[13th Age] Goodbye, Half-Orcs; Hello, Beast Folk?

Just a little thought-experiment here, something I'm contemplating for my own version of the Dragon Empire after reading some online discussion of half-orc origins:

13th Age gets away from the problematic origins of the traditional D&D half-orc by explaining the species not as the product of sexual violence but as a High Druid-initiated immune response to the return of the Orc Lord and the concomitant rise in orc populations. Walking, talking lymphocytes, if you all.

As a way of avoiding the inscription of rape into the game setting, this certainly works. But it does raise a new question: why use a breeding-related term for the resulting species of pseudo-orcs? Obviously the answer is "because 13th Age tries to preserve the sacred cows of D&D tradition whenever possible," but that meta-explanation doesn't make much sense within the fictional context of the Empire.

What I'm thinking then (and I suspect a Google search would demonstrate that I'm in no way original here) is to recast the half-orcs as an entirely different species: beast folk. The precise appearance of the beast folk is still up for grabs: they could just look like brutish humans with excessive body hair and pronounced canines, or they could have many more animal features, features that might be tied to specific subpopulations (a wolf group, a deer group, etc.).

But the advantage of either approach is that the existing half-orc stat block (bonuses to either STR or DEX and the Lethal racial power) can apply to the beast folk concept without any changes needed. The beast folk backstory also nicely maps onto the existing half-orc one: the beast folk of the frozen north have frequently been enemies of the Empire, but with the resurgence of both the Orc Lord and the High Druid, the Emperor has seen fit to make peace with his former foes and to support them against the hordes on their borders. (Especially since the Dwarf King's attention to the orcs frequently wavers based on whatever is bubbling up beneath his delvings that week.)

Thoughts?

BareBones Fantasy: Offensive Strike

One of the ongoing debates among players and GMs of DWD Studio's BareBones Fantasy roleplaying game is the potency of the Offensive Strike spell (the game's primary direct damage attack for spell casters). As written, the spell has a range of 10 spaces per caster level in the Spellcaster skill, an unlimited usage, and a damage of 1d10 + (1d10 per caster level in the Spellcaster skill) to single targets (and half that amount to victims within 3 spaces of the target space). This damage cannot be reduced by normal armor. Coupled with the game's rules for multiple actions (-20 percentage points to each action after the first), the official version of the spell makes for increasingly powerful magic-users. I.e., a beginning character (one with Spellcaster at Rank 1) can quite easily throw two Offensive Strikes in a single turn, doing 2D10 armor-ignoring damage each time. My friend Mike's playtest wizard threw the spell at this level and was probably the most effective combat in our battle against the ghouls of the Maidens of Moordoth adventure.

I've been pondering a house rule to "fix" the spell that doesn't completely defang it: I like the spell's ability to bypass normal armor, and I don't mind that a hero with Rank 6 Spellcaster (the highest level of ability in the game) does approximately the same amount of damage with a single fireball that a Rank 6 Warrior does with three blows from a longsword (damage of 2D10+1 plus additional bonuses for high STR). But there is a bit of a problem when the wizard can do that level of damage three or four times in a turn.

So here's what I'm thinking: everything about Offensive Strike remains the same with the exception of the usage value. "Unlimited" is replaced with "1/turn." A spellcasting hero needs some time to recharge his armor-piercing attack magic, and that cooldown period is a single combat turn. A low-level wizard (someone at Rank 1 or 2) is going to have a reduction in their attack potency (compared to melee and missile-oriented characters), but they will also have several other spells to chain each turn with their Offensive Strike.

Thoughts? Things I haven't anticipated?

BareBones Fantasy RPG: House-Ruling Character Races

Last week I had a chance to test-drive the new BareBones Fantasy roleplaying game from DWD Studios. I will post an account of that session soon (overall verdict: excellent!), but I wanted to get the following house rule written up and published . . .

Add the following bullet points to the character race write-ups provided on p. 8 of the rulebook:

DWARVES

1 free skill level in either Enchanter or Warrior.

ELVES

1 free skill level in either Scout or Spellcaster.

HALFLINGS

1 free skill level in either Scholar or Thief.

HUMANS

1 free skill level in any skill.

Chosen during Step 2 ("Select Race") of character creation (p. 5), each of these free skill levels comes in addition to the one provided in Step 3 ("Select Skill"). However, characters cannot double up in a given skill before play begins and Development Points are earned. The free skill level provided in Step 3 must therefore be taken in a different skill than the one selected in Step 2.

Examples: Mike wants to play an Elven mage, so he takes a level of Spellcaster during Step 2. In Step 3, he cannot raise Spellcaster to level 2 but must instead take a level in another skill. He chooses Warrior. Bill wants to play a Human aristocrat, so he selects Leader as his free racial skill during Step 2 and then Scholar as his free skill in Step 3.

I developed this house rule in response to my players' concerns about a bottleneck in character creation. Because five of the game's eight skills can only be used with training, any character who wanted one of those skills had to devote their free skill level to it. The player who chose Spellcaster benefited from this bottleneck since his trained skill was also his primary attack skill; the player who chose Cleric was able to use his Smite ability to similar effect (when wielding one's deity's weapon of choice, Cleric skill may be used in place of Warrior skill). But the players of the Dwarf Scholar and the Human Leader weren't so lucky: they had to spend their free level in Scholar and Leader in order to be able to use any of those skills' sub-abilities and thus ended up whiffing their attack rolls nearly 66% of the time. No one put a level into Enchanter (since the game was a one-shot, not the Enchanter's preferred venue), but I suspect that beginning Enchanters are in the same boat as Leaders and Scholars.

By adding an extra skill level, character concepts involving Enchanters, Leaders, and Scholars are much more viable at the start of play. I decided to attach the extra level to Step 2 and character race to heighten the importance of archetypal origins. Dwarves' choice between Enchanter and Warrior and Elves' choice between Scout and Spellcaster pay homage to the races' folkloric traditions. Thief does much the same for Halflings, looking back to Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit; Scholar owes more to the Fourth Edition Halfling and that race's tradition of wandering. Humans got a second free choice (to go along with the one they got in Step 3) out of deference to the longstanding RPG tradition of human versatility. Because characters of all races still get the free choice in Step 3, however, no one is locked into a racial archetype. I.e., you don't leave the underkingdom without learning something about either enchanting or fighting—but you can also focus on leading or studying or stealing as well.

There's an obvious counter-argument here: beginning characters are supposed to whiff attack rolls much of the time. While I recognize that argument's force, I felt that the bottleneck didn't distribute the whiffing fairly across characters. Players who devoted skill levels to Cleric and Spellcaster were able to focus their efforts and give themselves 66% success rates (by combining the +10 from the free skill level with the +20 from the primary skill bonus); players who spent their skill level in the three remaining skills had to fall back on their untrained Warrior skill in combat. Adding the free skill level in Step 2 evens the playing field, especially once the prohibition against raising any skill to level 2 before play is considered. Finally, it only costs 3 Development Points (half of the average per-session reward) to buy a skill at level 1 so the house rule really only speeds up the characters' improvement by two hours' worth of play.

BFRPG: Starting at Third Level

Although I've played D&D on and off since 1980, I have never been a fan of the "harsh reality" approach to first-level characters. None of my groups pre-Fourth Edition ever rolled 3d6 six times in a row for attributes, nor did they go by the rules-as-written when rolling hit points. Returning to Old School D&D with BFRPG has meant that I'm confronting these issues again. What I have in mind for the kids' first characters is the following:

1. For attributes, roll 4d6 six times, dropping the lowest die in each roll. Then assign the totals to attributes in whatever order is desired.

2. At first level, hit points equal the maximum result possible for the character's class hit die. CON bonuses still apply.

I'm also considering starting the characters off at 5000 xp, the minimum amount for a Magic-User to hit third level. I wanted any boys playing Magic-Users to have multiple spells to cast per day instead of being reduced to throwing daggers after using up their one first-level spell in the initial encounter. Third level gives any Magic-User a pair of first-level spells as well as a second-level spell.

5000 xp means that any Thieves will begin the game at fourth level, no problem since that starting point doesn't make using their thieving skills a cake-walk. Clerics will be 1000 xp shy of fourth level (and will have two first-level spells), while Fighters will be 3000 xp shy of fourth level as well. Elf Fighter/Magic-Users will begin the game as second-level Fighters with 500 extra xp and as newly-minted second-level Magic Users.

There won't be any "in-game" rationale for a third-level start. I.e., the characters will be fresh off the farm.  The two extra levels (three in the case of any Thieves) are essentially a narrative convention granting the PCs protagonist status (and decreasing the likelihood of an early TPK).

Two additional house rules follow from these decisions:

1. When rolling hit points for second and third level, all results of 1 will be rerolled. Once play begins, though, hit points gained through level advancement will be generated by the rules (and thus results of 1 will be possible). Enhanced survivability remains the guiding principle here.

2. Should a player's character expire, his new character will enter play at third level as well. None of my old groups were ever great fans of the "return to play at first level, even if the rest of the party is eighth level" approach to the game. We always felt that it was strange for experienced heroes to suddenly adopt a neophyte in the midst of their travails. At the same time, I want to use the differentiated experience tables of BFRPG, so a Fourth Edition approach would be cumbersome. (I assume that averaging party levels would be the likely option here, but I'll pass on it.)

Have others made similar decisions when starting campaigns at third level? Also: what are good "first modules" for third level characters, preferably adventures that wouldn't require much work to fit into a forest setting?