How Tolkien-ized Is D&D?

I debated whether to weigh in on the discussion about Tolkien's influence on D&D, seen on Grognardia and other places. I lost.

The Tolkien elements are pretty minimal. Elves and dwarves exist in pre-Tolkien fiction; so do little people (halflings or hobbits.) Orcs, even in Tolkien, are really just bigger goblins. "Barrow-wight" is technically an English translation of Daoine Sidhe, although Tolkien turns them into ghosts. Ents, Balrogs, and mithril are definitely Tolkien, and were-bears seem to be, as are elven cloaks and boots. Rangers, too. And dragons can talk and seem fully intelligent, as opposed to the way they're usually presented in western myth and literature pre-Tolkien, although Dickson's "St. Dragon and the George" (1957) is a significant exception.

Consider also what D&D didn't take from Tolkien. Magic in Tolkien is pretty stunted. Gandalf knows how to make light and fire, but apparently only because he wears the elven ring of fire. He's literally a wizard: a wise one, someone who knows a lot of old lore. The only other magicians are ring-wielders (Elrond, Galadriel) or ring-makers (Sauron.) It's been decades since I've read LotR, but I don't recall Sauruman doing any of the magic tricks in the book that you see in the movie. Giant spiders can be intelligent in Tolkien, but are more like animals in D&D.

The main thing Tolkien did to D&D was humanize the elves, dwarves and little people. Elves in Tolkien are non-ghost versions of the Daoine Sidhe. Elves or fae exist in numerous fairy tales, Arthurian romance, and in pulp fiction, like A. Merritt's "The Woman of the Wood". But these are weird, otherworldly beings; Tolkien downsized elves considerably. Dwarves, of course, used to be called dwarfs, drow, trow, or trolls, and are everywhere in fairy tales; Tolkien changed the spelling of the plural and made them bearded miner/warriors, which stuck in D&D. Little people used to be brownies, leprechauns, and the like, but again Tolkien named them, took the magic out, and gave them some traits and behaviors that stuck in D&D.

Without Tolkien, elves, dwarves and little people would have definitely been included in D&D, but would have been closer to their sources, and probably not as character races. That would have definitely changed the hobby; "race as class" would be the norm. So Tolkien's influence is simultaneous narrow and deep.

Edit: Duh, "St. Dragon and the George" wasn't written in 1057.

Do Sanity Mechanics Suck?

Over at LotFP is a post about handling horror in fantasy RPGs. James Raggi raise an interesting criticism of sanity mechanics: NPCs can be overcome by horror, but don't take control of a PC as a result of a failed sanity roll, and certainly don't have PCs frightened by stuff they normally would just fight.

Now, the last part is pretty solid advice, but there may be a problem with PCs never feeling the effects of fear unless the players choose to. There is a Cause Fear spell, after all. The main problem with sanity rolls, as I see it, is player resistance to being told how their characters react. Players accept the risk of death, and should, logically, also accept the risk of fear. But how can you implement this without taking over player characters?

Maybe make fear results beneficial, so that players might opt to choose fear?

A quick fix would be to allow a panic bonus: if a player opts to be panicked, the character can run at triple speed away from danger, but risks fatigue damage from the exertion. Simple. No one is being forced to do anything, but a player now has an incentive to choose panic. Likewise, you could allow a "paralyzed with fear" bonus: paralysed characters would get some kind of bonus against being physically forced closer to the object of their fear and may even be partially or wholly immune to hypnotic/magical commands to move closer, but the character must make a save to regain the ability to attack or take other action.

I have another idea on this, which I'll save for another post.

Leximorph Frameworks

Leximorphs don't always have to be used in an obvious manner. Consider this simple dungeon map as an example: I took a simple word out of a news headline, used it to create a simple framework, and filled in numerous rooms to taste to create a small region of a dungeon level. Can you spot the word?

