Training Levels: Update

In an earlier post I created a training cost table that differed from the DMG. I've decided to update it again. This time I giving the players the option to decrease the time it takes to train if they are willing to pay more.

Level Attained	Training Time	Gold	Level Attained	Training Time	Gold	Level Attained	Training Time	Gold
2	10 days	30	2	5 days	68	2	2 days	180
3	10 days	90	3	5 days	203	3	2 days	540
4	10 days	180	4	5 days	405	4	2 days	1,080
5	20 days	300	5	10 days	675	5	4 days	1,800
6	20 days	500	6	10 days	1,125	6	4 days	3,000
7	20 days	800	7	10 days	1,800	7	4 days	4,800
8	20 days	1,200	8	10 days	2,700	8	4 days	7,200
9	20 days	1,700	9	10 days	3,825	9	4 days	10,200
10	20 days	2,300	10	10 days	5,175	10	4 days	13,800
11	30 days	3,000	11	15 days	6,750	11	6 days	18,000
12	30 days	3,800	12	15 days	8,550	12	6 days	22,800
13	30 days	4,700	13	15 days	10,575	13	6 days	28,200
14	30 days	5,700	14	15 days	12,825	14	6 days	34,200
15	30 days	6,800	15	15 days	15,300	15	6 days	40,800
16	30 days	8,000	16	15 days	18,000	16	6 days	48,000
17	40 days	9,300	17	20 days	20,925	17	8 days	55,800
18	40 days	10,700	18	20 days	24,075	18	8 days	64,200
19	40 days	12,500	19	20 days	28,125	19	8 days	75,000
20	40 days	15,000	20	20 days	33,750	20	8 days	90,000

Casualties After 3 Sessions

Here is the list of monsters of the Mount that our brave adventures have defeated (killed or some other means of victory) and captured.

Name	Defeated	Captured
Beetles, Giant Fire	7
Dwarves, Insane	1	1
Kobold-ish Creatures	39	3
Rats, Giant	9
Skeletal Creatures	6
Snorks	36	3
Spiders, Giant	8
Zombie-ish Undead Creatures	1

Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be dungeon dwellers.

My Setup: Latest Addition, Spell Books

I grabbed pdzoch's Spell Cards (Template) for D&D 5E using Magic Set Editor (MSE) created a set of spell cards for each of my player's spell casting characters. And placed them in the spell books from my copy of Mage Wars.

Regional Map

Regional Map as known by PCs.

I'm a rules junkie: Degrees of Advantage/Disadvantage

I've always liked creating games or tweaking existing rules, maybe even more than playing. After I got my first "serious" war game Starship Troopers from Avalon Hill in the late 70s/early 80s, I used the board and units to create my own Star Wars game.

Anyway, I'll post some of my RPG rule ideas here on this blog - probably with little or no play testing.

Degrees of Advantage/Disadvantage in D&D 5e

The advantage/disadvantage mechanism is a real nice simplified means of handling conditions. You don't need to remember and add together a dozen different modifiers. Unfortunately, it's either you have an advantage/disadvantage or you don't. There is no variance, no degrees of, no means of cumulative effect. Could we add this without too much complexity?

My thought is what if different degrees of advantage/disadvantage gave different size of advantage/disadvantage die. So instead of the additional die always being a d20, the lowest degree of advantage/disadvantage provides a d10, the next degree provides a d12. Now in the standard set of dice the next size is of course a d20. Which is a significant jump from a d12. Fortunately there are d14, d16, and d18 dice available. There are even d24 available. I already have a d16.

Using the different sizes also allows a cumulative effect. You have two conditions that grant an advantage? The first advantage would grant you a d10. The second advantage would increase it to d12.

I'm already using this in my flanking advantage rule. At least for now I won't implement this rule. I'll run D&D5e as written, with the exception of flanking - 5e has no specific rules for how flanking affects combat, except rogue's backstab.

If you don't mind a little more complexity you could allow combinations of multiple advantages and disadvantages rather than simply one disadvantages negating multiple advantages. You have three conditions, two granting advantages and one granting a disadvantage? Subtract the difference. Two advantages minus one disadvantages results in gaining a d10 advantage.

Session #2 Report

Players and Characters

All the players in the current player pool were able to attend. In order by character name

Chris: Anders Blackwood
Brian: Frocensin Verth
Bill: Gleran
Jeremy: Milo Tealeaf    

Party was joined by Frocensin's squire Kelyn Robinsworth.

What Happened

My audio recording worked this time. Yea. While I listened to the six hour recording I took notes on my cell phone's voice recorder. I finished listening today. Before I got to my recorded notes, my cell phone locked up and proceeded to do a factory reset - all recordings gone!

So to summarize what happened in session #2, lots of shit! The PC explored, killed, almost died and left. The End!

I hate re-doing crap. Maybe I'll go back later. Right now I'm just don't want to even think about it.

Explored

Map of what was explored during the two sessions.

