Improved Armor Tables Part 6 - Partial and Piecemeal Armor

This is part 6 of my ongoing series on improving the armor tables.  Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these changes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes.  These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.

This week I'm dropping the rules for partial and piecemeal armor, followed by some examples that illustrate the versatility of this system.  Thus far, the armor I have presented has been full-body armor, protecting the wearer more-or-less head-to-toe.  The following rules will allow a character to lighten the load by wearing only torso armor, or mix-and-match different armors to customize their dungeon-delving ensemble.

Pathfinder already has some armors that I would consider 'partial armors' - the breastplate and chain shirt spring to mind - though their relationship to more complete armors is ill-defined.  There are also already rules for piecemeal armor, but I find them overly complicated and not particularly versatile.  By their system, piecemeal armor is divided into torso, arm, and leg armor, and the only way to determine the stats of any given piece of armor is to find it on their tables.  I have created a more versatile, consistent system of rules that lets you break down any suit of armor into two pieces (torso armor and limb protection), and mix and match them.  I developed it for my own improved armor tables, but these rules can also be easily applied to the base Pathfinder armors, armor created for the d20 system by a third party, or your own homebrewed armors.

The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Improved Armor Tables Part 5 - Heavy Armor

This is part 5 of my ongoing series on improving the armor tables.  Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these changes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes.  These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.

This week's subject is heavy armor.  This is the armor for those who can afford it, for while it may be more restrictive and, well, heavier than other armors, the protection it provides is second to none.  In the category of heavy armor, we have banded armor, bronze plate, mail-and-plate, heavy mail, bronze panoply, plate, and full plate.  This is armor for your characters that can take a beating and give one back in return: your stalwart legionnaires, your axe-wielding sea-raiders, your shining knights errant, and your bloodthirsty horsemen of the steppe.

Fans of plate armor will be pleased to see that, in these tables, plate and full plate offer more flexibility than they do in Pathfinder or D&D 3.5.  This is some of the best armor ever made, worn by the wealthiest warriors of Europe.  They would not have fought in it if it restricted their movements and limited their ability to fight.  It may have been heavy, but the way it was made and worn distributed its weight across the whole body, making it feel lighter than mail.

Read on to see the stats for all these armor types and learn more about them.  As before, I have provided some historical information with each armor entry in order to aid the GM in determining which armors would fit best in a particular campaign setting.

The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Improved Armor Tables Part 4 - Medium Armor

This is part 4 of my ongoing series on improving the armor tables.  Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these changes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes.  These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.

This week's subject is medium armor, more protective than light armor but less restrictive than heavy armor.  We've got leather plate, wooden slat, scale, light mail, jazerant, brigandine, and lamellar.  These include some of the most widely used armors from history.  Lamellar, for instance, was used from ancient times through to the 19th century, in places like Central Asia, Byzantium, and Tibet.  Some armors are more obscure, or more limited in geographic or temporal range; jazerant was largely a Middle Eastern variation on mail, though the Japanese later got in on it as well.

Brigandine is one of my favorite armors, but it is one that often goes overlooked.  Because the actual metal of the armor is concealed (except for the rivets attaching the plates to the cloth backing), it doesn't show up well in historical illustrations and it lacks visual appeal for Hollywood and for fantasy illustrators.  Medieval drawings of soldiers in brigandine armor were probably the inspiration for 'studded leather armor', the fictional type of armor so popular among Victorian medievalists, RPG designers, and Hollywood costume departments.  Nonetheless, brigandine was an incredibly effective and popular style of armor, and I hope it will become so in your games as well.

Read on to see the stats for all these armor types and learn more about them.  As before, I have provided some historical information with each armor entry in order to aid the GM in determining which armors would fit best in a particular campaign setting.

The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Improved Armor Tables Part 3 - Light Armor

This is part 3 of my ongoing series on improving the armor tables.  Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these changes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes.  These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.

This improved armor tables project has been a real labor of love for me.  I have poured countless hours into research, design, and revision that I honestly probably should have spent formulating my PhD proposal or writing thank you notes to my wedding guests.  But hey, I wouldn't be me if I weren't doing this.  What is the point of free time, I ask you, if not to spend it doing something which engages you, even if what engages you is reconciling a body of historical research with an RPG rules system and compiling the results on a table for the readers of your blog?

