid in the “Movement and Positioning” section of the chapter? Although, even if you moved the discussion of the battle grid there, that section still wouldn’t contain all the rules for movement and positioning.)

And this is just three pages we’re talking about here. The entire chapter is a disaster area.

3. DESIGN THE RULES SO THAT THEY’RE EASY TO LEARN.

The quickest way to make sure that nobody uses a rule is to make it so that nobody understands the rule.

Now, in some cases, there can be a trade-off between designing a rulebook so that it both (a) teaches the new player how to play the game and (b) is easy for the veteran player to quickly reference. For example, as we’ve already discussed, organizing sub-sections in alphabetical order can make it easy to find the sub-section you want quickly. On the other hand, this can lead to new players reading about a rule before they understand the full context for that rule.

My personal belief is that this trade-off is rarely as severe or as frequent as some game designers apparently believe it to be. Sometimes its a matter of rethinking how you’re discussing the rules. Sometimes its a matter of re-labeling a particular sub-section.

But when the trade-off does need to happen, I personally believe you’re better off leaning in the direction of the veteran player’s desire for quick and efficient reference. Why? Because a player will only use a rulebook to learn the game once. They’ll need to reference it dozens or hundreds of times.

If you’re concerned that a particular decision made for easy reference will lead the new player to be left completely adrift, I believe the solution is to write a short introduction giving a complete overview of the rules you’re about to detail. In the PHB, for example, a complete overview of character creation is given on page 6. (They try to do the same thing for combat, too. They just do it very poorly.) This introductory or quick start section will be completely ignored by the veteran, but it effectively teaches the new player the game. (Or, at the very least, gives them a context in which to place the rules they’re about to read.)

4. DESIGN THE RULE SO THAT IT’S QUICK TO USE.

I talked about this a little bit in my essay on tumbling: “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.”

On the flip side, it’s important to remember that rules are also responsible for making the game fun to play. Rules are responsible for creating and/or modeling the tactical and strategic situations which make for interesting gameplay.

BETTER RULES NOT FEWER RULES

A common misconception is that “more rules” is synonymous with “more complexity” or “greater difficulty”. While this certainly can be true, it doesn’t need to be true.

For example, one of the major insights I had while working on Rule Supplement 2: Flight is that aerial combat is rarely as fun as it should be. And the primary reason for that is that aerial maneuvering is more difficult than it needs to be. As I write in the book itself:

Handling minimum forward speeds, maximum turn in place angles, and the other details of three-dimensional, aerial movement can be a tedious affair. It can discourage you from using the rules to model complex aerial maneuvers. Instead of twisting and whirling through the air in battles of tooth and fang, your dragons may content themselves with sedately cruising in straight lines simply in the name of “keeping things simple”.

Perhaps the most obvious way you could try to fix this problem would be to remove rules from the game: Make the rules easier to use by removing some of the rules.

But there were a couple of reasons that I didn’t want to do this:

First, one of the core design methodologies for the Rule Supplements is that they should be 100% compatible with the core rulebooks. The Rule Supplements should expand the game but not alter the game. While I do many things in Rule Supplement 2: Flight to make the existing rules easier to use (redesigning the Flight Maneuverability table is one example of that), I didn’t want to fundamentally alter the way that flying works in D20.

Second, I’m not convinced that removing mechanics will actually increase the overall utility of the flying rules. We talked about this a little bit before: Removing some of the detail from the rules might make them easier to use, but it will also remove the useful distinction between a dragon and a hummingbird.

This is where it becomes important to have better rules instead of fewer rules. Rule Supplement 2: Flight will include a set of rules I refer to as “Aerial Aerobatics”.

In many ways, you can actually say that aerial aerobatics aren’t “new rules”: They don’t actually add detail or distinction to the system. Instead, they act as shortcuts that make the existing rules of aerial combat easier to use.

For example, if Lenora — a fighter under the effects of a fly spell — is being chased by a Huge dragon she might want to loop around and get behind the dragon. Since she has good maneuverability and the dragon is 30 feet behind her, you could look at the Flight Maneuverabiltiy table and calculate, step-by-step, that she needs to move at least 55 feet to end up behind the dragon: She can turn 90-degrees after traveling 5 feet. If she’s descending she travels at twice her speed. So she flies forward 5 feet, executes a 90-degree turn, and then flies down 5 feet at twice her speed. She then executes another 90-degree turn, flies backward 40 feet — 30 feet to reach the dragon and another 20 feet to clear the dragon. She then executes another 90-degree turn and flies up 5 feet at half her speed, then executes another 90-degree turn, and ends up 5 feet behind the dragon flying in the same direction she started out.

Or Lenora’s player could simply look at the loop aerobatic maneuver and get the answer immediately: A character with good maneuverability requires 15 feet of movement to perform a loop. Add the distances Lenora travels backwards (40 feet) to get a total movement of 55 feet (of which 50 feet counts towards her minimum forward speed for the round).

A loop is a simple example of what the aerobatic system can do, but the result is clear: The aerobatic rules makes these types of complex aerial maneuvers easier to use. As a result, players at the table are more likely to use complex aerial maneuvers. And, as a result, aerial combat will become more dynamic, exciting, and complex… yet, at the same time, not become more complex or time-consuming to actually play.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Even in an era of graphically-rich books with high production values in the roleplaying industry, I think that the majority of rulebooks and supplements remain fairly sloppy when it comes to organizing material at both the both macro and micro level. (By which I mean (a) the overall sequencing and cross-referencing of material and (b) how information is actually presented on the page.) There are also plenty of rules which are just plain sloppy in how they’ve been written.

I think I was lucky, as a freelancer, to have some of my earliest experience working for Dream Pod 9: They strongly emphasized writing material to the page. They didn’t like to split the information within any given section across multiple pages, believing — quite correctly — that it’s easier to reference and use a rule or a bit of setting information if you don’t have to flip between multiple pages while doing so. This forced me, as a writer, to focus on how I was organizing and sequencing the material I was working on.

Currently I continue to take a lot of inspiration from those high quality Dream Pod 9 supplements. I also look at how high quality textbooks are laid out. And whenever I see an innovative practice in a roleplaying manual, I make a point of adding it to my repertoire and keeping it there.

And I always — always! — think about how the product will actually be used at the gaming table.