Getting Lucky, and a Framework for Ability Scores

My last post talked about ability scores as they have been preserved in records from Dave Arneson's old games. I want to talk a bit about a couple of other early games, and how between them, they suggest a framework for a variant that I like on the old warhorse of OD&D's six ability scores. My goal is to make them useful as in-game tools, while keeping in tact OD&D's reluctance to turn high stats into mega-bonuses.

I'll start with Luck, which as far as I know was introduced in Tunnels & Trolls. Luck's biggest feature was being used in saving rolls, effectively replacing Gary Gygax's arcane matrix of saving throw values with one neat roll. Later editions expanded the saving roll into a generic system. The exact mechanic (a target number of 20+ minus Luck on 2d6, but you re-roll and add when you roll doubles) is wonky, but as Ron Edwards of all people has pointed out, the mechanic actually encourages creative activity on the part of players, especially because by rule, a player may call for a saving roll, and the referee just tells him the difficulty. SRs also give experience, regardless of success, which is food for thought.

Luck has a fairly good pedigree otherwise, including in Dungeon Crawl Classics. One of the reasons I like the idea of Luck is as a resource of last resort. It makes it clear, from the character sheet, that the player can always just throw his or her fate at the feet of the dice gods and give just about anything a try. It might not work, but what the hell. (And when it doesn't work, spectacular failure is the order of the day.)

The others I've written about before. Agility, from the CalTech Warlock rules (another score used in DCC, mind), takes on the AC modification of Dexterity. This is a personal pet peeve; hand-eye coordination does not help you dodge. I think Dexterity and Agility being split also nicely prevents Dexterity from being a super-powerful score like it is in most versions of D&D.

Wisdom, I have no use for. It's not an accident that so many games that otherwise swipe the D&D ability scores tend to chuck Wisdom overboard first. Tunnels & Trolls replaces it with Luck, Runequest with Power, Empire of the Petal Throne with Psychic Ability. In OD&D and Holmes, it has no use other than being a prime requisite for Clerics. So feh. Make Charisma the prime stat for Clerics, and throw out Wisdom. The "divine favor" aspect of Charisma makes more sense for a Cleric anyway.

The stat that replaces Wisdom is Ego. The reason to have an Ego score is simple: it determines your interaction with magical swords. If you look in the First Fantasy Campaign, Arneson has them compare with both Ego and Brains (Intelligence). It also allows you to have "willpower" type rolls based on Ego. Cunning is a good alternative, but I can see more cases of Ego coming up in a game.

My preference for Strength has always been for modest damage bonuses. In a 1d6-based damage system, +1 for Strength of 15 or more is a pretty powerful thing. (18 Str should give +2, making the Strength spell actually meaningful in Holmes D&D.) So in canonical order: Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma, Agility, Ego, Luck.

One reason I like this array so much better is it gives you a solid roll-under system. You can use either 3d6 (which advantages high scores) or 1d20 (advantage to lower scores) as a generic task resolution system, akin to T&T's saving rolls. I prefer 1d20, because adjusting with bonuses or penalties jacks up a 3d6 roll. This also begs for a system of improving ability scores; given a basis of 3d6 in order, even increasing 1 stat point per level only increases the average stat by 1 for every 8 levels.

Ability scores have always seemed to me like the D&D sacred cow most in need of a good barbecue. I think this alternate array fixes several issues I have with the game and makes an overall better array for adjudicating in-game actions with a quick die roll. Please address all thoughts to the comment box below.

Arnesonian Ability Scores

If you have Jon Peterson's Playing at the World, you may have noticed the earliest known character sheet from a D&D game. On the back of the sheet, under the heading "Personality," there are scores for the following attributes, in two columns:

Brains, Looks, Credibility*, Sex, Health, Strength, Courage
Horsemanship, Woodsmanship, Leadership*, Flying, Seamanship, Cunning
* these are spelled poorly but you get the idea

The so-called "Dalluhn Manuscript" or "Beyond This Point Be Dragons" document, the following statistics appear on the character write-up (you can see it in a picture here):

Intelligence, Cunning, Strength, Health, Appearance, Ego

From the Gaylord sheet to Dalluhn (likely a playtest document or a copy of one), we see that things are a bit more formalized, with Brains clearly becoming Intelligence, and Looks going to Appearance. Credibility, Courage, Sex, Leadership, and the skill-like values (Horsemanship, Woodsmanship, Flying, Seamanship) are gone entirely.

