Month: February 2021

Often in our favorite shows, movies, video games, and books our heroes are challenged by a wide variety of seemingly unequal forces, but its always an exciting challenge. How can this be, and how can we capture that in RPGs? In a lot of fiction challenge is built around creating tension and excitement as characters gauge the situation and build up to the level of response which is appropriate to overcome the odds. It’s a strong trope in episodic TV like Star Trek where different writers adjust the characters capabilities to their liking to achieve the desired narrative. Sometimes this can destroy our suspension of disbelief, other times it makes sense not set phasers to kill right off the bat. It can be done in a way that lends credulity. I believe its more thematic to have a response of force which matches the challenge. We can do this in our RPG even when most systems do not account for it out of the box.

In systems like D&D you can have this situation where the wizard just fireballs everything in their path, big or small, in every encounter, especially when they are about to hit the sack. If that seems cool to you, then you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you’ve pondered ways of making your game play out differently, maybe more like the the books and shows you enjoy, read on.

Adjusting level on the fly is something seen in plenty of video games, but it would be hard to crunch those numbers on the fly when you’re playing a “pen and paper” game. While leveling a character up and down between each encounter would be tedious we have other options. There are ways we can achieve the same effect with much less work. D&D and many other systems, can be tweaked, and of course there’s always the prospect of building a system with this in mind from the start. I have to mention that some RPG systems do reenforce this this out of the box, I’ll mention one later.

This is a thinking exercise, something for us to use as inspiration to create scenes that feel more like the media we consume. Gandalf doesn’t drop his best spells at every opportunity, how can we be more like Gandalf? Let me share my thinking process, this is my flow for GMing, creating systems, and arbitrating rules. Just get started and refine along the way. You can follow along at home and come up with something of entirely your own creation. Lets Riff.

Off the cuff, I start thinking lets take D&D, and easiest thing to tweak from the start: spell level. If the encounter is Challenge Rating (CR) 3 then perhaps cap the Wizard at level 3 spells. Now of course if things start to go south we can always make exceptions. Say if a character or two goes down this should perhaps remove or adjust the constraint. What about other classes?

“Ultimately the point is we are changing the optimal go to with each encounter and thereby creating more interesting choices.”

Similarly, you could cap character abilities at the level of the encounter, (without adjusting HP because thats tedious). You could also keep other level based increases to spells and abilities of a level lower than the encounter, just to avoid the tedium. Does your cantrip do 5d8 because you’re level 15 but you’re in a CR 3 encounter? Thats fine, just use it without fussing over what it would be if you were only level 3. I find it much more believable for a wizard to throw a leveled up cantrip at a small monster than a high level spell. Even if they are equally “overkill”. The cantrip is reusable and low effort in that fantasy setting. Ultimately the point is we are changing the optimal go to choice with each challenge, and thereby creating more interesting choices.

Now of course wizards don’t get level three spells till level six so if you want to limit them exclusively based on level progression like other characters, as mentioned, you’d need to keep the chart handy or remember, wizards know spells of 1/2 their level rounded up (to a max of 9). A little annoying. Spell level not being tied to character level is, to many people, akin THAC0, but it sticks around in 5e.

There are alternative solutions to achieve the desired effect as well, say for example adjusting recovery. For D&D 5th edition you could require a short rest to be: a full nights sleep in comfort and safety, and a long rest to be: 10 or more days in a comfortable settlement without much stress. I like this quite a bit, it creates a grittier campaign. You can do this with any system but its build into most OSRs in some fashion or another. This is why I prefer to play those systems these days.

Within one of my favorites OSR systems, Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), using magic should be carefully considered. Clerics can lose spells for long lengths of time and must perform duties to regain them, wizards recover spells overnight typically, however, thats not the only consideration. Casting spells has inherit risks, toying with magic can cause irreversible changes to the character and should not be used lightly. This helps curtail the casual use of magic in that system.

If I were to come up with a Fantasy system I’d likely build something in to promote force appropriate response. It would may be as simple as allowing characters to only use abilities of a level which do not exceed the “threat level” of the scene / encounter. Then of course, most likely, allowing the rule to be broken at some cost.

A related idea for homebrew systems or hacks: ramp up the abilities over the course of combat. Characters facing new challenges (typically combat in RPGs) often must test their opposition and try new things exhausting more and more effort along the way. So lets say in round one of combat you can use level one abilities, and level two in round two, and so on. Building on that maybe you’re the thinking type, the wizard who observes the fighter and rogue and you hold back on round one. Round two come around, the rogue and fighter confront the challenge with level one or two abilities, keeping track of which perhaps, to save the remaining unspent allotment. You the wizard having reserved you action on round one could maybe add that to your round two allotment and now you can do something at level 3? No wasted turns. Whether you get to save the remaining allotment on a turn where you act but use a lesser ability is up to the designer or GM. Enemies should probably be subject to the same restrictions… but not always! (I think this is literally how Dragon Ball Z must work.)

However, its important to be realistic, a character who has faced the same challenge before will know the appropriate level of response and should be allowed to it. Likewise a flaming Balrog should telegraph a serious challenge which could open up a strong response straight away, on the other hand they take those early turns to save up their power, defensively positioning, till they can unleash it!

There’s no shortage of ideas to discover around this concept. What I know is I am going to attempt to guide my groups into more thematic scenes with ideas here and in other new and interesting ways. I think we will all enjoy our games a little bit more, if not, we keep refining.