I think I would feel better about the charmed rock troll situation if Uncle Junkal's player had had to pull off some incredibly improbable roll in order to charm the deadly creature, but instead he used his nightly d30 roll, which made it nigh impossible for him to fail. A completely legitimate move, but one that made me feel as though we had encountered a dangerous loophole created by the d30 house rule.
Obviously, by embracing a once-per-session d30 rolling rule in the first place, I am to some extent endorsing and encouraging (or at least tempting!) players to find unique applications of the d30 roll, and I should not be too shocked when game-changing results occur. But the rock troll feels like a limit case, a d30 exploit that has led to a long-term imbalance which in turn has deflated the stakes of a good many of the combat encounters the PCs get into. Call me a stodgy old DM, but I want combat to feel more dangerous and threatening for the PCs.
How to cure this unforeseen imbalance?
With Dyson Logos' 2d6 Thievery, of course! I am a big fan of Dyson's system, since I dislike d% skill mechanics in D&D to begin with. For me, 2d6 skill rolls just feel more appropriate to B/X / Labyrinth Lord than d% rolls do, so as soon as I saw Dyson's 2d6 Thievery article in Dyson's Dodecahedron Issue #1, I knew I would be adopting it into the Arandish Campaign.
It did not take long for me to realize that what works for thieves could easily work for bards. I started talking this idea over with Spawn of Endra, who additionally mentioned the cleric's "Turn Undead" mechanic, which also uses 2d6 to do what it does (see LL p. 8). Thus it would seem there is strong precedent for a 2d6 skill system embedded in certain aspects of LL / B/X.
Spawn of Endra then used his substantial statistical knowledge and graphing ability to create that bad-ass chart he posted yesterday -- I love it so much that I'm going to reprint it here:
As you can see, 2d6 Bardery does indeed reduce the impact of the d30 rule, and generally follows a similar curve of success probabilities as d% Bardery. Admittedly, it makes using Bard skills a wee bit more difficult than under the d% system, but given how potent that Charm Person / Monster ability has turned out to be in the course of game play, I do not feel too badly about slightly decreasing Uncle Junkal's chances for success in his skill use in general. Furthermore, given Uncle Junkal's high CHA (15+, a Bard class requirement under the Brave Halfling template) he will always get at least a +1 to his Charm Person / Monster skill, as I use (and strongly endorse) the optional CHA Attribute bonus rule (see below). This attribute bonus factor is reflected in Spawn's chart.
[In a related note, Brave Halfling does the same thing for the Ranger in its Delving Deeper supplement on that class -- it takes away those pesky Druid spells and instead appends a mundane d% skill mechanic. I like this. Can 2d6 Rangery be far behind?]
So now Spawn of Endra and I proudly present 2d6 Bardery, hereby declared Open Gaming Content and available as a pdf here. You will probably need Brave Halfling's Delving Deeper: Bard to make best use of this system, but at the low low price of $0.75 for the pdf, this supplement is surely a must-have for those folks wishing to include Bards in their campaigns. A free sample version is available here.
2d6 Bardery
Using the Brave Halfling Delving Deeper: Bard template as a baseline, we have established that Bards have three basic skills: Legend Lore, Charm Person / Monster, and Read Languages and Arcane Scrolls. The latter is a conflation of two Delving Deeper skills, the former of which (Read Languages) has no set parameters or roll associated with it in the Delving Deeper template.Instead of using the d%-based skill chart in the Delving Deeper supplement, the Bard chooses one of the first two of those three skills (Legend Lore or Charm Person / Monster) to be his or her Favored Skill; the remaining two (ALWAYS including Read Languages and Arcane Scrolls) function as Other Skills on the table below.
2d6 Bardery Skill Chart - Roll 2d6:
Note that a roll of "2" always fails.
Optionally (and strongly recommended), you can grant a Bard his or her CHA modifier (i.e., the absolute value of the Reaction Adjustment modifier, +1 for CHA 13-17, +2 for CHA 18) to Charm Person / Monster checks. No attribute (INT) modifiers are permitted for Legend Lore or Read Languages and Arcane Scrolls skill rolls: exposure to lore during his or her training is the basis for the Bard's being able to decipher languages or arcane scrolls.
Endnote: Although much of this 2d6 Bardery business has been inspired by the presence and deeds of the Arandish Campaign's resident rodian bard, Uncle Junkal, it should be mentioned that Uncle Junkal himself does not completely conform to the rules given above. 2d6 Bardery as presented here should be considered a "Basic Bard Template" applicable to most bards; however, Uncle Junkal himself is a juggling specialist, and as such has a couple of skills / abilities not outlined here. A future post, perhaps?
I like the 2d6 bard skill progression and like the way it interacts with the d30. The only thing I would question is the underlying assumption that Uncle Junkle's original ability, as played, was too powerful. The rock troll is tough to kill; that does not make it incredibly useful. In combat and dungeon exploration, it has less utility than 4 2d level Dwarf hirelings, something that the party could have afforded after the very first few sessions. Since I have rejoined the game, I have seen many combats. The rock troll has participated, if I had to guess, in considerably less than half the combats. Our hirelings participate in almost every combat.
ReplyDeleteThe rock troll (if it can even be involved in the combat due to space constraints) can attack a single opponent twice for 1d8 damage. It has a better chance to hit than a low level hireling, but it can only engage one target. Four hirelings each have a lesser chance to hit, but can engage up to four enemies and each do 1d8 damage (equal to the rock troll) if armed with longsword or battleaxe.
Outside of combat, the rock troll is plain and simple a liability.
If I was the DM in this situation I would look at it not as a problem that needed fixing, but a cool new feature of the campaign.
Kom (through Uncle Junkle) has spent a lot of time in the game developing his relationship to the rock troll, spending time with it, learning to communicate with it nonverbally, and investing financially - to the point of spending hundreds (thousands?) of gold on it for the rock troll sized cloak of invisiblity and rock troll sized chariot, waiting with it and effectively removing himself from game situations because the rock troll could not logically go with the rest of the party, and basically investing a lot of time and energy in the thing NOT because it is somehow a cheat, or taking advantage of Carter, but because it is COOL to have a frickin' rock troll!
d30 house rule breaks game mechanics. I would strongly caution against houserules designed to prevent any single application of this general principle. The most powerful and game changing use of the d30 to date was the d30 hold person that allowed us to single handedly wipe out an entire encampment of hobgoblins without taking any damage.
Five pet rock trolls couldn't do that.
Leaving the rock troll aside and looking at the other ways the charm has been used - it has only been used when consistent with a nonmagical interpretation, assisted by careful planning (e.g. the elaborate ruse to pretend to be a rescuer while questioning the captured hobgoblin general, which you might have let work even if he had no special ability at all!). I haven't seen it as being game changing in play, and certainly not compared with every other use of the d30. d30 firebombs have been dropping fools since we cleared out that little dungeon Barberella died in.
ReplyDeleteOne final note RE four 2d level Dwarf hirelings vs. a rock troll - they will have the same average HP (8 HD total), and outfitting them with a shield and longsword gives them the option of sacrificing the shield to prevent a damaging blow. We do occasionally lose hirelings, but we would do so less had we the foresight to equip them with shields. The rock troll has one advantage - he comes back to life, so you are basically always guaranteed to have the rock troll. The four Dwarves could all get wiped out - but they also grant so many other advantages that the rock troll does not.
ReplyDeleteThey can understand and follow spoken orders and execute complicated plans. They can stay behind and serve as guards or watchmen. They can fit anywhere the party can fit. They give a bonus to detecting traps in stonework and secret doors while searching rooms. They are not a dangerous, territorial predator that reacts aggressively towards potential niche competitors.
Thanks for the number-crunching on this. As I said in the post, my objection is not so much the existence of the rock troll nor the Bard's ability to charm one -- it is an objection to his being able to charm one SO EASILY at FIRST LEVEL, which I do see as a problem. Luckily, it's a problem that the 2d6 system remedies.
ReplyDeleteI guess every one has their own comfort zone for the power level of their game.
ReplyDeleteA once a week (in game time) power that requires a once in a session power (d30 roll) to gain something that anybody of any class could gain simply through GP expenditure does not seem to me in any way shape or form overpowered at any level. Charm Person is a glorified shortcut on the desktop of the RPG computer, and it leads to more hirelings/henchmen/NPCs controlled by the players. How the rock troll became one of our allies is not really important mechanically - it performs sub-optimally compared to some 1st and 2nd level hirelings, and it is (in my opinion) therefor not overpowered
It functions mechanically like an NPC - it takes a turn in the initiative order just like an NPC - but unlike a dwarf or barbarian tagging along with us, we have to make all kinds of special allowances for the rock troll.
I personally would say that once the party has earned say, a few hundred gold, charm person can no longer be considered overpowered in any sense of the term because ANY member of the party can accomplish every mechanical benefit of the power simply by spending gold.
If hirelings were priced according to their value in Labyrinth Lord, they would be worth more than a healing potion but they are priced at a fraction of the cost.
But like I said, this is a DM's decision all the way. So is the decision to allow the d30 houserule. The decision to allow the d30 roll breaks game mechanics. It breaks them worse in spell mechanics - the Brave Halfling Bard's charm worked like a spell mechanic.
My observation as a number-cruncher and all around systems geek and mechanical enthusiast is that this particular use of the d30 is no more or less egregious than any other use, and far less so than the way the d30 interacts with 3rd level and higher spells of either magic user or clerical variety when it comes to a mechanical impact on the game.
But my observation as a long time RPG player and DM is that the numbers don't matter - if you as the DM react against the charm person used at first level on a rock troll and you don't react against a d30 hold person used at fourth level on an encampment of hobgoblins, that is just the way it is.