Cephalon Dusp's Archives

 Having tested this method out with my last post on Spell Schools, lets see how breaking down and rebuilding can work on something more central like Ability Scores. A Brief Overview     Ability Scores have been in Dungeons and Dragons since the very beginning, and have been somewhat constant throughout it. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma are the six basic stats and they have endured. But, they have been a constant source of friction as well.     Originally, Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom were all Prime Requisites, the things you needed to choose one of the three basic classes (Fighter, Magic-User, or Cleric respectively). The other three were bonus stats that affected your HP, AC, and Number of Followers. These divisions were clear and fairly straightforward, except for the fact that Ability Scores were described as being actual attributes of your character.      Even a brief thought about this will reveal issues with how the scores are not use

    Today, I am about to engage in what I know is bad design, but also hopefully good design. Spell Schools are a method of categorizing spells and they have a long history in D&D. The bad design I will be committing today is that I will not be looking at why  they exist, how  they are integrated, nor what  messing with them will do. I am just going to be messing with them because the way they are now annoys me. The good design for today is that, hopefully, I will make a set of Spell Schools which make more sense. A Brief History     Now, before I really get into tearing apart spell schools and putting them back together, I will take a moment to look back through the history of D&D and their place within it. Originally, in OD&D, there weren't even spell schools, unless one considers the different spell lists of Magic-Users and Clerics different spell lists.. Holmes' Basic and BECMI also do not have spell schools while AD&D 1E finally introduces something similar

     I do have a page on useful RPG mechanics, ideas, and concepts on this blog and one of the concepts in there that of Dice Chain and Usage Dice. The central idea is this: Roll a die and if you roll at or below a specific number you drop down the chain. It gives a nice element of random chance to how many uses of something you get and makes tracking items like Arrows or Chalk very easy.     However, it can be very unclear how many uses you would expect  to get when you buy a Ud6 or Ud8 item. I have just gotten done doing some math, specifically using Markov Chains, and I believe my math holds up. Thus I have been able to produce this very handy chart: Usage Die Expected Uses Ud4 2 Ud6 5 Ud8 9 Ud10 14 Ud12 20     Now, that chart is certainly handy and can easily be recreated by noticing that each die adds 1/2 of its size to the number of expected uses. However, this default chart assumes

 Forewarning      I would like to make it clear that I have enjoyed playing The Strange   and the group I play with have all enjoyed it as well. We originally started playing it as an alternative to our main 5E campaign since our normal DM was feeling a bit burnt out and we ended up turning it into our main campaign for several months. As we played it, everyone had a character and whoever had anything prepared would step up to run a one-to-few shot.      It was fun and we had a great campaign which we have decided to end for now, but the entirety of this post is going to consist of me basically tearing down this game because it comes so close to being great. As I have come to expect with Monte Cook / Cypher System games, it has poor organization, low-resolution maps, and issues writing rules in a way that makes using them easy. Someday I will write up something about that, but I won't be focusing on that for today's review. Now, lets get started. A Briefing on the Setting     T