Meditating on 5e: LBBs + LBBs

One of the things I really like about 5e is the whole concept of Backgrounds. It immediately adds flavor to a character and gives a good Referee hooks for adventures. In a way, it reminds me a lot of one of my favorite mini-games of all time: the character creation in Classic Traveller. There is an assumption that your character comes from somewhere and that background defines who you are and what you can do. It also implies the kinds of connections your character has and what influence those connections have.

Another reason I like the Background system of 5e is that it mitigates the need for the Rogue/Thief class. Since various backgrounds grant characters skills that normally are filled by the thief, the class has become redundant. This got me thinking about what other classes might be made redundant and I came to an interesting conclusion: it is possible to get rid of all of the classes except for the original three and express them all with Backgrounds.

This, of course, necessitates doing something with the 5e skill system, which I have said before is not something that is necessary to interpret as a pure skill system. I propose that these “skills” are actually broad Areas Of Expertise (AOE). Rather than telling players what their character can’t do (as I would argue a traditional skill system does, even the Thief skills from early editions of D&D), these suggest to players what their characters can do.

Here is the difference: a skill system defines what each skill is and then tells players when they can’t do something (when they fail a roll or fail to have the proper skill). An AOE, as I envision it, is a means for a player to argue that their character should succeed at a particular task.

For example: a character with Survival finds himself on a ship needing to lash down the sails in preparation for a storm. The player can then come up with some story from their character’s previous life that would justify saying Survival allows his character to succeed:

There was this time during a bad rainstorm that Bessie got caught in a gulley underneath a fallen tree branch. I’m gonna use the same knots that we used to pull that branch up to lash down the sails.

If the story or the reasoning is sound, no dice need to be rolled and yet another layer is added to the history of the character.

I am thinking of giving every character four AOEs: two based on their character class and two based on their backgrounds. This allows me to break up the skills of 5e into three categories: Class Skills, Non-Class Skills and Tool Skills.

Each class would have four skills that are not available to the other two classes:

• Cleric: Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, Religion
• Fighter: Athletics, Animal Handling, Intimidation, Perception
• Magic-user: Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature

This leaves six skills and nine tool skills that are only available through a background. Thus, it would make sense to have nine backgrounds that would allow a character access to two Non-Class Skills and one Tool Skill as well as one extra Class Skill. I named these nine Backgrounds after various classes that have popped up in D&D throughout the years:

• Assassin: Poison (Tool Skill), Deception & Stealth (Non-Class Skills), Investigation (Class Skill)
• Barbarian: Gaming (Tool Skill), Performance & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Insight (Class Skill)
• Bard: Instrument (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Performance (Non-Class Skills), History (Class Skill)
• Druid: Herbalism (Tool Skill), Deception & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Animal Handling (Class Skill)
• Illusionist: Forgery (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Deception (Non-Class Skills), Persuasion (Class Skill)
• Monk: Navigation (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Athletics (Class Skill)
• Paladin: Artisan (Tool Skill), Performance & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Religion (Class Skill)
• Ranger: Disguise (Tool Skill), Stealth & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Nature (Class Skill)
• Thief: Thieves’ Tools (Tool Skill), Stealth & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Intimidation (Class Skill)

Note: This leaves three skills that are class specific: Medicine (Cleric), Perception (Fighter) and Arcana (Magic-user).

Also note: All of these categories are intended to be very broad, and thus while some AOEs don’t seem to fit, they can easily be explained by moving slightly beyond the old D&D class title. For example: Deception and Sleight of Hand don’t seem to go with Druid very well; however, if you understand the Druid to be akin to a faith-healer, hedge-mage or veterinarian these things begin to make sense. Deception can be useful when someone who needs to hear good news in a time of disease and epidemic. Sleight of Hand can be used to describe a surgeon’s hands as well as a pick-pocket’s.

To round things off, each background would come with it a type of contact that a character could reach out to in times of need.

If one wanted to go full-on Classic Traveller, it would be a simple matter to create a table to randomize both the Background (a d10 where a ‘0’ represents Player/Referee choice) as well as the skills. A d6 can be used to determine two skills at once with the following pattern where A, B, C and D represent the four skills associated with a Class or a Background:

1: A + B
2: A + C
3: A + D
4: B + C
5: B + D
6: C + D

This would result in some really weird combinations that would force players to be creative, so I would love to use it myself, but I expect most players would prefer to just choose.

The Thief as a Sub-Class

I must confess that I am not a big fan of the Thief class; however, I do understand why people do and that it probably ought to be part of the game. My biggest quibble with it is the way that it tends to make Thief skills exclusive to that class. In this sense, Mr. Raggi's Specialist is probably one of the best renditions of the class (because Specialist skills are inherent to every class, but the Specialist is able to do them better). I am of the mind, however, that Thief skills ought to be supernatural in character — a flavor that is largely absent from the way the Specialist is presented.

In order to satisfy this particular itch, and to emphasize that Thief skills are, in fact, inherent to every class, I have been meditating on making the Thief a sub-class along the same lines that I proposed for the paladin.

