d&d

Cold Iron in folklore, fiction, and RPGs

‘Gold is for the mistress—silver for the maid!
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.’
‘Good!’ said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
‘But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all!’
— Rudyard Kipling, “Cold Iron”

Folklore

*Drudenmesser*, or “witch-knife”, an apotropaic folding knife from Germany

The notion that iron (or steel) can ward against evil spirits, witches, fairies, etc is very widespread in folklore. You hang a horseshoe over your threshold to deny entry to evil spirits, you carry an iron tool with you to make sure devils won’t assault you, you place a small knife under the baby’s crib to ward it from witches, and so on. Iron is apotropaic in many many cultures.

In English, we often come across passages that refer to apotropaic cold iron (or cold steel). “All uncouth, unknown Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly so much as by cold Iron”, says Robert Kirk in 1691, which I believe is the earliest example. “Evil spirits cannot bear the touch of cold steel. Iron, or preferably steel, in any form is a protection”, says John Gregorson Campbell in 1901.

Words

So what is cold iron? In this context, it’s just iron. The “cold” part is poetic, especially – but not only – if we’re talking about either blades (or swords, weapons, the force of arms) or manacles and the like. It just sounds more ominous. There are “cold yron chaines” in The Fairie Queene (1596), and a 1638 book of travels tells us that a Georgian general (in the Caucasus) vowed “to make the Turk to eat cold iron”.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang defines “cold iron” as a sword, and dates the term to 1698. From 1725 it appears in Cant dictionaries (could this sense be thieves’ cant, originally? why not, plenty of words and expressions started as underworld slang and then entered the mainstream), and from ~1750 its use becomes much more common.

In other contexts, cold iron is (surprise!) iron that’s not hot. So let’s talk a bit about metallurgy.

Metals

In nature, we can find only one kind of iron that’s pure enough to work with: meteoritic iron. It has to literally fall from the sky. Barring that very rare occurrence, people have to mine the earth for iron ore, which is not workable as is. To separate the iron from the ore we have to smelt it, and for that we need heat, in the form of hot charcoals. Throwing the ore on the coals won’t do much of anything, it’s not hot enough. But if we enclose the coals in a little tower built of clay, leaving holes for air flow, the temperature rises enough to smelt the ore. That’s called a bloomery.

clay bloomery / medieval bloomery / beating the bloom to get rid of the slag

What comes out of the bloomery is a bloom: a porous, malleable mass of iron (that we need) and slag (byproducts that we don’t need). But now we can get rid of the slag and turn the porous mass to something solid, by hammering the hot bloom over and over. And once the slag is off, by the same process we can give it a desired shape in the forge, reheating it as needed. This is called “working” the iron, hence “wrought iron” objects, i.e. forged.

a blacksmith in his forge, with bellows, fire, and anvil (English woodcut, 1603)

This is the lowest-tech version, possibly going back to ~2000 BCE in Nigeria. If we add bellows, the improved air flow will raise the temperature. So smelting happens faster and more efficiently in the bloomery, and so does heating the iron in the forge, making it easier to work with. And that’s the standard process from the Iron Age all through the middle ages and beyond (although in China they may have skipped this stage and gone straight to the next one).

If we make the bloomery bigger and bigger, with stronger and stronger bellows, we end up with a blast furnace, a construction so efficient that the temperature outright melts the iron, and it’s liquified enough to be poured into a mould and acquire the desired shape when it cools off. This is “cast iron”.

So in all of this, what’s cold iron? Well, it’s iron that went though the heat and cooled off. (No heat = no iron, all you got is ore.) If it came out of a bloomery, or if it wasn’t cast, it’s by definition worked, hammered, beaten, wrought, and that happened while it was still hot.

Is there such a thing as “cold-wrought” iron? No. In fact, “working cold iron” was a simile for something foolish or pointless. A smith who beats cold iron instead of putting it in the fire shows folly, says a 1694 book on religion, so you too should choose your best tools, piety and good decorum, to educate your children and servants, instead of beating them. When Don Quixote (1605) declares he’ll go knight-erranting again, Sancho Panza tries to dissuade him, but it’s like “preaching in the desert and hammering on cold iron” (a direct translation of martillar en hierro frío).

Minor work can be done on cold iron. A 1710 dictionary of technical terms tells us that a rivetting-hammer is “chiefly used for rivetting or setting straight cold iron, or for crooking of small work; but ’tis seldom used at the forge”. Fully fashioning an object out of cold iron is not a real process – though a 1659 History of the World would claim that in Arabia it’s so hot that “smiths work nails and horseshoes out of cold iron, softened only by the vigorous heat of the sun, and the hard hammering of hands on the anvil”. [I declare myself unqualified to judge the veracity of this statement, let’s just say I have doubts.] And there is of course such a thing as “cold wrought-iron”, as in wrought iron after it’s cooled off.

Either way, in the context of pre-20th century English texts which refer to apotropaic “cold iron”, it’s definitely not “cold-wrought”, or meteoritic, or a special alloy of any kind. It’s just iron.