In-game date(s): Aprflos 6 & 7, 918

Training to Gain Levels

Edit: Updated

Level Attained	Training Time	Gold
2	10 days	30
3	10 days	90
4	10 days	180
5	20 days	300
6	20 days	500
7	20 days	800
8	20 days	1,200
9	20 days	1,700
10	20 days	2,300
11	30 days	3,000
12	30 days	3,800
13	30 days	4,700
14	30 days	5,700
15	30 days	6,800
16	30 days	8,000
17	40 days	9,300
18	40 days	10,700
19	40 days	12,500
20	40 days	15,000

Initiative: We know they're there, we should have a plan

During session 2, which I'm still working on the report, the party came to a door with holes they could use to look through. Beyond the door was a room with some giant rats. They decided to open the door, go in, and to take on the rats. I determined that the rats were not surprised and had everyone roll initiative as normal. As a result of initiative a PC in the second row went first. Since he acted before the PCs in front of him could move, it limited his options.

With the PCs knowing what lay beyond, they could develop a plan of action. To my thinking this would cause the normal roll of initiative to be inappropriate.

Here is what I plan to implement for future sessions when the party wishes to take the time to develop a plan which includes the order in which each PC will act. The PC who will act first makes his initiative check. Every PC after will have an initiative value of 2 lower than the previous PC. I will roll initiative for the opponents as normal and slide them into initiative order based on their results.

Example: Say the party decides to go in the following order: Frocensin, Gleran, Anders, and Milo. Frocensin would make his initiative check, say he got a 14, then Gleran would have 12, Anders 10, and Milo 8. Then say I rolled for monsters in two groups: boss and minions. Minions got a 9 and the boss got a 12. So the order of initiative would be:

1. Frocensin (14)
2. Gleran(12) in case of tie, PC goes before NPC
3. Boss monster (12)
4. Anders (10)
5. Minions (9)
6. Milo (8)

So which ever PC acts first better roll well.

Movement and Surprise

In a corner of one of the pages on the D&D 5th Edition Cheat Sheet/DM Screen at EnWorld is an area under Travel Pace. I don't know where he/she came up with the numbers or if he created them.  The numbers in distance don't match the rules from the Player's Handbook. I gather the idea is the faster the party is moving the more likely it is to be surprised. I've changed the distances to match the numbers from the PHB.

This rule will not come into effect during ambushes - Perception vs Stealth - or when one party would have a reasonable chance to hear, see, etc. the other party - Perception vs DC based on amount of noise, light, etc.

The characters make a Perception check vs the given surprise DC. Those characters that fail are surprised for the first round.

In using this, Passive Perception is not used for encounters. But it is still used when passing by something of interest. 

Travel Pace	Surprise DC	Feet in 1 Min
Cautious	0	100
Slow	5	200
Moderate	10	300
Fast	15	400

Encounters, Initiative, and Talking

Ameron over at DungeonsMaster.com has an article, The New Initiative – Talk then Fight,
that discusses ideas on how to allow more opportunities for conversations between party and what they just encounter.

I'm going to use his simple suggestion of Insight checks.

"If nothing else I might secretly roll Insight checks for your character to give you a sense of what you encounter might do." 

Calendar

For keeping track of in-game dates I need a calendar. In previous campaigns I've made, I created calendars with fantasy names and unusual arrangement of days. Once I created months that each had three 10 day weeks. The problem, of course, is that everyone is used to the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, there's requiring remembering the calendar and making mental translations.

So for this campaign I decided to go real simple with just a touch of change to invoke some feeling of a fantasy world. I took the Gregorian calendar and only tweaked the names of the months to make it obvious what earth month it's referring.

My first thought was just to replace the end of each month with "us". I like the sound "us" at end of words. But I thought it was a little too repetitive.

Janus, Februs, Marus, Aprus, Mayus, Junus, Julus, Augus, Septus, Octobus, Novembus, Decembus

Instead I decided to group the months by season and use a suffix based on a translation of a word associated with the given season.

• Spring, I translated the word flower into Latin: flos.
• Autumn, I translated the word harvest into Latin (verb form): meto
• Winter, I translated the word cold into Latin: frigus.
• Summer, I just kept the "us"

So here is the calendar grouped by season:

Spring	Summer	Autumn	Winter
Marflos	Junus	Sepmeto	Decfrigus
Aprflos	Julus	Octmeto	Janfrigus
Mayflos	Augus	Novmeto	Febfrigus

My Car Failed It's Saving Throw

Highway accident where my car was used as an accordion between a SUV and a semi. Fortunately, except for sore ribs, I'm fine. My car, not so much.

More About My Setup

PC Trays

 I like to use tokens to represent things when possible. Each character has a tray - tray comes from Axis & Allies - to store various tokens. I use red 8mm wooden cubes to represent ammunition - arrows, bolts, etc. - and brown 8mm wooden cubes for a day's worth of rations. Each character holds a number of poker chips equal the character's max hit points. When the character takes damage, he/she just removes that number of chips from the tray and places them on the table.

 

Gaming Area

Picture of my gaming table.