D&D 5: Class Motivation is Motivation

One of the big problems our group has with D&D 5 is the characteristic system. This is a psychological profile that puts mechanical rules on roleplaying. Your character has five mental characteristics (two personality traits, an ideal, a bond to the world, and a flaw). If you roleplay according to these mental characteristics you earn a one-use, one-maximum "fate point" which allows you to get an advantage on any roll. Once spent, you have to earn another.

Now, you can roll random roleplaying characteristics, or choose your own. Now, most of my group are pretty good roleplayers, and here is what we chose for ideals:

Fighter: "I am brave and selfless!"
Cleric: "I believe in helping the sick."
Thief: "I take things as I see fit."
Wizard: "I believe magic solves every problem."
Paladin: "I shall destroy evil!" 

Those seem like great ideals, and they are fun for players to roleplay and try and live up to. But notice one thing about them - they are the class' default motivation. Of course the fighter is going to be brave and selfless, that's his job. Every time the fighter smites an orc he can ask the DM for a roleplaying bonus. Of course the thief takes things, and every time he takes loot from a monster lair he is going to ask for a roleplaying award. Every time the cleric heals, and every time the paladin vanquishes an evil monster, the sort of token roleplay comes out, and a bonus is asked for.

These bonuses are huge, they are instant advantage on any roll. The more you earn them, the better you do. Now, of course, you want people to be roleplaying and having fun and living up to character ideals, right? Of course.

The problem comes with ideals that are not so easily applied. There was a thief character in the starter set with a motivation like, "Does not want her aunt to know she is a thief." I'm sorry, that isn't that likely to come up during play, as a DM, really, you would be lucky if it came up once. If you are 50 miles away from home in the middle of a dungeon, I guarantee it may not come up at all unless another player is using it to blackmail your character. And the big boss of the dungeon isn't going to stand there cackling and threatening to tell on you to your aunt either because he saw you swipe that gold necklace. Maybe in a Disney flick, okay, but not in my dungeon.

Players who pick more generic and easily applied personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws will do better than others with more specific and harder-to-apply during the game choices. They will earn inspiration more often on roleplaying, use it more frequently, and be able to replace it faster.

I know if I were designing a character I would pick my characteristics so I could get maximum return on my roleplaying, and they would mesh up with what my class does naturally in the game. I would love to be the paladin who "loves to destroy evil" because I could ham it up in every encounter and recharge my inspiration point for the next battle. I would never pick, "Wants to rise to the top of my paladin order," because that isn't as easily roleplayed or have opportunities to use that motivation.

We don't use this entire character motivation system, to be honest. I find it to be one of those "mouse maze" player behavioral control sort of rules frameworks that turns what players should be creative and having fun with (roleplaying) into a structured "does this apply to me?" rules system. We skip it and use this house rule:

If you roleplay an action well, the DM may give you an advantage on the roll.

It's simple, it works, and it rewards creativity at the table and during play. There's no bennie points to game the system with, earn, and track. Better players who have fun, swing from chandeliers, slide across tables to attack multiple foes, or do other silly and action movie stuff get advantage in my games. If we are playing dark and serious Gothic horror, if players act like they were in a horror movie in the game, they get advantage for the roll they roleplay that well - we don't need a new motivation set telling us we are playing horror-type characters now. It also puts the player in control of how they want to roleplay their character, and the DM as the judge of that effort.

We don't need formal "king's rules" on how to roleplay and reward it. Combat, loot, character creation, build options, magic, treasure, monsters, and all that other good stuff? Give me more of that please.

Design Room: Player Behavior Control

Game designers get into a mentality of designing 'control systems' - which are rules that control a player's or referee's actions. The rules are in place to set down a controlled path of behavior. This runs counter to the game design theory in sandboxing, which assumes a lack of control and focuses on rules made to control how the world reacts to player chaos.

World of Warcraft is about the best modern example of a sandbox system degenerating down into a series of controlled paths for players to follow. In the beginning, there were limited opportunities to raid and get good gear, so what did the players do? Raid the hell out of each other's towns and sides. World PvP was king, and the world was dangerous and alive - there were places you could not go without an escort and other players on your side.