Fiction

The old superstition kept coming up in fantasy fiction. In 1910 Rudyard Kipling wrote the very influential short story “Cold Iron” (in the collection Rewards and Fairies), where he explains invents the details of the fairies’ aversion to iron. They can’t bewitch a child wearing boots, because the boots have nails in the soles. They can’t pass under a doorway guarded by a horseshoe, but they can slip through the backdoor that people neglected to guard. Mortals live “on the near side of Cold Iron”, because there’s iron in every house, while fairies live “on the far side of Cold Iron”, and want nothing to do with it. And changelings brought up by fairies will go back to the world of mortals as soon they touch cold iron for the first time.

In Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (1954), we read:

“Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason.”

In Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) the unicorn is imprisoned in an iron cage:

“She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain.”

Poul Anderson would come back to that idea in Operation Chaos (1971), where the worldbuilding’s premise is that magic and magical creatures have been reintroduced into the modern world, because a scientist “discovered he could degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces”. And that until then, they had been steadily declining, ever since the Iron Age came along.

There are a million examples, I’m just focusing on those that would have had a more direct influence on roleplaying games. However, I should note that all these say “cold iron” but mean “iron”. Yes, the fey call it cold, but they are a poetic bunch. You can’t expect Robin Goodfellow’s words to be pedestrian, now can you?

RPGs

And from there, fantasy roleplaying systems got the idea that Cold Iron is a special material that fey are vulnerable to. The term had been floating around since the early D&D days, but inconsistently, scattered in random sourcebooks, and not necessarily meaning anything else than iron. In 1st Edition’s Monster Manual (1977) it’s ghasts and quasits who are vulnerable to it, not any fey creature. Devils and/or fiends might dislike iron, powdered cold iron is a component in Magic Circle Against Evil, and “cold-wrought iron” makes a couple of appearances. For example, in AD&D it can strike Fool’s Gold and turn it back to its natural state, revealing the illusion.

Then Changeling: The Dreaming came along and made it a big deal, a fundamental rule, and an anathema to all fae:

Cold iron is the ultimate sign of Banality to changelings. … Its presence makes changelings ill at ease, and cold iron weapons cause horrible, smoking wounds that rob changelings of Glamour and threaten their very existence…. The best way to think about cold iron is not as a thing, but as a process, a very low-tech process. It must be produced from iron ore over a charcoal fire. The resulting lump of black-gray material can then be forged (hammered) into useful shapes.
— Changeling: The Dreaming (2nd Edition, 1997)

So now that we know how iron works, does that description make sense? Well, if we assume that the iron ore is unceremoniously dumped on coals, it does not. You can’t smelt iron like that. If we assume that a bloomery is involved even though it’s not mentioned, then yes, this is broadly speaking how iron’s been made since the Iron Age, and until blast furnaces came into the picture. But the World of Darkness isn’t a pseudo-medieval setting, it’s modern urban fantasy. So the implication here is that “cold iron” is iron made the old way: you can’t buy it in the store, someone has to replicate ye olde process and do the whole thing by hand. Now, this is NOT how the term “cold iron” has been used in real life or fiction thus far, but hey, fantasy games are allowed to invent things.

Regardless, 3.5 borrowed the idea, and for the first time D&D made this a core rule. Now most fey creatures had damage reduction and took less damage from weapons and natural attacks, unless the weapon was made of Cold Iron:

“This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties.”
— Player’s Handbook (3.5 Edition, 2003)

Pathfinder kept the rule, though 5e did not. And unlike Changeling, this definition left it somewhat ambiguous if we’re talking about a material with special composition (i.e. not iron) or made with a special process (i.e. iron but). The community was divided, threads were locked over this!

So until someone points me to new evidence, I’ll assume that the invention of cold iron as a special material, distinct from plain iron, should be attributed to TTRPGs.

[original post]

As The Order of the Stick nears its end

Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick is approaching the finish line, and it’s crazy to think that it launched in 2003 as a light-hearted parody of D&D rules – starting with the transition from 3rd Edition to 3.5. It’s crazy that we’re now on strip ~~#1262~~ #1295, 1295 comic strips with stick figures, 1295 punchlines, together making an amazing story which goes so beyond escapism.

OotS features one of my favourite antagonists of all time. Redcloak is a villain with an Actual Point and a hell of a backstory, and his arc, to my joy, is now coming forward. Plot-wise, I think the whole comic is Redcloak’s story – the Order reacts to his plans and machinations, and Xykon is the Big Bad only in terms of raw power, which he seeks for power’s sake. But Redcloak is a motherfucker with a cause, and a large chunk of OotS’s themes revolve around that cause.

In the most recent strip, “Two Villages”, we see the Extremely Wise bugbear (and goblinkin) Oona giving her insight on how much, and how exactly, Redcloak cares about actual living goblins.

“Intentions are sparkly, like fresh snow on mangled corpse. But little bald man is dong in his life what we bugbears are calling “living in two villages.” First village is named Doing-Very-Best-For-Goblins, where we are skipping and playing and not worrying about getting smushed by dwarf or elf. Second village is named Right-All-Along, and all the rocks and trees there are telling little bald man he is being very smart and justified.”

