Taking a Blogging Break

I am kind of short ideas and am busy with this and that anyway. As such I am going to take a bit of a blogging break and retool.

Thanks for reading everybody.

Level based Defense Bonuses in any Edition

One of my loyal readers (JD Jarvis) made this point in the comments

If AC went up along with attack, HP best be kept low or fights are going to last forever.

And you know he is right at least if applied with all the magic items.

The thing is though in any edition of D&D everyone has a magic defense or three just to keep AC at a certain point vs. monsters.Heck early editions had enough magic items to keep the PC leveling up, use some of them up , selling some for training costs and to pass some of them down to henchmen (which is what was supposed to be done with the extras BTW)

This excess of items IMO detracts from the game.

It gets worse with 3x where game balance assumes that you have X amount of 6 categories at Y level and Z amount of disposables. That is flat out yuck. At least the old "hand me down" method felt like an ancient gift economy. The 3x method reminded me of video games and thats not a good thing.

Now later d20 games (the excellent Iron Heroes) had systems to allow for less magic items but this was in no way handled to any careful balanced degree for normal play. Even my own rules are pretty ad-hoc.

By the time 4e was starting to mature its DMG 2 (and later its Dark Sun) had systems were created to allow low magic games and inherent bonuses so that magic items could be cool and not just kit.

What I'd like to see is something like this applied to Old School games.

To do this a person would need to figure out how many pluses a typical PC has a a typical level to AC and to hit, give enough so that AC and To Hit ratios are about the same and than allow magic items to cancel out.

This would put fights on the same scale while allowing items to be special and a bit more magical as vs "just another +1 sword"

Any ideas?

Less Squamous Frog Gods and More Faerie Queens Please

Just a short rant

I love Sword and Sorcery and cut my teeth on much of appendix N. That being said the hobby, old school especially has become so infatuated with Weird Fantasy that its sucked much of the juices out of it.

And yes sure there are some very cool original materials out there , not the point. It seems like our social decay (and yes US society at least is in fact desperately sick) has entered into a sick feedback loop.

These days I'd be hard pressed to to see a supplement that speaks of wonder, awe, terror and anything on the comprehensible, normal human scale. Instead our angst feeds us a steady diet of ancient moldering forgotten ruins and enough Lovecraft inspired material that it borders on pastiche.

When we don't get that we get more 70's style material that was seemingly influenced by way too many hallucinogens.

Well I think its time for a change and for us to look our other roots, the Hobbit, Grimm's Faerie Tales, Kathryn Briggs, Myths , Folklore, Ivanhoe, Horror. stories of swashbuckling daring do and even more modern things like Labyrinth, Stardust, Pan's Labyrinth. Legend ....

So yeah less squamous frog gods and more faerie queens please

Armor Confusion

This is kind of a continuation of the Shield Article in the last post.

A big part of the confusion comes from the ahistorical mix of armors in the pseudo Europe and the understandably mediocre research. Let me be clear none of this is not the authors fault. Back then they were short research material and what they did have was old inaccurate Victorian stuff. Given what little they had, they did a pretty good job and most importantly its playable.

The armor issues as I see them are

1st the existing armor types in B/X are Elizabethan not medieval (Buff Coat, Mail, Plate)

2nd Leather was in fact was rarely used in Europe as armor early on because of the expense and the inability to easily repair it . This category should be layered textile defenses, probably using the same stats as leather.

3rd Happily the mail rules are fine though there should be two or three lengths of it (the most common short hauberk, what D&D calls a mail shirt, longer hauberks and full mail) with different stats.

Now it helps to that mail was really effective (it can't be cut or trusted through with anything but a heavy longbow or specialized weapons) but it was horribly expensive. Defeating it was done not with a sword slash or cut but either with specialized thrusting weapons, going around the armor or by beating the wearer to death with a mace (the #1 weapon) . Not very heroic.

Shields were used in the mail period because they were cheap and effective especially for warriors who could not afford armor and they could protect weak spots (the legs typically) and prevent a solid blow. Still very useful.

4thThat leaves Plate Mail. What D&D calls plate mail is probably a coat of plates over mail!

A coat of plates was a common armor used later than mail . It looked rather like a modern ballistic vest with inserts within budget and comfort for many soldiers but as Widby showed, it too was mostly impervious. Most wounds were on unarmored legs.