Now that my table is (mostly) complete, I've had a bit of a debate with myself as to how I should break it up to present to you.  Should I cram it all into one long post?  No, my posts tend to be overly long as it is.  Should I divide it in two, perhaps one post presenting prehistoric and Bronze Age armors and another presenting Roman and medieval armors?  Or perhaps divide it between primarily European and primarily non-European armors?  Finally, I settled on what is perhaps the most obvious solution: one post for light armors, one for medium, and one for heavy.  The deal was sealed when I realized that I had inadvertently made seven armors of each type.  The sixth and (possibly) final part of this series will go over a new set of rules for mixing together two armors to make a composite suit of armor.

The armors presented below and in subsequent parts probably shouldn't all be available in the same time and place in your game world.  After all, one would hardly expect a medieval German warrior to be able to purchase ancient Thracian bronze scale armor or 17th century Iroquois wooden slat armor.  For this reason, and for my own edification, I have provided some historical information with each armor entry below, in order to aid the GM in determining which armors would fit best in his or her campaign setting.

The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Improved Armor Tables Part 2 - Shields

The stalwart knight raises his shield against the dragon's searing jet of flame.  Axe bites into shield as the two sea raiders begin a duel of honor.  The wild barbarians crash and break like the sea against the well-ordered legion's tight shield wall.  The brave warrior's crushed and bloody body is carried home on his shield.

Shields are an iconic part of ancient and medieval warfare, and naturally of fantasy roleplaying games as well.  They are also the subject of this week's Improved Armor Tables.  The last edition of Improved Armor Tables focused on the fantasy staples of hide and chitin armor, but from here on out they will largely be focused on bringing historical accuracy to the armor tables.  I have a degree in medieval history and I'm using it to shake things up in the world of fantasy RPGs.  Unlike my Fixing the Weapons Table posts, these fixes should be considered entirely optional and a GM should carefully consider whether they want to use them in their game, because it might mean a lot of tweaking stat blocks behind the scenes.  These changes are designed for GMs who love history and want their fantasy worlds to be a little more grounded in it.

In the d20 system, melee fighters face a dilemma: strap on a shield for a boost to your armor class, or leave that hand free to wield a two handed weapon - or maybe two weapons - to deal extra damage.  It's a trade off every RPG player is familiar with, but historically speaking it is not the only trade off about when to use a shield.  In ancient times, the Greek hoplite was the ultimate heavy infantry unit.  It didn't matter whether he was wearing bronze armor, leather or simple linen, as long as he had that great round bronze shield - the hoplon, the hoplite's namesake.  Think of Roman legionnaires and you'll probably picture them with those iconic tower shields, perhaps taking the impenetrable testudo formation.  The vikings had those round wooden shields, three feet in diameter and rimmed with iron.  But as time went on, the shields got smaller.  The long Norman 'kite' shield gave way to the smaller knightly 'heater' shield.  In the later Middle Ages, the small buckler - a foot or less in diameter - rose to prominence for foot combat.  As armor improved, cavalry and heavy infantry abandoned shields altogether, even in tournament jousts.  Why?  Because shields are heavy and cumbersome.  In ancient times, when armor was less advanced, larger shields meant more protection - for some warriors, a shield was the only armor they had.  But knight in full plate is actually more protected without a shield than with it because the shield weighs him down and slows his movements.

To reflect this, I have completely reworked shields.   They have gained a boost to AC, but have more taxing armor check penalties and max Dex bonuses.  There are more types of shields now, to reflect the greater historical variety of materials they were made from.  These different types are largely distinguished from each other by weight and by their hardness and hit points, which I have added to the table - this is important when someone tries to sunder a shield, or when you roll a natural 1 on a reflex save vs a fireball.  You will also notice that I have scrapped the light/heavy shield dichotomy.  There are now small and large shields (and tower shields), and light shields form a separate class of shield.  Read on to learn more!