“Anyway, little bald man is liking both villages and is owning fancy cottage with indoor fireplace in each. Okie dokie! Villages are across river from each other. No big whoop to be living in both. Lunch in one, dinner in the other! Everyone is happy!

But problem with living in two villages is: what if one day, bridge over river is being eaten by angry dolphin? Which village will little man be living in then? Which choice will he be choosing when choosing time is here?”

Oona is not worried that Redcloak will choose his ego over his cause. Oona KNOWS he will do that, and that’s why she’s helping him and “fighting off dolphins”, so that the bridge stays intact and he never has to make that choice in the first place.

*The Order of the Stick #1262*, by Rich Burlew (btw Oona’s wolf is the greatest animal companion of all time)

Like. Dude. The SHIT you can SAY with STICK FIGURES while being HILARIOUS at the same time, I love comics so much, I love D&D, I love fantasy, it’s amazing.

[original post]

How Tolkien invented dwarves (it used to be “dwarfs”)

“In English, the only correct plural of ‘dwarf’ is ‘dwarfs’ and the adjective is ‘dwarfish.’ In this story ‘dwarves’ and ‘dwarvish’ are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien, foreword to The Hobbit

frequency of “dwarves” vs. “dwarfs” 1930-2019, with Tolkien-related dates [Ngram Viewer graph generated by tuulikki]

“And why dwarves? Grammar prescribes dwarfs; philology suggests that dwarrows would be the historical form. The real answer is that I knew no better. But dwarves goes well with elves; and, in any case, elf, gnome, goblin, dwarf are only approximate translations of the Old Elvish names for beings of not quite the same kinds and functions.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien, to the editor of the ’Observer’, 1938

“[T]he printing is very good, as it ought to be from an almost faultless copy; except that the impertinent compositors have taken it upon themselves to correct, as they suppose, my spelling and grammar: altering throughout dwarves to dwarfs; elvish to elfish; further to farther; and worst of all, elven – to elfin. I let off my irritation in a snorter to A. and U. [George Allen and Unwin, Tolkien’s publishers in London] which produced a grovel.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien, from a letter to Christopher Tolkien, 1953

Oof.

D&D used the spelling “dwarves” from the start (along with other Tolkien ideas, such as hobbits, only later renamed to halflings for obvious reasons). Before the start, even. In 1972 Gygax published Chainmail, which was a wargame and not an RPG, but it included a fantasy supplement and it had stats for dwarves and hobbits. From 1974 on, all D&D publications (AFAIK) spell it “dwarves”.

It is debatable how much impact that had, and it’s tempting to guess “none at all”, given the HUGE overlap of “D&D players” and “people who’ve read Tolkien anyway”, and how recently D&D became mainstream enough to make a dent anywhere. But I think that would be ignoring D&D’s indirect impact via other media (official or otherwise), from Forgotten Realms novels to video games to webcomics to Critical Role, which reached a reasonably large audience NOT exclusively comprised of Tolkien readers. Anecdotally (but I think not weirdly for non-anglophone countries), I played D&D before I read Tolkien, and in fact that’s why I read Tolkien, thanks to D&D osmosis – and for a long time I totally thought that “dwarves” was the only spelling lol.

The graph is from google’s Ngram Viewer, it only takes printed sources into account, so no internet-only material. Here’s an updated version with 2 corpora, English fiction (there are more dwarves than dwarfs here, hah!) and English in general, plus a few extra dates.

frequency of “dwarves” vs. “dwarfs” 1930-2019, with Tolkien- and D&D-related dates [Ngram Viewer graph]

[originally posted on tumblr]

Deviating from the rules, or how (and why) to sneak attack with crowbars and glaives

Brawler rogues, thuggish rogues, rogues who fight with improvised weapons and/or unarmed strikes, and rogue/monk combos are common and popular character concepts. Well, class concepts really. For the purposes of making it work with sneak attack rules, which arguably include needless restrictions, people have been unearthing and/or homebrewing variants for ages. In D&D 5e, all it takes it a teeny houserule: sneak attack damage applies to unarmed strikes (or whatever weapon your thug uses; in one game I had extreme success and heaps of fun bludgeoning people with a crowbar). And that’s it. You tweak the rules just a little bit, and now you can go forth and be a sneak-attacking brawler, thug, whatever you want.

Of course, you need DM approval, but technically you need DM approval for everything. Rule Zero rules all, and this is about how to use Rule Zero to make the game better for all your players.

That said, weapon proficiencies are a part of the class system, and the whole thing is a tradeoff anyway: ALL class features restrict the player’s choices (you choose from these weapons, these skills, these abilities, these spells; if you could pick whatever you want, you’d play a classless system), and in return you get an archetype: a pack of flavour with pre-calculated balance in its mechanics (at least theoretically; I am well aware this doesn’t always work out in practice).

