Pool Initiative

This is what I am doing for 5E initiative rolls these days. I will have one sheet of paper with my PC's initiative modifiers to the side: +3, +2, +1, +0, etc. I will note the monsters' initiative modifiers the same way for the combat, just in a list.

Then I will roll a bunch of d20s, one blue for every PC and one red for every monster.

Then the players and I start picking dice out of the pool and going from the highest to the lowest. In this case, we have two 19 dice (one red and one blue), and I know my goblins are a +1 modifier, so the players need to pick one and have something higher than a 20 to go first. When a die in the pool is used, it is put to the side (preferably on the character sheet that just went, so it is easier to keep track of who went during a turn.

We don't assign dice to characters; we pick them out of the pool and go with the next highest. The party can decide who goes when and in what order. If they want their fighter to rush in first with that 19 and a +2 modifier, go for it. If they want to give the 3 to the cleric and have them hold back, OK. I mostly play solo, which is easier and faster for me to manage.

Yes, you can "game" this system and always have one character go first, but that feels more like a party strategy and tactical play. The party looks at the pool and picks who they want to go first. The entire party may be going last this round, or only one goes first, and the rest need to wait - those are the breaks and chaotic nature of combat. Someone goes one at the end of the turn and first the next turn for a double hit.

As a solo DM, this lets me play my monsters smarter too. The players do not know which monster left in the unused pool is going next, so they must think about defense. Let's say this order happens:

1. 1 Player
2. 4 Monsters
3. 3 Players

If you rush a fighter out there, he is getting swarmed. You should hang back, position the fighter, and be ready for a charge. Next turn, things will change.

With list-based initiatives, players know who is going next. Let's say everyone knows goblin #1 is going next, and they can focus their firepower on that monster, effectively playing a turn-denial game on the enemy side. With a pool, if I had a monster in the back that could throw buffs, I could make them go first and give my front line extra protection.

This system lets players use their modifiers creatively, like that PC with a +2 could elect to use the die that rolled a 10, creating a 12 that goes before the two goblins that rolled 10 (modified to 11). The highest modifier does not need to go to the highest roll, creating some play and strategy in the middle of the initiative track.

There is a potential for a "nuh-uh" situation where a player with a +2 picks up a 10 and modifies to twelve, and a DM right after that with a monster with +4 and a roll of 9 right after that gets a 13. Thus, the DM jumps ahead of a player choosing a die and declaring an intention to go. This is not allowed. If you miss your chance, tough luck, and that is true in battle too. That DM needs to wait, the player declared first, and that is honored, and that monster with the +4 hesitated and went after.

Once fingers touch a die - the turn is taken - and a final total is declared. Give everyone a chance to think, and the DM says, "Next," and then the next die is selected and removed from the pool.

I am done with the sheets of scrap paper with the lists of names and numbers. With the old system, you roll once, set order, and are done - but I like rolling every turn and getting things mixed up. I like unexpected order changes and dealing with surges in enemy activity. I like players having to study the current state of the battlefield and manage who goes next.

The old lists of initiative feel like the "kings rules" of war, where sides line up and trade hits in some Napoleon-era recreation. Given everything we know about war today, with surges, tactical retreats, and the unpredictable ebb and flow of combat, a pool-based system seems more deadly, gritty, and realistic. It gives the party more options to strategize their turn order than a system set in a static list. Both sides will have to deal with the unpredicted shifts in battle, like the 1-4-3 order example above. Your modifiers can be gamed on the remaining pool track.

Cypher System: The Universal Task Mechanic

There are a lot of incredible rules in the Cypher System, but none more universal than how monsters are created.

You set the level.

You multiply the level by 3 for hits.

That is the average monster of anything in the game. Now, you can tweak the numbers so everything isn't so uniform, like making a goblin a level 2 creature with 6 hits but making the little guy vicious and force level 3 defense rolls (doing 3 damage) on the characters - now the goblin is weak to taking damage but can put out more damage than an average level 2 critter. Monsters can have many other special abilities and rules, including special attacks and defenses and anything else you could find in a d20 game.

Minus a heck of a lot of rules.

However, what if you wanted to rate a complicated, multipart task where progress is tracked?

Simply make it a monster.