In the Gaylord sheet, these are in the range from 3 (Gaylord's Seamanship) to 11 (his Brains, Flying and Cunning). Several values are crossed out and replaced with increased values. It's not clear whether these values were increased through play, or if they were changed for some other reason, but it seems entirely within reason that attributes would increase in Arnesonian D&D; it was very much Gygax's bailiwick to make them extremely static. Against this, many other games of the very early days of RPGs, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest, used very similar statistics but assumed that they would be increasing as the character's adventuring career went on.

Over at the Comeback Inn, Greg Svenson says, "In my recollection, the stats were used more for task resolution than for adjustments in combat." This squares with Arneson's tendency to have players roll 2d6 for a great deal of task resolution: Gaylord's original Strength was 5, so on a Strength related roll he might have had to roll a 5 or less on 2d6. This same logic works in OD&D, where ability numbers have very little impact on the probabilities of combat, but many referees have used them for roll-under task resolution, such as calling for 3d6 or 1d20 under a specific stat to resolve an action not documented in the rules (which in OD&D is most non-combat actions).

Arneson was using this as a work continuously in progress. For instance, in the Comeback Inn link, Svenson mentions that the "Sex" stat was not, as may be expected, particularly involved in the more Gorean parts of Arneson's game. The "standard six" of D&D as codified by Gygax, even in the correct OD&D order (Constitution before Dexterity), are tried and true but far from exhaustive. Arneson was much more freewheeling, and felt free to define things that we might call "skills" but he treated just the same as any other characteristic. There is something to be learned from that attitude.

One of the implied uses of these statistics was for saving throws, which makes a neat parallel for later games like Castles & Crusades and 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's doubly interesting that "Dexterity" – a favorite for stat-based saving throws involving dodges – appears neither in the Gaylord sheet nor in Dalluhn, even in some form that's not a word dragged out of a thesaurus by Gary Gygax. Most of the modern "Dexterity" score is actually a combination of dexterity (hand-eye coordination / fine motor tasks) and agility (quickness of reaction and ability to move easily). As an oddity of history, Daniel Boggs's Arnesonian reconstruction, Dragons at Dawn, wound up stuck with a very out-of-place Dexterity.

I also like a few of Arneson's stats, particularly "Cunning." Think of the difference between a game with a Wisdom stat and one with a score for Cunning; it's like the difference between a Tolkien novel and a Fritz Leiber short story. (I think this is why, for instance, Dungeon Crawl Classics uses Luck over Wisdom.) Appearance/Looks and Credibility are also an interesting twist on Charisma, although I'm less keen on "Sex" given the looks of many gamers. I'm really thinking that tinkering with ability scores is an easy way to give your D&D a small Arnesonian twist.

Initiative, Dexterity and Ready Ref Sheets

Image by Michael Caroe Andersen. CC-BY-NC.

The title of this blog is Macaronic Latin for "Always Initiative One," but I don't actually write about initiative much. Which is odd, because I actually do think about it a good bit, just not in a format that's ready to write about. Here I'm going to be focusing on OD&D, although coming at it by way of Chainmail.

In the first round of Chainmail man-to-man, the attacker strikes first, unless the defender has a longer weapon, or the defender has high ground. In subsequent rounds, initiative stays the same, unless one side has a shorter weapon or the high ground. All of this makes sense. If a man with a sword attacks a man with a spear, the spear-wielder can fend him off and get the first blow in, but if they both survive, the man with the sword has the advantage because he's overcome the spear's range and can work more quickly.