I figure the stairs into this region would be somewhere in the lower left, with the first curved tunnel (top) acting as some kind of control point, with arrow slits in the wall allowing guard in the room beyond a chance to pick off unwary intruders.

Re-designing Thieves

Yesterday, I wrote:

If you look at the original classes, Fighting Men and Magic-Users each have one general power and one scaled power:

Fighting-Man: use any weapon, multiple attacks against 1HD creatures.
Magic-User: use magic (scrolls, wands, staves,) prepare and cast spells.

[ ... ]

Clerics came later and kind of break that pattern [ ... ] Thieves break the pattern even more, partly by having a whole bunch of abilities that scale, partly by most of the abilities seeming trivial at 1st level compared to the other classes.

I've been thinking about ways to fix this, to get back to the two-class-abilities standard. One thing I feel is important is to ask "what is character class really about?" I've said before, I don't think it should be about professions: I would cover that with backgrounds. I prefer to think of character classes as answers to the question "how do you solve problems?"

Fighter: "I solve problems by fighting."
Magic-User: "I solve problems by magic."

One of my problems with Clerics and Thieves is that they seem more like professions and don't seem to clearly answer that question. Leaving aside clerics for now, I think the thief archetype, stripped of the assumptions based on thievery as a profession, answers the question with "I solve problems by subtlety and guile." This covers more ground than simply "I steal stuff," and could describe scouts, for example.

The problem of having many scaled abilities can be solved by bundling several of them together under the subtlety and guile focus: instead of having individual advancement in "thief skills", treat hiding in shadows, moving silently, picking pockets, and backstabbing as things just about anyone can try, but make their success dependent on surprise. The thief scaled power is now a +1 bonus per 3 levels (rounded up) in subtlety and guile situations. Phrasing it that way lets me use the bonus for avoiding surprise (hear noise, spot hidden) as well, or deciphering or creating a subtle trap, lock or trick. You could even stretch it to cover the subtleties of language or magic. Only climbing would get dropped as a special ability; the revamped thief class would climb as well as anyone else. Thieves' Cant would only apply to the thief background, not to the class.

I'd change the surprise mechanic to both sides rolling a d6, with the higher result surprising the other. Some creatures can't be surprised, and a creature that is unaware of the other's presence can't surprise, but both sides still roll a d6. Thieves add their bonus to the die roll; if their target can't be surprised or if they are unaware of their opponent, the bonus is only counted to resist surprise. If a thief makes a successful surprise attack, their total is counted as additional damage. When deciphering clues in languages they otherwise don't speak, figure that average languages have a +6 bonus to resist decipherment; magic is even harder, adding the spell level to the difficulty. Further, when casting spells from scrolls, I'd have the thief player roll 2 dice, risking a miscast on doubles.

Under this revamped system, anyone could try any of the thief abilities, but probably won't succeed on many of them without getting bonuses from some other source, like magic or special training. Thieves will still be the best.

There are still two problems. One is that the name "thief" certainly doesn't fit, and "rogue" doesn't necessarily fit, either; this is OK in and of itself, but I can't think of a better name for "the crafty and subtle class". The other problem is: what's the other class ability? What's the general, non-scaled subtlety-based class ability that only this class should be able to do?

Exceptional Feats

Over at Akratic Wizardy, Saturday's post was about hating feats. I dislike feats, too, and most of what Akrasia has to say applies to why I dislike them: they require too much rule-consulting, longer creature descriptions, and more work from the GM, who has to be familiar with a wider variety of feats than the players.

I'm not as turned off by exception-based design in general, although it's something I'm wary of, mainly because of those three points. Funny thing is, I think exception-based design is OK if the exceptions follow general rules -- in other words, don't use exception-based design when designing exceptions. Keep it simple: X Resistance gives a simple bonus against attacks and effects that have something to do with X; X Invulnerability means X can't harm you; X Attack means you add an X feature to your attack. These are called production rules, and if you a small, well-designed set of production rules and the bonuses or mechanics remain the same for all of them, you don't need a list of feats; the name of the feat tells you everything you need to know.

I've used production rules here before: the psionic disciplines I suggested, for example, or backgrounds and labels, or using risks to design magic items (or even ordinary items.) Elsewhere, I've suggested defining some special feat-like abilities in terms of "ability score bonus to a type of action or in a particular situation", like "Int bonus to melee attacks" or "Wis bonus to woodland travel". Players can think up fluff names for these talents that fit into the setting, but the only thing that matters mechanically is what you add, and when. That particular production rule handles it all.

But while I can see ways of working with feats as exceptions, what I really have trouble with is exceptional feats. (Gasp! A double meaning to the title of this post!) A lot of 3e feats, and certainly 4e powers, feel more like superpowers. Cleave, for example, feels like a minor superpower, particularly if players have to "pay" for the ability, instead of any fighter having a chance to try attacking another opponent after a killing/subduing blow. Great Cleave is certainly superheroic. Power Attack is another example. Later additions to the 3e feats, especially those by third parties, get even more powerful. I, personally, would allow any fighter to attempt to Cleave by taking a risk of some kind, because Cleave doesn't seem that out of keeping with the style of fantasy combat; what I object to is it being some kind of special ability, available only to certain characters.

I also object to the "feat gravy train". When we're talking about the 3e feat system or 4e power system, we're not just talking about one or two powers to make a character stand out; we're talking about multiple powers at first level, followed by a steady increase in powers. If you look at the original classes, Fighting Men and Magic-Users each have one general power and one scaled power:

Fighting-Man: use any weapon, multiple attacks against 1HD creatures.
Magic-User: use magic (scrolls, wands, staves,) prepare and cast spells.

They don't have any other powers. They can try anything, but there are no special skills, feats, or anything else. The six ability scores aren't even as powerful as modern D&D.

Clerics came later and kind of break that pattern, but you can interpret them as having the turn undead ability plus part of the fighter's "use any weapon" ability and part of the magic-user's "prepare and cast spells" ability. Still, they stick out enough that I've thought about ways of ditching clerics. Thieves break the pattern even more, partly by having a whole bunch of abilities that scale, partly by most of the abilities seeming trivial at 1st level compared to the other classes.

Later classes start becoming superhero packages: paladins with all fighter abilities, plus turn undead, laying on of hands, protection from evil, and dispel magic is just one example. Then D&D adds proficiencies, which turn into skills in 3e, adds feats, and finally refactors some feats as powers in 4e. The superheroic feel is just not that appealing to me.

And that, to me, is a bigger reason for hating feats.

Experience Bonuses from Ability Scores

I know I should be working on more installments of the Megadungeon Training series, and even have ideas for at least two more installments. But I've been distracted by a discussion on Grognardia about ability scores (here and here.) There's a lot of interest comments on those posts, but I want to focus on the one of James Maliszewski's original points: the experience bonus for high prerequisites in OD&D. James wants to do away with these for his own games, because of "double dipping": if you use ability bonuses in addition to experience bonuses, some ability scores are going to provide extra benefit, while others (Con, Cha) won't.

But consider for a moment that problem here might be tying experience bonuses to specific classes. Since there are three (LBB) or four (LBB+Greyhawk) prime requisites versus six attributes, some attributes are going to do double duty for some classes. Further, a character with a high prime requisite gets that ability bonus no matter what the player actually does, which seems odd.

So, why not divorce the experience boost from specific classes? Any time a player solves a problem using methods that clearly rely on one of the six abilities, that player gets an experience bonus equal to ten times the character's ability score. Talk your way past a guard, get a 10xCha bonus. Bust down a door, get a 10xStr bonus. Pick the lock instead, get a 10xDex bonus. If the GM decides that's too high, don't multiply by 10. It's simple, provides rewards for non-combat actions, distinguishes characters, and encourages role-playing.