Labyrinth Lord / Desolate North House Rules Part 1a: Thieves

As promised last time, I'm showing my re-work of LL's Thief class. This is all based heavily on the write-up already in Hill Cantons and inspired by Unfrozen Caveman Dice Chucker (I refuse to accept the new name).

Thief

Requirements: None

Prime Req: DEX

Hit Dice: d4

Maximum Level: None

Note that a Thief can be of any alignment. In addition to any bonus languages for intelligence, the thief also knows Thieves' Cant, an argot of Common used by ne'er-do-wells to discuss nefarious proceedings.

9th level hideout shenanigans are still possible as per LL.

At 11th level, a Thief's backstab does triple damage.

Thief Skills

Instead of advancing along a percentage table with level, thieves are awarded Bonus Skill Levels. These bonus skill levels can be assigned into any skill the thief chooses.

 Starting Thief Skills

Scale Sheer Surfaces:5, max 12

Pick Pockets:2, max 15

Find/Remove Traps:2, max 12

Pick Locks:3, max 12

Hear Noise:4, max 11

Move Silently:2, max 13
Hide in Shadows:2, max 13

Read Languages (at Level 4):0, max 13

Read Scrolls (at Level 9):5, max 12

In order to succeed at a skill, the Thief rolls a d10 trying to roll below the skill level.

Double 12: Every time you roll a 12, roll again. A double 12 is always a failure, regardless of skill level.

Thief Skill Definitions

Scale Sheer Surfaces: This is not just 'climbing walls', but scaling sheer surfaces, viz. things that a normal person would just say, "That's impossible." Examples include the sides of skyscrapers, windy overhangs with few to no handholds, etc. However, some surfaces might still be outside the thief's ability at the DM's discretion.
Pick Pockets: As per LL, except for each level the target is above the thief subtract 1 from the skill.
Find/Remove Traps: Also works with Secret Doors and other such. Note that the DM will still require a description of your activities, and decide success, failure, and difficulty based on this. This is not preternatural, and is in fact a thing all adventurers do; thieves are just better at it.
Pick Locks: As per LL.
Hear Noise: Not just any old noise, but preternatural hearing - noises you wouldn't otherwise be able to hear. Picking up whispered conversations through keyholes, hearing footsteps far away by putting your ear to the ground, that kind of thing.
Hide in Shadows: Anyone can hide, but it takes a thief to hide in shadows. Area must be shadowy and dim, and you cannot hide in shadows while being watched. (If the thief fails the check, it is assumed he is still being stealthy - though maybe not with success.)
Move Silently: Anyone can move quietly, but it takes a thief to move silently. Thief must not be wearing or carrying anything noisy (e.g. clinking bottles, non-magical armor heavier than leather), and there are certain environments that either give a penalty to the roll or may make it impossible (e.g. nightingaled floors, wading through water). If the thief fails the check, it is assumed he is still being stealthy - though maybe not with success.

Thief Level Advancement

Exp	Level	Hit Dice (1d4)	Bonus Skill Levels
0	1	1	0
1,250	2	2	3
2,500	3	3	4
5,000	4	4	3
10,000	5	5	4
20,000	6	6	3
40,000	7	7	4
80,000	8	8	3
160,000	9	9	4
280,000	10	10	3
400,000	11	+1 hp	2
520,000	12	+2 hp	1
640,000	13	+3 hp	1
760,000	14	+4 hp	1
880,000	15	+5 hp	1
1,000,000	16	+6 hp	1
1,120,000	17	+7 hp	1
1,240,000	18	+8 hp	1
1,360,000	19	+9 hp	1
1,480,000	20	+10 hp	1

******

I'm thinking of completely removing Find/Remove Traps in favor of just giving Thieves a flat 3 in 6 to notice secrets and traps when looking, and a note saying they're likely to be better at removing them than other characters. That skill in particular bothers me for all the reasons it's bothered other people more experienced and eloquent than I.

Labyrinth Lord / Desolate North House Rules Part 1: Character Creation and Classes

Inspired by a lot of people, including +Jeff Rients, +Peter V. Dell'Orto, and +Chris Kutalik, and
others. I'll try to include links to relevant posts/articles/whatever when I can, but if I forget or can't find it, that shouldn't be taken to mean I'm claiming to be the original author of the idea.

3d6 In Order. Few Exceptions.
The only exception here is noted by LL, where it points out you can trade 2 points down for 1 point up, with restrictions. Those restrictions are still in place. Further, you can only do this if doing so would allow you to play a class you wouldn't otherwise qualify for, not just to get your Prime Requisite into XP bonus territory.