The state of affairs in Chainmail is good, and it's worth seeing what we can do in terms of replicating it in D&D. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover enough possibilities; what if someone is firing missiles, or throwing spells, or fighting against a creature that attacks with its claws? Chainmail only has 12 weapon types (if you don't have Chainmail but do have OD&D or Holmes Basic, the weapons are arranged in order by length in both of those books). So clearly it's going to need some work.

Outside of surprise, the main comment that OD&D has on initiative is under the description of abilities:

Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character's missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc.

We're not told how Dexterity indicates this. We can compare stats when an Elf is taking a shot at an Evil High Priest, to see whether the Elf's arrow gets off before the EHP's Finger of Death spell, but it breaks down once we have monsters with no stats. So if a Hobbit is fighting a Manticora, does the plucky hero throw his stone before the creature's tail spikes fire? We don't have a Dexterity score for the monster. Also, this doesn't specify whether it factors into melee at all.

But I like the idea that Dexterity should impact on initiative. Now our goal is twofold: a spear should get first action over a sword, and Dexterity should impact on initiative.

In the 1975 article in The Strategic Review, "Questions Frequently Asked About Dungeons & Dragons Rules," Gygax did make some attempt to clarify initiative:

Initiative is always checked. Surprise naturally allows first attack in many cases. Initiative thereafter is simply a matter of rolling two dice (assuming that is the number of combatants) with the higher score gaining first attack that round. Dice scores are adjusted for dexterity and so on.

This doesn't specify exactly how Dexterity adjusts initiative, but in the ensuing example Gygax says that the Hero gets a bonus of 1 due to high Dexterity. We can reasonably extrapolate that he is geting +1 for a Dexterity of 13 or better, matching the missile adjustments given in OD&D.

Unfortunately the method in the OD&D FAQ doesn't get us an effect much like that in Chainmail. Now initiative is mostly random, with a bump for Dexterity, but weapon length has disappeared from the equation.

The Judges Guild tried to solve all these factors (and add a few more) in the Ready Ref Sheets. The Weapon Priority table (you can see it on the Zenopus Archives site here) factors in weapon length, spell level, missile weapons, dragon breath weapons, armor, monster speed and Dexterity. Which is all for the good, except that the priority system has a fatal flaw: it makes longer weapons better in absolute terms than shorter ones. A spear in these rules is better than a sword, and if you're using all d6 damage, there's no reason to ever use a sword. Which is silly, as there are plenty of reasons to use swords in real life.

This really only works if you can work out in advance that, say, a fighting-man in plate with a sword and Dexterity of 14 has a total rating of 5, while an orc (9" move) with a spear has 6. The orc always goes first. But it has some good ideas, and we can pull this all together without so much work that it's unwieldy.

This is a much-simplified table that takes into account weapon length:

Factor	Round 1	Rounds 2+
Long Weapon*	+1	n/a
Short Weapon**	-1	n/a
Dexterity/Move 8 or less	-1	-1
Dexterity/Move 13 or higher	+1	+1
Encumbered (Moving at 1/2 speed)	-1	-1

* Morning Star, Flail, Spear, Pole Arm, Halberd, 2-handed Sword, Lance, Pike
** Dagger, Hand Axe, Mace

The system is simple: roll initiative on 1d6, individual for PCs, as a group for monsters, and apply the above modifiers. Roll-off (no modifiers) on ties.

I chose not to flip the modifiers after round 1. Particularly in d6-based damage systems, 2-handed weapons don't have a large advantage, and giving them a penalty for most of the fight makes them nearly useless. I also threw in the encumbered modifier from the Ready Ref Sheets rule, and merged Dexterity and monster Move rates, which are pretty similar.

This does pretty much everything I want an initiative system to do: it takes into account weapon length, but only on the first round, it takes Dexterity into account, and it makes movement rates a bigger part of the game. A dextrous, light-armored fighting-man with a spear (+3) is at a pretty big advantage versus a clumsy, heavily encumbered cleric with a mace (-3), and will almost certainly get the jump on him.

