3eish: what's a level

Theoryposting, maybe I'll get to the point of concrete details by the end of this post, maybe I won't.

Artist: Tennis Cramer

So, my goal of 3eish is to make something that feels like 3e to me, while also keeping it light enough to hold the whole thing in mind and play fast and easy. Can't get rid of levels without it starting to feel like something else entirely so it's worth asking: what's a level. In 3e there are a couple clear answers:

• One HD.
• 1, 3/4 or 1/2 a point of BAB
• 8, 6, 4, 2 + Int skill points
• 1/2 or 1/3 a point of each saving throw
• 1/4 of an one-point improvement to an ability score (1/8 of a one-point improvement to its modifier)
• 1/3 of a feat and some class features
• various scaling on spells you cast

There are some rationalizations that suggest themselves, like making attack bonus or saving throws a part of the skill system, but I've been down most of those design roads at this point and most of them wind up reinventing RuneQuest. So instead I'm going to reinvent True20; a level is a feat and one HD and everything else falls out of that.

Let's nail that down somewhat:

• As in the base rules, the benchmark for a boring feat is that it applies +2 on two different kinds of rolls. 
• Boring feats (that only add bonuses to rolls) are now called skills and can be taken multiple times. This replace the skill list and save progressions; if a character does not have any skills that apply to a saving roll, they use 1/3 their level as a bonus.
• Obviously not all feats are boring ones. The ones that grant more interesting abilities can generally only be taken once.
• Each feat specifies an amount of HP (2, 3 or 4) gained when you take it. If you're proficient with it, add +1 to an attack roll for every 4HP you currently have. If you're not proficient, apply a -3 penalty.
• Abilities for combat add 4HP.
• Skills and miscellaneous abilities add 3HP.
• Magic abilities adds 2HP.

You may notice there's no real purpose left for classes. That's probably for the best, let's lose them. Carve out their interesting bits into feats and leave the rest.

One-feat character creation is probably too bare to be fun. Instead we'll have two-feat character creation (truly, I have a dizzying intellect). There's a special set of feats called backgrounds, and you pick two of them to start. Your starting HP is 4 if both of them have experience with violence, 3 if one does and 2 otherwise.

The 3e PHB had 7 races and 11 classes, so for parity with its 77 combinations a pool of backgrounds would need...a pool of 14 backgrounds (14 choose 2 is 91, fourteen more combinations for a pool with three fewer elements). Now that's of course not the full range of customization of a 1st level 3e character but it's close enough for my purposes.

talent, time and tools

Being a universal 2d6 resolution mechanic and some extra bits.

An attempt succeeds if a roll of 2d6 is at least equal to the required target number:

• You have an appropriate talent, time and tool: 5
• You are missing one of those: 6
• You are missing two of those: 7
• You have none of those: 8

A roll of 10+ (regardless of target number) is a clean success. A particularly stressful situation may require a clean success to avoid costs or complications.

Talents

Create a character by giving them 2-3 traits or skills and however many talents your Referee finds appropriate. 

If you don't start with a talent you must:

• Practice for a season with a skilled teacher or three seasons on your own for the archery, climbing, thievery or any weaponry talents.
• Slay three armed foes by your own hand for the fighting talent.
• Become initiated into the inner mysteries of a cult for its ritual talent.
• Survive ten days in the bush without aid or supplies for the wilderness talent for those environs.

Combat

Talent. The fighting talent is for hand-to-hand or hand weapons and the archery talent for bows. No talent is required for crossbows or guns. Weaponry talents do not affect the target number of attacks, but they allow the attacker to use any special properties of the weapon.

Time. You have time if the target is surprised. 

Tools. Close weapons for hand-to-hand and non-close weapons otherwise.

An armed attacker gets +1 to their roll if their target is unarmed. A character with a longer weapon than their opponent starts with a +1 advantage to their attacks, but a clean success seizes the advantage from one's target (or seizes it back).

In hand-to-hand, a clean success damages, disarms, pins or throws one's target. Otherwise, success merely holds them. A held character may do any of those to their opponent with a clean success. Otherwise, success reverses the hold. Any success by the holding character may damage, disarm, pin or throw the other.

