Set and Setting - I - Languages

Set and Setting is a series of posts intended as aid in fleshing out a world by way of setting-specific rule design and reinterpretation.

Introduction

New blog year, new series.

Where the previous rubric focused on rule expansions and reinterpretations for universal acts such as climbing,  that I would endeavour to keep constant across settings and tables, this series too is to deal with rules homebrewing but as applied to lending a setting a distinct character, honouring the concept of “fluff is crunch”.

Despite intending to dip my toes into more lore driven forays later on, I’m settling for now on the utilitarian approach to setting building. This will imply modular mechanics for aspects of a setting that need not remain constant across time or space, primed on the belief that, when wishing to invoke otherness, exoticism and a sense of place for the benefit of the players at the table, knowingly employing one of the primary bridges – that of the game’s structure – to tackle this problematic can be greatly effective. Thus rather than just saying that something is different, one is best served by having it *play* differently.

Angling for subtlety, a little can go a long way. As before, all of these rules are merely tentative and, of course, completely untested. The threshold of simplicity, for the sake of me not trampling all over these like a slobbering husky in the heat of the running, remains: “rollable at a moment’s notice, behind the palm of the referee's hand if need be ”. 

Ideoglossia

Language use gets a real bad rep as it is seen (correctly, I must add) as an inhibitor rather than enabler of action and interaction, a stonewalling that the real world throws up at us and that is never fun, to the point that it has been pretty much abolished by escapism in whatever format, with exceptions as the shibboleth special episode of the Old Testament only serving to highlight the rule.

In Dnd, the afterthought of language use as written in the rules manifests itself with mindnumbing predictability, as once a party counts a given language’s speaker in its ranks, effective communication with a huge demographic cross-section of an entire fantasy setting is all but assured: if you’ve got someone who can speak elvish, you can talk to all the elves you ever happen to come across, from tallest mountain to deepest wood.

For a basic rulebook I can understand that the above is sufficient, but it just seems disingenuous for me to put forward even the most tentative sketch of a setting and tell players with a straight face: “don’t worry, everyone here understands everyone else just fine”. If you can contemplate that sentence and not wince at the positively granitic dumbing down implied by it then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.

Localism above

The essence of an old school running hinges among other things on the assumption that cultural microclimates exist, rather than the unified and overbearing cosmopolitanism of settings implied by later editions of the game, where “common” serves as the dovetailed excuse for trivializing any and all manner of cultural barriers, namely linguistic ones. This means tribes, kiths and clans sooner than it means kingdoms, fiefdoms and empires. 

(As a side-note, it won’t be the last time you find me linking Manola’s blog, if only because he must’ve built himself a treehouse for all the nails he’s hit square on the head.)

Since before the advent of the city, the human tendency to divide and set itself apart linguistically (and culturally in general) stemmed from both geographical accident but also the immanent desire to point to the competing tribe that dwelled across the river and clearly broadcast, through all possible signifiers – ritual, tradition, law, personal fashion – that “we are not like those other people over there”.

Framed by the above and tempered then with the addition of even just a sampling of different fantasy races to this bubbling crucible, language begets this hazier quality, embracing a quasi-mystical and certainly anti-scientific paradigm: the Gods’ divine will is pretty much what determines if one can understand a given creature or not; for despite a character knowing the rudiments that enable him to understand one barbarian tribe, such does not mean he’ll be in any way guaranteed to understand the next one, three miles south as the crow flies.

Underworld below

Then we get beneath the earth. Mind the dinossaurs.

Truth be told, I find excessive talkie interactions to devalue the act of the descent, forming a familiarity that quickly evaporates wonder and leads to gonzo or philosophical questioning of the motives of every single hapless creature found dwelling under the ground, all of it conspiring to offer up the most hated interaction by me as both player and referee: the in-depth hostage questioning.

As personal refereeing style goes, my default assumption is ever for creatures in the underworld to be either unwilling or incapable of cogent communication, barring exceptional setpiece social encounters (i.e. characters with something interesting to say), preferably with a weird slant.