Talking Blue Book D&D: Ability Scores

I haven't talked for a while about Blue Book D&D, my name for a fusion of Holmes Basic D&D with Cook/Marsh Expert. But lately it's been on my mind, and I've thought more about cleaning it up and solidifying it for my own future games.

Specifically I've been thinking a lot lately about tweaks to ability scores. Holmes is minimal with bonuses, copying OD&D's Dexterity and Constitution bonuses, but increasing the Constitution bonuses to hit points at 17 and 18. Moldvay, meanwhile, sets out with the standardized thresholds: 13-15 for +1, 16-17 for +2, and 18 for +3, with corresponding penalties on the low side.

But Moldvay's attribute curve is misleading. One +1 is not the same as another, if the first bonus is on 1d6 and the second bonus is on 1d20. +1 to 1d6 is 16.67%, while +1 to 1d20 is only 5%. This has a distorting effect, particularly with Strength where damage bonuses go as high as +25% (for daggers and such that deal 1d4 damage).

OD&D has a schema hidden within it. Constitution gives -1 hit point per die (d6) at 6, and +1 at 15. These are the same distance, 3 units, from the median range of 9-12. Dexterity gives -1 to hit with missile weapons (d20) at 8, and +1 at 13. Again, these are equidistant from the median range. This is an interesting rule of thumb, and I think it's a good one for Blue Book.

So, Wisdom can give a bonus to save versus spells, just as in Moldvay, but it only gives +1 at 13 and -1 at 8. This gives Wisdom some role mechanically that it lacks in Holmes.

Strength is a thornier matter. If we have it give bonuses to hit and damage, the logical places are for a bonus to-hit at 13, a bonus to damage at 15, and penalties at 8 and 6, respectively. The difference is that 13 Constitution doesn't already grant a bonus, and 8 Constitution gives no penalty, so it seems fairer to move the second bonus 1 unit further away: +1 damage at 16 Strength, and -1 at 5.

This happens to dovetail nicely with Supplement I: Greyhawk, up to 16 anyway. But Greyhawk goes nuts and gives +2/+2 at 17 and +2/+3 at 18 - with a chance that the 18 Strength fighter's bonuses can go even higher. I don't like that so much. I'd rather follow a slower pattern, and give +2 to hit at 17, and +2 to damage at 18. That's idiosyncratic, but I think it works better for me.

My rationale behind this is the observation that Holmes fighters are way underpowered compared to Moldvay fighters, due mainly to strength, but I don't care for either the Moldvay or Greyhawk strength charts. Mine is simpler, and fits right in the sweet spot for me.

One of my least favorite additions is Greyhawk's modification of Armor Class by Dexterity score. It actually was supposed to represent an active parry, and only apply versus one opponent per round. But this addition wound up changing the definition of Dexterity; it stopped being a measure of hand-eye coordination and nimbleness of fingers, and became a measure of general agility. That doesn't really make sense, though; the two aspects are not firmly linked, and it's not a coincidence that Caltech's Warlock rules added Agility as a separate ability score. D&D never followed suit. But I'm not for using Dex to modify AC.

(This is one of the reasons I like Blue Book conceptually; it's easier to add than to subtract, and since Blue Book assumes Holmes, I can get rid of Dexterity bonus to armor class just by not adding it in the first place.)

Which leaves Charisma. Holmes says that Charisma is supposed to modify the reaction roll. OK, great! But how? He doesn't say. Moldvay actually breaks from his standard here and gives an OD&D-like +1 for 13-17 and +2 for 18, with corresponding -2 for 3 and -1 for 4-8. This is the one place where Moldvay ability scores actually go along well with the dice roll type, since +2 on 2d6 is a very significant boost.

Now, that's a lot of thought to give a few ability score bonuses. But I really think it's worth figuring it all out. As I've run a good bit of older D&D, I feel like Blue Book D&D is really very close to what my sweet spot is for the game rules, and it's really a question of tuning all the elements so the game works just like I want it to.