Magic Rituals

Magic rituals are done with one roll but involve a sequence of steps. Some might require all of the following, and some only one or two:

1. Guarding the space
2. Guarding the magician
3. Opening the way
4. Fixing the terms
5. Closing the way
6. Purifying the magician
7. Purifying the space

Talent. Each cult has its own path of rituals, any its ritual magic talent counts for any ritual on that path. Anyone with such a talent is aware of the presence of other talented magicians and of powerful spirits, and may address them mind-to-mind.

Time. Rituals of 1-2 steps take 10 minutes, minus one for every time the size of the group of magicians doubles. Each additional step doubles the time required.

Tools. Guarding or purifying magicians requires oils or potions for each. Guarding or purifying the space require candles, diagrams or smoke to fill it. Opening the way requires an arcane connection to the recipient of the power. Fixing the terms requires a symbol of what is to be done. Closing the way requires a symbolic weapon.

If the power invoked by a ritual is an intelligent spirit, a clean success is needed to avoid some additional price being demanded. Offering a sacrifice adds +1 to a ritual roll to deal with a spirit, or +2 if the sacrifice is extremely dear.

if our lives be short - the gloghack

Being an excerpt of the beating mechanical heart of Hulk Rats, themselves being a light revision of Maze Rats.

the earthwife and the termagant

Continuing to muck about with my GLOG/echo, I wrote two classes that tie in with the fair and fell ancestries. Gaining lots as an earthwife represents growing closer to the elemental world to the exclusiong of the civilized one, while gaining lots as a termagant represents gaining magical power at the cost of your social graces.

Both are three-level classes, and both have decreasing-dice mechanics inspired by The Oblidisideryptch's excellent druid. The termagant's abilities were lifted from Rise Up Comus's Dwarf class.

• Earthwife (fair ancestral class)
  1. You cannot tolerate anything of base metal upon your person, but can speak heart-to-heart with any living thing. Plants and animals will attempt to do as you bid, though not contrarily to their natures. This roll has no goals; the dangers are not reaching what you cannot touch with your limbs, not reaching more than you could bear on your shoulders and not conveying more than flashes of raw sense information.
  2. You cannot tolerate spun fibers upon your person, but may speak heart-to-heart with earth and stone, which tell you what they know of old or bestir and rearrange themselves for you. When you speak with living things you may disregard one danger.
  3. You cannot use common nouns; though you may use or give proper nouns to specific things, you must otherwise describe whatever you refer to obliquely. You may speak heart-to-heart with bodies of water to learn nearly anything you wish to know or ask them to bar your enemies or save your friends. When you speak to earth and stone you may disregard one danger, and when you speak to living things you may disregard two.
• Termagant (fell ancestral class)
  1. You gain two useful magic items chosen by the Referee. When slighted or wronged at all, you roll for the goals of not complaining, not demanding recompense and not holding a grudge. Keep a list of every grudge and strike names from the list only if they suffer a greater loss.
  2. Once in your life, you may withdraw from worldly affairs for a time and emerge with a powerful magic item you wrought. Work with the Referee to determine the nature of this item. When slighted or wronged, you may only roll for two goals.
  3. Magic, friendly or malign, can no longer affect you. If any of your hair is cut or dressed, you lose this protection until it grows knotted and tangled again. When slighted or wronged, you may only roll for one goal.

unified levels

In my opinion, one of the more interesting things D&D 3e did was treat monster HD/type somewhat like the classes for player characters. Understandably, this was closest to the surface when discussing the possibility of adventuring as a monster. Level adjustment meant that a monstrous character was treated as one or more levels higher than their class level for the purpose of how much experience they needed to reach the next level.

When Savage Species was written, that concept got significantly expanded by the inclusion of monster classes. One could start your career as a stripped-down version of a monster on par (in theory) with other level 1 characters, and gradually gain their more powerful and iconic abilities. However, this still needed a separate class for each monster type and it didn't expose the mechanical guts of how monsters and characters ticked.

