I don’t know, does that look like 11 hit dice to you?
Apropos of Delta’s discussion of big cats in D&D, I suddenly realized after all these years that a saber-tooth tiger was nearly as many HD as a red dragon.
Here’s a handy little chart showing the difference between a linear distribution like rolling a d20 and a bell curve distribution like 3d6 when it comes to rolling versus a target. The first column is the d20 roll, the second is the approximate percent chance of rolling that or less on d20. That’s pretty obvious, but the next column is what the target number would be on 3d6 to have that chance to succeed (i.e. roll target or under). So a 50% chance is right in the middle of the curve at 10… but by the time the target is 12 you’ve got a 75% chance of succeeding. Next we have columns for a d20 skill roll/Basic Attack Bonus (as in 3e or 5e). The final four columns show THAC0 (to hit AC 0) and what level you would have to be to have that chance of hitting an unarmored person, using the D&D Rules Cyclopedia as a reference point. Hitting an unarmored person is the standard we’re using because that directly translates to scoring a hit in Heroes & Other Worlds/TFT (and similar games like Runequest) where armor reduces damage from a successful hit but does nothing to make success less likely.
From this you can see that, for instance, having a 13 DX in HOW is like being a 10th level Fighter, at least in terms of being able to land a blow. (On the other hand, a 10th level Fighter in D&D can sustain multiple times the damage a HOW fighter could, so you can’t just translate back and forth quite that easily.) Another thing to pay attention to is the s20 skill column, where you can see that in terms of stat bonus, a D&D score of 18 is equivalent to DX 11 (if 18 is +3 as in original D&D), or maybe DX 12 (if 18 is +4 as in later editions). Using the stat bonus in D&D is much more common than a straight roll-under against the stat.
Still, I find thinking of things this way as instructive.
| Roll Under | Rules Cyclopedia | ||||||
| d20 | Approximate % | 3d6 | d20 skill/BaB | THAC0 | Fighter | Cl/Th/D | MU/Normal |
| 0 | 0.00% | 3,4 | -11 | ||||
| 1 | 5.00% | 5 | -10 | ||||
| 2 | 10.00% | 6 | -9 | ||||
| 3 | 15.00% | 7 | -8 | ||||
| 4 | 20.00% | -7 | |||||
| 5 | 25.00% | 8 | -6 | ||||
| 5 | 25.00% | -5 | |||||
| 6 | 30.00% | -4 | |||||
| 7 | 35.00% | 9 | -3 | ||||
| 8 | 40.00% | -2 | |||||
| 9 | 45.00% | -1 | |||||
| 10 | 50.00% | 10 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 11 | 55.00% | 1 | 9 | ||||
| 12 | 60.00% | 11 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 13 | 65.00% | 3 | 7 | ||||
| 14 | 70.00% | 4 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 11 | |
| 15 | 75.00% | 12 | 5 | 5 | |||
| 16 | 80.00% | 13 | 6 | 4 | 10 | 13 | 16 |
| 17 | 85.00% | 7 | 3 | ||||
| 18 | 90.00% | 14 | 8 | 2 | 13 | 17 | 21 |
| 19 | 95.00% | 15 | 9 | 1 | |||
| 20 | 100.00% | 16,17,18 | 10 | 0 | 16 | 21 | 26 |
Here’s an Anydice page with the 3d6 info, and just for the heck of it, the 1d20
Link to
The following are some hopefully useful templates (mostly based on Delta’s discussion of the rates in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide). They show the cost to enter1 a hex on the overland travel map, with a key to how many hexes a party can move in a day based on the degree of encumbrance (for travelling on foot) or type of mount. The assumption (following the DMG) is that roads and trails do not speed your travel enough to track, but they do allow you to pass over worse terrain as if you were on clear terrain. That doesn’t completely match up with the way, say, the Cook Basic D&D works, but it’s easy enough to increase the rates on roads if you’re really inclined.