Bonus Languages:
High INT score gives bonus languages as noted. However, these languages do not have to be chosen at creation. Instead, whenever a new language is encountered, the player may choose to roll a D6; on a result of 1-3, the character happens to know that language as a Bonus Language.

Languages can also be learned in play through other means.

Classes

New classes: None yet. But I might add some (like Battle Nuns).


Cleric:
I'd love to make clerics start with no spells at level 1, but that sounds exactly like the kind of modification to make players not familiar with the OSR grumble.

Clerics must be either Lawful or Chaotic. Lawful Clerics are Clerics of the Church (more on religion in the Desolate North later) and must be male. Players are encouraged to create sects or brotherhoods or orders to which their clerics belong.

Some Clerical sects (even within the Church) may have different weapon limitations.

Clerics are the only class to automatically know an 'alignment language' - which is the language of their religious proceedings. (In the Church, it's a Latin-analogue.) Well-educated monsters may or may not know an appropriate alignment language.

Clerics may create scrolls as per Holmes: usually 100gp and 1 week per spell level.

Dwarves:

Clarification: a dwarf hiring folks for the stronghold can hire dwarves for any job, though it may be hard to find a dwarven spellcaster. However, they cannot hire any other races as mercenaries or soldiers.

Elves:

Elves have no souls. This means they are immune to spells that directly inflict death or act on the soul; e.g. Ray of Death, Disintegrate or Trap the Soul, but not Prismatic Sphere. However, they cannot be brought back from the dead, either.

Elves can cast spells while using weapons, shields, and armor.

Elves do not have spellbooks. Instead, they gain (and can cast per day) spells as on the below table:

	Elf Spell Progression
	Spell Level
Level	1	2	3	4
1	1	0	0	0
2	1	0	0	0
3	2	0	0	0
4	2	0	0	0
5	2	1	0	0
6	2	1	0	0
7	2	2	0	0
8	2	2	1	0
9	2	2	2	0
10	2	2	2	1

Spells gained are usually randomly determined, though there may be exceptions.

Elves may create scrolls as per Holmes: usually 100gp and 1 week per spell level.

Fighters:
Fighters with DEX 16 or higher may Parry, sacrificing 1 attack per round to give themselves -2 AC.

Fighters get +1 to their hit dice at 1st level, so a 1st level fighter is 1+1 HD.

Whenever a fighter kills a foe with a melee attack, he may immediately melee attack another foe in range. Each new attack is at a cumulative -1 to hit.

Fighters start gaining bonus attacks at 10th level instead of 15th.

At 4th level, any time a Fighter rolls a natural 20 to hit, it hits automatically and rolls max damage. Note that no other class gets critical hits.

At 8th level, a Fighter's damage dice explode. The max damage from a critical hit counts for this purpose.

Halflings:
Halflings may only carry 1 Large Item, and it counts as two. (See house rules for encumbrance here.)

Halflings are universally bald, and they have a parietal eye. Whenever their heads are uncovered, they receive a +1 to saving throws from threats from above at the DM's discretion. When forced to wear headgear they feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Magic Users:
A Magic User starts play with 2 1st-level and 1 2nd-level spell in his spell-book. All other spells must be gained in play. (Not a change, just a note.) One of those spells is Read Magic; the other two are randomly determined. (Not everyone gets Sleep and Web.)

Magic Users may create scrolls as per Holmes: usually 100gp and 1 week per spell level.

Thieves:
Thieves effectively get a complete re-write, based on the alternate thief skill rules from the Hill Cantons and then further modified by Timrod. More detail follows in another post; it's too big to throw here.

Barbarian meatgrinder

So, last session I let the Barbarian bring a maul to a sword party. My poor bandits weren't expecting anything of the sort and were brutally murdered. Brutally! I wept. The children wept. The little puppies wept. (I even had the players wincing at one point - I'm particularly proud of that.) But! lo! a voice from the heavens! I looked into the Holy Writ and it said '13‡'.

Glory! My (next) bandits were saved! That damn dirty ape-err, I mean, technologically challenged exemplar of the Elder Race could no more deal out double-fisted death every turn with a mere 16 ST. Muahahaha!

