Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Effects of Exposure

Every day of extreme or hostile weather, players have to make a paralysis save (or fortitude or constitution or what have you). If they fail increase their exposure meter by 1. The number under the dot indicates the penalty to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, To Hit rolls, and maximum HP. Wearing appropriate clothing grants a +2 bonus on the save.

Every night spent in comfortable quarters decreases the exposure meter by 1.

I'll be posting my system for generating weather soon.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Hit Dice on the Fly

I don't use any monster manual very much. Generally I invent stats for things on the fly, based on some measure of common sense. Hit points are an important part of this, so I've had to develop a consistent system. Hit Dice for a given monster is equivalent to its mass plus its combat experience.

Here is my system for mass-based HP (using a d8 for each hit die):

For every 5' of length along the spine's axis, I give 1 HD unit
For every 2' of width along the shoulders' axis, I give 1 HD unit
For every 1' thick from chest to back, I give 1 HD unit

Multiply all these together, and you have total Hit Dice. For example: a wolf is 5' long, 3' along the shoulders, and 2' thick from chest to back. This gives 1 unit x 1.5 units x 2 units = 3 HD.

Add to this hit dice for combat experience as follows:
Predator (animal intelligence): +1 HD
Fights among its own kind: +1 HD
Every 10 years of life: +1 HD
Humanoid intelligence: +1 HD
Supernatural entity: +1 HD
Every actual class level: +1 HD as class

The wolf is a predator and fights among its own kind, giving it 2 HD of combat experience. Thus its HD is written as 3+2 HD (average of 22.5 hp), and it has attacks and saves as a 2nd level fighter.

Another example: a troll is 10' tall, 4' wide, and 2.5' thick. This gives 2 x 2 x 2.5 = 10 HD for mass. It fights its own kind, has humanoid intelligence, is supernatural, and let's say it is 20 years old, for 5 HD of combat experience. It thus has 10+5 HD (average of 67.5), and attacks as a 5th level fighter.

Note that you will start having serious trouble with particularly large creatures. C'est la vie. If purple worms are 100' x 10' x 10', they will have 20 x 5 x 10 = 1000 HD, or 4500 hp on average. That's a loooonng combat. If you wish, you can determine HD based on the smallest length at which the creature is still "itself" (that is, worms and snakes have a long, repetitive bodies; only calculate HD for a fraction of this body). Using this system, let's say that each "segment" of the purple worm is 20' long, for 4 x 5 x 10 = 200 HD, or 900 hp. Still a monster, but I'm sure your PCs can at least outsmart the bastard!

This system is mostly based on Alexis' HD = m + e, a series of posts that can be found at the following links:
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-concepts-in-hit-points.html
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2008/08/unified-theory-hd-m-x.html
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/mass-experience.html
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/you-cant-kill-whale.html
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/big.html