If the cost of entering a hex is more than a single day’s allotment (e.g. on heavy horse in a swamp with no road), you can either say it’s impassible, switch to a smaller scale map and have the party slog through taking multiple days, or make the minimum rate of travel 1 hex per day or 1 hex every other day.
While these have been derived from D&D, they are non-system specific, and are released under a CC-BY license (that is you can use them any way you want, but you should credit me somewhere)/ Enjoy.
+Joe Johnston released How to Hexcrawl: a nice little pay-what-you-want primer on running a hex crawl in Labyrinth Lord, or any other D&D-like, gathering together the rules and charts you might use as well as some advice.
What I want to talk about, though is how to handle checking for encounters. Joe correctly points out (p 20) there’s a contradiction in the rules, or at least some confusion, about the step-by-step procedure of rolling once per day’s travel vs what happens when you travel over multiple terrain types and the admonition against checking more than 3-4 Times per day. He suggests 3 possibilities: roll based on the start hex, the last hex, or each time the terrain changes. Unfortunately those all skew the encounters one way or another.
I’d like to offer a fourth option:
4) Secretly roll 1d12 for the hour and 1 die of any type (or flip a coin) for day/night. At the appointed hour in the game day, roll for an encounter based on the current hex’s chance of encounter. This prorates the chances exactly. The only minor drawback, if it is a drawback, is you do need to pay slightly closer attention to what the in-game time is, though that shouldn’t be at all difficult since you already are dealing with the travel speed to traverse the hex.
N.B. How to Hexcrawl doesn’t mention it, but the assumed overland travel rate for most D&D editions is about 3 m.p.h. for unencumbered travelers, with an 8-hour effective travel day, which gets you the list 24 miles/day. With 6-mile hexes, each hex of travel is 2 hours. If you get in the habit of announcing the time of day as the party enters the hex (“it’s about 10 am when you get to the mountains”) it’s dead easy to tell if it’s time to roll for an encounter, and helps give the players a better sense of the passage of time anyway. This suggests a nice variation, if you want to roll for travel encounters and then separately for night encounters while camped: roll a d8 to see which hour of travel the encounter gets checked and then again at night based on the terrain where they are camped. Ideally you want to have a separate table, or at least adjust the results, for night encounters, since a caravan or troop of men are not at all likely to be traipsing through the woods in the dark.
I’ve long been a fan of Trollsmyth’s Death & Dismemberment table for D&D-like games… Arduin’s Critical Hits are more amusing, but quite a bit deadlier than I’m usually willing to play with (though I read somewhere recently that the way Dave Hargrave used them they were only 1 in 400 chance… a 20 followed by a 20 required a roll on the Crit Chart, rather than just a 20 the way we did back in High School.) At any rate, one of the things that kind of bothers me about 5e Basic is that there’s not really any way to sustain a real injury. I’m OK with Hit Points representing pure Stamina, or at least I’m willing to give it a try and see how my players like it, but it kind of bugs me that except by GM fiat there really isn’t any way to suffer a broken bone or serious laceration. Even if your HP go to 0 and you have to start making saves against Death, once you’ve stabilized a Long Rest will patch you right up.
So my current thought is to use a slightly modified version of Trollsmyth’s D&D chart to fix that. We’ll ignore the time-to-death results from the original chart, and just use the 5e three success before three failure Death save to determine when and if you die.
If you get taken down to 0 HP, and every time you get hit when you’re at 0 HP, roll on the following table. Apply a -1 modifier to the die roll for each time you’ve failed your Death save, a +1 for each success.
