Don Quixote Stayed Here

During an excursion into Spanish literature with a member of our campaign, mention was made of Don Quixote, and I recalled that within that doorstop of a tome is plenty of fodder for encounter, and even adventure, ideas for our game.

 

The text in my possession is P. A. Motteux's 1712 English translation, still the best loved by many. The language is delightful, but might present an obstacle to anyone whose primary literary exposure comes from the 21st-century internet; that is to say, the majority of the general public. These days, even when I write for the university publication, the 'readability index' through which my papers are run says that they're too difficult to read, and I'm commanded to rephrase things in a 'simpler' (read: less precise) manner.

 

Don Quixote should really be read by everyone, though; all the better if they can read the original Spanish. Since I'm fairly confident that no one in our campaign is going to read it cover to cover anytime soon, however, I feel free to usurp, bastardise and cannibalise that cornucopia of ideas for all that it's worth--as soon as we start playing again, which, by the way, seems to keep getting pushed further and further back.

 

Our next session is at the beginning of November.

 

I am working on updating certain players' spreadsheets in response to the claim that two of them have ascended in level. The bare mathematics of the total XP of one of these two, however, forbids me to interpret that he has.

 

In the meantime, I'd like to revisit the subject of lodging as I offer a gem of a description of an inn, which serves to remind us how, despite the austerity, a stay at an inn is a big step up from lying in a rain-soaked mohair tent with only a bedroll between earth and weary body.

One of the servants in the inn was an Asturian wench, a broad-faced, flat-headed, saddle-nosed dowdy, blind of one eye, and the other almost out. However, the activity of her body supplied all other defects. She was not above three feet high from her heels to her head; and her shoulders, which somewhat loaded her, as having too much flesh upon them, made her look downwards oftener than she could have wished. This charming original likewise assisted the mistress and the daughter; and, with the latter, helped to make the Knight's bed, and a sorry one it was; the room where it stood was an old gambling cock-loft, which by manifold signs seems to have been, in the days of yore, a repository for chopped straw. Somewhat further, in a corner of that garret, a carrier had his lodging; and, though his bed was nothing but the panels and coverings of his mules, it was much better than that of Don Quixote, which only consisted of four rough-hewn boards laid upon two uneven tressels, a flock-bed, that, for thinness, might well have passed for a quilt, and was full of knobs and bunches, which, had they not peeped out through many a hole, and shown themselves to be of wool, might well have been taken for stones. The rest of that extraordinary bed's furniture was a pair of sheets, which rather seemed to be of leather than linen-cloth, and a coverlet whose every individual thread you might have told, and never have missed one in the tale.

It's striking that a night's repose in such environs is sufficient to regain lost HP (as, incidentally, it was for Don Quixote, whose bangs and bruises from his most recent skirmish were somewhat miraculously healed by the next morning). That should underscore the necessity of at least a roof and indoor heating after a hard day's travels; all the more if the party is recovering from combat.

 

Historian Ian Mortimer, in The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, reminds us that the medieval traveler's place of rest depends on where he finds himself at sunset. When considering the alternatives, when he has a chance to stay at an inn, he should most certainly leap at it. Innkeepers are aware of this, and are likely to charge accordingly. Mortimer calls innkeepers 'no-nonsense men, shaped like bears' who are accustomed to handling all manner of ruffians and other obstreperous clients. They have the power to turn a customer out without his belongings, or even without his clothes, if he fails to make good on the bill.

 

Thus far, the party have run into few problems with inns or their masters. Nonetheless, they should always be aware that they're lucky to be allowed to stay, lest they get any ideas about complaining about the smoke, the fleas and bedbugs, the barking of the guard dogs, the smell of stale beer and dog urine in the rushes on the floor, or the creaking of stairs and bodily noises of fellow guests coming and going in the night. The only option remaining might be to bed down with the elements, which at the very least will provide no recovery of HP, and very well might lead to infection and other problems.

 

Or perhaps they could take their chances in a cheap bed in a hospital, on ancient unchanged sheets next to a pungent leper.