Set the task level, and multiply by 3 to calculate the "hits" of the task. Make rolls against the task as usual, like standard combat. But how much "damage" do you do on a successful roll? That depends on the effort, and you can rate that as a light (2 points, eases), medium (4 points), or heavy weapon (6 points, inability). The player chooses the level of effort (2, 4, or 6) and modifies difficulty according to the situation, assets, skills, and rolls.

Reduce the task's hits (or total effort needed) on a success. On a failure, no effort is gained. On failed rolls, you could reduce a character's ability score pool by the task level if the task is physically or mentally exerting. You could even use that as damage (such as untangling a panicked animal from a thorny briar).

Bonus effects on the rolls (like bonus damage) can be used to reduce the task's hits/total effort.

The atomic pass/fail rolls are still the standard way of doing most everything in the game. Still, this system lets you use the combat mechanics for complex tasks, such as safecracking, where a series of rolls may be needed to open the safe, and the character could mentally exert themselves on a string of failures.

The rules of this game are so easy to hack, and this is one of the best d20 systems out there.

Subclasses as Primary Classes

As the bards, rangers, illusionists, druids, assassins, and paladins begin adventuring through our B/X games - I wonder if somehow they belong. Not as in get rid of them, but as in, "Were they ever implemented correctly?" I am thinking of this as in adding them in a way that doesn't take away from the central four classes in the game. I know historically these have been staples of fantasy gaming since AD&D, the moment when the basic four classes were all there was and the huge change began at "race as class."

And the door was opened to expanding the game beyond the core four classes.

So the question becomes, why play one of the original classes? A ranger does more than a fighter, flavorfully the ranger is more cool, and all the fighter really has is "better numbers" or "different attack options." When you introduce subclasses into the game, you make the original classes less interesting to play, and all of a sudden you are backporting cool into the original four when they were fine to start with.

Skill Rolls for Subclass Abilities

The old saying "a ranger is a fighter with a bow" comes up. Robin Hood did not have spells or dual-wielding abilities. You could simulate a ranger as a fighter in a game like Basic Fantasy by letting the player make nature-style skill rolls that a ranger would have as a background option and keep the game simple and maintain the strength and role protection of the fighter class.

Basic Fantasy also has that built-in leveled "skill roll" mechanic that makes this easy.

Same with bards, a thief with a musical background - or a mage-bard if your bards are mages. All of a sudden I have two music flavored classes by using bard as a background option instead of creating a standalone bard class that competes with the others. What about music? Let them "do what music does" through skill rolls, charm a crowd, soothe the savage beast, and so on through skill rolls - those don't need to be spells. In the case of the magic bard, well, they are spells and that is how they cast them. The magic bard's music background skill could also be used for any other music related check, and you are done.

Illusionist? That skill roll could be used to create minor illusions, manipulate the ones they create, and see through others. You could do some mechanical stuff within magic user to give them double daily use of illusion spells in a spell slot, and forbid them from scrying and informational style spells. Whatever you want to do in magic user is fine, but keep it in the original class with as few changes as possible. Same thing with ranger, adjust the allowed weapons and armor, and give them a +1 to-hit with ranged weapons and forbid them from wearing metallic armor.

Paladin? I would make paladin a background option of cleric, finally let them use edged weapons, and limit them in another interesting way. Perhaps forbid them from harming like-alignment foes, tithing, and getting constantly sent on missions against evil (or good if anti-paladin). You don't have to weaken or change cleric much in this case, and the base cleric is still a core of the game, while paladin is just a cleric flavor (and retains access to the full spell list). The one thing I never liked about AD&D paladins was that weak spell list. Here? A special type of cleric with some benefits, and some limitations to trade them off.

Let the base classes use their "class skill" for interesting uses too, fighters could identify foes, or know the origin of weapons and armor; thieves have a lot of cool skill rolls just on their own; clerics know rites and religions; and mages know history, spells, and other magic knowledge. Your background determines what your class skill roll covers. A mage-bard would know more about music than general wizard magic, but still know some things.

Parties of Subclasses?

