“If I cast a fireball spell and fill a room with a giant explosion that incinerates a half goblins, shouldn’t the curtain in the room catch on fire? And how did the delicate potion bottles the goblins were carrying all manage to survive the explosion?”

“If I fell into a vat of acid… even if I survive, isn’t there a risk that my boots of elvenkind would be damaged?”

“So if I stabbed him through the chest, which is mithril shirt in perfect condition and ready to be worn into combat?”

Good questions!

Questions like this have been asked since at least the dawn of D&D (and I wouldn’t be shocked if they date back to Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign), so by asking these questions you’re part of a tradition that’s entering its sixth decade!

And, traditionally speaking, there are several broad approaches that have been taken to answering this question:

1. Let’s just ignore that sort of thing. It’s not worth the hassle.
2. The GM can just apply that sort of thing ad hoc when it seems appropriate. (GM intrusions are a great mechanic for handling this!)
3. Whenever we cast a fireball or someone gets hit by a black dragon’s acid attack, we should (a) resolve the attack and then (b) have some sort of procedure for applying (or potentially applying) damage to every single individual piece of equipment carried by the character, tracking the hit points for each individual piece of equipment. It probably makes sense to have a threshold of damage at which the item’s utility is impaired and then another at which it’s totally destroyed. Oh! We’ll also need repair rules, so that damaged equipment can be recovered before it’s lost forever!

The great thing is that anyone actually doing #3 inevitably discovers that it’s a huge pain in the ass and they rapidly circle back to #1. So it turns out there’s really only one solution, it’s just a question of how long it takes for you to reach it!

… but there are a couple things to think about.

First, it turns out that “you can cast fireball or meteor swarm and unleash overwhelming hellfire upon your enemies, but if you do that you risk losing all the kewl lootz they’re carrying” was actually an interesting balancing mechanic that varied gameplay and created interesting strategic choices.

Second, the verisimilitude of “your acid arrow melts a hole through the goblin’s chain armor!” or “as the flames of fireball clear, you can see that all the books in the library are aflame!” is appealing. It just makes sense! That’s why, after five decades, we’re still asking these questions!

Plus, it can really make the wizard’s player feel like a badass.

Is there a way we can have the best of both worlds?

Maybe.

LOOT DAMAGE!

When looting an NPC’s corpse, roll 1d6 for each:

• Armor
• Weapon
• Magic Item (or other significant item)
• Container (e.g., a backpack)

On a roll of 1, the item was damaged. (Their armor is rent; their blade broken; the potion bottle shattered.) If a container is indicated, the container is ruined and you should additionally make a check for each item bundle in that container.

Non-Fragile Magic Items have advantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and both dice must roll 1 for the item to be destroyed.)

Fragile Items or items that are particularly vulnerable to the attack(s) suffered (e.g., paper blasted by a fireball) have disadvantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and a 1 on either die means the item has been destroyed.)

Area Effects, like a fireball or dragon’s acid breath, trigger a check for all unattended loot in the room / area of effect. You can wait until the PCs start looting to make these checks, but a check is made for each area damage effect! (If there are valuables about, use with caution!)

DESIGN NOTES

The advantage of a loot-focused approach is that the bookkeeping is pushed to the point where the party is, in fact, looting the bodies. Listing, distributing, and recording loot is, of course, already a moment in the session that’s focused on bookkeeping. So rather than bogging down the action-focused combat sequences, this system.

By using a simple binary check (destroyed or not destroyed?), we’re also simplifying the mechanic so that it can be resolved quickly and efficiently. Simply grab a fistful of d6s, roll them all at once, and check the condition of each item as you list it for the players.

You can easily tweak this procedure by varying the dice size until you’ve got a frequency of loot damage that feels right to you.

GRITTY VARIANT: PC EQUIPMENT

In addition to checking for loot damage, when a PC is slain or brought to death’s door, make a damage check for their equipment (as per the loot check).

These checks might be triggered only if a PC is actually killed. (“We were able to raise you from the dead, Norgara, but not your plate armor.”) Alternative thresholds might vary depending on what edition of D&D you’re playing, and in some cases you might have multiple triggering events:

• D&D 5^th Edition: When the PC has to start making death saves.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC has negative hit points, even if they haven’t reach their death threshold.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC suffers massive damage.
• AD&D: The PC is reduced to 1/10^th their maximum hit points.

For a truly brutal variant in any edition, you could also trigger an equipment damage check any time the character fails a saving throw against an area effect. (Or, for a less painful version, when they roll a natural 1 on a saving throw.)

DESIGN NOTES

In D&D 5^th Edition, in particular, triggering an equipment damage check on death saves gives them an extra bite. You REALLY don’t want to be popping up and down on the battlefield! Get some healing to your allies!

INCIDENTAL DAMAGE

Incidental environmental effects and damage — e.g., curtains being set on fire, windows being blown out, spilled oil being set aflame — is still be handled via GM fiat and the whim of description.

If you want a rudimentary procedural generator for this, however, you could roll an additional 1d6 for each area effect and, on a roll of 1, make a point of including a significant environmental effect (e.g., the dragon’s acid breath melts the floor, creating difficult terrain; or the fireball spell causes the barrels of oil in the room to explode).

ADDITIONAL READING
Shields Shall Be Splintered!
5E Encumbrance by Stone

Disclaimer: I am not entirely sure how serious I am about this.

In Night’s Black Agents, the PCs are considered to be operating under one of three levels of funding:

• Insufficient Funds
• Steady Funds
• Excessive Funds

As described on p. 95 of the Night’s Black Agents rulebook, their level of funding determines what types of supplies they can easily obtain. (For example, agents with Steady funds can buy same-day plane reservations, while those with Insufficient funds can’t. If you’ve got Excessive funds, on the other hand, you can just charter a plane.)

If you don’t have the funds for the op you’re trying to put together, then you’ll need to figure out some way around your constrained funds. (And the game gives you plenty of tools for doing this, ranging from hitting up the black market, reaching out to friendly contacts, making it for yourself, or stealing it.) You can also, of course, try to figure out how to improve your funding, which usually means doing some sort of job.

(You can also find details on this in the Night’s Black Agents system cheat sheet.)

The great thing is that all of this encourages the players to dig in: Whether it’s stealing what they need, sourcing from a black market dealer (who may betray them to the conspiracy), or taking an iffy job that pays well enough to keep them swimming in silver bullets for a few months, all of it fuels the complexity, paranoia, and tough choices at the heart of the espionage genre.

As I’ve been running Night’s Black Agents, though, I’ve found myself wanting a little more structure for tracking and making rulings on the PCs’ current funding status. Partly for my own sake, but also because I think having some structure will help the players feel in control… which will drive further strategic decision-making and create interesting choices and dilemmas in play.

PATRONAGE

If the PCs are supported by a patron — an intelligence agency, occult billionaire, etc. — the patron will provide either Steady or Excessive funds.

This funding will only change if their patronage is endangered (e.g., their patron is killed or the PCs are blacklisted).

Note: If you don’t want to worry about fluctuating funding, just give the PCs some form of the patronage. If you don’t necessarily want it to come with a string (or even a face attached), consider some sort of trust fund. I would generally recommend having patrons offer Steady funding, thus encouraging the PCs to occasionally have to figure out how to get their hands on Excessive funding when the occasion calls for it.

STRAINED FUNDING

If the PCs are providing their own funding, then they begin each op with a Funding pool of 5 points.

Each time the PCs make a significant purchase, they have to spend one point from this pool. The GM ultimately decides what constitutes a significant purchase, but they should remember that Funds should still effortlessly cover regular expenses and typical lifestyle. (And, of course, they should try to be consistent in these rulings.)

Tip: I’ve found hotels to be a useful way to think about this. A group with Steady funds, according to the rulebook, can stay in a normal hotel. So if they want to book a four-star hotel? Or simultaneously rent rooms at multiple hotels? Those are probably significant expenses.

On the other hand, a group with Excessive funds can regularly stay in four-star hotels, so that wouldn’t be a significant expense for them. If they want to rent a $10 million mansion, on the other hand? Spend a point of Funds.

The group with Steady funds, however, couldn’t rent the $10 million mansion from Funds. (If they need such a mansion, they’ll either need to improve their funding or they’ll need to create a bespoke solution for using the mansion.)

If the group needs to make a significant purchase, but they don’t have a Funding point to spend, then the op has strained their Funds. They can continue making significant purchases, but they will begin their next operation with strained funds.

If the group has strained funds — e.g., Steady (strained) — then they begin each op with a Funding pool of only 3 points. In addition, if a group with strained funds once again needs to make a significant purchase when they don’t have a Funding point to spend, they’ve exhausted their funds and their funding level drops by one level (e.g., a group with strained Steady funds would now have Insufficient funds).

Repairing Strained Funds: If a group has strained funds, they can take action to repair it — e.g., doing a well-paid job or robbing the payroll for a black ops mercenary team. If that happens, simply remove the strained condition from their funds.

Optional Rule — Strong Funding: In addition to strained funding, you could also introduce a class of strong funding — e.g., Steady (strong). This doesn’t increase the group’s Funding pool, but if a group with strong funding strains their funding, they only lose their strong funding status. (So it gives them some protection from strained funds.)

Optional Rule — Out of Cash: There’s no funding level below Insufficient, so if a group with Insufficient (strained) funds runs out of Funding points, they can no longer make significant purchases for the remainder of the op.

Note: This can easily doom an op. They can’t travel, get a car, or even rent a hotel room. In some campaigns, that can easily be a feature (and strongly motivate them to solve the problem). But if that doesn’t sound interesting, just don’t use this optional rule. Insufficient funds are punishing enough all by themselves.

Optional Rule – Insufficient Funding Crisis: Alternatively, if a group with Insufficient (strained) funds strains their funding again, this will trigger a funding crisis: Their car gets repoed. They get kicked out of their hotel room. A source of stability badgers them about unpaid child support (and they can’t use that source of stability to refresh until they solve it).

Note: Remember, there are already rules in the game for improving your current funds.

OPTION: STRAINED PATRONAGE

As another option, even if the PCs have a patron, you can still choose to track funding strain: The agents won’t necessarily find their funding pulled, but they might have to do one or two “budget ops” while their accounts are being audited or deal with some other logistical or bureaucratic consequences for taking advantage of their patron’s generosity / abusing the tax payers’ money.

FURTHER READING
Review: Night’s Black Agents
Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet
Review: The Persephone Extraction
System Cheat Sheet: Night’s Black Agents

GM: The blue-skinned humanoids approach and begin speaking in a fluted, lyrical tongue. Anyone speak Avariel?

(much shuffling of papers)

Rashid: Nope.

Sara: I’ve got Sindarin, Carcinan, and Ashkaral. That’s not the same thing, is it?

GM: I’m afraid not.

Whether you’re playing a fantasy, science fiction, or historical campaign, it’s not unlikely that PCs — who often go roaming far and wide — will end up running into a language barrier or three. Some GMs may choose to handwave this away, perhaps even invoking some diegetic device like a universal translator to justify the wave.

Language barriers, however, can also be fun: They create an unexpected challenge, and can often force the players to come up with creative solutions to work around them. In the real world, one way people work around language barriers is by using a pidgin — a simplified form of communication featuring a limited vocabulary.

BASIC PIDGIN

To establish a pidgin in your RPG of choice, have the PC make a Language skill check.

The margin of success on this check establishes how many words the PCs and the other language speakers can establish in common. In practice, treat this as a pool of points: The player can spend one point from the pool each time they want to use a new word. The words they’ve used to far should be listed, and they can use the established words (or new words purchased from the pool) however they want in an effort to communicate.

This works best in systems that will generate a margin of success roughly between 1 and 20.

• If you’re using a percentile system or some other system that generates high margins of success, you’ll likely want to divide the margin of success to establish the pidgin pool.
• If you’re using a success-counting system, decide how many pidgin pool points are created by each success rolled.

The NPCs are generally limited to the same pool of words which has been “unlocked” by the player, although the GM may choose to introduce additional words if they so choose. (These additional words will also be available to the PC going forward.)

Tip: The GM is also encouraged to include literal words from the unknown language in the NPCs’ speech. Clever players may be able to figure out what these words mean and be able to start using them without paying points from their pidgin pool.

ADVANCED PIDGIN

Here are some optional/advanced rules that you might use in combination with the basic pidgin rules at your discretion.

RELATED LANGUAGES: In the real world, it’s easier to establish a pidgin if you know a language that’s more closely related to the one you’re attempting to communicate in. (For example, the Romance languages are all more closely related to each other than any of them are to Japanese.)

If you have an established language tree, you could apply a penalty for each step of difference between the closest known language and the target language. (Or impose disadvantage beyond a certain threshold.) If you don’t have a language tree, this might be a great opportunity to start one! Alternatively, you can just make a call with your guy about whether or not the languages are Closely Related (bonus or advantage), Related (normal check), or Distant (penalty or disadvantage).

EXPANDING YOUR PIDGIN: Each successful conversation the PC manages to have in the pidgin can grant them the opportunity for a new check to add more points to their pidgin pool. What constitutes a successful conversation (i.e., did you successfully communicate what you wanted and did you understand what they wanted?) is determined by the GM.

FROM PIDGIN TO FLUENCY: Some RPGs are smart enough to include a mechanism by which PCs can learn a new language. If so, then the player can choose to transition from pidgin to fluency by simply spending the appropriate skill points, selecting the appropriate perk, or whatever that mechanism might be.

If your RPG of choice doesn’t feature such a mechanism for some reason, you might consider setting a progress clock at the same time that the pidgin pool is established. You could then use downtime actions (as described in detail in So You Want to Be a Game Master) to fill the progress clock; or perhaps successful conversations could similarly fill the clock (while conversations that go awry would do the opposite). When the clock is filled, the character becomes fluent in the target language.

Alternatively, the first time you fill the progress clock, the character becomes fluent enough to make social checks with a penalty or disadvantage. You can then set up a second progress clock, which can determine when full fluency has been achieved and the penalty/disadvantage can be dropped.

When creating an NPC for a GUMSHOE game — like Esoterrorists, Trail of Cthulhu, or Night’s Black Agents — instead of giving them ability ratings (e.g., Infiltration 10, Scuffling 8, Shooting 6), instead give them an ability modifier:

• +1 (skilled)
• +2 (excellent)
• +3 uber

You could also use -1 or -2 modifier to indicate incompetence. (Any rating lower than -2 would most likely mean the NPC automatically fails on those tasks.)

Health / Stability / Sanity: These and similar pools that are depleted via some form of damage are rated and used normally.

USING ABILITY MODIFIERS

As with an Alertness Modifier or Stealth modifier, because GUMSHOE defaults to being a player-facing system whenever possible, you will primarily use ability modifiers to modify the base difficulty of a PC’s check (which is usually difficulty 4).

Ability modifiers can also be used if the NPC makes a check, in which case the relevant modifier is simply added to the NPC’s die roll.

CHERRIES

In Night’s Black Agents, an ability rating of 8+ unlocks a cherry. Although most other GUMSHOE games do not have cherries, they similarly unlock a +1 Hit Threshold for any character who has Athletics 8+.

Most cherries are only relevant to PCs, but any cherries that may be relevant to an NPC (including the +1 Hit Threshold) are unlocked at ability rating +2.

OPTION: NPC ABILITY POOL

As an optional rule, you can also grant NPCs a small pool of general points:

• 2 (mook)
• 4 (default)
• 8 (boss)

This pool can be spent to enhance any ability the NPC possesses, as appropriate, to either increase the difficulty of a PC’s check or increase their own check result.

If using this optional rule, you may also want to give NPCs ratings of +0 in a skill (indicating that they normally don’t receive a bonus, but could choose to spend points on a check).

OPTION: THRILLER CHASES

In the thriller chase rules from Night’s Black Agents, pursuer and runner must make secret spends from their chase pool each round. Depleting the opponent’s chase pool is a key part of what makes these rules dynamic and fun, and that combines poorly with static NPC modifiers.

Option #1 – Chase Pool: For the purposes of the chase, ignore the static modifier. Instead, when the chase starts, form a chase pool equal to 3 x the NPC’s static modifier. These points can be spent in addition to the NPC ability pool (if any) during the chase.

Option #2 – Static Charge: By default, NPCs in a thriller chase always spend their static modifier. If they have a generic NPC ability pool, they can use those points to increase their spend. In addition, if they choose to spend LESS than their stat modifier, those points are added to a dedicated chase pool which can be spent on future rounds to increase their default spend.

DESIGN NOTES

Something I find frustrating while running GUMSHOE games is that it’s very difficult to use the mechanics to figure out whether an NPC can accomplish a task while taking the NPC’s skill into account. Several GUMSHOE rulebooks even go so far as to say that the GM should simply fiat all non-combat checks by the NPCs. (Which I, personally, find deeply unsatisfying and unhelpful.)

Even in combat, though, the problem persists: The PCs’ combat pools are balanced so that they can last an entire scenario and multiple combat encounters. The NPCs’ pools are given the same rating, but they can spend it all in a single encounter. The result, combined with the typical length of a combat encounter, means that you can either:

• spend no points, which means skill is irrelevant when it comes to NPC attacks; or
• spend enough points to auto-hit the PCs every single time they attack.

The latter is both devastating and deeply unsatisfying: As a GM it means I can’t just roleplay the NPCs and see how things turn out. I am instead always making a completely arbitrary decision about whether the PCs should be hit or not. (Which, ultimately, means that NPC skill is still irrelevant.)

I believe that using ability modifiers will both (a) make it easier and faster to create NPCs (by eliminating the false precision of, for example, choosing between a pool with 10 points or 12 points) and (b) allow you to actually use the mechanics of the system while having NPC skill be relevant.

In assigning ability modifiers, you’ll generally just be choosing between unskilled (no rating), skilled (+1), and excellent (+2). PCs generally have a 50% chance of succeeding on a check with the default difficulty of 4. A +1 modifier gives them a one-third chance of success. A +2 modifier means they have to roll a 6 on the d6 to succeed. A +3 modifier means the check will be impossible unless the PCs spend points — it’s not necessarily inappropriate for an NPC to have such a rating, but you’re definitely making a very strong statement about them.

FURTHER READING
NBA Opposing Forces Cheat Sheet

DM: As you’re crossing the completely empty, 20’ x 20’ room, your foot hits a pressure plate. A huge fireball engulfs the room! Give me a Dexterity saving throw!

Player: 18! And I have evasion!

DM: Somehow, while standing upright in the middle of the featureless room and taking no defensive action whatsoever, you’ve managed to completely avoid the raging inferno!

That’s weird, right?

But we’ve all come to just kind of accept it as a weird trope of D&D. It’s not even an intentional trope. It’s just a weird artifact of turn-based actions, locking our characters onto a grid, and requiring specific abilities or effects to declare any sort of positional change.

Partly we can address this by just loosening up a bit and giving ourselves a bit more creative leeway when narrating outcomes in a scene like this. (There’s nothing inherently wrong with describing a PC diving out of the room in the nick of time.) Even if we want to remain more firmly locked to the grid, the reality is that the 5’ x 5’ square is an abstraction that can cover a multitude of sins, particularly in a typical room.

(Seriously: Tape out a typical room of your house in 5’ x 5’ squares. You’ll discover that pretty much any square has some bit of furniture or a door or some other form of cover that you could imagine an evasive monk finding cover behind in the event of an unexpected explosion your living room. This is a useful lesson in general: Even if your dungeon map or battlemap may make most squares look wide open for the sake of legibility, that doesn’t mean you can’t weave unillustrated details into your descriptions of the action.)

Of course, many of our fantastical adventures will take us into quite atypical rooms — barren rooms, vast vaults, and so forth.

Regardless, we might find a slightly more formal system useful in any case. For better or worse, I’ve frequently had players object to bits of flavor text woven into action descriptions (e.g., “you stagger back a step” or “you leap out of the way”), and you may find a little formality can help grease those wheels.

DYNAMIC RESPONSES

When a character has to make a Dexterity saving throw in order to avoid an area effect (or any other effect where the DM deems it appropriate), they can describe a dynamic response that explains why/how the saving throw is being made.

Examples include:

• falling prone
• ducking behind a large shield
• getting behind cover
• moving out of the area of effect

Other options are certainly possible, particularly in specific environments (e.g., diving into a lake). Players are encouraged to be creative in the dynamic responses that they create.

Guidelines for resolving dynamic responses:

Not a Reaction: A dynamic response is not a reaction. If a character cannot take a reaction, however, they also cannot make a dynamic response.

No Response: If no appropriate dynamic response is attempted (or can be attempted), the character makes their Dexterity saving throw with disadvantage.

Movement: Characters can move up to 5 ft. as part of a dynamic response. Alternatively, they can move up to 10 ft., but they must fall prone at the end of the movement. (In other words, they’re diving for cover.) This movement provokes attacks of opportunity normally.

Duck and Cover: Simply falling prone and covering up can be a sufficient dynamic response, but this renders the character prone.

Design Note: Dynamic responses essentially create a wider spectrum of mechanical response to area effects. You can have no adequate response (disadvantage), actively seek to avoid the effect (resolve normally), or be well-prepared and take the Dodge action (advantage).

ABUSING THE SYSTEM

“Hey! What if my players start dropping area effects on each other just so they can ‘dive out of the way’ and get ‘free’ movement across the battlefield?”

You have a few options:

• Simply disallow it.
• Limit dynamic response movement to once per round.
• Allow it, with the rationale that the area effects are creating enough chaos and confusion that people are able to move around a little more freely than they usually could. (Or whatever other rationale makes you happy.)
• Only require/allow dynamic responses to trap effects.
• Sigh… fine, dynamic responses now require you to use your reaction. If you don’t have a reaction left this round, then you’re stuck making your Dexterity saving throws at disadvantage.