Toward an Adequate Set of Combat Rules

My sincere hope is that if I keep honing this, I'll manage to get it right one day. By getting it right I mean making it understandable to everyone playing, reflecting what we know about the laws of physics, and simple enough that I know the rules cold, don't need to look at any charts, and can do all the calculations in my head right off.

It's generally accepted that needs to be fast-paced. During combat, the DM is visualising what's happening in detail and considering a number of possible consequences to each action. He is sometimes rattling off answers to questions at the rate of several a minute to players who don't want to--and shouldn't have to--wait for him to look up the answer. He is often planning for what might happen after combat. He will frequently be drunk. Modifiers are lovely in that they help explain variables and contingencies of the sort that happen when people are trying to kill each other, but they should be kept to a minimum at least until the DM knows the system like the back of his proverbial hand. 

Amour Class (AC) = Defence

I know it's been explained and house ruled into meaningful things by much better DMs than I, some of whom have blogs that are much more worth reading, but the idea that wearing armour makes you more difficult to hit is patently absurd. I've tried to compensate by saying things like like 'The sword blow glances off your gauntlet' in order to convey what would be likely to happen on an unsuccessful attack roll, but to paraphrase Russell Glasser, in order to count as an explanation, it has to make things more understandable. And our players are sometimes drunk. What I propose, then, is that AC simply represent defence and that it improve in tandem with THAC0. A fifth-level fighter, for example, would have an AC of 5, making him quite hard to hit regardless of what armour he's wearing. This should be quite hard to attain, as no character in our campaign has yet survived past fifth level. We might reason that there are rather few of such level in the world. 

Hit Points = 1/2 CON

At the suggestion of our resident Simulacres player, HP are taken directly from a character's Constitution score, rounded up to the nearest full hit point. (We toyed with the prospect of making HP equivalent to CON, but that seemed too high in consideration of the amount of damage most weapons do.) Characters begin to suffer significantly at -1 HP, losing 10% of their ability scores at each lost point, are dead at -10. (It shouldn't be hard to figure out from whom I pilfered this rule.)

HP are determined at character creation, and they don't change. This reflects the reality that people are harder to hit as they gain more combat experience, but if they are hit, they suffer the same damage as everyone else.

Somebody suggested that this makes things difficult for mages, who have to wait three levels before their defence improves. In fact, the average rate of HP improvement by third level under the standard rules is 7.5 for the mage (1d4 average of 2.5, multiplied by 3) versus the fighter's 15 (1d10 average of 5, multiplied by 3), so our system clearly gives him the better deal. 

Bleeding to Death

If a character is reduced to -5 HP or more, he will lose an additional 1 HP every five minutes until his wound is bound to stop the haemorrhaging. When he's no longer losing blood, the DM rolls a d20 to determine the severity of infection, unless the wound is treated with an herbal poultice or the like (infections start at rolls of 2 below CON and become progressively worse, with a natural 20 being fairly severe gangrene). 

Armour Defence

In our most recent trial setting, the only real defences that exist are hide armour, chain mail, and shields. Hide armour absorbs 1 HP of damage and is then torn. Either chain mail or a shield will deflect 50% damage on its own, rounded up; both used together will deflect 75% damage, rounded down. (A hard enough blow against one's shield will still hurt, and the shock could even break a bone.)

Chain mail quality is divided into three broad categories at this point. On every successful hit, mail of standard construction is torn on a 1 in 1d6; of fine construction in 1d12; and mastercrafted in 1d20.

The standard metal helmet absorbs 50% damage only if the hit location die reads 'Head'. At any rate, full damage is taken on a hit to any unprotected location. 

Modified Attack Rolls

Also per our resident Simulacres player, character may expend extra effort trying to hit exposed body parts. Obviously, this only works with armour that has significant gaps, but the only real armour we're working with presently is a chain mail shirt, which leaves the lower legs, head, and neck. At a 2 point THAC0 penalty, combatants may aim for any of these he chooses. At a 5 point THAC0 penalty, a combatant may attempt to behead his enemy; on a successful roll, hit location and armour are both ignored, and full damage is automatically sustained. 