I like class systems. Given how much I adore character customisation, and fiddling with options and tweaking the rules, perhaps I shouldn’t, but I really do. It gives me a cool starting point, and from there I can fuck things up and adjust them to my preferences. Classless systems are cool too, but at the end of the day… this is a blog for Rogues. Not for sneak attack plus evasion or whatever. So for me at least, the archetype is the pull, and the rest is bookkeeping.

An archetype often means different things to different people, and each player (and DM) might have different tolerance on how much deviation from the rules is acceptable for a given game and setting. You may be okay with a mace-wielding rogue, but what about a greataxe-wielding rogue? Isn’t that too much? (Too much for what?) Does it maybe depend on circumstances, the setting, the character concept? I think it 100% should. If you play with a class system, you can be flexible with it, but on a case by case basis. (Unless you go revise the whole system and effectively replace the PHB with your own creation, which, good luck! I’m not being ironic, honestly, good luck! It sure needs an overhaul, and that 5.5 which WotC is currently concocting is 20% hit and 80% miss.)

For example: the most unconventional sneak attacker I’ve played was a girl with a glaive. However, the flavour was very specifically a former gladiatrix, which, at least in our eyes, perfectly justified the image of fighting dirty (i.e. sneak attacking) with a non-finesse two-handed reach weapon. BUT, at no point did I say “well if it’s allowed for THAT character concept, it should always be allowed for all rogues!”. It was suggested (and accepted) only as part of that specific character, and not as a general houserule to be adopted from now on. The general rule exists already and it’s called Rogue. And happy as I am to fuck with it, I like that it exists, restrictions, warts, and all. 🙂

tl,dr; restrictions are annoying, but they’re an integral part of the class system; feel free to ignore a restriction which ruins your fun or character concept for no reason; but if ALL restrictions annoy you, consider switching to a classless system

[originally posted on tumblr]

Regional Thieves’ Cants in D&D

*Thieves’ Cant signs collection by aliveria*

There’s an idea floating around that “thieves cant is essentially coded messages, probably based on references and stuff, so it’d be SUPER regional”. The logical conclusion is that a traveling rogue would have to learn the local culture before understanding the references, and that’s indeed pretty funny.

And you could do that! One modest option is to assume that only a few terms are different, so you can mostly communicate but misunderstandings can still happen.

But historically, cants weren’t really regional, because they were mostly used by people on the road, vagrants and vagabonds and itinerant workers and such. Think hobo signs and hobo slang: the whole point is to communicate with people who came from elsewhere, and don’t have the same references as you. Some cants were geographically MORE widespread than local languages. For example, Rotwelsch was spoken by various marginal groups in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Bohemia.

Without looking it up right now, I believe the English cant had very few regional, local references, and those mostly involved prisons or execution sites. Like, “Tyburn tippet” meant noose: a tippet is a scarf-like garment worn by anglican priests, and Tyburn was a gallows. A bunch of terms refernce it, both directly and indirectly (“to go to Holborn Hill” = to hang, because this hill was on the way there from London, “Paddington Fair day” = execution day, because it was in the parish of Paddington, etc). But everyone knew Tyburn, and especially everyone who spoke cant. There were also terms that referenced the Newgate prison, the executioner Jack Ketch, and so on, but again, all these were famous all over Britain, and not obscure local knowledge.

On the other hand, a French argot-speaking rogue would find English cant mostly unintelligible, though some words come from Romance languages or Romani, so they’d have a headstart learning it, at least. But of course, here we get to the larger issue of languages in D&D settings, and to the absurdity of Universal Common — a worldbuilding atrocity that I’m happy to handwave because it facilitates gameplay and makes the story go. (Seriously, Common makes no sense at all if you think about it, but whatchagonna do? Never travel to or meet anyone from a different country? Preposterous! We’re hopping to other planes here, surely we can make it to the equivalent of France!)

So anyway, if you want to introduce some regional differences in thieves’ cant in your game because you dig it, that’s great! But if you’re only doing it for the verisimilitude, you don’t really have to, and I think you shouldn’t go overboard either way. Don’t screw the Rogue!

As I’ve said before, thieves’ cant in D&D works better when you think of it like its historical counterpart: it’s not the language of thieves, it’s the language of people in the margins. Including but not limited to thieves.

[originally posted on tumblr]

The “Dumb Fighter” D&D Trope

The Dumb Fighter is a D&D cliché, a trope, we can even say it’s an unofficial term, like “meatshield”. So is it a justified cliché? Not in recent editions, but earlier yes, I think it was.

cartoon by Will McLean, probably mid ’70s to early ’80s

For starters, in early editions you didn’t choose your stats, you rolled them, in order, 3d6 for each. If you wanted to play a Fighter (or Fighting-Man, in OD&D) and rolled STR 4, you just didn’t play a fighter. If you rolled STR 15 and INT 4, you proceeded.

Second and VERY important, in OD&D and Basic you could fiddle with some of your rolled stats, and reduce one to increase another, but not on a 1:1 basis. Fighters could lose 2 points of INT to gain 1 point of STR, and having a higher STR affected almost everything for fighters including XP, so they had a strong incentive to do it.