Later on, World of Warcraft adopted a strict, hierarchical system of 'raid finders' and 'dungeon finders' and organized arena PvP. They did not want sandbox PvP anymore, so they organized the reward system to punish free PvP and highly reward organized PvP. As a result, the main game world turned into a waiting room style lobby where you sat around waiting for the next fight or instance.

In short, they designed a rules system to control player behavior, and they are still at that today. They even get into designing rules systems to emulate old-style open world PvP in some zones, but it isn't the same. Those areas are just like any other instance, and the desire to be in them is in constant competition with the other systems they designed that give better rewards faster.

Eve Online is a counter example. There, they designed a 'game world' that has a base set of rules of how it reacts to PvP, and gradually phase away any control in the most desirable star systems. Uncontrolled psace is the most dangerous, because anybody and attack anybody. It's up to the players how they react to each other, and the world's 'rules of engagement' are designed to get out of the way after a while.

Part of the danger in game design is getting too cute with controlling player actions, and as you design, you are creating 'virtual mouse mazes' of rules for your players to navigate through for no other reason than to control their behavior. Mostly these 'player behavior control' systems are a waste of space and time in pen-and-paper games that could have been spent on higher value content.

Why? Players know how to play role playing games. It's like coming up with behavior control in Monopoly with rules of how to pick up the dice one at a time, formalizing the turn structure with negotiation phases and trading phases, having a property upkeep phase, and also formalizing an end-turn accounting phase for each player. For some players, yes, these steps may be a help to them playing, and it may "clean up play" in a game designer's eyes. But people know how to play, they figure out the ways they like to play, and it takes away the freedom of playing the game your own way.

Now some games are so complicated they need 'mouse mazes' to control behavior with formalized turn structures, and most of the time those games can benefit from simplifying things. If you find yourself developing behavior control systems for complicated rules, you may want to look at rules complexity first rather than making the game more structured.

Other games that are simple also put mouse mazes in place for areas they think players need help understanding, they create structure around concepts and force players down preset paths. It's like D&D 5's characteristics system for our group that instructs you what mechanical benefits you get from roleplaying your character correctly. For us, we know how to roleplay, and our DM knows how to reward good and creative roleplaying, so we don't need a system that forces people down a maze of behavior controlling statements for character motivation. For some, yes, it may help, but we know how to do this and we don't need such a large and formalized system of behavior control for the referee and players.

For us at least, I would have loved seeing rules that promote character freedom and options rather than limited random charts of a couple basic and limiting motivations - characters will make the ones they want up anyways, so other than new player help, these charts seem of limited use for experienced players. There is a danger in this character motivation system too we will examine later, as it is an easily exploitable system that can be marginalized with a couple simple choices.

So think twice about making 'mouse mazes' for players to run through in your rules. As game designers, we can come up with all sorts of cute systems and make players jump through all sorts of hoops. That time is better spent supporting player options and freedom, because mouse mazes limit freedom and choices, so it's often better to support player choice than it is to direct it down limited paths.

Old-School is the New "Organic"

DarkgarX said the above line, and there is some truth to it. He contends D&D 5 is not an old-school game, it is a modern design and lacks the certain clunky and vague areas of a true old-school game. Those are typically all the places designers left something important (or tangentially so) out of the rules and the referee was told to "make it up."

D&D 5 is a very streamlined design, and I agree, it is more of a modern game that wears the old-school clothing and supports old-school settings. You see a lot of D&D 4 innovations in D&D 5, and some of those design goals are kept here. The thought that "casters should always be able to contribute" from turn-to-turn is a more modern theory. In the past, it was wands and darts, nowadays, they get infinite ranged attack spells like something out of an MMO. Ritual magic is in, and the concept of bounding to-hits and defenses is another more modern theory.

On the whole, D&D 5 is a very modern game indeed. It has an old-school inspiration, and I would humorously compare it to calling Olive Garden and Italian restaurant. Yes, Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant, but it gives you a feeling of an Italian-inspired establishment that overdoes it in some places, and isn't true to the cuisine in others. It's a good place (most of the time lol) that I'd return to, but I accept it is not authentic.

I feel the same with D&D 5, it is a great story RPG with old-school inspirations, simplified and streamlined, but sometimes I prefer the original old-school games with their boardgame feel and simple motivations. We can enjoy different games, so I don't subscribe to system domination or one replacing the other - games are like books, meant to be read, played, and enjoyed.

Granted, there are some things about old-school that I don't miss, like the ambiguities, the omission of critical rules systems, how easily the games go out of balance, uneven complexity, and some other aspects old-school games have in common with each other.

So yes, I am a little wary of calling anything "old school" just because it subscribes to the feeling or design elements of the era. It's like new films calling themselves "Noir" and all the flak that critics give that designation nowadays. There can be no more true Noir films since that era has ended, so everything made in the Noir style nowadays is a tribute, neo-Noir, imitation, in the style of, or even parody of the genre. It's why you see paintings called "Renaissance style" instead of "Renaissance" - the art world has already went through this and worked out how they name things inspired by one era or the other.

I have no problem with calling D&D 5 or other games "old school inspired" or "old school style" in regards to the simplicity, world support, and design goals. There are some very modern elements of D&D 5 that do not fall into that category, so we need to be careful just throwing words around because they make us feel good or support our arguments. It's like a Noir film created today where they use a 3d camera that didn't exist in the era, while visually striking, true to the genre, and possibly cool - it can't be called true Noir because of how the movie was made did not exist back then.

Otherwise, it's like the "organic" quandary some food producers get into calling some foods "organic" just because of some of the modern chemicals and additives they put in them are "organic" as well. Pretty soon, everything is called "organic" and the word loses its "wholesome and natural" meaning.

So yeah, there is a difference between old-school and D&D 5. The new D&D has a number of optimizations and streamlining that clearly make it a newer game, and it is an interesting set of design decisions and goals, some of which I agree with and others I don't. Like all games in a way, they have good and bad points, so you keep an open mind, mod them, play them, and discuss them without wasting time on silly system wars or advocacy.

Mod them? Now there's an idea.

Darn it Wizards, get your community publishing license out and done already. Walled gardens do not let us play, and there are always other games out there to mod and bring new ideas into.

Or I'll just end up writing my own.

D&D 5: Personality Characteristics

D&D 5 introduces a system of personality characteristics, of which you start with five:

2 Personality Traits
1 Ideal
1 Bond
1 Flaw

Before we get into talking about them, let's discuss them. Traits are quirks or unique Trivial Pursuit facts about your character. Ideals are core beliefs, while flaws are shortcomings in your personality. Bonds link you to the world in some way. I'm not seeing the system as optional, so it is needed to play and has mechanical considerations.

What do you do with these? Well, during roleplaying, if you act true to your personality, you get a one-use Inspiration point (non stacking, only one at a time) you can use to get "advantage" to any roll you choose. It's like a "reroll fate point" sort of thing, a reward for staying true to your character's personality.

My group found this system heavy and a bit distracting in the Starter Set. If felt like it focused on the character a bit much, and put a "does my trait apply?" layer between our characters and the story. I am not sold on the system because I really don't need it - this is what good roleplayers do (and more), and we don't need it so spelled out for us.

I suppose it would be helpful to teach new players how to play Game of Thrones style characters, okay, but my group found it limiting. There is a lot of mental characteristics to consider, and it felt like creating an extra statistic for something players naturally do, and puts what feels like an extra rules system between a player and their character.

Seriously, if a player just wants to play "drunken dwarf" they don't need this system, just let them play and let them have fun without having to check five mental characteristics in every roleplaying situation.

Yes, a character's mental state should probably affect how they relate to the story, but is such a codified and structured system needed for that? It feels like it takes the focus away from the shared story with a series of per-character quirks. They aren't "character story" traits either, just how you react to events. It reminds me of older roleplaying games that put mental characteristics as actual ability scores, with scores such as Bravery or Determination forcing the player to make rolls for what should be player-determined roleplaying traits.

I suppose they are taking the question of "how do you reward good roleplaying" out of the game with this system. Certain players, just by the nature of their personality type, can get all sorts of bonuses from a receptive dungeon master by acting in character, having fun, telling jokes, and being the life of the party. More passive players don't get these rewards because they hold back. With this system, everyone gets rewarded for "good roleplaying" equally with a single Inspiration point. Once you have roleplayed "good" you cannot earn extra roleplaying bonuses until you have spent that point.

Okay, I have problems with this. I want everyone to ham it up, have fun, try and outdo each other, and act crazy at my table. I shall reward them time and time again if they make us laugh and everyone gets a kick out of a player's antics. I want the passive players to step up and act just as silly as the outgoing ones. I shall reward your in-character-ness, silliness, stupidity, bad jokes, or heroic feats of derring-do as much as I want and as many times as my players keep the party going.

It's called having fun.

We really don't need a system that tells us how to roleplay or reward us for doing it "right". I don't want a system that limits rewards and possibly keeps my outgoing players from trying something else silly once they have earned their Inspiration point. As the dungeon master, I am the one who knocks, and I am the one who says, "You get advantage on that roll" because a player did something cool, acted within character, or made us all laugh. I know, you want a system in place that gives players guidelines for rewards, but I don't feel it is really needed, and it is a throwback to the old systems that told you how to roleplay your character.

Besides, I award good roleplaying with extra experience points, not Inspiration points. If a player did something the hard way, played something true to character which made it harder on them, or otherwise played things "true to character" that is worth an experience point award, not a temporary die roll bennie. You took the hard road, so that is worth real bonus XP.

I can't see us using this system much, and I am replacing it with the tried-and-true "I give advantage or disadvantage" bonus system that I decide at the table during play. Players can write all this stuff down, sure if it helps them, but I find the "fate point" style Inspiration point thing limiting, and a bit silly since it does not reward the action directly - it only gives you a freebie to be used later. Okay, so your drunken dwarf drank a lot at the inn and you got an Inspiration point which you use...the next day when you are smashing an orc's face? And you have no reason to play in character further because you have your point stored and you're waiting to use it?

Hmm. If it were me, I'd reward the roleplaying with a small xp reward and skip the Inspiration mechanic. That way, there is no limit to the bonuses I can award you, and you can keep making us laugh with your drunken dwarf antics all the way to the dungeon. If you manage to smack that orc in his face with your ale-filled tankard, I may just award you advantage on that roll.

The inspiration? It comes from everybody at the table, and we really don't need points to track it.

D&D 5 vs. Pathfinder: Magic Systems

As I read through D&D 5's magic spells I am struck by one thing, and I have saw this in our "Fun With D&D 5 Magic" series. D&D 5's spells all seem very version 1.0, they can be exploited with combos or special tricks, have huge area of effects, infinite-cast cantrips give immunity to all forms of melee damage, and there are just a lot of ways to abuse these spells. They require a different way of thinking about magic and powers, and they do have a D&D 4 magic rethink feeling to them.

D&D 5 puts the dungeon master squarely back in control of the rules though, so a lot of these exploits are "to be denied" by the dungeon master when they come up. It puts a burden on the referee, but it gives the game a more old-school and freewheeling feel.

DarkgarX has an issue with calling these "old school" style spells, and he fought me on this point. He's partially right, but I still think they are old-school inspired. His reasoning is that these are spells designed with more modern design techniques and considerations.

In comparison, the majority of the spells for Pathfinder were created under the OGL in the year 2000 when D&D 3 came out. These spells were revised and balanced under D&D 3.5, and then again for Pathfinder. So the D&D 3.x to Pathfinder line of spells have been balanced, used, and playtested for about fourteen years. These were the original spells created by the Magic the Gathering type team at Wizards, so they were crafted with a new level of balance and usability in mind.

D&D split from D&D back in the 3.0 days with AD&D 2.0 being the last faithful version, and it turned into a highly tuned Magic the Gathering style roleplaying game. Pathfinder is that MtG RPG nowadays, and true D&D continues on with D&D 5 and also the retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy RPG.

It is an interesting lineage, and the Pathfinder spells are clearly better designed, streamlined, and balanced. If you read Pathfinder spells and compare them to their D&D 5 counterparts (reverse gravity, etc), I feel the Pathfinder spells are just a better designed and working set of magic powers as a whole. The D&D 5 spells are simple and easier to use in a more casual setting, but the Pathfinder magic spell set has been beat up, used, and exploited for a long, long time, so they feel like they have been through the battle and they work very well.

Yes, in both these games casters are very powerful, but that's just the world we live in. The point is, they are powerful enough, giving them a set of spells that feel like a step backwards before D&D 3.0 in balance with exploits makes these wizards even more powerful. Magic has always been a headache for referees, and I prefer a set of spells that have been used for the last 14 years and most of the bugs worked out. They just feel like better working spells to me.

Part of me would like to see D&D 5 errata that corrects some of this, but then again, part of me doesn't. I am tired of errata, and D&D 4 has soured me to the entire concept where I would rather play a semi-broken "rules as written" game from my books than have error-filled books and pages of printouts with corrections to cross reference. With D&D 4, there was so much errata if felt like the game kept changing, and there was a version in there we liked, but it was patched and fixed to a point where we didn't recognize the game after a point and we just quit.

Pathfinder has errata, yes, but at least I can keep my PDFs and Hero Lab up to date, and that is what I play with anyways. I love my books, but I play with the most up-to-date electronic copies. There is a clear benefit to Paizo's PDF-centric business model for players and referees, and I support it because it makes my gaming life easy.

So I will take the D&D 5 spells in all their sort of silly, unbalanced, and exploitable forms as they are, and just chalk it up to "this is how this world works." The books I buy for this game are it for my group, and I am not buying into errata or character generators that are different to what I have on paper. I'm not interested in a D&D 5.5 later on either.

Besides, old-school magic is supposed to be and exploitable and rules-less Wild West to an extent, and those referee headaches are part of the fun for players. It does turn the game into a "gotcha" sort of simulator, where the referee makes monsters use the same magic spell exploits on the characters, but coming from Basic Fantasy RPG and Labyrinth Lord, I am used to that. There is a sort of freewheeling fun to it, so it is not a problem for me because I understand where it's coming from. D&D 5 is more of a casual RPG, and a lot is left to the referee. It's cool and I actually have a place at my table for that sort of game.

If I am playing seriously, like in a tournament or a setting where rules disagreements could affect the outcome of a competitive game? I feel I will stick with Pathfinder. In these settings and organized play, I want rules and powers that have been beat up a little bit and have all the problems worked out. There are still problems with balance in many spells, yes, but overall, Pathfinder may be a little more complex, but this complexity came out of the years of using the system. There is also a fairness in having rules for everything that protects organized play that I appreciate, and this design mentality goes all the way back to Pathfinder's sort of Magic the Gathering roots.

Pathfinder: Mundane Monsters Into Awesome Monsters

One of the most important things to remember in Pathfinder and other 3.x fantasy games is that humanoid traces such as goblins, orcs, gnolls, kobolds, and others do not possess racial hit dice - they are full characters. The monsters in Pathfinder Bestiary 1 are typically "warrior level one" versions of the monster, and using them straight does a disservice to the challenge level and interest of your game.

To be fair, you need to include a range of levels and classes in your encounter, and this includes specialists, support classes, and casters. If you have Hero Lab it takes just a couple minutes to create a kobold shaman and kit him out with a basic spell list. An encounter with six kobolds is one thing, but three kobold warriors, a kobold shaman, and two kobold rangers is quite another, and in fact, much more interesting and memorable.

Let's give those kobold rangers masterwork shortbows and weak-poison tipped arrows? Great idea. Let's give the warriors caltrops and have them toss those under the character's feet? Even better. Have the shaman try to blind characters and have them step on the spikes? Fun. Even if those special attacks and pieces of gear never amount to anything, when the players remember back to those crafty kobolds that tried all sorts of silly tricks as something cool and memorable.

The six by-the-book kobolds with no armor and shortswords? Bland and uninteresting, and a disservice to your masterpiece of an adventure. The care you put into encounter creation shows your attention to detail and crafting your adventure. I know it takes a bit of work, and there is probably a need for pregens, but if you give yourself a rule "never use a monster straight from the book" - you will be in a lot better place when you are at the table with players.

Plus, from my experience, players love that attention to detail. Anybody can defeat stock by-the-book monsters, and in fact, many-many people do every day. That's what everybody does, so why follow the crowd? This is your game, the time your players are spending with you is special, so show them some love and customize your humanoid monsters with all the equipment, classes, feats, and spells that players use. Pull out your bag of "dirty tricks" and come up with some memorable attack combos for each encounter.

You could go even further, and customize most every monster, especially the intelligent ones. This is very fun, and it gives your campaign world a sense of difference and wonder where a wyrmling green dragon can have a couple ranger levels, adding a natural weapon feat for the claws to up damage, a favored terrain of the forest for stealth and tracking, some ranger powers and possibly an animal companion, and you have turned a stock monster into something very cool and interesting. Again, the capability of makes Hero Lab an incredible tool and worth investing in to increase your enjoyment of the game.

It turns the mundane monsters into the awesome, and gives you a whole new perspective on Pathfinder's character builds and flexibility. Yes, you can and should use class levels for monsters, and doing so customizes and "powers up" your game. It lets you put incredible creativity into your game, and makes every one of your encounters memorable and cool for your players.

Don't be by-the-book, be awesome.

Fun with D&D 5 Magic: Lightning Bolt

Okay, old-school storm chaser dungeon masters, listen up. Today we light things up with lightning bolt.

We get a 100-foot long bolt of lightning that is five feet wide. I'm assuming the actual lighting bolt is just an inch wide, and the rest of that width is a conductive danger area that forks out along the main bolt.

The line must be 100-feet long. Because lighting is the way it is, it won't bounce off of living tissue, it will pass straight through in a line to the next thing. The silly "carried or worn items will not be ignited" anti-player-complaint gear-protection rule is back here again, and I summarily ignore it because old-school is cool. Nope, you get toasted by a lightning bolt and all bets are off for your gear, just like fireball.

"DMs can improvise," page 5, PHB, so don't complain about your broken magic items. That stuff was paid for when you found it.

They say that you get a DEX save to take half damage? If you are wearing metal armor, you get disadvantage on that roll, lighting rod. I may even up the distance from the bolt where you can be hit to 10 feet, especially if there are other objects nearby that can get hit and transfer the shock to you. That candlestick near the bolt took a strike, and it jumped all the way over to you. It may up the power of the spell, but this is the sort of freedom you get with old-school rules that is cool and gives the referee the flexibility to adapt to situations.

Lesson? Don't stand next to an iron golem if the mage casts a lightning bolt at it, I just may rule it jumps to every adjacent target in melee, especially characters hitting it with metal weapons.

When this bolt hits a solid object, things get interesting. You could rule one of two things. In old-school versions of D&D, lighting is wonderfully bouncy, and it would reflect in random directions all over the map until it expended its length. In the real world, the wall or ground behind the lightning hit would absorb the electricity, but act as a conductor and spread the electric shock out to a 20-foot radius sphere through the walls and floors.

Since I am an evil DM, I will roll a d6 on each impact, on a 1-3 it bounces, and on a 4-6 it grounds and causes area damage. I love bouncing lighting, but causing it to ground and fry everyone nearby helps you understand why you shouldn't stand near trees during a storm, so it is in. If the dungeon is made of metal or water, I would rule bounces produce grounding damage as well.

To be fair, it is all one jolt with one voltage, so you can't take damage twice from any combinations of direct strikes or grounding. You are either connected to the current or not during the millisecond flash, and you take that damage once no matter how many times you are hit.

If lighting hits water, everything within a 100-foot radius of the strike in the water takes damage. Stay out of the pool during a dungeon exploration for your own safety, please.

The lightning may bounce back and hit your friends, so be careful where you cast it. To be fair, bounce direction should be random, you can't really predict the angle of whatever it hits on the map, so just come up with a random direction based on a d6 roll, and bounce away until it grounds and stops. No, you can't predict lighting and do a cool bounce shot, you are unleashing the cruel forces of nature.

Noise? What, I can't hear you because this stuff is loud. It is probably safe to assume the entire map has heard your little experiment in voltage transfer, so monsters are likely on their way (or running). Enemy mages can use lightning bolt as well, and I toss those scrolls into magic wielders with enough frequency to make my players' eyes twitch anytime they see a caster. DM's, you are not old school unless you regularly fling the same spells back at the party at least a couple times during the adventure. What fries the geese can fry the gander.

The only way to truly balance powerful magic is give it the chance to kill the caster, break magic items, and wipe out the party. Then, the caster thinks twice before summoning unholy power, and the party's thief loses all thoughts of backstabbing the careless mage before trigger-happy Gandalf gets them all killed.

This is the old school. The DMs are evil and turn the party's own tricks back onto them with alarming frequency and maniacal glee, either through stupid mistakes, random chance, or by a monster's own hands. If you want your game to capture that OG flavor, you pull no punches. Magic spells this powerful does not come with warning stickers and safety caps.