Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 6: Medieval Gunpowder Weapons

Depictions of gunpowder weapons in fantasy RPGs are plagued by a number of issues, not the least of which is a general overestimation of their power and efficacy.  This is because people think, "Guns and gunners replaced swords and knights, therefore guns must be more powerful."  This is a reasonable line of thinking, but it is not correct.  The reasons why guns became the dominant weapon on the battlefield are many - too many to go into here, in fact - but for our purposes, it is important simply to recognize that guns did not become dominant because they did more damage than the other weapons of the period.  Even today, in this wonderful technological world we live in, I would rather be shot in the chest than be struck with a battle axe.

Knights actually co-existed with guns for centuries, and for the most part they could get by with only a few dents in their armour to show for it.  Even in the 17th century, many soldiers wore steel armour which protected them from bullets.

Royal Armouries - Leeds

Although later guns were getting better at penetrating armour, the decline of armour in warfare had less to do with the power of guns and more to do with the weight and expense of the armour itself.  It is only in recent decades that sending soldiers into battle in suits of armour has come back into fashion.

That said, you may be starting to guess that I have some issues with the way Pathfinder deals with gunpowder weapons.

Actually, not as many as you might think from the above paragraphs.  For the most part, the damage these weapons deal seems reasonable on the whole, with a few exceptions.  A lot of the weapons have x4 crits, which seems fine for modelling gunpowder weapons - if they hit you right, they can hit you hard.  Sure there are a lot of things I could nitpick (in what world does a musket do more damage than a rifle?), but I'd rather just scrap the whole thing and start over.  So let's kick off Part 6 of Fixing the Weapons Table.

Guns of the Western Kings - First Play Session in a Brand New Campaign Setting

I've been working on a secret project for a while now: a Wild West campaign setting for the PFRPG.  I'm calling it "Guns of the Western Kings" (formerly: "Gunslinger", but that is a little too close to some other trademarked names.  Plus Pathfinder has since come out with an ill-conceived class of the same name).  Here's a picture I drew when I first came up with the idea about 4-5 years ago, which still gives a pretty good idea of what this whole thing is about:

(No longer called Gunslinger and no longer being developed for D&D 3.5)

I thought maybe the best way to introduce you to the campaign setting was to tell you how my first playtest of it went.  But first, I feel I should clear up a few things.  This is a campaign setting for the PFRPG, not a new roleplaying game system.  It uses the same rules and has many of the same races, classes, and monsters.  It is not steampunk, it is not Eberron, and it is not Deadlands.  It is an original fantasy world, not a magicked-up version of the late 19th century American West.  The world of GotWK is one of kings and presidents, dragons and locomotives, wizards and six-shooters.

But I'll tell you more about it later.  For now, let's hear how the first play session went!

4 Rules You Probably Aren't Using Correctly (And Why You Should)

You know the problem with rulebooks?  There's just so many darn rules!  I know how it is - some rules are just too complicated or time consuming to enforce.  Maybe you were a new GM and you jettisoned those minor rules that just slowed things down.  Maybe you were running a game for some new players and you didn't want to scare them away with these extraneous rules.  And then you sort of let them slip away, because the game worked just perfectly without them.

Well... I think it's time to re-evaluate some of those rules.  I've played a fair amount of D&D in my time, and I've read of and heard a lot of other peoples' stories as well.  From the experiences of myself and others, I've identified a few rules that often get ignored (not all the time - very possibly not even in your games - but often).  Now, I totally understand why these rules don't always get used: I've neglected many of them myself.  But they were written for a reason, and I think they might benefit from a little extra love.

Monster Monday: Ichthyosaurs - Prehistoric Sea Monsters

"Two prehistoric sea monsters in a row?  What is your problem, d20 despot?" you might be asking.  To that I say "Shut up, sea monsters are awesome.  Especially when they're prehistoric.  It's not my fault you don't run more aquatic caveman campaigns."

"I'm sorry," you might reply, "I won't complain anymore that you are spending so much of your free time making awesome monsters and giving them to me for free."

Wow, what a great segue into some site business before we get started on today's Monster Monday.  Last week, I put d20 Despot on patreon and asked you to tell me what kind of rewards you would like to see for backers.  If I don't get any feedback by the end of the month, I'll default to the 'occasional gifts of random content' option, with a distinct probability of me adding more rewards tiers when I'm less busy/actually have backers.  So go on over and leave your feedback, or sign up to Patreon and become a backer of d20 Despot!