What follows is an attempt to do unify monster and character building by giving each an "ordinary track" that governs more mundane advancement, here Nerve (aka Hit) Dice, and optional multi-classing into "extraordinary tracks" that grant special abilities.

hazarding a tale

rule

Whenever a rogue is in dire enough straights, they can hazard a tale appropriate to their current peril. You may not hazard the same tale that someone else has already proved for themselves. After naming your tale, throw two dice:

• A throw of 2,7 or 12 proves the tale is true. It becomes a permanent part of your character (retroactively if necessary) and they escape the peril.
• A throw of 3 or 11 calls out your character for a liar and they'll just have to deal with the situation like everyone else.
• Otherwise, the tale remains to be proven; record the throw next to the tale. The peril remains

While a tale remains to be proven, the Referee can occasionally put it to the test by rolling again; the tale is proven when the original throw is thrown again, but a throw of 7 before then calls it out for a lie.

why?

I have a great love for the way the Far Traveler and the Zouave inject a checkered past into a character. If I could find a fault with those classes it's that I'd like to have that sort of thing continue throughout their adventuring career. I wrote the mechanic for specifically roguish characters (it's what I'd use for the core mechanic of a rogue class), but in a more generally picaresque game it may make sense to have it open to all characters.

A list of example tall tales follows. It's not meant to be exhaustive, players are certainly welcome to make up new tales, but this should do to prime the pump and all these options would I think be interesting at the table:

GLOG/echo

This is a GLOGhack, I guess, or the first part of one. The original GLOG is from Arnold K but it seems that the real GLOG is the GLOG you had inside you all along.

The most gloggy feature of this is the class structure, since rather than more traditional dice mechanics, this uses the an only slightly modiefied version of ghost/echo. I drew from a lot of GLOG classes from different bloggers, but particularly from Finders Keepers for the backgrounds and Vain the Sword for a couple of the classes.

Dice

Before rolling dice, identify dangers, edges and goals. Roll one die for each and assign one roll to each danger and one to each goal (discarding any left overs):

Roll	Danger	Goal
1-2	Comes true.	Failed, opportunity may be lost.
3-4	Mixed, danger remains.	Mixed, opportunity remains.
5-6	Avoided.	Achieved.

Nothing extremely good or bad should happen on a mixed result, but it may make those outcomes more likely; mixed results should maintain or increase tension, not resolve it.

Roll dice in the following situations and pick the appropriate goals (including ones not listed) and use the given danger (in addition to others the situation may call for).

• Act under pressure. Goals: complete a task, get out of harm's way, rescue someone in peril. Danger: you suffer harm.
• Sneak. Goals: move without being noticed, plant an item, remove and item, defeat a lock. Danger: you are caught in the act.
• Close combat. Goals: cut down a foe, dodge past a foe. Danger: you suffer harm.
• Fire missiles. Goals: stop a foe short, cover an ally, destroy something. Dangers: you cause unwanted harm or get unwanted attention.
• Suffer harm. Goals: shake it off, fight through the pain, impress with your toughness. Danger: you are incapacitated.
• Make an impression. Goals: they believe your story, they remember you later, they answer your question, they agree to a bargain. Danger: they distrust or dismiss you.

Characters

Characters are defined by lots ("templates" if you prefer). You set out with four lots: the Adventurer rank, two backgrounds, and the first of a class of your choice. 

"target 20" modern

This is an idea I've had for some time. It's a silly idea, but that's rarely stopped me before. Back in high school I played a lot of d20 Modern, at least until my friends and I collectively realized that the game was kind of a mess and d20-system combat and character creation was majorly in the way of the way we actually wanted to play.

This is an attempt to strip as much of the cruft from that game while leaving parts of it recognizable. A lot of the mechanical inspiration here is due to the Target 20 system on the one hand and UVG's SEACAT system on the other. Revisiting d20 Modern I was struck by how many fiddly mechanical choices there are, in the forms of talents and feats and skills and advanced classes, and how little most of that stuff matters. Most abilities boil down to a small modifier on certain saving throws or skills checks. I only bothered importing interesting rules as Target 20 Modern's talents.

winning fame

Fame is gained by defeating foes, carrying off loot or receiving grand gifts. Fame represents not only your celebrity but also your esteem among your people.