So the understanding comes to be that finding a creature you can have a conversation with in the underworld ought to be a prized exception, almost treasure.

“Common, motherfucker. Doth thou speak it?”

Aim’s to naturally select for slapstick avoidance as this isn’t about building a sitcom generator, rather about offering some small measure of setting immersion while keeping the play flowing: It is presumed that all of the semicivilized (read playable) races and cultures can understand each other to a workable degree when not under pressure. If milling about town, always assume that either one of the characters with the matching language knowledge understands the local speech or that a translator can be fetched handily.

In the wilderness of the borderlands however, over a tense mid-road encounter with a band of roving foreign mercenaries or faced with the discovery of ancient script lining a foreboding entryway while the sand runs out is where a party cannot count on the luxury of assured communication.

The Rules

Let's forget for a moment my railing against oversimplification in language use with one breath as with the next I dive with gusto into making some insulting simplifications and draw wild correlations between intelligence and average literacy levels (as applied to the exceptionality of the PC condition).

- Reading, writing, orality and even gestual signs are all contained in the knowledge of a language family.

- Having a language listed on the sheet is merely the gateway to rolling and finding out if a character can actually grab at least a toe-hold on communication with a creature that shares a speech drawing from that language tree.

Languages known as determined by Intelligence total:

Intelligence attribute	Language Knowledge
3	Speech impediment
4-5	Unable to read or write
6-7	Has not learned to read or write
8-9	Has not learned to write
10-11	Literate in one’s own mother tongue
12-13	One additional common language known
14-15	Two additional common languages known
16-17	Three additional languages known, one possibly exotic
18+	Four additional languages known, two possibly exotic

- When encountering NPCs in a tense or stressful situation or in any interaction with monstrous characters, determine the number of language families common to both parlaying groups and make a single roll:

Shared linguistic families	Die roll	Degree of communication
Common	d20	4+: No verbal exchange possible and even gesticulation is misunderstood; Reaction roll adversely affected. 3: Basic understanding, present tense only, strongly aided by practical gestures. 2: Functional understanding, including future and past tenses allowing for conditionalisms. 1: Complete understanding, allowing for formal, subtle and artful speech; knowledge on how to read and write the language, if applicable.
one	d12
two	d10
three	d8
four	d6
five	d4
six or more	lowest of 2d4
Roll result:

Specific language knowledge dispenses with rolling and same goes for having a reliable interpreter. The domains of man are each accorded a distinct language while the diluted pseudolanguage known as ‘common’ is actually rare. It does have a use keeping disparate parties afloat within the tenuous glow offered by distant beacons of civilization as a mercantile lingua franca, a civilizational legacy of a long-forgotten past.

This opens the postern for injecting all manner of languages as set-dressing without increasing the complexity overhead, from isolated tribal dialects to splinter sect religious cant. Of course, the dials can be tuned to adjust the implied level of isolationism presented in the setting so that the  number of languages shared may increase the chances from a d12 straight to a d8 or understanding can happen on a higher base number.

General Rules Revisited - Weapon Tables & Properties

The Riddle of Steel

In the original two-part post, I’d already wondered aloud if I might be fretting overmuch over differentiating sharp pieces of metal mounted on sticks. Though short of a categorical answer, this post treads at least part of the way.

Once I actually got down to experiment rolling up some opposition to a party in the shape of a warband decked with different weaponry types it quickly turned into a journey across the bridge of sighs and onto the land of temple-rubbing. And it had been myself who’d written the damnable thing, too.

Ironically, given my wish to avoid the redundance present in the PHB list, I fell into the same sort of potholes, cross-polinating properties across the table in exotic combinations, often using that as justification for new weapon entries. The truth is, many of the properties that seemed so exciting a year ago were just convoluted ways of dealing additional damage, loaded down with rerolls and time consumming cross-comparisons to boot. But all goes according to plan, for this is why I keep an online presence: to fail better.

An effort at simplification, then, is in order, trying to keep hold of some form of variety without sacrificing one’s natural hair colour.