All self-promotion aside, today's Monster Monday is actually a 3-for-1 deal, because there is such a variety of Ichthyosaurs that I couldn't stat up just one.  So we've got your basic dolphin-sized Ichthyosaurus, your much larger, deep-diving, gigantic-eyes Ophthalmosaurus, and (as a variant option) your saw-nosed Eurhinosaurus.

Heinrich Harder (1858-1935) via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.

d20 Despot is Now on Patreon

I'm pleased to announce that d20 Despot is now on Patreon.  Mostly I'm pleased because that means you can give me money if you want.  'What is Patreon?' you may find yourself asking.  Patreon is a service that seeks to return to the days where artists were given patronage by great men and women who had a lot of money and enjoyed the finer things in life, only this time the artists are internet content creators and the patrons are their viewers (and you don't need to have a lot of money to do it).  It's sort of like an incremental, ongoing kickstarter.

"How does it work?"
If you aren't already on Patreon supporting all your favourite artists, go over and sign up!  Once you're signed up, head over to patreon.com/d20despot, determine how much you would be willing to donate to my cause, and click "Become a Patron"!

Sadly, I don't think their scripts can handle die rolls.

You can donate any amount you want (but I think any donation that adds up to less than 30 cents per month actually costs me money, so please don't do that).  In my case, you would be donating that amount per blogpost.  Don't worry: I won't start posting tons of new posts just to take all your money, and I won't count boring ol' newsposts like this one.  In fact, you can set an upper limit to your monthly donations just to be sure you won't go over budget.  And if you ever get tired of me, just cancel your patronage (note: please don't cancel your patronage).

"Yes, We're All Individuals!" - Reskinning and Reequipping Monsters So They Don't Get Boring

"Hey, remember that time we fought those skeletons?"
"Yeah, I almost died.  It was bloody ridiculous."
"No, you're thinking of the skeletons we fought back in Derdinn's Keep.  I'm talking about when we fought the skeletons in those crypts back when we were second level."
"You mean third level.  There were three skeletons and two zombies."
"No, second level.  The ones with rusty scimitars."
"They've all had rusty scimitars."

We can't all work our way though the Monster Manual from cover to cover; sometimes in our campaigns we have to throw the same kind of monsters at the party that they have already fought.  But that doesn't mean they have to feel the same.  Too often as GMs we become satisfied with presenting monsters just as they are presented to us in the Monster Manual or Bestiary.  But no matter how good a dish is, eating it over and over is going to get bland.

Take a look at these skeletons.  We've got your typical shambling skeleton in tattered scraps of armour:

Duty-Bound Dead, by Johannes Voss (c) Wizards of the Coast

A saintly skeleton decked out in the finest gilded plate:

St. Pancratius - Dr. Paul Koudounaris, via Cartwheel Art

And glowing-eyed skeletons (okay, probably liches) wielding staves and wearing crowns and mighty robes:

Keith Parkinson

In your game, if you pitted your party against any of these three types of skeletons - even if behind the screen they were all just your basic CR 1/3 skeletons - I guarantee they wouldn't remember it as just "that skeleton fight."

The two simplest and best ways to make your monsters unique are reskinning and reequipping.

d20 Despot Reviews the 5th Edition D&D Basic Ruleset - My Initial Thoughts

Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast released the Basic Ruleset (a free, watered-down version of the rules) for D&D Next, which they are now just calling D&D, and which I will be calling 5th Edition D&D because - unlike Wizards and Microsoft - I don't like confusing people.  So I have spent several hours badly neglecting my schooling in order to bring you folks my initial reactions to this new official ruleset.

You can download the rules for free here, at Wizards of the Coast's website.  

To make a long story short, it seems fine.  I really want to play it.  But I very much doubt that it will replace Pathfinder as my go-to fantasy RPG.  There are some things that they did really well, like the classes.  There are some things they did poorly too, but those are outnumbered by the things they did that confuse me.  It's a very decent ruleset with a lot of really great pieces in there, but it's not enough to make me abandon my current system yet.

I appreciate that they really tried to tone down the rampant bonus accumulation that plagues D&D/Pathfinder once players hit even moderate power levels; they really bring the focus back to die rolls more than bonus-stacking, which is great.  And they did a lot to simplify things, some of which worked and some of which didn't so much.

Alright, I'm done making long stories short.  Here's the long story, with my remarks presented in no particular order: