Vows and Codes of Conduct [5e]

Tying game abilities to behavioral restrictions has always been a bumpy road, but I think the new rules provide some interesting options.

Consider a simple code of conduct for a monk or priest:

• No touching money (coins).
• No touching members of the opposite sex out of combat.

If you violate either of these strictures, you lose:

• You proficiency bonus
• Any unspent spell slots

Until your next Long Rest (which you must spend meditating and doing penance, but you can still regain spells as normal- you don't have time to do anything else, however).

Couple of points:

• Keep rules concrete and few in number
• Doesn't have long-term alignment impact- that is a different ball of wax
• Doesn't cripple you by removing all abilities, but is serious enough to not be used willy-nilly
• Restoration is low-impact, but not automatic (because you have to make it until your next safe spot for a long rest)

Likewise, you can take on optional strictures (like "no edged weapons" or "no metal armor"). Doing so gives you Inspiration at the end of the next Long Rest (provided that you didn't break a mandatory vow during the same period).

5e Goblin PCs

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
Age: Goblins mature faster than humans, reaching adulthood around age 10. A healthy Goblin can live to 50 or more, but rarely does.
Alignment: Goblins tend towards evil; they tend to be greedy, lazy, and selfish. They have no particular inclination towards following orders without a strong incentive to do so, but are happy for someone else to be responsible for hard decisions or dangerous tasks. As a result, they have little inclination towards either law or chaos and their most common alignment is Neutral Evil. Goblins that live among other races are capable of working within a system to get what they want, or ignore it entirely when it is convenient, tending more towards True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral.
Size: Goblins are between 3 and 4 feet tall and average about 35 pounds. Your size is Small.
Speed: You have a base walking speed of 30 feet.
Darkvision: Goblins commonly live underground, and even surface-dwelling Goblins tend to be more active at night, emerging to scavenge or raid and then laying low during daylight hours. You can see in dim light within 60 feet as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Goblin, which uses a crude version of the Dwarvish alphabet. Goblin is rarely written down, except in the form of graffiti which Goblins use to mark their territory and mock their enemies.
Nimble Escape: Goblins favor hit and run tactics, which they use in groups to wear down their opponents while trying to remain out of range. When an opponent targets you with a melee attack and misses, you can take the Disengage action as a reaction to move away from your attacker.
Sneaky: You are proficient in Stealth.
Sniveling: Goblins are used to being treated with contempt by those stronger than they are, which is nearly everyone. The average goblin will shamelessly lie, boot-lick, grovel, and flatter to avoid being swatted down by a boss or foe. Their ancient enemies have long realized that goblins treat mercy as a weakness, but other races either haven't caught on or don't regard goblins as worth the trouble to kill. You have advantage on Charisma checks to avoid being blamed or punished for your actions by anyone other than a Dwarf or an Elf.
Opportunistic Eater: Goblins enthusiastically eat a wide variety of foods that more civilized races turn their noses up at; they also are accustomed to having to provide for themselves in a wide variety of situations. You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to forage for food, and can forage for food anywhere- including inside dungeons and cities. At the DM's option, the food that you find may not be fit for non-goblinoids to eat!

edit: Thanks to /r/DnD for feedback- I've made a couple adjustments for balance and simplicity that were suggested there and added the 'Sniveling' feature.

Taint as an Alternate Paladin Mechanic

Paladins are one of those classes that provoke a disproportionate amount of debate and/or hate. One of the big problems with Paladins is the use of alignment (a mechanic with a long history of pointless argument and other sturm and drang) to balance the extra goodies that Paladins get as a 'holy warrior' class. The need to maintain Lawful Good alignment and use only Good allies and henchmen can become a pain for the whole party; the Paladin player's choice of character ends up limiting what his fellow players can do and what concepts will work within the game. It might be great for high-immersion groups who are primarily interested in telling a good story, but as a game mechanism it's a source of tension and bother without an accompanying upside. If alignment is ignored (as 4e did, and as some DMs irritated by the whole thing certainly did in pre-4e), Paladins end up being rather flavorless- they're just a super-Fighter with magic powers.

The all-or-nothing nature of 'loosing' Paladinhood is also a particularly blunt instrument- either you're in the favor of your God, or you're not. There is no mechanic that reflects 'skating on thin ice' or a gradual descent into naughtyness- you're either one of the Divine Elect or you're a nobody. So here's an alternative:

Taint Points: Paladins start with a Taint score of zero. For every unlawful act they personally commit ('unlawful' in this case meaning out of alignment with the goals and values of the deity they serve), they gain one Taint point.

Taint Points in Play: Whenever a Paladin invokes a class ability, spell, or spell-like ability, roll 1d20. If the result is less than the current Taint score of the Paladin, the attempt to use the ability fails and that ability can not be used again that day until the Paladin has slept and prayed (i.e., the next time he has the opportunity to prepare spells for the day). This applies to casting spells, lay on hands, auras, turning undead, immunities, and other supernatural and spell-like effects, but not to base attack bonus/THAC0, level/attribute determined saving throws, weapon and armor use, etc.

Getting Rid of Taint Points: To get rid of Taint points, the Paladin must complete some action to bring himself back into the favor of his deity. This can include:

• An Atonement spell cast by a cleric at least two levels higher than the Paladin. The cleric will likely require the Paladin to complete some task (possible a Quest/Geas) to earn the spell, but not one as complex as the quest option described below. The cleric may also require a donation to his or her temple.
• Tithing 5% of the Paladin's current wealth to an appropriate temple. The donation can be cash or equivalent magic items/treasure. The donation must be for the use of the temple- the player/character can not, for example, donate treasure to a temple that is part of their own fortress or castle or donate to a temple that they are in control of. If you ordinarily give XP for class-appropriate treasure spending, the character receives no XP for this donation.
• Undertaking a major quest for the appropriate deity or temple, for which the character receives no XP and donates all recovered treasure to the temple, might be worth wiping a Taint score back to zero.
• Laboring under a vow for an appropriate amount of time. A god of war might want you to refuse using missile weapons for five combats. A god that protects the poor might want you to give generously to anyone who asks for money or other help for a month. Any god might accept fighting without magical weapons or armor for an appropriate number of combats or using crude and simple weapons (possibly ones that you are not proficient in) like daggers and clubs.

Semi-Random Starting Spells for Myth & Magic

Random character creation is good because it's fast and unpredictable. Picking spells for new wizards is bad because it's slow and you tend to only pick spells you already know how to use and can anticipate using. Totally random spell selection is a pain in the ass because you may end up with too many spells that do the same things (if you already know Magic Missile, as a level 1 Wizard are Shocking Grasp, Burning Hands and Shoot You In the Face really that useful?). Thus the following:

Starting Spell Selection: Wizards in Myth & Magic start the game knowing a number of spells equal to 1/2 their Intelligence, rounded down. In practice this means that you always start knowing between 5 and 10 spells.

All Wizards start play knowing Read Magic and Detect Magic. Use the guidelines and tables below to determine the rest of the spells in your spellbook.

5 Spells: Roll one time each on the Offense, Control, and Utility tables.
6 Spells: Roll once each on the Offense and Control tables, and twice on the Utility table.
7 Spells: Roll one time each on the Offense, Control, and Defense tables. Roll twice on the Utility table.
8 Spells: Roll once on the Offense and Defense tables, and twice on the Control and Utility tables.
9 Spells: Roll once on the Defense table. Roll twice on the Control, Utility, and Offense tables.
10 Spells: Roll once on the Defense table. Roll twice on Control and Offense tables. Roll three times on the Utility table. Enjoy being a Gnome.