Shields were still used at that period and and even later but by skirmishers and in personal combat.

What we think of as plate was what Gygax called Field Plate and Full Plate in AD&D. It was unbelievably expensive but it was Plate was basically immune to most weapons save very strong crossbows at close range and highly specialized weapons and joint attack techniques that were almost all two handed.

A really good set of white harness, 2mm or so Italian steel was essentially impervious to everything other than sustained bludgeoning attacks and specialized weapons (the Poleaxe was the #1 choice)

As I mentioned this was was pretty expensive stuff (as in price of a house or more) but even so its later cheaper cousins (and note munitions grade armor was cheaper and less labor intensive than mail) provided good protection.

By this time less well off troops mostly dropped the shield because it was tactically no longer needed , polearms were needed for battle field work and they were all two handed.

How we work that into D&D without big changes is tricky.

5th and last comes all the oddballs...

Studded which is a misinterpretation of brigandine (a common European leather and scale sandwich armor) and didn't exist in Europe although I suppose could be used for boiled leather scale if desired.

Scale which was dark ages stuff in Europe (though scale sandwich as above was common enough )

Banded which was Roman Lorica Segmenta and not used after Rome fell .

and "Splint" which was not clearly defined and was apparently mail with greaves if it existed at all.

Ugh, its little wonder there is some much confusion.

As for fixes well, thats another post for another day..

In which I way in on the Great Shield Controversy

There has been a lot of debate on the shield rules in older editions, whether they are good, whether they need changing and so on.

For me this is somewhat a matter of system. In OD&D and SW. I think the rules stand up just fine bonuses are few and far between and even a meager +1 (or more with magic) can make the difference between life and death. Were I using this rules set or Lament of the Flame Princess I'd probably use the rules as written with maybe the addition of the excellent Trollsmyth Shields Shall be Splintered rule.

However if use a more B/X, Labyrinth Lord or AD&D 1 or 2 flavored game I'd use a different set.

However before I go over that a not so brief bit of history.


D&D is basically a plug in for a wargame written by people with no combat experience.

Its understandable, European Martial Arts were hibernating, Asian Martial Arts were hard to find trainers for and fraught with bad training, and the sword and shield sport of the SCA was in its infancy. Certainly none of these things were available in Lake Geneva at the time.

However the shield itself is one of the most useful battlefield instruments known and is criminally underestimated in D&D . Even today we see shield walls and shields in use (the Vancouver sports riot FREX) on a semi regular basis.

Historically there were roughly 3 kinds of shields

Bucklers, a fist load shield the size of a pie pan most commonly carried for personal defense, were in use from around from the 13th century or earlier to the early 17th and possibly later in other areas (the Okinawan Timba and the Filipino Tameng ) Giving them a +1 AC and +1 to Hit or whatever bonus a second weapon gets (as they are an excellent off hand weapon) is about right. These weight about 2lbs (a shade under a kilo) and are not disposable as they are all metal.

Bigger shields are amazingly useful both on offense and defense and are a combination of mobile cover and weapon . They were also cheap enough for any man to own.

Downsides , they were heavy (8-12 lbs) awkaward to carry (save the buckler) and disposable. They stopped being used at a point when armor grew strong enough that they were no longer as useful and only the buckler which was carried for personal defense and was socially acceptable almost anywhere persisted.

Amusingly 3rd edition has a pretty good nomenclature for the bigger ones.

1st up are light Shields. These were in use from the dawn of history well into the 18th century in some areas (by Highlanders) They were decently protective and somewhat offensive.

They probably should get +2 to AC (or be used +1/+1 as above) with possible extra bonuses for a fighter or shield wall tactics. However are disposable and as such can use the splintered shields rules as if desired and will wear out . The easiest way I do it is to make all non magic shields gone after one adventure. These weight about 7-8 lbs (a shade under 4 kilos)

2nd were large shields which are still in use (as riot shields) they weigh up to 15lbs (7 kilos or so) and provide good coverage (+3 to AC) but being so large probably should not be treated as an off hand weapon. What opportunities they provide are negated by the limits they put on action. As above they are disposable and fighters and shield walls should probably get extra bonuses

Magic shields should probably work as whatever size they were and with whatever bonus but not wear out for ease of use.