It’s not just about the math though: Thieves could also lower their INT to raise their DEX, and yet “dumb Thief” has never been a trope or term in D&D. I think the reasons for that are obvious. People choose to play Fighters to be badass and hit things. People choose to play Thieves (or Rogues) to be smartass and steal things. It ain’t rocket science. 🙂

D&D tropes have a lot of inertia, they remain strong in the collective imagination long after the reason they came to be is gone. AD&D didn’t keep all these rules, people could also assign rolled scores to their stats, choosing which are high and which are low. With this arrangement, Fighters only dumped INT if they chose to. (And you know what? They often did.) AD&D also had minimum scores, and the Paladin (originally a Fighter subclass) had the strictest prerequisites: STR 12, INT 9, WIS 13, CHA 17. I theorise that Intelligence was included because otherwise Paladins would end up dumber than their horse. In any case, that left vanilla Fighters NOT required to be smarter than their Intelligent magic sword, and you know what? They often weren’t. Partly for optimisation reasons (you got more benefits from keeping your other stats high, CHA affected NPC reactions and henchmen, WIS affected saving throws, and all INT gave a non-caster was languages), and partly for roleplaying reasons (real-life fighting may be about tactics, but strategic players weren’t necessarily attracted to Fighters, not with these rules, which gave them ONE option and that option was to hit it again).

Then came 3rd Edition, which was complicated. There were 173 splatbooks and a million rules. There were tons of feats, and all the Fighter got was feats. There were hundreds of classes and prestige classes, many of them combat-oriented, and multiclassing was easy. Point-buy became a popular method of generating ability scores, which meant that once again people could reduce their INT to boost their STR if they do pleased. And optimisation became a science, peer-previewed in dedicated forums.

At that point, if all you wanted to do was hit it again, you played a Fighter, dumped Intelligence to boost your physical stats, and took Power Attack and similar feats. If you wanted tactical combat, you could do it, but then Fighter was a dip class. You’d take 2 or 4 levels tops for the extra feats, and then you had much better options, some of which were INT-based. You COULD build a strategic Fighter by choosing the right feats, a charger, or a tripper, or someone who focuses on attacks of opportunity, but there were few good combos, and some didn’t need INT at all, while others had Combat Expertise and required INT 13. That was basically the smartest “normal” Fighter.

So the dumb Fighter trope remained. Mind you, it wasn’t dumb warrior in general. People who wanted to fight smart had plenty of options, but playing a single-class Fighter was not the best or the most common, and even then a high INT was not required.

*The Order of The Stick* #791 by Rich Burlew

…At least in some circles. One very famous fighter is Roy Greenhilt, from The Order of The Stick, and he has “a very good Int” (number not stated, but fans have calculated it’s 14 to 17). This is noted to be unusual, considered suboptimal for Fighters, and whatchagonnado with it anyway?

Well I’ll tell you. I’ll figure out which columns are load-bearing, entice you to hit them using myself as bait, and bring the whole building down on your head, you oaf!

*The Order of The Stick* #808 by Rich Burlew

Basically, Roy was Rich Burlew’s vehicle to push back against the dumb Fighter trope, to remind us that they don’t have to be stupid and/or useless, and that copying an optimisation handbook is not the only way to build a character and play the game. 🙂

5th Edition is another animal altogether. If we only look at base classes, Fighters have no incentive at all to boost their intelligence, but neither does anyone else (except INT-based casters). All INT gets you now is a rarely rolled saving throw and some skills. It doesn’t affect how many skills or languages you get any more, so not even skillmonkeys are beholden to it, unless they focus on INT-based skills. Uncharitable but not entirely undeserved wording: in 5e, “dumb Fighter” isn’t much of a trope because everyone is dumb.

Once we look at subclasses though, the picture changes. There are actually more martial archetypes that have something to do with Intelligence than there are roguish archetypes! (For me this is an affront.) Eldtritch Knights are INT-based half-casters, Arcane Archers get INT-based trick shots, Psi Warriors get a bunch of stuff. For comparison, the roguish archetype named “Mastermind” gets zero mechanical benefits from a high INT, the Inquisitive is good with the Investigation skill, and the Arcane Trickster is the INT-based half caster.

As for tactical combat, Fighters are in the lead here. Battle Masters get manoeuvres, and (perversely, if you ask me) no one else does, not even Swashbucklers. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything has an optional rule where all Fighters, regardless of archetype, also get a single manoeuvre, as a treat. Various martial archetypes come with various combat options.

Of course, it’s very easy, and not uncommon, to play a Fighter who does nothing but hit it again. Fighters excel in that, what with Action Surge and a million Extra Attacks. However, if that’s all you do and/or if you dumped Intelligence, then it’s clear you chose to be a dumb Fighter. The system didn’t push you. You had other options, and you didn’t take them.

So by now the “dumb Fighter” trope is a bit of a relic. It’s a lot more undeserved now than it was in the 1970s. It hasn’t died out, though. One reason is inertia, people hear an old cliché and repeat it and perpetuate it. But another reason, which I think is important, is that at the end of the day, despite all the available options, most people who play D&D just want to be badass and hit things: the most popular choice of species/class has always been and still remains “Human Fighter”.