So I spoke to the player about this, and last night we came up with a solution. (It helps that she's my wife - it means easy access to her opinions on the matter.) At first she wanted to go with a mace, but I explained the delicious advantages of wielding a Reach 1,2 weapon  when all your foes are stuck at Reach 1. So that was out. Still, she didn't like the idea of not getting two attacks every round. "But with a maul," I explained, "you would need to be effectively ST 20 in order to hit with it every round. Instead you'll be taking an All-Out Attack (Strong) and then readying the maul your next turn." I toyed with the idea of making a house rule saying that if you All-Out Attack (Double) you can switch that second attack for a Ready, but no - that was explicitly debarred in the rules, and I respect that when something is explicitly mentioned as a bad idea, Evil Stevie and Dr. Kromm mean it. (Side note: I'd pay money to see a riff off Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog starring Steve Jackson, Sean Punch, and Warehouse 23.)

We cast around for options. She had five points to spend; those obviously went into Striking ST 1. (I allow my players to upgrade Striking ST to full-bore ST if they're lacking ST that the 250-point template calls for.) Okay, ST 17 still isn't enough to wield a maul without it becoming unready. Hmm...what other Two-Handed Axe/Mace weapons are there?

She liked this one specifically.

Oh. Warhammer. A sledgehammer with a spike on one end. And that's only 12‡, you say? Where's the dotted line? 1.5 times 12 is 18; only 9 more points and she'll be swinging that monster twice a round.

My innards ache in sympathy just thinking about it.

(As if that weren't bad enough, going back over her character sheet, I realized that the maul was Dwarven - what berserker barbarian who also has Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) also needs a Dwarven weapon? - and that she never spent the extra $900 of debt per person the party was loaned from the Arcanists' Assembly in Verbobonc. So now our Barbarian has a silvered warhammer and real armor as well. Oi, vey. It's a good thing the Knight is badass in his own right.)

Levels in the temple

One of the advised conceits in D&D is the correspondence of dungeon level with character level. If you're level one, you should stay on level one of the dungeon. If you're level two, venture down to level two, and so on.

This is violated quite a bit, especially later on, but it's still at least implicit in 1st edition. Needless to say it doesn't work in GURPS, since GURPS doesn't have levels.

It can be broadened out to say, "Further down means more dangerous," and fortunately this is the way the Temple operates; they expect you to be around level six or seven by the time you hit Temple level three. So how am I going to salvage this in GURPS? I don't quite know.

I've spoken before (as have many others) about the difference in the power curve between GURPS and D&D. In fact, it's more accurate to describe them completely separately. Nevertheless, I want to preserve the feel of the temple, transitioning down to tougher monsters as the party grows stronger, and having the party grow stronger, rather than presenting a roughly homogenous difficulty that only slowly grows.

The first part of this is figuring out the rate of advancement. For my game, I want the PCs to hit 250 points, the base point value for the DF templates, by the time they finish level 2 of the Temple. This strikes me as fairly fast advancement (though it remains to be seen if I'm mistaken about that), since the PCs are starting at 150 points. Nevertheless, I can tie point rewards to geographical features. For example, once the PCs discover the secret room on Level 1 (disclaimer: I'm not looking at the map at the moment; I don't know if one such exists) they get ten points. If they recover the treasure horde in room 136, it so happens that's enough to earn them 5 points when they go back to town, for paying off their debts. You get the idea. Extra rewards (for roleplay, awesomeness, or whatever) will be above and beyond, so that it's possible to advance faster if they play well, or slower if they play poorly. (One could argue that I should place more points, because the assumption is that the PCs won't find every treasure, but looking at

Every twenty-five points is a 'level', for purposes of building new characters. If your character dies, your new character gets his last point value that evenly divided by 25. (So, if your character had 186 points, your new one gets 175. Don't die.)

So much for characters. Unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to give too much in specifics on this blog, but one of the stats to write down for treasure hoards, secret rooms, and other desirable areas is character point value.

For monsters, the process is a little more difficult. I want to maintain roughly the same constitution in the temple; if AD&D players are fighting githyanki in the temple, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy players should also be fighting githyanki. However, numbers obviously need to change; HP does not an interesting encounter make. However, I discussed this in more detail in a recent post.

Still, I'm hoping that skill level may make a difference. I understand that 14 is the minimum level to challenge 250 point DF characters. Maybe 12 will work with less skilled PCs. Still. I understand there's a fairly hard lower level of skill that matters. Hmm.

Unfortunately, it looks like what I'll need to do is put together a skeleton crew ("This room has at least one ogre; this room has at least a roper and three trolls.") based around what the module says, then tweak it in play to actually fit. Unfortunately I don't have the experience to do otherwise. This is distasteful to me, but there it is. I suppose it's all right so long as I haven't given any hints of a contrary nature about what's to come if I bump the bugbear count from two to fourteen before the PCs hit the room.

I can at least map out relative difficulty levels in the module from room to room and use those to guide my placement, if nothing else.