The following items and rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Improved Armor Tables Part 1 - Hide and Chitin

The ultimate expression of victory over a monster is not killing it or taking its treasure - it's making armor out of its hide.  Adventurers are bound to come across all sorts of interesting and thickly armored creatures that they might want to turn into armor - not only is it an excellent trophy of your victory, but it is also a great way to add a dash of unique flair to your character's look.  After all, who is going to forget the grizzled dwarven hero decked out in black beetle armor, or the salty sea captain wearing a cuirass made from the rubbery hide of a giant squid?

Presented here are rules for creating both hide and chitin armor with variable levels of protection depending on the natural armor bonus of the creature they come from.  After all, mammoth hide should be stronger and heavier than wolf hide, and ankheg armor is going to be more protective than a cave fisher breastplate.

The following rules in gold and their accompanying tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Critical Hit Tables - Scaling Crits for Weapons and Spells

Critical Hit!  Those two words can make or break a tough battle, depending on what side of the GM's screen they come from.  Recent editions of D&D have tried to simplify crits, making them deal max damage every time.  If you are like me, that's no fun.  Getting a critical hit is all about rolling on tables to see what crazy thing happens.  Will someone's armor get broken?  Will someone lose an eye?  Dare I mention the fabled instant death critical?

My main impetus for making these tables was my growing frustration with the GameMastery Critical Hit Deck.  Too often would a player draw a result that was less than spectacular, or didn't make sense in the situation, and it was easy to forget to step-up the damage result if the weapon had a x3 or x4 crit value.  Plus, should 'Severed Spine' and 'Lip Cut' really have the same 1-in-52 chance of turning up?  When it comes down to it, it's a lot more satisfying to roll dice on a table than to draw a card.

This set of critical hit tables is built with the assumption that you will be using weapons with x2, x3, and x4 crits, with higher crit values providing better chances of getting better crits.  If you are lucky, you'll get to roll for an additional effect on one of three separate tables (one for each damage type: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing), with effects ranging from 'Bad Bruise' and 'Disarm' to 'Punctured Lung' and 'Temporary Amnesia'.  Plus, there's a Magic Crit table, with results broken up by spell level (0-2, 3-5, and 6-9), because what kind of GM would I be if I didn't give you a chance of summoning a gelatinous cube every time you cast scorching ray?

Enough preamble; let's take a look at these tables!  Below, you'll also find guidelines for their use, and optional rules to make things even better.

Random Minion Motivation Table

"Aim for the big one!" yelled Daltos, hurling a spear at the largest orc.  "If we take out their leader, they'll crumble!"

The rest of the party followed suit.  Grim plunged two bolts from his magic crossbow into the hulking orc chieftain, and Ylvessa charged in and finished the job, hacking off his green head with a swift blow of her scimitar.  

Some of the orcs did as Daltos expected and fled back into the cave.  Some, but not all.  An unassuming orc spearman let out a terrible cry.  "You killed my brother, you elf witch!"  He ran up to the corpse, grabbed the chieftain's warhammer, and brought it down squarely on Ylvessa's surprised head.  

"Rally to me, you cowardly scum!" barked another.  "Unlike that dead idiot Gorflegg, I'LL lead you to victory!"

Then came the shout that Daltos disliked most of all.  Echoing from deep in the caves, an orcish voice called, "C'mon boys! Let's grab the treasure and run!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any good adventurer knows that discretion is the better part of valor.  But what about the minions that they fight?  Some GMs will drag a battle out until every last mook on the battlefield has dropped below 0 hp, other GMs realize that their goblin horde might rather flee than face the whirlwind of death that is a well-prepared adventuring party.

If you want to go a tiny bit more in-depth, check out this table of random minion motivations:

The idea is simple.  During battle, if a major morale-shattering event happens (such as the death of the enemy leader or an attack that kills more than half of the enemy minions), roll 2d6 for each minion to see what his motivation is here, and judge from that what its action will be.