Personally I prefer to be smartass and steal things, but to each their own.

[original post]

Rule Zero: A Timeline

“Rule 0” is an unofficial term for a fundamental aspect of tabletop role-playing games: the DM’s word is Law. Some games have no referee at all, but if there is such a thing as a Dungeon Master, Game Master, Storyteller, etc, then what they say goes.

This can mean two things. The first is “what they say goes, as opposed to what the players say”. Someone has to be the final arbiter on how rules are interpreted and what happens in game. And if the DM says Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, well, rocks do fall and everyone does die. (And whatever led to that should be addressed out of game.)

The second is “what they say goes, as opposed to what the rulebooks say”. As far as I know, no RPG designer has ever had the gall to claim that the rules are final and you shouldn’t change anything. Sometimes it’s left unsaid (and probably considered obvious), but most of the time rulebooks explicitly state that the DM (Game Master, Storyteller, etc) can change the rules. The attitude varies, ranging from “rules are a suggestion! do what you want!” to “you can make changes BUT take into account this and that”.

I find it interesting that D&D 3rd Edition is the most stringent in this regard. It doesn’t say “change the rules as you see fit”, it rather says “well if you must change the rules, do it right”. It makes sense, I guess: that edition was BIG on simulation, and having rules for every little thing. Like, you can calculate how many hit points the wall has, depending on size and material. That means the DM can tell how many punches it takes to break each specific wall, since unarmed attacks deal damage to objects (half dmg, but still). It also suggests that the DM shouldn’t say “you punched the wall? okay, your knuckles bleed, it hurts like hell, and the wall is fine”, which for some styles of play is in fact unfortunate, because that’s exactly what the DM should say.

(There’s no right or wrong here, different strokes for different folks, and every system caters to different needs.)

I also find it interesting that the very similar Pathfinder is conversely generous, and singles out Rule Zero as “The Most Important Rule”. This also makes sense, given that Pathfinder is essentially a house-rules project that got out of hand.

In any case, here’s a selection of different ways to say “the rules are a suggestion”.

Original D&D (1974)

“These rules […] remain flexible. As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity — your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors.”

— Dungeons & Dragons Book I: Men & Magic

Basic D&D (aka Eric Holmes’s revision, 1977)

“Instructions for the game referee, the “Dungeon Master,” are kept to the minimum necessary to allow him to conduct basic games. This is absolutely necessary because the game is completely open-ended, is subject to modification, expansion, and interpretation according to the desires of the group participating, and is in general not bounded by the conventional limitations of other types of games.”

— Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set

AD&D (1979)

“The final word, then, is the game. Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. […] The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.”

— Dungeon Masters Guide

Basic D&D: B/X (aka Tom Modvay’s revision, 1981)

“In a sense, the D&D game has no rules, only rule suggestions. No rule is inviolate, particularly if a new or altered rule will encourage creativity and imagination. The important thing is to enjoy the adventure.”

— Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook

Basic D&D: BECMI (aka Frank Mentzer’s revision, 1983)

“You may use all or part of these rules. They often include several ways of playing and running the game. You may create new rules, monsters, and magic, using these rules as guidelines.”

— Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game Set 1: Basic Rules

AD&D (2nd Edition, 1989)

“Take the time to have fun with the AD&D rules. Add, create, expand, and extrapolate. Don’t just let the game sit there, and don’t become a rules lawyer worrying about each piddly little detail. If you can’t figure out the answer, MAKE IT UP! And whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of believing these rules are complete. They are not. You cannot sit back and let the rule book do everything for you. Take the time and effort to become not just a good DM, but a brilliant one.”

— Dungeon Master Guide

D&D (3rd Edition, aka 3.0, 2000)

“Changing The Rules: Beyond simply adjudicating, sometimes you are going to want to change things. That’s okay. However, changing the rules is a challenge for a DM with only a little experience.”

— Dungeon Master’s Guide

Note: I won’t quote the whole thing, but it goes into some length on what to consider before changing a rule. I’m gonna bet that when they suggested you ask yourself “How will the change impact other rules or situations” they hadn’t predicted that 3rd Edition would end up with 215 books full of interconnected rules, NOT including adventures and periodicals.

D&D (Version 3.5, 2003)

“The power of creating worlds, controlling deities and dragons, and leading entire nations is in your hands. You are the master of the game—the rules, the setting, the action, and ultimately, the fun. This is a great deal of power, and you must use it wisely.”

— Dungeon Master’s Guide

Note: I won’t quote the whole thing, but it says there are different styles of play, and if you like combat-oriented games you should be “very careful about adjudicating rules and think long and hard about additions or changes to the rules before making them”, whereas if you’re into deep-immersion storytelling, rules become less important: “feel free to change rules to fit the player’s roleplaying needs. You may even want to streamline the combat system so that it takes less time away from the story.” Or you can go for something in between.