| 2 or lower | Grievous wound: Increase Exhaustion Level by 5, if that would take you to 6 Instant Death (decapitation or the like). |
| 3 | Fatal wound (gutted, stabbed through lung, broken back, etc.); Increase Exhaustion Level by 4. |
| 4 | Severed limb (DM’s choice or roll randomly); Increase Exhaustion Level by 3. |
| 5,6 | Severe Wound. Needs surgery. Increase Exhaustion Level by 3. |
| 7,8 | Broken bone (DM’s choice or roll, randomly); Increase Exhaustion Level by 2. Requires 2d4+9 weeks to heal; can’t use the bone until that first 2d4 weeks have passed. After that are at a Disadvantage for checks that rely on it until it’s healed the rest of the way. |
| 9 | Moderate Wound. It’s going to need stitches. Increase Exhaustion Level by 2. |
| 10 | Light wound: cut, gash, contusion in random place, and according to weapon type. Needs bandaging. Increase Exhaustion Level by 1. |
| 11 | Knocked out for 2d6 rounds, unless wearing a helm. With helm, only stunned for 1 round. Increase Exhaustion Level by 1. |
| 12+ | a surge of adrenaline returns 1d4 hit points per HD; these vanish at the end of combat & you gain 1 level of Exhaustion. |
The upshot of using this table is pretty much anything that takes you to 0 HP will also give you at least one level of Exhaustion… I think that’s fair for an ever so slightly grittier take one what it means to be out of HP and dying. If you want to stick to straight 5e for HP and conditions, you could just use the wounds as flavor text with no mechanical effect.
For an even grittier, though still not super-gritty, effect you can also use the table for critical hits in a variant on the Hargrave method: a crit is double damage, and 1/20 chance of having to roll on this or some other favorite critical hit table.
And as an added bonus, I’m reposting the Quick Hit Location Chart I posted on G+ a little while back, which lets you quickly determine a hit location without an extra die roll, and a relatively sensible weighting of heavier hits with more dangerous places:
A new race for D&D 5e Goblins are evil, or at least mischievous, creatures, no two of whom are alike. Skin, eye, and hair color vary as do number and arrangement of eyes, limbs, ears, mouths, etc. Every goblin should roll on the Goblin Random Features chart (see bottom of post). Goblins are often employed by evil wizards, because of their large numbers and lack of fear…but their equal lack of discipline makes them less than ideal as guards.
Stats: +2 Dex Size: Small (approx same as Halfling) Speed: 25 Age: Goblins reach maturity at age 3, and while max lifespan is 100+ years, average is closer to 20. Alignment: Chaotic
Foolhardy: Advantage on saves vs. Fear; Disadvantage on Wisdom checks related to prudence or patience (such as Perception checks on guard duty, but not while skulking around looking for a snack or treasure).
Goblin Nimbleness: Can move through the space of any creature at least 1 size larger
Darkvision: you can see in total darkness
Sneaky: can attempt to hide even when only obscured by a creature at least 1 size larger than you.
Languages: speak Goblin and Common.
It had better be food, ’cause I’m gonna eat it!
Ability Score Increase: Str increases by 1.
Iron Stomach: Advantage on Poison Saves and Resistance to poison.
Devour: During a grapple, you may attempt to use a Shove attack to shove the grappled creature in your mouth. Creatures so grappled may attempt to escape as usual, but the Grappled condition does not end automatically when you are incapacitated (though the next attempt to escape the grapple will succeed since you can no longer resist it), and things that move you (such as a Thunderwave spell) will move both of you instead of disrupting the grapple.
Sticks and stones? It is to laugh.
Ability Score Increase: Con increases by 1
Boyoyoing: Advantage on saves vs. falling and crushing. Resistance to Bludgeoning damage.
Squeeze Through: You can move through openings as small as a key-hole. This takes your full move (so you start and stop on either side of the opening), and the distance you can traverse while squeezing yourself through a narrow opening can be no greater than the length of one of your limbs (you have to be able to shove one of your body parts through before the rest can follow…)
Ability Score Increase: Cha +1
Behatted: you can (and usually do) fit your entire body except your feet into a Medium-sized creature’s hat. Any Prodigious physical features also stick out (see chart). You may also fit as much gear as you can carry unencumbered…any gear over that has to be carried outside the hat. You may use gear and wield weapons normally, by extending your hands and arms outside while you’re using them. The hat does not interfere with your perception.
