As you might already be aware, full-casters are generally much more powerful than non-casters and druids are pretty solidly powerful, even among full-casters.  Pathfinder has done well (in my opinion) of powering down druids, but one-on-one, a druid is still more powerful than an evenly leveled fighter.  The animal companion plus summoning spells make them a more than formidable adversary.  So why bother with fighters when you can just raise armies of druids (and clerics and wizards)?

Our first problem when answering this question is that, in Pathfinder, your basic NPCs are given the stat array 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 with no mention of how those stats should be best arranged.  With this we concluded that it is more-or-less evenly distributed, with one in six people having any particular stat be that 13.   Since a 13 wisdom will let you cast 3rd level spells as a druid or cleric, wouldn’t 16% of the population be prime candidates for militarized divine spellcasting? And another 16% primed to be wizards?

The second problem we run into is that we have no built in controls on how common the various heroic PC classes are.  The rules make vague statements that most people fall into one of the NPC classes (commoner, warrior, expert, aristocrat and adept) but there is no hard and fast rule saying that they can’t be of heroic PC classes.  Gone are the 1e days of stat requirements to play classes (17 charisma to be a paladin, anyone?) so why not take a level in ranger or barbarian or fighter instead of warrior?  Why not take cleric levels instead of  adept?  What makes the NPCs take NPC classes?

This kind of thinking leads toward an end that we, as our gaming group, do not desire: the Tippyverse.  If you frequent the Giant in the Playground message boards, you may have heard of the DnD universe created by the poster Emperor Tippy.  For those of you who haven’t heard, this thread explains it relatively well.  Basically it is a world were RAW is Law and the logical extensions of a world wherein magic exists and costs nothing but time and coin are explored.  It’s a magocracy to the Nth degree.  Our group does not want this.  So how do we fix it?

My first solution to this conundrum was to decide that the stat arrays were not evenly distributed.  In a pseudo-medieval society, your basic person is going to be best served by a high constitution.  Yes in a magical setting, clerics, bards, druids and adepts exist and can cast curative spells, but they aren’t around all the time and not every midwife has levels in them.  People die from injury and disease.  Those who have that 8 in constitution are much more likely to die than the ones with their 13 there.  Secondly, because every street corner doesn’t have a wizard on it offering to solve your problems with a few arcane spells, manual labor still needs to be done.  Fields need to be plowed; tools need to be made; things need to be lifted and carried; a decent strength score is probably well prized among the common folk.  Essentially, natural selection has made it such that the stat arras are skewed towards the physical stats rather than the mental ones.

The second solution that I arrived on (which still is contended by Wolfgod) is that the PC classes are just less common.  My reasoning is that, even though as players we think, “I want to be a cleric” or “I’d like to play a barbarian this time”, the people in the world don’t make that conscious decision.  They simply do stuff and then their actions are translated into classes, feats, skills and such as best modeled by the rules.  The rules of the game, as I see them, are like the laws of physics in our world.  Physics does not force an object to fall when I drop it.  Physics describes how the object fell and can help me predict what other falling objects will do based on centuries of data.  In the same way, being a fighter or cleric or druid was not a conscious decision by the character, but rather a reflection of the decisions that he made in his life.  With this outlook in mind, the NPC classes are just easier to fall into.  It’s easier for your average soldier to have made decisions that made him a warrior instead of a fighter or for your skillful NPC to be an expert rather than a rogue.  My basic viewpoint is that not all priests are clerics and not all soldiers are fighters.  Most are NPCs and a select few are specialized PC classes.

With these two constraints in mind, we have gone to building the various armies.  We are still hammering out the finer points and balance issues, but our basic conclusion was that the vast majority of an army needs to be made up of rank-and-file guys with spears (or swords or whatever) and that spell slingers are a small minority.  We are setting a fluid limit of no more than 5-10% of your force can be casters and I would eventually like to see a rule that states how many of your infantry need to be warriors instead of fighters/rangers/barbarians/paladins.

If you have any comments or advice on how best to achieve our desired low-medium magic world, I’d love to hear them.  We are always looking to make our world fit our vision for it and would like to have reasons why it has developed and remained that way.