Deadlands (Revised Edition, 2004)

“The rules in the Weird West Player’s Book are fairly detailed. […] Characters need all that detail because they can’t cheat. But you’re the Marshal. You can do whatever the Hell you want to, and that’s official partner.”

— The Marshal’s Handbook

GURPS ( Revised Third Edition, 2004)

“The GM is the final authority. Rules are guidelines … the designer’s opinion about how things ought to go. But (as long as he is fair and consistent) the GM can change any number, any cost, any rules.”

— GURPS Basic Set

D&D (4th Edition, 2008)

“If you disagree with how the rules handle something, changing them is within your rights.”

— Dungeon Master’s Guide

Pathfinder (1st Edition, 2009)

“The Most Important Rule: The rules in this book are here to help you breathe life into your characters and the world they explore. While they are designed to make your game easy and exciting, you might find that some of them do not suit the style of play that your gaming group enjoys. Remember that these rules are yours. You can change them to fit your needs.”

— Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook

D&D (5th Edition, 2014)

“The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren’t in charge. You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game.”

— Dungeon Master’s Guide

Vampire: The Masquerade (5th Edition, 2018)

“If the rules in this book interfere with your enjoyment of the game, change them.”

— Vampire: The Masquerade (5V corebook)

Legend of the Five Rings (5th edition, 2018)

“Your Game, Your Rokugan: This game is designed to support numerous styles of play and, as GM, you are empowered to jettison, rework, or simplify rules as you desire.”

— Legend of the Five Rings Core Rulebook

Pathfinder (2nd Edition, 2019)

“As Game Master, you have the final say on how the world and rules function.”

— Pathfinder Core Rulebook

[original post]

The Eyes of Avalir

“Cerrit looks at the symbol of the Eyes of Avalir on his ring. The eye is sculpted to look down, ever watchful, the eyes of a city in the clouds.

On a 26 insight, you found many threats to the city of Avalir, long years of being exceptional, perceptive, intelligent, clever, your eyes ever peering down, cultists and criminals, even some magisters, some corrupt officials – but on a 26 insight, often ones without friends or connections.

The Eyes of Avalir never looked up.

And the price you paid was that here at the end of things, you still don’t get to hear the laughter of your children in this home, as was the case so many long nights of devotion and service.”

— Brennan Lee Mulligan, Exandria Unlimited: Calamity finale

See what Brennan did there? Brennan said, on a 26 insight, you finally understand what’s wrong with law enforcement: it enforces only downwards. It investigates and hounds the little people and the outcasts, and leaves the corridors of power unchecked. And it’s not a failure of individuals (this cop is corrupt, that one’s incompetent); that would be easily solved with better individuals, individuals like Cerrit, brilliant and honest and devoted. But it’s an institutional failure. The Eyes of Avalir were meant and made to look down, and never up.

Brennan said, y’all thought that because Cerrit’s the only non-magical guy in the Ring of Brass of the floating city of Avalir in the Age of Arcanum, he’s blameless? Think again! Everyone unwittingly contributed to the Calamity. The Leywright trio by hubris, the paladin by zeal and conviction, the fey by love (if Loquatius hadn’t killed the truth about Evandrin to protect Laerryn, she’d have to explain what she’s building in there, and crucial information could have come to light in time), and the cop by being a normal-ass cop, and thus missing every single clue that could prevent this – because every single clue was up above, and the Eyes of Avalir never looked up.

And then Brennan “I came here to hurt people” Lee Mulligan twists the knife and says, Cerrit, this is what you devoted your whole life to, this is what you spent all your energy on, this is why you missed on your own children growing up. For an institutional failure.

And on a 26 insight, here at the end of things, Cerrit finally takes off his ~~badge~~ ring and sets his fucking office on fire.

[original post]

[D&D 3.5] Open Lock optimisation

This is basically a compilation of all things Open Lock-related in 3.5. Just max the skill and Dexterity, and pick as many of these as you can afford.

Gloves of Manual Prowess [Magic Item Compendium]

Price (Item Level): 3,000 gp (7th)
Body Slot: Hands
Caster Level: 3rd
Aura: Faint; (DC 16) transmutation
Activation: Swift (mental)
Weight: —

This pair of fine, charcoal-gray leather gloves is exceptionally comfortable. They are so well made that they do not impair the sense of touch.

Gloves of manual prowess allow you to temporarily excel at tasks involving fine manual dexterity. These gloves have 3 charges, which are renewed each day at dawn. Spending 1 or more charges grants you a competence bonus on the next Disable Device, Forgery, Open Lock, Sleight of Hand, or Use Rope check you make. You must begin the check within 1 round of activating the gloves. You can’t apply this bonus when you take 10 or take 20 — it only applies on a check you actually roll.
1 charge: +5 competence bonus.
2 charges: +7 competence bonus.
3 charges: +10 competence bonus.

Lockpicking Ring [Magic Items Compendium]

Price (Item Level): 3,500 gp (8th)
Body Slot: Ring
Caster Level: 3rd
Aura: Faint; (DC 16) transmutation
Activation: — and standard (manipulation)
Weight: —

This large ring is set with a faceted ruby. Closer inspection reveals a tiny trigger near the base of the stone.