• Every hit dealt in a mêlée is worth a point of fame to each fighter on the line.
• A foe slain in single combat is two points of fame per hit it took to bring them down.
• A foe brought home as a captive is worth three points per hit they could have taken.
• A captive freed from the enemy is worth four points per hit they could take.
• A peace made is worth five points of fame for ever family involved.
• Goats or sheep seized from the enemy or given in recognition of great deeds are worth a point of fame per head. Cattle or horses are worth eight points per head.
• Wealth given away freely is worth half the fame it would be worth when seized from the enemy.
  

A group of heroes who carry of loot together (or are awarded a gift in gratitude together) each receive a full half of its fame and split the remaining half between them. Thus, if three warriors together drive home a flock of 24 goats from enemy lands, each one of them gains 12 points of fame plus one-third of the remaining 12, so each warrior receives 16 points of fame.

Only wealth taken from the enemy or awarded as a gift for one's great deeds builds an adventurer's fame. Gifts to or from one's comrades-in-arms do not increase one's fame unless they are wedding-gifts.

To determine its effect on one's fame, convert coin, fine cloth, jewels or other precious stuffs to an equivalent amount of livestock. One weight of gold, or 25 weights of silver is a fair price for an ox, a common horse (though a warrior's horse may be much dearer) or eight sheep or goats.

Fame	Title	Followers
0	Nobody	Hired hands demand payment in advance.
20	Rogue	Hands want half their fee up front.
40	Neighbor	A few (2-7) will brave danger with you for a fair share of the rewards.
80	Fellow	A band (5-35) will brave danger for a fair share, a few for loyalty alone
160	Senior	A company (30-175) will brave danger for a fair share, a band for loyalty alone. your decisions suffice for twenty families.
320	Worthy	A company will follow you for loyalty's sake. your decisions suffice for 55 families.
640	Grandee	Your decisions suffice for 400 families.
1000+	Legend	Your decisions suffice for 3,000 families.

If one's decisions suffice for a community, they still may not be in any formal position over it; this simply means that if a matter from a community of twenty families is brought to a captain to settle, they will not dispute the decision unless it is obviously unjust. One need not have a captain's esteem to officiate for such a community, though it may be more difficult without.

ranks and tiers

rule

You advance first with ranks, then with tiers. Ranks improve a skill or add a new one or small stuff like that. Tiers give you big stuff: templates, dice, etc.

To gain the next rank, earn [x] experience points. (Alternatively, everyone gains a rank every session that they make it through. Or accomplish something meaningful in.) Your tier depends on your rank:

Ranks	Tiers
0	1
1-2	2
3-6	3
7+	4

why?

Standard character advancement has a logarithmic pace (which sometimes tapers off or sometimes gets smoothed out, but let's stick with the logarithmic part); the amount of experience needed to reach the next level is as much as you needed to get where you are over again. That means that your level is essentially a logarithm of how much experience you've had so far.

There are some very good things about this. It means that a character who joins later will probably catch up to your level minus one by the time you gain another level. That's neat.

What's less neat is that if amounts of experience don't inflate, you need to put exponentially more time into a game in order to get the new stuff. Everyone likes the new stuff (that's why we have advancement mechanics at all).

The idea here is that you gain dice (big chunky numerical advancements like hit dice) and templates (new game-changing abilities) at a logarithmic pace. Don't inflate experience rewards (or use one of the real-time based awards). Instead, you parcel out little things. Improvements to the skills you've been using. Maybe a new spell. Maybe you learn how to use that weird new weapon you found. Nothing game-changing but something to keep you coming back.

Why does this level off after 7? It doesn't have to, but four tiers should be enough to take you out of that basic starting-out mode of play. You could have advancement level out there, or open up new options, but I'd have the mode of advancement change significantly.