Campaign News October 18

CLUB BUSINESS 

To continue preparing for the vote on our rules in December. I'll dive into the next one now. This is not to close down discussion on the first three item. Thank you, Jeff, for engaging in discussion about those on Discord. I hope others with whom I haven't previously discussed these will weigh in or ask questions, and even if we have talked about these before, that's no reason not to reopen the discussion in anticipation of the voting.

The rules which we will be voting on are:

1. Character creation rule variations: minimum and maximum ability scores by sex and minimum hit points at first level
2. Family background rule extension
3. Secondary skills rule extension 
4. "Smoothed" and reversed combat matrices.
5. Time-tracking rules, specifically constraining the "spread" in time between the future-most characters and those furthest in the past.
6. Overland movement rate rules contradiction resolution. 
7. Loan rules extension and elaboration.
8. Class wealth restrictions as they related to character upkeep costs.

Please bring up any questions, suggestions, debate, etc. that you have, either in the #rules-discussion channel on our Discord, the comments on this page, in person, or whatever, although the more public the discussion, the better.

We will vote on these in December, so please get any discussion in early and please understand these rules so that you can make an informed vote.

Rules Question #4: Shall the club adopt the "smoothed" and "reversed" combat matrices?

There's a lot to explain with this one, but the short answer is that this results in combat tables that are mathematically equivalent to the original tables, just with "skipped" columns added and the target number to roll being the defenders armor class or lower.

Consider the original combat matrix for fighters from DMG p. 74.

 

The "smoothing" part of this rule is explained in the "Special Note" at the bottom. According to the table a 1st or 2nd level fighter needs to roll a 10 or higher to score hit on a defender with armor class (AC) 10 and a 3rd or 4th level fighter needs only to score an 8 or higher. The special note indicates that instead of following that table exactly, the game may be played whereby a 1st level fighter needs a 10, a 2nd level fighter needs a 9, a 3rd level needs an 8, and so on. Put another way, instead of improving the fighter's ability by 2 on the roll only every 2 levels, the fighter may improve his ability by 1 each level.

Similar "smoothing" columns have been added for the other classes and monsters. In the chart below these smoothed tables have been combined into a single matrix.

The last line on this chart shows the "reversed" aspect. Notice that in the original table, a 1st level fighter needs to roll 10 or higher to hit armor class 10 and that is 11 chances in 20 since only 1 - 9 would miss. To give the 1st level fighter the same odds of rolling to hit AC 10 by rolling that number or lower, he enjoys a -1 to his roll so that only rolls of 1 - 11 would hit. This provides mathematically equivalent odds for every character and monster to the original chart, but requires less effort, and offers fewer opportunities for mistakes, during play to resolve to hot rolls.

Hopefully just looking at these tables makes the rule clear, but please pose any questions you have. Likewise, if there are objections or a desire for discussion, we should have those out before the voting.