Table 1: Offense Spells

1d10 Roll	Spell
1-2	Burning Hands
3-4	Chill Touch
5-6	Gull’s Stone Storm
7-8	Magic Missile
9-10	Shocking Grasp

Table 2: Control Spells

1d8 Roll	Spell
1	Charm Person
2	Color Spray
3	Deflate
4	Frighten
5	Grease
6	Hypnotism
7	Sleep
8	Unhinge

Table 3: Defense Spells

1d4 Roll	Spell
1	Arcane Armor
2	Protection from Evil
3	Thermoc’s Reflective Disc
4	Thermoc’s Shield

Table 4: Utility Spells

1d20 Roll	Spell
1	Alarm
2	Change Self
3	Comprehend Languages
4	Dancing Lights
5	Detect Undead
6	Enlarge
7	Feather Fall
8	Floating Disc
9	Hold Portal
10	Jump
11	Light
12	Manipulate Flames
13	Mending
14	Message
15	Minor Cantrip
16	Audible Illusion
17	Phantasmal Image
18	Spider Climb
19	Unseen Servant
20	Ventriloquism

Goblin PCs for Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition

As I've mentioned a number of times, I really enjoy Goblins as a PC race.  For fans of old school gaming, James Maliszewski at Grognardia created these Dwimmermount Goblin PC rules for his Dwimmermount setting using the Labyrinth Lord rules.  James uses a mix of regular LL, LL Original Characters, and Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition for his games, but his race rules for the Goblin lean strongly towards the original edition rules- split advancement, limited class selection, racial prime requisites, etc.

I'm currently working on putting together some OSR-style dungeon crawl adventures that I want to run via PbP.  I'd like to offer Goblins as a PC race (since I expect players will be running multiple different PCs over the course of things, death being a frequent possibility) but wanted to adapt the Goblin rules to be a little closer to the rule system I had in mind- essentially a simplified LL Advanced Edition that keeps the notion of race and class being separate, but focuses on the core four classes of Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, and Thief.  With that goal in mind, I pulled together the following rules for Goblin PCs in Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition:

When Good PC Races Go Bad: Dwarves

What makes a Dwarf turn to the diabolic arts?  What makes Elves evil?  In this series of posts, I'll inexplicably examine what might motivate an evil member of one of the normally good PC races- and how they might behave once they've gone over to the Dark Side.

Why, you ask?  Mostly idle hands and idle curiosity.  I also think it may provide some story ideas for people, or provide some more realistic motivations for in-game villains.  Keep in mind here I am describing evil individuals from the non-evil races- Duerger, Drow, and the like are another matter entirely.

Today we'll be dealing with the stalwart and reliable Dwarves.  How might a Dwarf- normally the embodiment of Lawfullness, Goodness, quality craftsmanship, and gruff-but-loveable-ness wind up as an antagonist for the player characters?  How would an evil Hill or Mountain Dwarf go about carrying out his evil schemes?  Read on for some suggestions.

5e Character Creation Redux

After last nights exhaustive (and exhausting) walk through, I tried my hand at creating another D&D Next character.  While Foobar Testface was a pretty straightforward concept and execution, I decided for my next candidate to be a bit more creative.  To that end, I went full Willow on the character creation rules, creating a Neutral Evil Hafling Wizard Spy Necromancer, who I've yet to name but am currently referring to as 'Bad Hobbit'.

This time, I played with the standard stat array (8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15) rather than going for random rolls.  I also ignored the RAW for play test character creation and assigned my attributes right from the get-go, rather than waiting until after my Racial and Class abilities were ready to plug in.