Halswood was indeed under threat – allies of the Redstone Spur threatened the town.  As you know, Halswood sits on the southern shore of a vast, clear, cold mountain lake, which was once the home of terrible predatory monsters until they were all hunted down by Rhenic some years ago.  At first it seemed merely as if the monsters had returned – but it was more than that.  Great grey fish with massive teeth were again loose in the lake, but they were controlled – by a coven of hags who dwelled in the waters with them.

Worse, Mauril and Athelas determined that these were creatures of the open sea – that had been brought here by some means still unknown to us.  Something more was going on – and we suspected it was going on in the ancient runs of Eriad, on the north shore of the lake.

Our attempts to travel there ended in battle with the hags and their minions.  We managed to defeat the horrible witches, and in doing so, we stole the magics they were using to control the sea monsters.  Using the weapon of the enemy against them, we were able to defeat the largest, strongest guardian set before the shores of Eriad – a massive dragon turtle.

That overcome, we docked out battered ship and scouted Eriad.  Instantly we were set upon by Jarls – soldiers in the service of Redstone – but these Jarls were different; younger and clad in blues instead of reds.  Though the fight was harrowing, we drove off or killed the Jarls – and took a prisoner.

Our captive – little more than a boy – told us there were more of his kind in the ruins, and that they were merely scouts for a larger force.  We resolved to destroy this scouting force utterly, in the hopes that any following force would deem Eriad unsafe, and turn elsewhere.

We approached the stronghold of the Jarls – an ancient temple of Archgate, still standing when all about it was tumbling down.  Knowing we were outnumbered and forewarned that a Druid was leading the Jarl force, we attacked from concealment with Longbows, attempting to whittle down the numbers of our foes.

The Druid replied with lightning from the skies.  We countered, killing more of his men.  The battle grew heated – and the enemy attacked with his most powerful force – a white Dragon.  She was considerably smaller than the great beasts which besiege Tir Castellan, perhaps twenty feet nose-to-tail, but even such a modestly sized creature is a great threat.  The ruins helped us greatly, as did my study and training – knowing that Dragons besiege my home, I have spent the last months seeking out all I can learn about slaying such creatures.  This knowledge and the bravery of my comrades allowed us to strike the beast from the skies – and slay its Druidic master.

The scouting force was wiped out – the Druid slain, his attempt at building a northern version of the Redstone Spur crushed – barely.

I traveled from Halswood to Queen’s Landing, where I am moving my War Griffons-in-training.  With Baron Caig’s permission I am establishing a Ranger station down the coast from Queen’s Landing to train my mounts – as I have accepted a Knight-Leftenant’s commission in the Aruthien army and am now responsibly to raise and lead a company of Rangers.  With Tir Castellan besieged, I know serving my Kingdom is my duty.  I hope in good time I am able to come against the enemies of our home alongside you and father.

in the meantime, I am well – though another message has arrived, warning of some trouble in Caliban.  I suspect I will again be sent abroad on the Kingdom’s business.

In Tir Ezion I took the small fortune I had earned and invested in War Griffons – six to be exact.  Hatchlings now, but growing and training with the Rystars of Spaartha.  I’ve spent many months there, training the Griffons and being trained myself.

War Griffons seemed a wise idea, with four great Dragons threatening Tir Castellan.  I know full well I lack the skill and fortitude to face such ancient beasts – at present.  But like all my companions, we train and study for the day when we face the great wyrms in battle.  With trained mounts, we could face them in the air, where the Rystars tell me Dragons are clumsy fliers.

Nonetheless, after months of training, a letter came from Holly, the Flen Wizard who had trekked with us across Bravenland in pursuit of the snakemen spies.  She was in some kind of trouble, and had taken pains to conceal it – her letter was written in a code only the snakemen used – a trick which she knew that Mauril the archivist could certainly unravel.  We gathered together again from the far countries where we had scattered, and went seeking Holly.

Having no good place to begin, we traveled to Valeska, to the Diviner’s College there.  Here we paid for scrying – not only in the search for Holly, but also in combating the pirates who had been raiding the Spaarthan coast of late.  As you well know, the Kingdom navies are tasked beyond their capacity these last few months, sailing convoys of troops to Caliban to fight the armies of Manath, and sailing other legions to Bravenland to aid in the war with the Redstone Spur.  It was no surprise then that buccaneers would take advantage of the opportunity.

