Problems with D&D 5E: Combat - Mooks

The other day's article seemed to work nicely, and I still have some steam left over, so I'll tackle another issue of mine (that I briefly touched on yesterday). Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition seems to favour fighting big bad evil super-powered monsters... Except for one glaring problem. Despite how powerful a monster is, it still only gets to act once a round, whilst the PCs get to act PC amount of times.

This means either you make a monster so bullet-spongy that they can survive for long enough to act enough times to be compelling, or all your monsters become piles of goo before they get a chance to show why they're cool. The bullet-sponge tactic also has the short fall that often the amount of hp to damage a monster does is off-whack. Either they present no issue for beefy PCs (like Paladins or Barbarians) or they one-shot-kill weaker ones (like Bards or Wizards). This results in weird stilted combats...

One obvious solution to this is adding in Mooks - tiny monsters that surround the big one, and are threatening only in numbers. Mooks in a combat-heavy RPG are awesome - they give the PCs something to fight whilst presenting less of a challenge. They're meat shields for the bosses, and act as pockets of fiero for our heroes. It gives them the chance to throw their arms in the air and yell like the crazy Gnome Barbarians that they are (Flick, I'm looking at you!)

Great! Sorted! Except now you have to run combats with 20+ minis on the field, and a ridiculous amount of book keeping besides. But, as I said last time, 5th Edition is very easy to hack - and hack we will! Below are my rules for using Mooks by turning them into Squads.

I know it's technically Warhammer, not DnD, but just appreciate the awesome, ok?

Squads of Mooks

1. Firstly, find the monster stat block you want to turn into a Squad. Anything squishy works well - generally creatures that will go down in 1-2 hits from your PCs.
2. Next, decide how many you want in the Squad. This number becomes their "Magnitude".
3. Now, make a mini-base, or use a proxy model, that would be of equal size to all the monsters together. So a 3x3 for 9 medium creatures in a Squad.
4. This base moves and acts as a single entity.
5. Give the Squad a special Action:
1. Divided Attacks. The Squad may make up to Magnitude divided by 3 (minimum 1) melee or ranged attacks each turn, so long as they target different opponents with each attack. If they have fewer viable targets, they may direct their attacks towards the few they have.
6. Give the Squad two special Features:
1. Squad Combat. The Squad attacks together, and even though some may miss, eventually one blow's going to get through. If the Squad fails to hit an opponent with an attack, they deal half damage instead of missing entirely. The Squad loses this feature if their Magnitude is reduced to 1.
2.  Stand Together. Whenever the Squad takes damage equal to or in excess of their hp, they immediately lose 1 Magnitude, and replenish their hp. Whenever the Squad would be the target of an effect that targets multiple creatures, instead have it effect that amount of the Magnitude. If this is damage, simply multiply it by the amount of targets. If the effect is a condition, count it as temporarily reducing the Magnitude of the Squad by that many targets. The Squad loses this Feature if their Magnitude is reduced to 1, fully or temporarily.
7. And that's it! Now you've reduced a large group of Mooks into a single 'creature'.

Give this a try, and let me know if it speeds up play whilst not removing your ability to have lots of monsters.

Problems with D&D 5E: Legendary Resistance

There are two things many of you may know about me:

1. I've been running Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition for about 2 years now in a campaign called Ameshirel: A World Undone.
2. I hate Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, the second thing has always come in waves. I see a new edition, I play it, I like the new things, but the old shitty things continue to piss me off. I then realise that Dungeons & Dragons doesn't do the thing it claims to be best at any better than a handful of games. So I end up switching to something better...

But I've stuck with 5th Edition because I honestly believe it is better than all previous editions. However, that doesn't mean it is good. Just better.

Luckily, we can make it even better!

Now I'm not sure if this is going to be a series, or just a one shot, but I'd like to start looking at individual mechanics in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, pointing out why they suck, and then reworking them to be a little more interesting. The first one I am going to target is:

Legendary Resistance

AKA, "nah, fuck your cool signature spells... I'm a bad-ass and don't want to be hurt." AAKA "I'm a Game Designer and needed a way to make this super powerful creature actually powerful, but refuse to fix the broken system around it, so will instead invent a bullshit rule."

Legendary Resistance (3/Day): If the <creature> fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

This ability is given to a number of monsters - basically anything that's considered a stand-alone boss fight. The problem is, with Dungeons & Dragons's weird combat system, stand-alone monsters aren't really feasible. The PCs will have infinitely more chances to act than them, making their super powers only useful a fraction of the time. And the amount of crazy PC abilities means they'll whittle it down before it's acted more than once or twice. So we see Dragons, and Vampires, and Demons, etc, all sporting this rule.