Observations:

• Human attribute bonuses seem even more OP after running through the character creation process with a non-human.  +1 to every single attribute AND +2 to your primary attribute seems like a bonanza, particularly if you're someone who likes well-rounded characters.  With attributes getting more attention than ever with D&D Next (thanks to the apparent decline in importance of skills & skill ranks), this really feels like an obligatory feature if you are at all interested in optimizing a character.
• Halfling racial abilities all seemed to fit the theme of the race quite well.  I'm pleased to see the return of some mechanical benefits for sub-races, but the Halfling race bonuses do seem to push them solidly in the direction of Rogue being their best class, and them being the best Rogues.  That's OK, as long as the playing field is relatively level for everyone else, and they aren't head-and-shoulders above the rest of the gang.
• Halfling weapon dice scaling salves the bitter wounds left by weapon shrinkage in 3.5e.  Hoping that other Small races (like my beloved Gnomes and Goblins) get comparable qualities to keep them competent at hand-to-hand, but not holding my breath.
• Creating a Wizard gave me some much harder choices to make compared with the Warlock I built yesterday.  While the Warlock Invocations were fairly easy to pick (and there weren't many of them), I spent a fair bit of time thinking about situational uses for my spells and minor spells.  I quite missed having a larger range of cantrips to choose from that I could plug into 0-level slots instead of a fixed pool of at-will spells.  I've often found uses for Mage Hands over the years, but felt like Light and Detect Magic were obligatory utility spells and that I needed an offensive at-will (like Magic Missile) to round out the selection instead of relying on my sling skills (though the sling does have a nice +6 to hit and 1d6 damage).  I kind of hope Detect Magic eventually gets baked into something like a Magical Lore check- it's such a universally used spell that requiring every character to have it starts to feel like a spell tax, or like you have fewer spells than you are told.
• Building on the above- the Magic-User specialty feels even more useful when faced with having to pick cantrips that you will presumably have with you forever.  Doesn't seem like (so far) there is a way to gain more later.  Again, I'd prefer the 0-level spell slots option to having this choice be permanent.
• The level 1 Necromancer benefits seem a bit weak in comparison to the other prime-time spell caster specialty, Magic-User.  At first level you have a choice of two necromantic spells (Cause Fear and Ray of Enfeeblement), which means you aren't going to often have the chance to kill something and then cast a spell within one minute.  On the other hand, it likely will scale better with higher levels than having extra cantrips- being able to blast a minion with Magic Missile in round 1 and then cast a high-level necromantic spell with advantage in round 3 could be a pretty nice combo.  Feels a bit like the nub of a 'combo point wizard' build- wonder if they will build that out further at some point.
• My Warlock from yesterday's post feels like a much bigger combat threat than my Wizard.  Getting off a Ray of Enfeeblement or a Burning Hands or two, followed by lots of Magic Missiles or sling stones seems pretty paltry compared with the Warlock's at-will 3d6 Eldritch Blast, to say nothing of his higher Hit Points and armor class and better weapon selection (again, still don't know why a Warlock would ever use a weapon).
• Regarding balance- a number of posters on the forums have noted that the Sorcerer and Warlock feel a lot more powerful than the Core 4.  Not sure whether we will see a boost to the Core 4 or a nerf to the new guys, but one of the two is bound to happen quite soon.  The disparity between the combat potential of the Warlock and the Wizard (at least at low levels) makes me wonder if WotC is trying to push the Wizard a little more into the controller role that it held in 4e, while giving the Warlock the blasting/Striker crown.  Maybe it's just a transient effect of the two classes being in different stages of review, though.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with my Bad Hobbit.  I've never played a Halfling spell caster before, and created him mostly as a laugh, but now I'm quite looking forward to the opportunity to play him for a bit.  Anyone looking for a player ;)

Background Traits for WFRP v2

I put these rules together years ago for a WFRP game.  The basic idea was to reflect the fact that, while a starting career reflects what you did as a youth/adolescent/young adult, your childhood might have been spent doing something quite different- and the Old World being the place that it is, you probably picked up a few things in order to keep yourself alive.  It also provides a little mechanical support for some interesting character concepts, like the former wealthy burgher who was reduced to thieving or banditry, noble children dumped into the church or university system, thieving urchins who went on to lead respectable lives, etc.

Background (Optional Rule): Select one of the following backgrounds at character creation.  Your background can't be changed once it is selected.