What was strange were the abductions – these pirates weren’t taking loot, they were taking men.  So we scryed upon them as well – and found little.

However, it soon became clear that all was not well at the school of Diviners.  Being a Ranger has some advantages – I might not know when someone is lying, but I can tell when things are being hidden.

We left the Diviner’s College, discussed our clues – and returned and launched a rapid assault under the cover of Mauril’s silence spell.  We slew the guards and those Wizards who were keeping the rest in bondage – and liberated Holly and the rest of the students who were being held hostage here.

This was not the end of the quest; the grateful Diviners showed us what we needed to know about the mysterious pirates – apparently they were coming from Lake Fum in Tantathia.  This seemed impossible – as the lake is landlocked – but we resolved to go and investigate.

The wilds of the Tantathian March were warmer than we had left them in winter – spring had come to the land.  We scarcely paused to enjoy it, traveling fast down the Kingdom high road.

During our travel we came upon a strange house – which I am sure was never near that road before.  Upon closer investigation, we met the occupant – a strange being claiming to be the ‘Fire King’ – an ancient being who had dwelled in these lands for many centuries.

He claimed to have a solution to our problem.  Raiders were coming through some kind of portal which had torn open above Lake Fum – where an ancient portal had once existed before Mount Fum had blown itself apart and become Lake Fum.  Apparently, this weak point was allowing these extraplanar raiders to attack us.

I was not entirely convinced of the ‘Fire King’ and his story, but it fit with the facts, so we investigated.  Mauril was armed with a strange magical device that the King claimed would slowly regrow the mountain, closing the portal.

We traveled on, finally discovering the portal in the lake.  We fought the interlopers and drove them back through the portal – but the magical device was damaged in the battle, and we couldn’t raise the mountain.  We left a guard on the portal and returned the device.  The Fire King claims he will repair it, and the mountain will be raised again.  We shall see – meanwhile, the raids have stopped, and Spaartha is returning to health.

With that emergency dealt with, I returned to training Griffons in Tir Ezion – until your next letter reached me.

I’m not sure this letter will make it through the lines to you, but I owe you a fuller explanation of where I’ve been and what we’ve been doing since last I was in Tir Castellan.

Alder and I were traveling in Tantathia when we were caught in a blizzard.  We weathered the storm at Fort Rodez, and had to go out into the storm to rescue a stranded party of travelers.  It was well we did, for one of those in danger by the storm was the Aruthien Ambassador to Barloz.  We saved him from the icy storm and starving Dire Wolves – but we couldn’t save him from the summoned hellhounds of two assassins.

To my surprise, the assassins proved to be women – young, pretty women posing as barmaids.  They said their names were Tara and Isola, though naturally those names would be false.

It was too late to save the ambassador – and probably relationships between the Kingdoms – but we could chase down the murderers.  Or so we thought.  The assassins proved far more resourceful than we would’ve expected.

I found myself part of a group of companions.  You have heard of some of them no doubt – Alder of course.  A Spaarthan street rogue called Brenin.  A learned Mishyan scholar called Mauril.  Edelbrock, the prince of far-off Mastillan.  Athelas, an Ehrenlander who follows Athor the sungod.  Braden, a nimble fighter from Rothgorod or some far-off place, and Holly, a Flen from Woodsheart, and a skilled Wizard.  Together we set out after the killers, though we had no idea how far the journey would take us.

They fled north into the Tantathian March, paying local ruffians to kill us.  We dealt with them and harried them as far as Kylon, where the assassins purchased teleports to Queen’s Landing.  Scraping up our meager funds, we followed.

One of the assassins – Isola -  took ship from Queen’s Landing to Barloz, and we lost track of her.  We suspected them of using disguises to hide their true faces.  She could be anywhere now, looking like anyone.

Tara fled overland from Queen’s Landing, hiring mercenaries and riding out across the Toth Badlands.  We suspected she meant harm to Duke Vladir – as you know the Caspan Legion was at that time assigned to build a serviceable road between Queen’s Landing and Tir Castellan.  We arrived at the Duke’s Camp, but either he was not a target or the assassins could not get close to him.