And I am still sticking to the basic four classes, and the core party and play balance is not upset, but I have the options and flavor I always wanted. You get into these groups where you have a bard, ranger, druid, and illusionist and all of a sudden some core abilities the game's balance depends on are missing. Maybe no access to the heals the game expects you to have, or the bard's thief skills are sub-par. Do the additional abilities make up for it or is there a problem here? In AD&D I might say I felt there was a problem of parties of subclasses and things never felt right, or I had to fudge rolls to keep the play balance feeling correct.

I Still Like Them, but I Wonder...

Yes, there is a case to be made for nostalgia and unique class mechanics. Design wise I find those interesting too. But we should not feel beholden to the past or what came before, or feel if a game doesn't have a class and a player wants to play something similar, that we should limit them. With a little hacking and creativity, we can come up with custom class-mods to the original four (or how many ever your game has), and create something unique that the player could have a hand in creating with you.

I just wonder at times how really needed dozens of classes really are. I mean, it is nice to have options, but once you have dozens of almost-similar classes and variants in the game where you are doing numerical trade-offs to keep them feeling different you have lost me. The B/X style classes in Old School Essentials are really cool, and they are an example of what I would say "true" feeling subclasses would have been. The ones in AD&D never really impressed me, they felt like blends with weaker versions of powers other classes already possessed.

But if someone wanted to craft a custom B/X class at my table, I would jump at the opportunity to be creative with them. Rule zero applies to how your group interprets the game and how they design characters. You can change anything, even before you pick up the dice.

Hacking Games

Yesterday's discussion of "hacking games" put the thought in my mind. Simple games? They invite hacking and experimentation. Back in the day, we had the basic Car Wars for the longest time, and sheet after sheet of typed additions to the game that we invented. Star Frontiers, Top Secret, and many other classic games were so simple we built entire expansions for them using our homebrewed content - and it was fun. The games were almost designed for expansion and experimentation, and while you could play them as they were - coming up with all sorts of new things yourself was a part of the hobby.

Now by hacking, I am thinking of larger changes and systems - more that just a new monster or magic item. You can do small changes in most any game, and one of the fun parts about D&D 4 was its generic monster creation system that let you come up with anything, mutant mushrooms, flying monkeys, robots, or any other creature imaginable and put it in the game. Our base three book experience with D&D 4 was an incredible run, and the more we bought for that game the worse it got because our imaginations were slowly crowded out.

Complete Games

With newer games, especially ones we invested heavily into (Pathfinder and D&D 3 and 4, FFG Star Wars), we never really hacked those games. We had some non-publisher material for some of them, but we never really took those games and made them our own like we did the older games. Perhaps we had that consumerist expectation where we expected everything was going to be done for us, and that the publishers would keep their new books balanced and equal options to everything which came before.

I feel there is a point where a game gets so big and complex you give up hacking it. Any hacks you make end up breaking the game, ruining some class balance somewhere, or affecting a part of the rule you either don't know about yet or never use that will come up later when you play with others. This is also true of games where the dicing system feels "tight" - if you touch too much, add modifiers, or come up with combat options or maneuvers outside of the game the system will start breaking.

Basic Fantasy hits a sweet spot for me because the base game's options are so limited hacking is almost required to customize the game to your liking. I can drop in crit charts, skill systems, hit locations, new magic or power systems, modern weapons, sci-fi elements, ability scores, class tweaks, and just about anything into this game and modify it to my liking quickly.

For the most part, all of B/X is like this, and the basic framework of the rules is very hackable and extendable. Certain B/X games come "pre-hacked" to capture a certain flavor, such as Labyrinth Lord's hack of the AD&D material into the system and Dungeon Crawl Classic's retro-gonzo emulation. All of them are cool, and demonstrate how well B/X works as a base for any game you can imagine - from fantasy to sci-fi it just works with a couple tweaks here and there to capture falvor, genre, and the danger level desired.

Old School Essentials is modular and designed to be very hackable, so it deserves special mention here too. You can just buy the Core Rules booklet and get none of the others - no spells, no classes, no genre rules, no treasures, and just the core rules module and hack an entire system off of that core. If you want to put in the work, this is your ultimate hacking option. An SRD is out for this too, along with many other B/X games, so you can hack for free.