Character creation (mostly) complete

I have a confession to make.

Those after-play reports people have on other blogs? The ones they say that no one ever reads, that are the least popular posts?

They're my favorite part of this whole blog thing. In fact, reading through Peter D's campaign log is what convinced me to start on this project originally. It's what made me aware that the OSR exists.

So, with that out of the way, what follows is a play report, of sorts. Okay, not really, but it's the first player-side progress toward actually playing through what I've been working on. Last night, people made characters. (I brought my notes to continue my conversion work, but that didn't happen; instead I helped people with various questions, as expected.)

We have a fairly large table, but not absurdly so, at seven players plus GM. This means that players can cover all the bases, and they gladly did so - we have a knight, a wizard, a thief, and a cleric. We also have a druid, scout, and barbarian, meaning we have representatives of every acceptable class except bards and holy warriors. The lack of bards didn't surprise me - all of the players are sunk into the mindset that bards are useless - but the lack of a paladin analogue was curious. I'd think that, going into someplace named a Temple of Elemental Evil, a holy warrior would be a good person to bring along.

The interesting thing here is that the whole party, save the knight, consists of elves. (The knight is a dwarf.) This was at first unintentional, though of course once we became aware of what had happened it was heartily approved as the party's identifying 'thing'. There's even talk that the next round of characters is to be all dwarves; we'll see. In any case, the bias against bards amuses me even further because everyone now has Musical Ability 1 and Voice

I'm curious to see how this works out in Hommlet. On the one hand, it's a fairly exclusively human town. On the other, there is an elven enclave a few days north that does come into the area for occasional trade and patrols, and which is politically allied with the Duchy. On the gripping hand, there's a current low-level struggle in Hommlet between the Old Faith (firmly entrenched) and the Church of St. Cuthbert, which is a newcomer but influential due to the Archbishop of Veluna's actions the last time the Temple rose to prominence. I imagine it will boil down to how they behave and to whom they talk, as it always does.

In particular, the wizard is a bit eccentric:


One of the things that was driven home to me again is that GURPS character creation takes a longer time and has many more options than pre-3rd edition D&D. This is especially marked with the pre-1st edition D&Ds, where you can roll up a new character in five minutes, including gear. By contrast, it can take hours to shape GURPS characters into being.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. The more I read, the more I come to appreciate the minimalist approach that was taken in the roots of the hobby. The thing GURPS has going for it, though, is that that extra time isn't for 'optimizing' or, to put it another way, navigating through a forest of options looking for the best fit to drive what Courtney over at Hack & Slash calls wish fulfillment. Instead, the extra time is taken to provide mechanical incentives for assuming a role. D&D is not a role-playing game, though role-playing can often happen through it. GURPS is.

That said, reliance on the templates and familiarity with the process can very much quicken that process. I can bang out a DF Knight I might want to play in half an hour. A wizard might take me a whole hour, depending on how much I dithered over the spell list. That's still not five minutes, but it's close enough to work. I don't have to be too afraid of killing characters because they're replaceable without the sacrifice of too much blood and tears on the part of the players.

Character creation

I've decided that new characters start off at 150 points, as that seems roughly consonant with an AD&D first level character. This is a little bit of a problem because the Dungeon Fantasy Adventurers' templates cost 250 points. There are a few ways around this:

1. Pick a template from Adventurer’s and build your character on 250 points, then scale back to 150 using "Dungeon Fantasy on the Cheap". Players can also/instead scale back other abilities in the template; DF on the Cheap is pretty much focused on ability scores.
2. Pick a 125 point template from DF 15: Henchmen that mimics an acceptable template from Adventurers, then spend the extra 25 points for any of: a race, part of a 50 point occupational ‘cross-class’ lens from DF 3, or the complementary 125 point lens from DF 15: Henchmen

Acceptable Templates:

(From DF 1)

·         Barbarian

·         Bard

·         Cleric

·         Druid

·         Holy Warrior

·         Knight

·         Scout

·         Thief

·         Wizard

(From DF 15)

·         Any. However, note there are restrictions inside the templates so that they won’t mimic unacceptable templates. Generally, they’re common-sensical, here are a few:

o   Apprentice: Can only choose wizard package

o   Initiate: Can choose Druid or Good Cleric

o   Sage isn’t allowed, since there’s no point to it

o   Any ‘Eastern-flavored’ portions of the templates should be ignored

The lenses to add on top of them follow the same rules.

Races:

Races can be found in Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level. Acceptable races include Human, Halfling, Wood Elf, High Elf, Dwarf, and Half-Orc. Half-orc isn’t liable to be a good idea, at least at first.