We met the Duke and dined with him.  He remembered me of course, and seemed most pleased to meet Alder and Edelbrock.  I know our family is loyal to the King, and that Vladir is out of favor because of the Barlozian problem, but I liked him.  He seemed like a good man, not some cunning enemy of the crown.  Vladir gave us all the aid we could ask for and sent us along in our pursuit.

Abandoning the mercenaries, Tara went onward – turning north and taking shelter in the Vigabrock itself.  Outside, we were attacked by a band of strange warriors led by a fire sorceress – not anyone I could identify, even living my whole life on the frontier.  It was only much later we learned they were Jarls in service to the Redstone Spur, though what they were scouting for so far east I could not tell.

Not willing to abandon the quest for justice, we tracked Tara into the Vigabrock.  We entered the Stronghold clad as warriors, and passed beneath the very noses of the Frost Giants who rule that great fortress.  Finally our luck broke – Alder and the companions cornered the assassin and captured her – but Tara took poison and died before she could be stopped.

Now in possession of her corpse, Mauril and the other learned members of our party could see she was no human or elf of race of the Kingdoms – she was something else.  Something subtle and disguised – eventually, with much research, we were able to identify her as some minion of the Yuan-Ti, a mysterious snakefolk who dwell far to the southeast.  We can only suppose they were in the Kingdoms to create havoc and sow discord – but we cannot be sure.

From there we came to Tir Castellan – both to see you and to chase down the last lead Tara left us. We raided an innocuous shop in the south of the city – but the wizard we came to arrest and his greatsword-wielding bodyguard escaped us.  Still, we were able to alert the Kingdoms to the danger, and perhaps the machinations of these creatures will yet be exposed.

As you know we were at the Citadel when the Dragons attacked the city and the Jarl army laid siege.  The Redstone Spur may have Tir Castellan surrounded by I believe the city can be held – you and father didn’t build the city up from nothing to see it burned by a few Dragons, no matter how ancient they may be.  If there is any service I can provide our home, please call on me.

In my next letter I shall tell you of our adventures in Spaartha and beyond, and how it relates to combating the Redstone threat.

I’ve noticed, however, a certain discomfort for the late 3.5 material.  Core books, Unearthed Arcana, and the ‘Complete’ books I’m fairly comfortable with – as for the rest … not so much.

I think a lot of it has to do with my pre-imagined idea of what the game world is really like.  Our game world is huge and detailed – we’ve been playing in it for more than a decade.  There are dozens of maps, a wiki full of old characters, NPCs, Kings and Villains, and history of old campaigns.  Our world is pretty low-fantasy for D&D – there are wizards and magic swords, but not very many of the ‘exotic’ things that have come to be a part of 3.5 D&D over the years.

In this world, a Ranger or a Wizard is a pretty normal thing – everyone from common folk to a King knows what you are and what you can do … where you fit into society.  I suppose that’s why I can ‘see’ them interacting with the game world.

The exotic races don’t have a home in our game world – if you wanted to play an Aquatic Half-Giant, we’d have to figure out where in the heck you were from.  Most everyone (at least if I were running) would have a reaction to the character – because they’ve never seen anything like it before.

The same goes for the strange classes.  A Rogue or even an Assassin is a thing built into the world – there are Guilds for both in most places – but even something like a Warlock just isn’t built into the fabric of the game world.  Playing something like a Psionic or anything that turns you into a Dragon is going to seem strange at best.

That’s just my reaction, though – I think I see the game world as an unfolding story, with the ‘rules’ of the world loosely drawn from 3.5 ish D&D.  We have old Kings who are Paladins, or Wizards … not a base Bard with dips into five other classes and feats from books nobody has ever heard of.  It’s just the way the game world works.

• How hard is it for a character to die in 4e?  To me, with all the checks and healing surges, it seems nearly impossible.  That seems to really rob the game of any sense of danger.
• Do the limited number of ‘paths’ make it difficult to truly ‘customize’ a character?  (i.e. do all Fighters feel alike?)
• Are the number of given options in combat overwhelming or freeing compared to 5th ed?  Do they eventually get tedious?
• Do the healing surges, in practice, really mean that you’re never carrying around any damage?
• Is there anything I should know about the learning curve?  Any beginner’s mistakes I need to look out for?