Why is this bullshit? Well, because spellcasters (and Monks) rely on saving throws for a lot of their abilities. These same classes also rely on limited resources (spell slots, Ki points, etc). They also, usually, don't get to do much in their turns except cast a single spell, or whatever.

So when you have the Wizard dutifully wait around until it is finally their turn (because combat in this game takes forever), and then to use their favourite spell, which they get to do for, maybe, 10 seconds in a 4 hour session, you pull this shit out. It tells the player that, no - in this case, for no apparent reason, your awesome ability didn't work. Doesn't matter what kind of saving throw, either.

White Dragons are massive, so they can probably resist Constitution saving throws. However, they're also described as being stupid. They're also, as I mentioned, massive! So it's arguable to say they can't dodge all that well, nor hold onto their wits like others can.

This rule decides to shit all over the lore, and just tell the players that, in this case, the monster is OK.

It also becomes a war of attrition. The spellcaster has 3 spell slots? Well Legendary Resistance has 3 uses. Looks like you're not getting your spell off - Tim the Enchanter. Oh, what's that, you DO have a 4th slot? Well we could either let you just use your damn spell, or we could waste 3 rounds of combat until the monster has no more charges left. Because that sounds fuuuuuuuuun.

I haven't ever used this ability against my players. And I never will. It sucks... Unless we can fix it.

Fixing Legendary Resistance

Now that my rant is out of the way, here are some ideas on how to make it not terrible.

At its core, it's a useful ability to have - it makes the big bad guys actually difficult to defeat. What can we do to make it better?

1) We give it specific saves it can bolster.

Firstly, we tie the ability into the lore. What is this monster good at resisting? What is it bad at resisting? We can foreshadow all of this in game as well, so that we give the players an early idea of how they might be able to win this thing. 

Is the monster afraid of cold attacks, and can't use their Legendary Resistance against anything cold? Then we put lots of warm fires in their lair.

Is the monster dumb, and can't use their Legendary Resistance against Intelligence saving throws? Then we make it perform stupid actions. It chases its tail if it isn't sentient. It can't speak properly, or bumps into things, or whatever... You get the idea.

This allows the players to strategically choose which spells they're going to cast. If they know this monster is super wise, and they're going to use a spell that needs a Wisdom saving throw, then they should second guess themselves. If they don't after all this foreshadowing, then it's their fault.

2) We make it a bonus, not a trump.

Secondly, we make the ability a bonus to the monster's saving throw, not a flat out "it fucking wins". Make it a big bonus, to reflect the nature of its Legendary status... However just by rolling - and rolling out in the open - we give the players a fairer chance. We're telling them that the mechanics are granting them the possibility of succeeding, but because this thing is a bad-ass, it's slim.

For argument's sake, let's make it a +10 bonus. Big, crazy, bonus.

3) We make it a strategic choice.

Thirdly, we tie it to a limited resource for the monster - like Reactions. Maybe we give them a second Reaction each turn, to make it more possible for them to use it, but we tie it to something like this. Why? Well, this allows the players to drain the monster's resources.

If the party knows the Wizard is going to lay down some hurt, but they need a clear shot when the monster doesn't have Legendary Resistance, they can help them out. They can purposely provoke Attacks of Opportunity, or they can cast minor spells to expend uses of counterspell, or whatever. Basically, they can set up the Wizard's spell.

The awesome thing about this? Well, it makes everyone involved feel responsible for the awesome spell going off. The Wizard made the spell, but the Monk made the spell possible. Now we've got some team work.

And GMs, don't choose to save the Reaction for the Legendary Resistance. If the players tell you they want to try to provoke the monster so as to distract it so it can't use its Legendary Resistance? Bloody well let them. That's awesome. That's tactics. That's what the game is about.

Conclusion

The age-old rule of "Yes, but..." applies to mechanics too. Don't make a mechanic that shuts a player down, or invalidates their favourite moves. That's not good game design. That's laziness. We're all better than that, and we can work together to make Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition better than that too.

Sorry if I've been too critical of the game. I do have parts of it I like. But I have other parts that I despise. Hopefully, if you scrape off all the vitriol, you'll get some good advice!

What I Learned About Characters from Watching Marco Polo

My favourite thing about roleplaying is growing. I love finding something I'm not, building a character about it, and testing that personality out. It helps me in many ways: it broadens my repertoire for NPCs, it increases my real-world empathy for different view points, and it allows me to explore myself better. Am I actually the way I think I am? Am I different? What would I do, were I in a different situation? Were I a different person?

I believe every character a person makes is a little bit of them. Maybe just a tiny detail - but in some way, from heroes all the way through to villains - our characters reflect who we are.

I recently started watching Season 2 of Marco Polo, and the first two episodes begin with a pretty big bang. This bang inspired me to write an article. This article will have spoilers of a sort, but I'll keep the details out of it. The keen observer will be able to figure out what's happening, so if you care about that sort of thing, turn away now.

I'm also going to make random conjecture, and suggest possible endings to the show without having seen the end of the Season, so take everything I say about the show's events with a grain of salt.

I'll also be throwing around the term good a hell of a lot. By good, I don't mean the opposite of evil. I mean "well-rounded", "interesting", "engaging", "dramatic", "exciting"... Basically, I mean a character that you'd want to read about. You may hate who they are, but not how they're told, or the story they force into existence. By good, I am assuming that you want your roleplaying characters to exemplify the traits I mentioned above. If you don't, ignore everything I'm about to say...

Good Characters Have Motivations

Every good character I know has something they want. More to, they have a reason why they want that thing. This goal and reason together forms their motivation. A motivation is more than just a base want. It is everything that surrounds the want that makes the want interesting.

Let's look at two motivations from Marco Polo:

Kublai Khan wants to be a great ruler, but mainly he wants to be a great ruler so that he's considered better than Ghengis Khan, the greatest Mongolian ruler ever. Many people want to be the head-honcho in the series, but it is because of Kublai's obsession that he is so compelling.

Kaidu wants to be Khan to prove that the Mongol way is right. He believes that Ghengis Khan's original message of expansion has been deformed and broken by Kublai's reaching, and wants to, in his eyes, redeem the Mongols. He hates the weakness that he perceives comes from trying to be Emperor of all Mongolia and China.

Here we can see two very similar goals, yet vastly different motivations. Already, the keen GM should be thinking of future plots where these two characters could come to blows...

Good Characters Have Limits

Now, character motivations aren't anything new - we've had roleplaying games that have mechanised motivations for years now, and to very good effect. They work well, but I believe for true dramatic gaming, they need to be pushed. Motivations need to be tested, otherwise the game is just a script.

Does Kaidu kill Kublai to take the throne?

Without limits, of coarse he does. If he has the option, the means, or the chance, he must kill him. It would fulfill his motivation, and he'd win.

However, what makes the character's so compelling - and what can make your characters so compelling - is the limits that are placed on them, by themselves. The characters know what they can and cannot do to achieve their goals.

Kublai Khan has no qualms with killing Kaidu for threatening his throne... He'd even enjoy it, and has been hoping to cross blades with him for some time. However, he's limited by the law. He knows he can't turn down a challenge given within the law, so must accept to undergo an election of sorts. This chafes at him, because even though he has legitemacy, he lacks massively in diplomacy. Kublai, with the greater army, and the greater claim to the throne, fears for his position because his weaknesses can be exploited. This will lead him to compromises that he might not be happy about...

Kaidu has diplomacy. He also has the backing of the law (see above). He knows that Kublai's armies are meaningless if he fights him in an election. But that means he has to sway lots of other chieftains, many of whom are loyal to Kublai. This brings together a great scene, in Season 2 Episode 2. I won't spoil it, but from it we learn that Kaidu has a second manifestation of his core motivation - he believes acting like Ghengis is more important than being Khan. Whether this works out for him or not, is yet to be seen...

From these limits, we get tension. Characters must play to certain rules which dictate their actions and their methods of attaining their goals and achieving their motivations. The best limits are those that make their motivations harder to attain, which leads us to...

Good Characters Make Choices

The moment a character has to make the choice between their motivation and their limits. Does the character accept that their limits are there for a reason, or do they break past them and trust that the ends justify the means?

Kaidu, in the example above, chooses to stick to his limits. He'll figure out another way to achieve his motivation, even if he makes it harder for himself along the way. He's a man of honour or principals, regardless of the morality or righteousness of his motivation. He plays by the rules he's set himself. In old-school terms, he'd be Lawful.

Kublai, on the other hand, faced with several threats to his throne, chooses to dance around his limits. At first, he claims a certain act is unthinkable. Then, he knows he must do it. Then he is convinced against it... Just as we're certain he's turned the other cheek he... Well, I won't spoil this one either. However, the final scene of Season 2 Episode 2 is so perfectly on-point for interesting choices that I urge you to watch that episode, even if you don't care about the rest of the show.

The point is, Kublai isn't certain that his limits are set in stone. He's willing to listen to council, and to change and bend as a person to achieve his goals. Therefore, the drama becomes about what he will decide to do. What choices will he decide to make? He's what we'd call Chaotic.

The main point I'm trying to make, for GMs, is that the best moments of the show - and the best moments for your game if you care about personal and characterful drama - are when you give a player the chance to achieve their character's goals... But then you test their limits. Do they take the leap and risk who they are to become what they want? Or do they sacrifice their dreams to hold firm to their morals and inner voice?

THAT is what I've learned from watching Marco Polo...