There is a lot of room for GM interpretation, of course.  This is a GM-ing aid, not a new rule-system.  If the minions in question are soldiers in an evil warlord's army, and you roll that one of them is "Only there to protect a loved one", you might decide that he's there to look out for his kid brother who is fighting alongside him, in which case he might fight hard long after the evil warlord is dead just to keep his brother safe.  On the other hand, a cultist in a death cult who is only there to protect his kid brother might grab his brother and flee at the slightest opportunity.

A fanatical believer might fight to the death for his cause, but a true believer, not blinded by outright fanaticism, might see the value in withdrawing to fight another day.

I chose to make it a 2d6 table because it results in a nice bell-curve, as those of you who have attempted to settle Catan will well know.  I didn't want a flat d6 or d10 table, and I thought a d% table would be too complicated for consulting in the heat of battle.  I think the 2d6 bell-curve makes for a quick and easy table with a lot of potential depth.

Sorry for the short post this week.  Life is busy, and it's so hot in Seattle right now that my rapidly decaying computer is threatening to catch aflame.

-your in-it-for-the-money d20 despot

Expanded Reincarnation Tables - Back from the Dead with a Brand New Body

I don't care how you die, the most fun way to come back is reincarnation.  Sure, spells like raise dead and true resurrection bring you back just as you were before, but with reincarnate, you could come back as anything!  Well, so long as your definition of 'anything' is 'bugbear, dwarf, elf, gnoll, gnome, goblin, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, lizardfolk, orc, or troglodyte'.  I really like the element of chance involved in reincarnate; it feels right to be rolling on some big percentile table when you come back from the dead in D&D.  But it feels like there should be more options for what you come back as, for better or for worse.  So when one of the characters in one of my ongoing campaigns died (you'll see who in a later update), I decided the time was right to make my own table.  Well, tables.

I took some inspiration from the old AD&D version of reincarnate, which gave you a chance to come back as a centaur, a satyr, a badger, or any number of other woodland creatures.  It makes sense for a druid spell.  So on my tables, you have a chance (albeit a much smaller one) to come back as an animal or fey creature.  I even added plants and vermin, something I feel druids would appreciate, though the recipient of the reincarnate might feel a little less comfortable with it.  I think the possibility (however small) of coming back as a flower or a cockroach really adds to the sense of risk that this inexpensive shortcut back to the world of the living should have.

"Okay, maybe we should have sprung for raise dead, but I think we still have what it takes to bring down that lich!"

Illus. Paul Bransom via Wikimedia

I also wanted to expand the number of races you could come back as, making full use of the Advanced Race Guide.  This is where more of my own personal opinions went into this table, because there are some races in the the ARG that I am wholly against.  Some, like the half-vampire dhampir or the sci-fi android I left out because I think they are dumb and I would never let my players play them.  Others, like the half-wyvern half-kobold wyvaran and the four-armed kasatha, I think are overpowered, cheesy, and dumb, and I would never let my players play them.  But, hey, feel free to modify these tables to include them if you like them.  I won't judge.  I would have excluded the notorious Mary-Sue-bait catfolk race from my campaigns had one of my players not convinced me that they could be played realistically, like asshole cats, not just as special snowflake fetish-fodder.

I also, of course, put my own homebrew races in there.

So there are a lot of things a player could come back as using these reincarnation tables.  Even some monsters are available as rare options!  Take a look, and use them in your game if you like.

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 4: More Polearms (part 2)

Continuing from last time (before I was interrupted by an amor of rampaging cupids)...

I am on a quest to make polearms more appealing weapon options for adventurers, and just more realistic* in general.  Part of that involves updating and expanding the list of polearms.  Last time I covered the bardiche, bec de corbin, lucerne hammer, bill, fauchard, fauchard-fork, halberd, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, glaive-glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive...  This time around we've got some more polearms like the partisan, the pike, the pollaxe, and maybe some that don't start with p.  Read on, dear reader.

*By realistic, I don't mean 100% historically accurate, because that is simply not possible within the d20 combat system.  I am attempting to reconcile what we know about polearms with the assumptions about them that are core to D&D.  This may sometimes mean adhering to polearm categories that are relevant to D&D but not to modern historical scholarship (I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a glaive-guisarme).