Crits should have lasting effects in game, that aren’t easy to fix.  The critical could sever an artery, cost a player an eye or leg, or scar his face.  This may mean lasting repercussions to the character, or at least disadvantage until they could be properly healed (what if clerics couldn’t fix all damage immediately? That may be a topic for another post).

Crits need to happen less often than they do in 4e if they are going to be this debilitating.  With any roll of ’20′ being an automatic critical, crits happen 5% of the time.  However, for a low-level 3.5 character, he may only hit on two consecutive 20s (for a 0.25% chance).  Crits should happen somewhere between the two extremes.  I would think that always using a 19 or 20 for possible crits, then a confirmation roll would be about the right number of crits per game.  As you can see in the graph below, this would be a flat, even geometric increase as monsters get easier to hit.

How often a critical happens, however, is up for debate, and not the entire point of this post.

Perhaps there could also be a ‘severity’ of criticals, with a ’19′ meaning you are eligible for an less severe (or easily corrected) critical, and a ’20′ meaning you are eligible for a devastating critical.  This would save us from some sort of superfulous ‘crit severity’ chart, and allow us to immediately roll the critical.  This roll may be a d100, with the first digit determining the body part, and the second determining the actual critical.

This critical system would make the game seem more gritty and real.  Combat is not just a matter of rushing in and droping HP to 0, it’s dangerous, and it could hurt you.

It’s time to bring in the Mentor.

Everybody needs a reason to go on a dangerous Quest.  Your players will have more buy-in to the storyline if they feel like something is in it for them.  Of course, some players don’t engage much with the role-playing part of the story, and others are very reluctant heroes who need a good push out the door.

That’s where the Mentor comes in.  The classic mentor figures are guys like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gandalf; wise old Wizards who can tell the young hero what he needs to do – and maybe train him a little bit, or give her the special item that’ll give a much-needed edge later on.

They don’t always have to be old wizards.  The Mentor could be the King, or a parent, or anybody with wisdom to share about the coming trial.  (The Ranger who last went to the Mountain of Shadows to get the Pearl Orchid.)  Even a bard with a good story could help out – give the heroes that last bit of advice and a shove of motivation to get them moving along.

The Mentor is your device to give the heroes a compelling reason to take up the dangerous quest; to change their minds if they refused the adventure, to give them advice and make sure they’re properly equipped for the trial to come.  The Campaign worlds we’ve created over the years have usually had plenty of Mentor figures built in; often the same Mentor would appear in different campaigns, giving a new band of heroes that extra nudge out the door.

Now, if all else fails, you can simply use an authority figure for the mentor – the aforementioned monarch, or a military leader, or one of the gods.  That’s your last resort to get the heroes moving – but it’ll work.

Now that they’ve accepted the quest, they’ll need to cross over into the adventure proper – I’ll cover that in Part Five.

So, Wolfgod and I came up with a few things we would eventually like to see in a game system.  These may be eventually made into a system; we’d have to hash out some statistics first.  For now, it is just a pipe dream.  Here’s a smattering of our ideas:

Levels?  Classes? - Why are we still dealing with the Level/Class construct?  We have neither in real life, so why do we need it in our games?  We advocate a XP spending system something like what GW’s Dark Heresy uses..  It would look something like this:

50 XP buys one of the following:

• 2 skill points
• D6 HP

100 XP buys one of the following:

• One Feat
• D8 HP
• 1 Ranger/Bard/Paladin spell/day

200 XP buys one of the following:

• D10 HP
• 1 Special Ability (Rage, etc)
• 1 Cleric/Druid spell/day
• 1 Point of Base Save

300 XP buys one of the following:

• D12 HP
• 1 Wizard Spell/day
• 1 point of Base Attack

This would allow you to build whatever you need to.  It seems that it may be a good idea to require a feat (or a few feats) before you could buy either wizard spells or cleric/druid spells, just to keep players from picking whatever spells are the most powerful and completely robbing themselves of any “flavor”.  It’s hard to cast spells, it would take a lot of preparation.