Poker Face: you gain Advantage when trying to brazen things out (resisting Insight), but not on your own attempts to persuade.
Ability Score Increase: Wis +1
Nimble Escape: may take the Disengage or Hide actions as bonus actions in any turn.
Elves “If they had those sticks any farther up their butts, they’d be dryads”
Dwarves “If rocks could make beer, Dwarves would never get invited to another party.”
Halflings “Come the Revolution, they’ll be first up against the wall!”
Humans “OK, I guess. Really, really touchy about sharing their children. You’d think they can’t just make more.”
You may roll on this instead of, or in addition to, the Personality Traits associated with your Background
Roll d20
So, the 1st level Sleep spell in D&D bugs me. I don’t actually mind that it’s an encounter-ender for low-level characters… in fact I regard it as a bigger problem that 1st level MUs don’t really have any other spells nearly as worthwhile. Maybe Charm Person, at least outside of a dungeon, but that’s about it. But being awesome once a day isn’t a deal-breaker. No, what bugs me is the ritual of going around and killing all the sleeping foes afterwards. Not only is that particularly unheroic (granting that not everybody needs to play a heroic character) it just doesn’t feel particularly like the magic in stories that inspired it.
Over the years I’ve played with a number of DMs that had various solutions to this: some made you roll for damage against the sleeping foe, and if you didn’t kill him in one blow he woke up. That mainly served to make players more cautious about arranging a gang-stabbing of any multi-hit die creature they slept and sometimes the spell being wasted; not trying to kill the creature almost never came up. A free round of attacks was basically the best chance you were ever going to have, and chances are you’d be meeting it again. One DM made you roll to hit as well, though at least she applied bonuses. I think I recall one in the early days of playing who would count it as an alignment infraction if a Lawful (or maybe */Good… can’t recall which edition) character killed a sleeping foe; hardly anybody played Lawful characters at his table. A couple have removed Sleep from the game, or made you start with random spells and by the time you found a spell book with Sleep you likely had better mass-murder spells. Some have allowed saves against sleep in addition to the max number of creatures affected (not necessarily horrible if you extend the same thing to the PCs). But nothing I’ve encountered really did more than make the process of casting Sleep then slitting throats a bit more risky and likely to fail.
So I’m considering the following house rule: if you try to attack or move a magically slept creature, you fall under the spell as well. No save, no limit on the max HD. To me that feels a lot more like the sleep spell in literature, including spells like abandoned castles with all the inhabitants sleeping for a hundred years. The 1st level Sleep spell would just be a lesser version of that.
Another version I considered would be the spell would be broken on all sleepers if any of them were attacked, but that seems like it leaves too much room for rules-lawyering it. E.g., trying simultaneous attacks, tying them all up and throwing them off a cliff all at once, smacking your own companion with a small attack to wake the rest, and so on. They could all probably be patched, but I think the result would be a multi-paragraph list of conditions like a 3rd edition spell.
One thing that I think is attractive about this, besides having more of a fairy-tale or fantasy feel, is the way it makes Sleep a very different spell, with different purposes, than something like Fireball or Cloud Kill. You always need to think about what you’re going to do when they wake up… are you using it to cover your retreat, give yourself time to burgle the place, pass deeper into the dungeon and figure you’ll deal with them on the way out, or what. You can’t count on clearing the level one sleep spell at a time. And on the flip side, if an enemy spell caster uses sleep on you it’s no longer time to roll up a new character unless the GM is having the monsters be far more merciful than the players ever are.
I guess my one worry is whether it’s just too different from the way players are used to using Sleep. The whole reason for using D&D instead of something like Zounds! is because of the instant familiarity and buy-in. There’s definitely a certain amount of tweaking and house-ruling that just the way D&D works, but there’s a point beyond which you might as well play something else, and changing one of the most reliable 1st level spells gives me some pause.