The following base skills are true of everyone with a chance of 1 in 6:

• Pick Locks
• Search (Find Traps + Hear Noise)
• Sleight of Hand (Pick Pockets + etc.)
• Stealth (Move Silently + Hide in Shadows)
• Climb Sheer Walls
• Read Language (get the basic meaning if the character knows a related language)

The following (total) XP may be spent per skill in order to improve the base chance:

• 200XP..........2 in 6
• 1800...........3 in 6
• 14,600.........4 in 6
• 117,000........5 in 6

Note: any XP spent on Read Language allows for a more specific understanding of what is being read regardless of what languages the character knows.

Backstab works in a similar way. The basic "backstab" ability is the surprise attack that all players receive when they catch opponents unawares. By spending XP, the surprise attack may be amplified:

• 200XP..........+4 to hit
• 1800............x2 damage
• 14,600..........x3 damage
• 117,000.........x4 damage

Players are allowed to spend XP earned during a session on these abilities when they have fulfilled in-game requirements. Given that these are supernatural abilities, the requirements need to be in the form of serving/making contracts with/pleasing supernatural beings. These beings are often Chaotic in nature (read: demonic), but not necessarily. For example, St. Vineria of the Eyes is known to give the Search ability to those who she finds worthy. Different skills could (should?) require different sources.

Normally, all of these abilities ought to require characters using them to be unencumbered. Given the supernatural character of these abilities; however, one could wave this particular requirement or impose a penalty for various levels of encumbrance depending on the flavor of the campaign.

Hopefully, this will put a very interesting spin on what it means to be a Thief.

Meditating on Sub-Classes

On Tuesday, I mentioned that Hamlen's player surprised me by making an oath and playing through the struggles of keeping it — and keep it he did. In some of our post-session banter, we began to discuss paladins. Hamlen behaved very much like a paladin without actually being one. In contrast, every one of us has seen people play paladins in very un-paladin ways.

Given James's recent question about the number of classes we use in our games, his treatment of Druids and my recent perusing of Adventures Dark & Deep has got me thinking about sub-classes.

To my mind, Hamlin's paladinesque behavior proves my own axiom that What makes a Fighting Man a Barbarian, a Knight, or a Gladiator is the way it is played, not the mechanics behind it. However, in playing the game in a world where 3.5 exists with a bunch of guys who cut their teeth on 3.5, my players chomp at the bit over having only the three core classes. For myself, I have been gravitating more and more to that personal proto-version of the game I used to play that exists somewhere between Holmes, Moldvay and AD&D. This version includes some great experiences playing paladins and illusionists.

Ironically, I've been turning to 3.5 in my attempts to reconcile these two divergent impulses in the form of the prestige classes. Like most things about 3.5, I have a love/hate response to this mechanic. I love the idea of being able to grow a character into something that isn't available at character creation and that isn't hardwired into the core classes. I despise the way 3.5 handles this, however. In making skills and feats the primary way to qualify for prestige classes, it actually shackles players instead of freeing them with more options for their characters. It forces players to ignore the natural progression of their characters as they interact with the world in which they exist in favor of an arbitrary sequence of necessary mechanics. In other words, 3.5 punishes creativity and rewards homogenization (despite the appearance of the opposite).

The basic idea, though, has a lot of merit. In thinking about this, I have been playing with the idea of making sub-classes actual sub-classes. Rather than making them available at character creation as wholly formed classes, have them be a sub-set of class abilities available to players when their characters fulfill a set of requirements during play. These requirements need not be set in stone, but could be adjusted to fit the needs of each individual Referee and their world. Upon fulfilling the necessary requirements in game, the player would then be allowed to put XP towards obtaining this sub-set of character abilities.

For example, Hamlen took an oath, accepted a holy quest and managed to fulfill both. As such, when I award XP for the session, I can inform Hamlen's player that he would be allowed to set aside some of his XP for the purpose of advancing in the paladin sub-class set of abilities. Each ability could require the following (total) amount of experience (based on the difference between Fighter and Paladin XP requirements in AEC):

1st 350XP
2nd 700
3rd 1400
4th 2900
5th 4000
6th 10,000
7th 25,000
8th 50,000
9th 100,000, etc.

The following abilities are available:

• Lay on Hands: heal 2hp per character level
• Cure Disease: once per day for every 5 character levels
• Immunity to disease
• Detect Evil: 60' as per the spell when concentrating
• Protection from Evil: as per the spell, radiating 10' r. at all times
• +2 to all saving throws.

Once two abilities have been gained, the following becomes available:

• Turn Undead as a cleric 2 level lower than the current character level.

Once three abilities have been gained, the following becomes available:

• Summon a special warhorse (AC 5, HD 5+5, MV 180).

Once eight abilities have been gained the following becomes available:

• Gain the ability to cast Cleric spells.

Note: character level indicates the class level, and is not tied to the number of sub-class abilities.

I could see Bards, Berserkers, Illusionists, Rangers, Seers, etc. and even Thieves getting this kind of treatment. What I really like about this is its flexibility. One need not necessarily be a Fighter to qualify for obtaining Paladin sub-class abilities. I could very easily see a Cleric spend the XP to get some of these. It also empowers the Referee to control how much these sub-class abilities get used by determining whether or not XP rewards can be used based on play. Finally (and in a way, most importantly) it encourages and rewards player interaction with the world that the Referee brings to the table.