When we ended our last session due to time constraints, the party was hot on the trail of a perceived enemy; if they find what they were looking for this next time, it will offer an excellent opportunity to test the system.

The Ubiquitous Hit Point Question

Truth be told, I don’t much like combat. I think Machiavelli was entirely correct in his assertion that war cannot be avoided, but only postponed to one’s own disadvantage; and there are situations in which violence seems inevitable; but I don’t relish these the way I do explorations of food, landscapes, architecture, personalities, or just about anything else. I’m persuaded that it’s generally healthier for everyone if the eventualities of combat are minimised rather than actively sought and prolonged. Thus it should be no surprise that in seeking to revise the unmitigated disaster that passes for combat rules in AD&D, I tend to envision systems in which players are motivated to evade injury rather than those in which they gaily dance before those who want to hack them into little pieces. 

We have been using a system in which characters are rewarded with XP for damage given, more for damage taken, and still more for the value of wealth gained through combat. In the particular case of one character, to whom the Player’s Handbook granted ominous bonuses to attack rolls and hit dice for his ridiculously high STR and CON scores, it soon became obvious to the player that the surest route to success was to sustain as much damage as he possibly could, which was a lot more than any of the other characters could do. He climbed levels faster than everyone else, and his HP became exponentially greater. Until he went berserk and got himself slain, but this is another tale.

For the Minoa session we tried a system akin to that of Spells and Steel: HP are static, measuring how much a living body can stand before destruction, not changing as the character advances in level. Rather, AC would be lowered in tandem with THAC0, according to character class. The function of armour would be to absorb the first few HP of damage from an attack rather than these going directly to a character’s body. Choices for armour in this setting are limited, with the best types shown in the sketches below. 

Cisseus, the myrmidon, sports the best armour of the period, a bell cuirass and a pair of metal greaves. Demetrius wears a makeshift set of gladiator’s armour composed partly of metal and partly of leather. Armour was assigned a number of HP it absorbs, based on construction and material. For trial, we said the myrmidon’s armour absorbs three points of damage and the gladiator’s two points, but these could be amended further by applying a greater number of damage absorption to the armoured parts and none at all the the exposed parts. When an attack roll is successful, we roll a hit location die (12-sided, listing parts of the body) along with the die for HP damage. For Cisseus, the exposed body vulnerable to hit location dice would be the neck, arms, and thighs; these should sustain full attack damage if hit, with the exception of ‘Legs’ which might or might not refer to a  protected portion. (There’s no ‘Groin’ on the hit location die, but I think there should be.) For Demetrius, ‘Chest’ would be the obvious target. His right arm, covered in metal, would be protected more than the left, with only leather. Perhaps on a hit to the right arm the first five HP of damage could be ignored, and perhaps only the first three if the left. Armour would have to be repaired later, at some expense. 

(Shields didn't come up because no one used them, but similar calculations would have to be made for them.)

Assent to this system was not unanimous at the table. My goal, however, is reducing confusion; HP as we had been playing them had almost no connection to the reality of combat. Players were often unsure of whether or not they had actually taken a blow each time they lost HP, and often seemed to find it impossible to visualise what was happening during the fight. 

Briefly, we tried a system based on the French game Simulacres, but the modifiers to the attack roles required that the only person at the table who understood the rules consult a chart and perform calculations while everyone else just zoned out while waiting for him and having no choice but to trust his interpretation. Combat dragged. 

It was also a bone of contention for anal me that we were limited to three six-sided dice, which don’t allow fine enough gradations of percentage—and I can see the same argument being made against fighters jumping an AC every level and mages one every three, which are much coarser gradations than the numbers generated by different hit dice. It just seems it would be far easier to understand and visualise. I’d like some help from the players in nailing down a system that doesn’t make everyone’s eyes glaze over every time we roll the dice.