This system better emulates real life, where you might either dabble a little in this and that, or you may concentrate on one thing to do it well.  There’s no reason why a wizard or cleric needs to be unskilled in thieving skills, for example.

I think this would require some 4e culling of skills, so you’re not spending the same amount on useful skills like ‘Spot’ or ‘Hide’ as you are for ‘Knowledge: Geography’ or ‘Rope Use’.

This also prevents the sudden increase in power that a ‘level’ system uses.  Every time your character adventures, they gain XP  which they spend at the end of a session or during downtime in the session to get better.  Moreover, it removes all the restrictions of a ‘Class’ – if you want a spellcaster who is extremely perceptive or a thief who has no social skills, you only have to buy what your character gets good at.

Magic should be malleable – So far, in D&D, we’ve really only seen magic as a fully-formed entity.  Spells do what they do, and not much else.  In reality (or, rather, ‘in fantasy’), magic should be scale-able.  What would this look like?  Well, for starters, there is no fireball.

For example, A caster might learn a basic Fire spell.  When first learned, it can light candles or kindling or make a small light.  Learning this would take a Feat or something (probably a Feat which depends on several others, in order to make casting arcane magic challenging).  Once learned, more Feats would allow expanded range and damage – for example, the basic Force magic line would allow you to project the fire away from you, and a third area of magic (Air for example) would allow you to cause the Fire spell to ‘bloom’.  Now you can throw a ‘fireball’ – but it took a series of feats/spell areas in order to project that kind of power.  Want to thow lightning?  Different area of specialization.

Some example fields of study might be elemental (fire, air, water, ice, electricity), and some may be physical (force, teleport).  These can be combined for many effects.

Magic Systems – Magic comes from many different sources.  These include the divine systems, which draw from a deity or nature itself, and the arcane systems, which draw from mystical forces of the world around us.  It may also be useful to include a power source of the casters’ energy itself, for inexperienced or ‘wild’ casters who haven’t mastered the arcane power sources.

Years ago, we played a homebrew Cyberpunk game using the wounds/vitality system.  The catch with being a caster in this game was that it took vitality points to cast (magic wears you out physically).  When you were out of vitality points, you could keep casting, but it cost wounds.  It was a particularly interesting visual; casters would get exhausted from casting, and eventually wounds would open up on them from the extreme amount of force channeled through their bodies.

Right now these ideas are more theory than system – but it would allow maximum customization of characters and flexibility to the players.

When 3rd Edition hit, and we saw how good it was, we all bought a copy.  Finally, we had enough PHB’s for everyone.  It was joyous.  There was some initial resistance to 3.5, but after seeing the improvements it made, and the broken things it fixed (remember 3.0 Rangers, anyone?), we eBay’d our 3.0 books and upgraded.

Now, in a little over a month, I am going to try to run my group’s first 4e game.

Most mentions of 4e are met with derision, even at the time when we first heard about it.  Admittedly, there is some things I don’t like about 4e (mosly about having to shoehorn new things into our game world), but there’s quite a bit I do.  I feel it’s important to stress to my players that this is a new rules system, and comparison to 3.5 is not exactly comparing apples to apples.

There’s a few things that I know already won’t go over well.  It’s funny how I haven’t heard these mentioned as negatives anywhere else, but nonetheless will cause groaning at our game table:

• Not adding con bonus to HP every level – adding their full con score to HP at first level may throw them for a loop, though.
• Fixed HP at each level – the more I think about this, the more I like it, especially since I’m always the guy who throws a ’1′ on my HP roll.  It’s gotten so bad that I usually have other people roll for me.
• WTF is an Eladrin? – I’m not too sold on them, either, and I’m not really sure how they’ll fit in my game world.
• Why is the cheese-tastic Dragonborn now core? – We may be able to put these people in somewhere, but for the most part they will cause women to scream and babies to cry if they show up in our established villages.
• No Druid or Barbarian (yet, anyway) – I was usually the Druid player, but we had quite a few that liked to play a barbarian.

What they may like, if given a chance.

• More balanced classes.
• More options in combat.
• Interesting terrain, playing a bigger role in fights.
• Skill challenge system, for situations bigger than a single DC.
• The Warlord.

So, I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes.