Last time I mentioned some of the issues I faced adjudicating combat—and other situations where the PCs could get hurt—using a mostly freeform approach. I now believe that tighter mechanics for governing such things result in a better game, one that actively discourages violence as a problem-solving tool.
And what combat system is better tried-and-tested than D&D, especially in its original form? Besides, I've become more interested in the classic "dungeon crawl" experience of late, including aspects like encumbrance, morale, XP-for-gold, and so forth. Old School Essentials has made so-called B/X D&D much more accessible these days, so I'm using that as my main point of reference.
However, I am also very interested in keeping things as simple as possible both for the ref and the players. Some of my specific goals are as follows.
- The essentials of a given character should ideally fit on a single 3×5" (or 100×150mm) index card.
- Erasing and rewriting entries should be kept to a minimum.
- Primary emphasis should be on the adventurers' gear.
To that end, what follows are my efforts to apply a bit of reductionism to OSE to try to extract the mechanics I need in a somewhat simplified form, starting with character creation. I expect similar attempts have been made by various people at various times, but shut up I need to do this!
Ability scores—what are they for?
The first step in creating a character is to roll ability scores, which implies that they are one of the most important aspects of an adventurer. Variations on how to generate the numbers, avoiding sub-par results, and the emphasis they receive in other retro-clones all seem to reinforce this idea.
However, aside from a brief description of ability checks, there are (almost) no references to ability scores in OSE outside of character creation. This may come as a surprise to players used to other systems, along with the fact that the numbers (almost) never change over an adventurer's lifetime. (I prefer the freeform system mentioned earlier over ability checks for adjudicating non-combat situations anyway.)
A handful of relatively small bonuses/penalties are derived from these values, more or less as follows. The probabilities shown are for 3d6 rolls, the "traditional" way of generating ability scores.
| Ability score | Modifier | Probability |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | -3 | <1% |
| 4-5 | -2 | 4% |
| 6-8 | -1 | 21% |
| 9-12 | ±0 | 48% |
| 13-15 | +1 | 21% |
| 16-17 | +2 | 4% |
| 18 | +3 | <1% |
In the context of combat, these are generally applied as follows.
- Strength: modified chance to strike an opponent in melee and the amount of damage thus inflicted.
- Intelligence: nothing… other than perhaps the ability to speak an opponent's language.
- Wisdom: modified chance to avoid/mitigate certain special effects (i.e., saving throws).
- Dexterity: modified chance to avoid being struck (i.e., armour class); modified chance to strike with ranged attacks; modified chance to act before an opponent if using individual initiative.
- Constitution: modified ability to absorb damage from hits sustained (i.e., hit points).
- Charisma: modified morale for retainers ("loyalty").
In general, though, a character's class and level are of primary importance when it comes to their effectiveness in battle. Experience, it seems, counts for much more than natural ability. (Speaking of which, each class designates one or two ability scores that modify the rate of XP gained… but I'll come back to that some other time.)
So… what is the point of ability scores? Simply to distinguish—very slightly—one character of a given class from another character of the same class. At least, that's how it seems to me. And isn't that enough?
A modest proposal
The premise I'm going with is that ability scores represent a sort of "genetic profile" for an adventurer. Flagrantly stealing from the Traveller RPG, I suggest encoding them as a string of hexadecimal digits (as follows) in the traditional order (as above), prefixed with class/level as per saving throw notation. I'm also inclined to "round off the edges" by dropping the ±3 modifiers—I think Whitehack does this, too.
| Score | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F |
| Mod | -2 | -1 | ±0 | +1 | +2 | |||||||||||
A few examples:
- NH-777777: completely average normal human (e.g., level 0 adventurer).
- F1-7778A6: level 1 fighter with +1 Constitution.
- T3-88AC65: level 3 thief with +1 Wisdom, +1 Dexterity, and -1 Charisma.
- C6-5AB7D5: level 6 cleric with -1 Strength, +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom, +2 Constitution, and -1 Charisma.
(The computer nerd in me finds the correlation between the number of bits in these codes and the number of chromosomes in human DNA compelling… but perhaps I'll examine that idea another time.)
Encoding ability scores as a short string of digits frees up quite a bit of space on the character sheet. It also de-emphasises these values as anything of concern to players beyond character creation.
The significant figures
In the heat of battle, the following numbers are far more important than a combatant's ability scores and so deserve greater prominence on the character sheet.
- AC: armour class.
- HD: number of hit dice and hit point modifier.
- TH[AC0]: "to hit" target value or attack bonus.
- SV: saving throw target value(s).
- MV: movement rate.
- ML: morale rating.
- Attack range(s) and damage rating(s).
The question is, can this be streamlined into a lean "plug-in" system of its own?
Yes, I think so. I'll look at that next time.
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