Basic Fantasy focuses on fantasy basics and gets the "system plus standard parts" down to the metal, which is where I like to start. The game has the standard four-plus-four race-class combos (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Human) and (Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric) so there is a lot of room for my own interpretations of variant classes and new races. There are also no race-as-class options - just the basic formula which is easy to build upon. It is not as modular as OSE, but the resources and format of this game work for me well when I am experimenting.

And this is B/X porting is super simple, so where you choose to start is honestly preference.

Room to Breathe

I feel a game needs to leave parts for you to play with. I feel some designers get this very completist feeling, so the rules just keep going on and on covering every possibility. The game feels complete. I put it down. I rarely return to it. There isn't a part inviting me to tinker or experiment. There is no room for my creativity. All of the page has been colored by crayons. There is no room left for me.

I have done that with games, and I don't know if it is just me, a bad habit, or if anyone else feels this way. Games that are complete are less interesting than games that invite me to take part in their design. I guess I love the modding community of games like Skyrim, and love to see what players come up with - and even myself. The game has lots of open places. The rules are up to interpretation. There is plenty of room conceptually to add new systems and new ideas.

Same thing with pen-and-paper games these days. I am moving away from the "complete experiences" and gravitating towards the simple games I grew up with, and finding myself spending more time with the ones I can modify and experiment in with new rules and subsystems.

Basic Fantasy: Hacking Subclasses

Is more better?

I found myself doing a rules development test with Basic Fantasy the other day, and I created a couple character for the test - based off of character we had run in several campaigns in other games. Well, Basic Fantasy only has the base four classes: fighter, mage, cleric, and thief.

The characters were from systems with dozens of character classes. So I found myself asking the question, is this character more a mage or a rogue? A bard? This bard? Well, this one is more a mage and that one more a rogue. How about this ranger? Well, a fighter with a bow would work. This paladin? Hmm, more like a cleric. They played more or less how I wanted them to, and all was well. I didn't need all of the expansion character classes to get the job done.

We have had that "more is better" thing going on since D&D was first written, and a part of me likes a world where things are simple and four classes cover it all. I know you can download some pretty nice expansion classes for Basic Fantasy and I would use them too, but in doing this I see how over the years games started creating all sorts of variant-flavor classes that really exist because a synonym existed for the base class. Is a knight...a fighter? Do we need a cavalier class? A squire class?

Or they invent abilities to make things fit, like giving the ranger class spells. I don't remember Robin Hood knowing magic, nor many magic-using rangers in sort of the pre-D&D fiction. They had good wilderness skills, but were still essentially - fighters. And then when you are combining skills and classes, you get creations like, well, we need a bard with wilderness skills and druid spells, so let's invent a forest-singer class. And the cleric spell version would be the nature-lyricist.

The splat-book buying side of me says, great, more options, take my money!

The side of me that avoids rules bloat sits there and says, you are pulling random crayons out of a box of abilities and inventing a class for them. What are you doing? I don't need any more options!

I get the feeling most subclasses can be done in Basic Fantasy base classes with a few house rules, a handful (like three) of special abilities added to a class, and increasing the XP to level by 10%. A bard is a thief (or a mage) with some songs or music powers. A ranger is a fighter with some special wilderness skills, and maybe a +1 to-hit with ranged weapons. A druid is a cleric who doesn't wear metal armor or weapons, and has a couple cool nature powers.

Maybe give each subclass a special limitation, rangers wear lighter armor, bards must use a musical instrument, druids do not wear metal armor, paladins must abide by a strict code, and other limits that make playing the class difficult but interesting. This way, yes, you can say the 10% XP increase could be easy to overcome, but you need to play by special rules to be special.

You could even make the "ranger subclass" an add-on class for any class, make it a package deal of powers and skills, and open it up to any class so you would have fighter-rangers, mage-rangers, cleric-rangers, and thief-rangers. Same with assassin, bard, druid, or any other class that flavors another class but is close enough to it to not really feel like a standalone.

If I were playing Basic Fantasy and a player came in wanting to be a special class, and we didn't have the Basic Fantasy website to reference, and we needed to house-rule a custom class - this is what I would do. Three cool abilities, a limitation, and +10% XP on top of the four base classes.

Done. Let's see how it works. If we like it, we keep it. If we want to tweak it, we can do that. If we hate it, well, stick with it, and we will say your character was the only one.

Time to play.