“Careful with that axe, Eugene!”

This post is to serve as an update: I obviously still am not fond of the book’s redundance-laden weaponry list, meaning that I’m not about to jettison all of my work and just fall in line instead. But I do need to linearize, simplify, make attractive. I feel one should aim more for ‘apples to oranges’ type of properties, and discard the ones that read more like solvable math problems of damage yield. 

Another thing that was avoided were calls for comparison with the adversary’s stats other than AC, as this not only increases time spent looking up numbers, it would also get in the way of the ruleset further embracing OSR minimalism later, if I wish it to. Erring on the side of simplicity is for the best, even if the end result is not always that exciting, at least until a better crop of ideas presents itself.

As weapon rules got added, pruned and mulled over, the list became lighter, less redundant and I started gaining a better appreciation on how the original list had at least been a success of distillation: many properties that I regarded as interesting to add (Lashing, Minor) ended up only featuring in a couple of entries, signalling that they’d be better off being special rules rather than full-blown properties, making the whole table simpler to parse.

For the moment I am waving away any potential problematic interactions with feats or class features which, knowing myself, probably won’t end up entirely resembling those presented in the corporate version of the game anyway.

List of Weapon Properties

Meat for the plate: there's some reworked stuff, some that was folded into other properties and much that has been kept from the original posts, italics for a one-line description and stuff in brackets is commentary.

Ammunition

Expended for ranged attacks. Drawing ammunition from a quiver costs the round’s free action.

Chargebreaker

Readied attacks against charging foes roll the weapon's damage die twice.

Concussive

Missed attacks against armoured targets resulting from an unadjusted roll of 16 or higher deal half damage instead.

[I know what I want from this property: for certain weapons to ignore high non-dexterous armour values as bludgeons were historically used to overcome the piled layers of armour that were proof against edged weapons. Translating it into a format that is easy to assess in play, doesn’t break the combat model and flows naturally is trickier.]

Finesse

Can use Strength or Dexterity for the attack and damage rolls.

Fleshbiting

Critical hits with this weapon always roll an additional damage die.

[I’ve settled on this proven classic for Axes and related weaponry. Doesn’t really break the game (or come up all that often, for that matter) and it’s easy to remember.]

Heavy

Unsuitable for Small creatures. Costs an extra inventory slot.

Light

Small, concealable and easy to handle. Ideal for use with the off hand and usable in a clinch.

Loading

Requires a full dedicated round to reload between shots for every damage die that the weapon deals.

Range (normal range/maximum range)

Missile attacks past normal range made at Disadvantage and impossible beyond maximum range.

Reach

Longer effective reach. On weapons where this property exceeds 10', Disadvantage against targets at a closer reach, unless weapon’s staff is used (d4 damage).

Shield (s)

Adds one plus character’s Strength bonus to AC in melee, up to the number in parenthesis. Against missile attacks, flat number is added instead.

Special

Has unusual rules, explained in the weapon’s description.

Swift

Bearer may expend reaction to make an additional attack at Disadvantage as bonus action.

Thrown

Throwable, using Dexterity for the ranged attack roll and Strength for the damage roll.

[Added back this bit of complexity, as I feel it emulates thrown weaponry better and combats over-reliance on a single physical stat. Conversely, all of the better ranged weapon choices have some significant downside unless the character happens to be both strong and dexterous.]

Two-Handed

Requires two hands to use.

Versatile

Can be used with one or two hands. Damage in parentheses for two-handed use.

Improvised

Object that can be wielded or thrown as a weapon. Deals 1d4 damage; if throwable has a range of (20/60).

Special Weapons

Bows. (*)

Using a bow requires a minimum Strength rating of 5 plus the weapon’s damage die (i.e STR 11 for a Shortbow).

Cestus.

Improves the damage from Unarmed strike by +1. Does not take up the hand slot while worn but prevents tasks requiring fine manipulation.

Crossbows. (**)

Heavier versions of this weapon cannot be loaded by hand, requiring a cranequin to reset the firing mechanism. Repeating crossbows sport an integrated cranequin and a ten-round magazine that takes d4 minutes to  reload.

Flail.

Attacks with a flail ignore AC bonuses from shields and may not be parried.

Lance.

Requires two hands to wield when unmounted. On a mounted charge deals triple damage and shatters.

Net.

Attacks with a net target touch AC. A Large or smaller creature hit by a net is restrained. Removal requires a successful DC 10 Strength check, dealing 6 slashing damage to destroy the net (no to-hit roll needed) or two other characters dedicating their full turn to freeing the target.

Trident.

If a weapon attack misses the wielder and rolls under his Dexterity modifier, he may expend his reaction to attempt to disarm the attacker.

Whip.

If maximum damage is rolled, wielder may use a bonus action to attempt to disarm, trip or grapple the target.

The Table

Unsheathe.

Them Bones of Adventure - XIX: Killing Blows (Assassination, Hunting, Critical Hits)

Continuing my exposition on table procedures for common exploration feats & rules, which began here with part one.

Introduction

To finally shake off the holiday hibernation sickness, here’s the refinement of a process, proving yet again that the only constant in rule design is how inconstant things turn out to be. Just two posts ago I was proclaiming Dismemberment tables to be for the sole benefit of player-characters. After that, spitballed on battling giant-like creatures and how such combats lack a properly distinct character and don’t feel different enough. Sometime previously, it had been the notion of revising critical hits and the abstractions inherent to hunting what kept the mental gears grinding away.

So one’s left with this smattering of cold-meal topics: Hunting, Critical Hits, Dismemberment Tables, Large-sized creatures.

Keep calm and operate synthesis.

Todestoss, or the art of the one-hit wonder: Hunting, Ambushes, Assassination

While mentally playing with how to pan out the scenario of the patient hunter that tenses and levels his longbow at the placcid elk or the dagger poised to slip amid the oblivious camp sentry’s shoulderblades, a referee is presented with something not covered by the book’s rules: the need for the mechanical possibility of inflicting a deathblow that bypasses the gradating combat abstraction that are Hit Points.

As can be expected, mechanics for “assassination” and related rules genera may as well be seen as exclusively player-facing, despite their pretenses of all-inclusiveness. I’ve no desire to fight this particular fight and I’ve yet to witness a referee engage in one-sided player character slaying – no matter how even-handedly supported by rules – whose game did not directly careen into a ditch. I can count myself among the examples, thank you very much for asking.

But let us return to the initial huntsman scenario: assuming an elk or whichever creature endowed with a significant hit-point pool and generally treated, barring exceptional circumstances, as a shy and non-agressive beast, hunting one shouldn't really be a matter of rolling for initiative and needing a barrage of missiles or magical artillery simply to secure an evening’s meal. What is more, if the party were to wound the animal, even with multiple attacks, it could then bound away, never to be caught again, as its status of health depletion would have quite no effect on its ability to hoof along past the horizon.

No, the scenario as it should play out is that our hunter will carefully line up his shot, he’ll knock, inhale, draw, aim, loose, exhale and, should he miss, never get a second chance at that particular elk for the rest of the day, maybe the week, perhaps never. Conversely, a good hit ought to inflict a wound deep enough to momentarily stun the animal, make it leave a trail of blood or slow down as he drags along a game leg, that some further tracking effort may result in further encounters that will probably lead to its becoming a hard-won trophy.

This initial problematic, of course, is all too easy to draw out onto the more man vs. man facets of play so, in an effort to spawn a transversal rule to frame such noninteractions, I needed something that was resolvable in a couple of rolls, accounted for both the ranged and melee approaches (achieving a measure of balance between them) and that restricted eligible targets by differing mass and power level, to erect limits on those whose existence might conceivably be endable through a fortunate string of rolls – a typically DnD kind of approach, I guess, but one necessary to contain the implications of invisibility on demand, as well as supporting the fact that none if not a mithically gifted hunter could hope to bring down an elephant with a single javelin throw between the eyes, most mortals being forced to resort to the prosaic method of wearing it down volley by volley.