Advancement (aka why would I use a henchman template?):

The optional rule, “Changing Professions” in DF 3 on pg 42 will be in effect. In brief, you're stuck with the template you've chosen until you have all the primary abilities that template grants.

Using Dungeon Fantasy on the Cheap usually scales back core stats to remove points from the templates. This can make advancement fairly boring. To alleviate some of that, when you use such a template, only half of your earned points at any given time need to go into attribute advancement; the other half can go into various abilities already provided by the template, whether you took them or no. So, for example a Knight could increase his primary sword skill or his Born War Leader Talent; a wizard could purchase more spells or increase Magery or Energy Reserve.

The henchmen templates, on the other hand, are only 125 points, so you aren’t locked in for as long a journey, and the lenses provided offer more interesting choices than just putting points into attributes.

Also, more generally, the rules under Adding New Abilities (starting on DF 3 pg. 42) and Training Costs (ibid.) are in effect.

Notes for Magic Users including druids, clerics, and wizards:

(Taken in large part from Peter over at Dungeon Fantastic, by way of this post on the SJ Games Forums.)

Instead of the standard fatigue-based magic, we’ll be using Threshold magic. Standard Threshold is 30, and you can buy more at 1 for 1 point. Recovery rate is high enough. You cannot buy Energy Reserve except via a familiar. Other energy sources – power items, paut potions, etc. – still exist. Also, wizards can burn HP for spells at standard rates (and penalties), but druids and clerics cannot. Further, you can concentrate while grappled, if you make a Will-6 roll. If you attempt and fail, you must Do Nothing

                Spells:

• Shape Earth and Earth to Air only work on unworked stone
• Walk Through Earth can only be cast on yourself
• Wizard 'appendages' (Wizard Eye, Wizard Ear, etc) do not exist.
• ‘Mass’ versions of spells take no longer to cast than their Minimum Costs, in seconds.
• Geas and Enslave require ceremonial casting on a helpless target, and they take an hour per point
• Only a small number of Meta college spells exist: Ward, Counterspell, Great Ward, Dispel Magic
• Counterspell requires you to know the spell countered or five spells in the same college; same with Ward. Further, these spells require that the source of the spell be the same as your source; e.g. clerics cannot counterspell wizards.
• The Machine, Metal and Energy colleges don’t exist. If their spells are part of another college, then those spells can still be learned.
• Magical missiles get a save chance vs. Missile Shield and Reverse Missiles
• Force Dome and Utter Dome, along with their Wall types, don’t exist.
• See Secrets only works on things that are within plain view. Thus, if there’s a secret door that you can’t detect because it blends in with the wall, See Secrets will show it. However, if it’s hidden behind a tapestry, See Secrets will not work.
• Explosive spells (Explosive Fireball, Explosive Lightning, etc) use the old 3^rd edition explosion rules, meaning that for each hex out from the center, you drop the highest die, rather than dividing by 3 x distance

Languages:

I don’t have room here to do the subject justice, so here’s the basics. The gritty details must needs wait on another post.

 Halflings and Humans get Common Native/Native, and Tengwar (Common) at Native (it’s written only).

Elves of both types get Elvish Native/Native and Common Native/None. If it ever matters, the Elvish written form is Tengwar (Elvish). They don’t have another sort.

Other races get their native tongues at Native/Native and Common at Native/None. Note that for other races the native writing form is not Tengwar.

Finally, Barbarians of any race only get Spoken proficiencies. Thus, barbarians of any type have 3 points to spend somewhere else. Human barbarians get to choose another language to speak natively, if they so desire.

Miscellaneous:

The Outdoorsman talent costs only 5 points, and doesn’t include Fishing.

Druids and Wizards can consider animal companions/familiars as part of their starting templates, if you so desire.

Healing potions are 1/5^th the cost if bought at start.

In Dungeon Fantasy, trading cash for points gives you the same amount of money as buying signature gear. Why would you ever do the former? Well, for one, the cash from Signature Gear must needs all be spent in one place, on one piece of gear. If your signature gear doesn’t cost some multiple of $500, too bad. Also, Signature Gear cannot be used to purchase perishables such as rations, torches, or healing potions. Finally, Signature Gear provides protection, but it also ties you to the item, meaning you can’t easily upgrade later. If you find a better sword, you can’t just leave your Signature Gear sword at home, sorry.

Last note:

The point totals above are for beginning characters. Once the median point value of the party is 200, new characters will start with 200, and so on – the starting value will bump for every 50 points the median increases.