Hidden below the stone in this ring is a set of tiny prongs, wires, and other small devices that spring out when the trigger is depressed. Using a lockpicking ring grants you a +5 competence bonus on Open Lock checks. This is a continuous effect and requires no activation.
In addition, you can activate the ring once per day to use knock. You must touch the ring to the portal you want to open.

Vest of Escape [Dungeon Master’s Guide]

Hidden within secret pockets of this simple silk vest are lockpicks that provide a +4 competence bonus on Open Lock checks. The vest also grants its wearer a +6 competence bonus on Escape Artist checks.

Price: 5,200 gp.

Nimble Fingers [General Feat, PHB]

You are adept at manipulating small, delicate objects.

Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Disable Device checks and Open Lock checks.

Lucky Fingers [Luck Feat, Complete Scoundrel]

The winds of fortune guide your hands when you most need luck.

Benefit: You can expend one luck reroll as an immediate action to reroll a Disable Device, Open Lock, or Sleight of Hand check. You gain one luck reroll per day.

Clever Improviser [Manipulation Skill Trick, CSc]

Tools? Why would you need tools? It’s just a combination lock with a poison needle trap, after all.

Prerequisite: Disable Device 5 ranks, Open Lock 5 ranks.

Benefit: When making a Disable Device or Open Lock check without using thieves’ tools, you ignore the normal –2 penalty.

You can use this trick any number of times per day until you fail a Disable Device or Open Lock check made without using thieves’ tools. After a failure, you can’t use Clever Improviser again until after you have rested for 8 hour .

Opening Tap [Manipulation Skill Trick, CSc]

“No time to waste on tools — a sharp tap should pop that lock!”

Prerequisite: Open Lock 12 ranks.

Benefit: As a swift action, you can make an Open Lock check with a –10 penalty by tapping a lock with a hard, blunt object such as the pommel of a weapon. You don’t take any additional penalty for making the check without thieves’ tools.
You can use this trick any number of times per day until you fail an Open Lock check made in this way. After a failure, you can’t use Opening Tap again until after you have rested for 8 hours.

Quick Lockpick [Rule, Complete Adventurer]

You can try to open a lock more quickly than normal. To reduce the time required to open any lock to a move action, add 20 to the DC. For example, opening an average lock normally requires a DC 25 check and requires a full-round action. To open the lock as a move action requires a DC 45 check.

Epic Open Lock [Rule, Epic Level Handbook]

The character can open locks more quickly than normal. As a move-equivalent action with a DC modifier +20, or a free action with a DC modifier +50.

[original post]

The amazing Guillermo de la Cruz, or why vampire hunters should be Rogues

Like everyone who watches What We Do In The Shadows, I adore Guillermo. And I was thinking, the OG vampire hunter in D&D was… the Cleric. Literally, the class evolved from a Dave Arneson home game where someone played a vampire (Sir Fang!), so to balance things out a Van Helsing type was introduced on the spot. At the time they were already thinking to add a priest type, a divine magic-user, and in the end they bundled the two concepts together. So in a sense, Turn Undead preceded the spells, and it became a defining feature of Clerics. If you had a vampire to fight, that’s who you’d call.

But in fiction, while symbols that make vampires hiss and recoil are often religious, they just work, regardless of who’s holding them (Van Helsing wasn’t ordained or anything), and vampire hunters aren’t spell-slingers. They do their research, they gather their tools, and they fight skillfully and fast enough to stake a fucking vampire. What I’m saying is, by all rights they should be Rogues. (Even Van Helsing, who lockpicked his way through Dracula’s lairs with his trusted skeleton keys.)

Unfortunately, for many editions D&D got stuck on the notion that sneak attack targets “vital organs” and therefore doesn’t work on half the monster manual, and certainly not on undead. So while visual media started portraying vampire hunters as more and more agile and fast, to keep up with their foes’ inhuman speed in action sequences, D&D didn’t follow, and didn’t support or provide lore for vampire-hunting Rogues.

Then 5th edition did away with that pointless restriction, and Rogues can totally sneak attack undead, so by now, friends, players, DMs, we have NO excuse. There are many ways to build a badass vampire hunter in 5e, mind you, and I’m not saying you should pigeonhole anything, but also let’s not ignore the obvious.

A fast (Cunning Action), elusive (Uncanny Dodge), and skilled (a ton of proficiencies + Reliable Talent) bastard, who knows how to aim a stake to the heart (sneak attack). Now that’s a Vampire Hunter.

So as I was saying, Guillermo is a Rogue, and how can someone be so adorable and so badass at the same time, it’s amazing. And that’s what I like most, he’s a perfect example of a kind of Rogue that’s very dear to my heart: he’s unassuming.

That’s better than sneaky. He’s not in stealth mode, you can see him plain as day, and you take one look at him and immediately dismiss him because you don’t perceive him as a threat. OH BUT YOU SHOULD.

[original post]