Critical Hits – (un)called shots

Called shots are generally regarded as a bad idea, a taut stretching of the granularity inherent to DnD’s combat that the system is not ready to support.  With this I stand in agreement, though I find room for exception in the shape of the critical hit. I previously proponed that critical hits might empower the player to either translate a character’s good fortune with the traditional increase in damage output or as a successful free-form maneuver, up to and including wounding an opponent in crippling fashion. As I’ve since come to rework the dismemberment table, it seems fitting that I should contrive to double dip on my own design efforts and unravel these options apart so as to get some more mileage out of the table while at the same time more strictly systemizing the rule.

Overheadwise, it’s easy to hear the clamouring hue: whoever could care about spending table time inflicting a belabored limp on the second orc from the left, knowing all too well it is two rounds away from being dead anyway!? Agreement comes easy that here the effort is probably wasted.

But let us contrast this to the elation of hamstringing a rampaging cyclops, just at the point where it is about to brutally prevail in combat over the party, the act itself insufficient to carry the day as it turns out, but enough to prevent the hulking brute from pursuing the fleeing group due to its mangled leg tendons, would this be worth the time taken randomizing a dismemberment result? You’re reading a blog post about it, so the odds are conspicuous.

Dismemberment rolls on large creatures with a corresponding reserve of hit points seem inherently interesting as they can dramatically swing a fight and provide some granularity that is worth tracking. Hope is that, by enabling this option, this furthers the rule-agenda of differentiating large creature combats, a current windmill of choice.

This is not intended to provide a fast-track to victory or a means to bypass a monster’s Hp total, but as an accretional method of winning otherwise difficult fights by whittling down a large foe through infliction of wounds, hence contributing to the goal of making it feel like a different type of fight than the “fighting at full potential/dead” binary display that is endemic to normal DnD combat (and perfectly adequate to larger numbers of smaller foes).

Much like the above entry for killing blows, in spite of my wish for general mechanical coherence across the character spectrum – PC to NPC – what follows is also a forceful departure since, as I’ve conservatively established, it is the player character's privilege to roll for losing fingers only at the dry bottom of the hit-point well. Dipping into the murk of dismemberment before that point can well be faced as a punishment for the non-player character, though one can dub it a redress of the assymetry already inherent to employing critical hits in the first place (since NPCs get to roll plenty more dice and thus to inflict many more critical hits upon player characters, in the long run).

The Crunchy Bits

Deathblows

In order for a character to attempt to inflict a deathblow, a number of preconditions must be met:

- The target cannot have more than twice the attacker’s Level in number of Hit Dice;

- The attack must benefit from Advantage and both attack rolls must hit the target;

- The target’s guard must be completely down (i.e. unaware of the attempt, not engaged in combat);

A hit under the above conditions being sufficient to inflict a critical hit, then comes the deathblow attempt proper:

- The target must pass a Constitution saving throw, DC equal to the unmodified number rolled for the attack. Melee attempts will count the highest d20 result for this while ranged attempts count the lowest; Failure results in immediate death, success downgrades the hit back to a critical.

Note that even a critical hit may still - on much reduced odds - leave a victim wounded onto helplessness or even death.

Revised Critical Hits (w/Dismemberment)

Upon scoring a Critical Hit, the attacker chooses:

1) Roll double the number of damage dice, explodable;

2) Roll damage as normal and automatically succeed in a combat maneuver or stunt;

3) (Player-characters only; attack must be made with a weapon whose damage die is no more than two sizes below the target's HD size) Declare an attempt to inflict a wound: roll damage as normal and apply a roll on the Dismemberment Table to the target.

As before, unintelligent creatures will always opt for 1) whereas intelligent foes will go for whichever of 1) or 2) is worse for the target.

Dismemberment rolls on monsters can require some considerable interpretative flexibility on the part of the referee, as enemies of great size or unliving nature may flat out ignore the wounded condition and many of the table’s entries, whereas dealing with creatures with a non-humanoid body structure can make for some head-scratching randomization efforts.