However if verisimilitude is a goal D&D AC rules need a bit of work all around. In most editions, its no possible to accentuate offense or defense, basic stuff like skilled voiding is mostly ignored and magic gear is grossly over accentuated.

Its not really feasible to rewrite the rules but if I did well shields would be more useful, it would be possible to fight defensively or offensively and AC would scale with level rather than just gear.

That would not rule out magic gear, only make it a cherry on top rather than an expected part of kit.

What makes things confusing is that Plate, Sword and Shield was a generally an ahistorical combination save early on when a coat of plates (which looks much like a modern ballistic vest with inserts) might be worn over mail and the sword used vs lightly armored targets or as art.

The problem was that a sword cut cannot penetrate armor,even mail . Thrusts will not penetrate mail either although they could be used vs. joints in later plate (what Gygax calls Field Plate and Full Plate in AD&D)

Normally opponents were battered to with blunt weapons (all those maces on the Bayeux Tapestry) or hit on unarmored spots. This is covered very well by the To Hit Rules although some bonus blunt vs mail or plate might be worthy.

I'd probably give blunt weapons +1 to hit vs plate or chain and edged weapons +1 damage vs leather or unarmored if I cared.


Over time I have come to like armor class, seeing it as "roll to find an unarmored spot or weak point" and seeing damage rolls as quality of a hit. It works well and is fast and decently accurate at least at low levels.

The problem however comes in scaling AC with level. I am not in the HP are your skill crowd and I find the rules unsatisfactory

Let me explainn

A L1 Fighter say will only hit a plate armored (AC3) guy 15% of the time. This is about right as it represents a stab to a joint or smash to an opportune location.

Obviously modifiers can be used as needed and in those circumstance the rules as written work fine.

The problem is that to hit goes up much faster than AC, after about 3rd level or so. In 1e using the optional 1 per level rule a 6th level fighter has a 40% chance or scoring a hit (sans mods) which is a too much. Add in mods and it gets even worse.

If AC (sans magic) rose at a reasonable rate along with attack , most of these issues would vanish.

So why don't you cover Runequest, B.R.P. and all that?

Actually its pretty simple, the blog is already kind of incoherent covering music, Pathfinder and Old School D&D like games, adding the above would just make things even less focused.

To be clear I think RQ/BRP/Legend, Open Quest, Gore and the rest are quite good games and in some other universe where BRP was a little better focused to become a universal system I am probably happily playing that instead of GURPS (since in that verse their probably was no GURPS) .

And note I have played the new MRQ, well MRQ1 anyway. It was just as much hun as I remembered.

However right here and now I have GURPS for my needs.

Locally there is a group playing BRP, mostly play test stuff for monographs or so I am told. I'd be welcome enough but at least currently I am not a good fit with that group. Nothing personal, those guys are welcome at my table too, I just don't belong at theirs right now.

Do note that things could change and if they do, well you may see a bit of that old school BRP round there parts.

Till then since I have plenty to keep me busy, well I'll let BRP slide on by.

Monngoose RQ2 to Become Legend

Via Akratic Wizardry

I do have to agree with Akrasia, Legend is a much better name.

Also this little bit here

Finally, as had been noted widely when Mongoose first announced their new name for MRQII, there already exists a 'Wayfarers' FRPG. It looks like Mongoose will be publishing and distributing the original Wayfarers for Ye Olde Gaming Companye:

Wayfarers RPG
First up, we have been chatting to those nice chaps at Ye Olde Gaming Companye and found out that they were not only prepping a new version for their Wayfarers RPG but that they were in need of distribution. Being familiar with their game and seeing they were obviously such nice chaps, we immediatly offered to print and distribute their game!
The Wayfarers RPG will be released by Mongoose in December this year, likely in the second week. We will be following it up with the first supplement in January, World of Twylos. Look for them in all good game stores.

reminds me just how cool our little hobby can be at times.Mongoose didn't have to do this, probably won't make much money anyway and all they might, operative word, might have been required to do is change a name.

Instead they decided to step and help YOGC increase their sales and distribution . And yeah sure its good publicity but in my book its quite generous and above and beyond the call of duty.

In case anyone from Mongoose should read this, good show gents, good show ...