Immortality and the Price of Death

Savage Insider volume 3 issue 1 includes another article of mine: Back from the Dead. The article discusses various different solutions for designing characters who cheat death, based on the following observations about the rules  in Savage Worlds Deluxe:

1. The "Character Creation" chapter stresses that you should play a character you enjoy.

2. The "Background Details" section encourages players to make up their own history and background.

3. The "Replacement Characters" rule states that "When a character dies, his new hero begins play with one less Advance than his last."

So by a strict interpretation of the rules, it's perfectly legal to recreate the same character (with one fewer Advance) every time they die, and simply explain in your background history that your character is immortal.  At the very least, it'll save you the effort of explaining how a new PC joins the group in the middle of the wilderness!

While many GMs might refuse to allow such a character concept, that's not really the point of the article. The point is that we can now assign a specific price to death in Savage Worlds: Death costs one advance.

Once we know that, we can extrapolate, and that's what I do throughout the rest of the article. Resurrection can now be handled with standard Powers and rules, immortality can be covered by applying trappings to existing Edges and Hindrances, immortal(ish) races such as Time Lords and the Goa'uld can now be easily balanced against other races, and so on. I finish up the article with a new Edge (Immortal) and three new Hindrances (Curse of Eternity, Dark Appetite, and Phylactery).

Further Thoughts

"You, Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula, shall know mortal life unending. Mortal, in the ravages of age, in the pain of wounds and the anguish of despair. In dreams brought to ruin. In love withered. In the shadow of Death's spectre, ever a threat to end what you will not relinquish. Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula, you shall never ascend. Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula, each time you rise, you shall then fall. All that you achieve shall turn to dust in your hands. As you have wilfully done here, so it shall be in turn visited upon all that you do. Three voices curse you. It is done."
-- Memories of Ice (Malazan Book Of The Fallen 3)

The Harder to Kill Edge gives you a 50% chance of avoiding death, which (when applied to an "immortal" character concept) would mean that death now costs you only half an advance on average. A GM who wanted to explore the concept of unkillable characters (without applying it to everyone as a setting rule) could even take the Edge a step further...

Impossible to Kill
Requirements: Legendary, Harder to Kill
  You can no longer be killed, although you can still be beaten, incapacitated, captured, and even dismembered. You no longer suffer permanent injuries, they always go away when all of your wounds have healed.

Of course "unkillable" is not the same as "invulnerable"; a cocky PC who crosses the wrong people could still be put out of action, waiting out eternity at the bottom of a lake in a pair of concrete boots.

Granular Advancement

By the RAW, characters in Savage Worlds earn 1-3 experience points per session, although in practice it usually works out at 2-3 for most groups - and as 5 experience points grant an Advance, some GMs find it easier to simply award everyone half an Advance per session. This means that PCs can improve something every two sessions.

Some GMs dislike characters advancing every two sessions, and instead prefer to double the number of experience points earned, so that PCs gain one Advance every session. The obvious drawback of awarding double experience points is that the PCs advance at twice the recommended speed, and can rapidly outpace the challenges in a campaign designed for characters using the normal advancement rules.

One Advance can be used to raise an attribute, buy an Edge, buy a new skill at d4, raise a skill above its linked attribute, or raise two skills below their linked attribute. But if PCs can raise two skills below their linked attribute for one Advance, why not let them raise one skill below its linked attribute for half an Advance?

You can still rule that characters cannot raise the same skill twice in succession if you wish to retain the "raise two different skills" limitation, but allowing PCs to spend half an Advance at a time means there is the possibility for improvement every gaming session.

But that's just skills. Can the same concept be extended to attributes and Edges as well?

Odd Traits

There have been several discussions in the past about the pros and cons of extending trait progression using d14, d16, d18, d20, d22 and d24, instead of applying fixed bonuses after d12. But what about inserting additional die steps in between the existing trait progression dice?

Introducing a d5, d7, d9 and d11 would allow characters to raise their attributes in smaller increments, for example a PC could increase their Strength from d6 to d7 for half an Advance, then increase it again to d8 with their next half Advance if they wished.

The same approach could be used for skills: if you had Agility d7 then increasing Fighting from d6 to d7 would cost quarter of an Advance, while increasing it from d7 to d8 would cost half an Advance.

Note that Derived Statistics are already rounded down (e.g., Vigor d12+1 gives Toughness 8 rather than 9), so increasing Vigor or Fighting to an odd die step would not be exploitable in that respect.

Minor Edges

In Savage Abilities I introduced the idea of Minor Edges - Savage Worlds already splits Hindrances into Minor and Major, after all, so why not do the same for Edges?

Some Edges provide +2 bonuses which could be halved, for example a Minor version of Attractive might just give +1 Charisma, while a Minor version of Alertness might give +1 to Notice rolls.

Another option is to make an Edge more specialised, for example a Minor version of Alertness could grant its +2 bonus to one specific sense rather than all senses, while a Minor version of Beast Bond might apply to one specific animal rather than every animal under your control.

Other Edges provide multiple benefits which could be divided up, for example Beast Master might be split into Animal Empathy (animals don't attack you) and Animal Companion (you have a loyal animal companion), while Strong Willed might have its Intimidation and Taunt bonuses separated into two Minor Edges.

Particularly weak Edges such as Bruiser or Combat Reflexes could also be downgraded to Minor Edges, at the GM's discretion.

Semi-Skilled

Characters can purchase a new skill at d4 for a full Advance, which effectively negates the -2 penalty for being unskilled. By extension, it should be possible for someone to become partially skilled (going from d4-2 to d4-1) for half an Advance, representing a character who is still learning the ropes but is no longer completely clueless.

Summary

Although this proposal has additional benefits (such as increasing character diversity by allowing smaller investments in specialised abilities), one of the main advantages is that PCs can advance in a more granular fashion. They can potentially gain or improve an ability every session, but overall they still progress at the same speed as the official rules.

From a terminology perspective it might be easier to refer to an Advance as a "Major Advance" and half an Advance as a "Minor Advance". PCs would then earn a Minor Advance each session, with two Minor Advances being worth a Major Advance. A Major Advance could be spent as described in the core rules, while each Minor Advance could be used for any or all of the following (at the GM's discretion):

• Gain a new Minor Edge, or increase a Minor Edge to a Major Edge (if two versions are available).
• Increase one skill that is equal or above its linked attribute by a minor increment (e.g., d6 to d7, or d7 to d8).
• Increase two skills that are both below their linked attribute by a minor increment.
• Increase one skill that is below its linked attribute by a major increment (e.g., d6 to d8).
• Learn a new skill at d4-1 (semi-skilled), or increase it from d4-1 to d4.
• Increase one attribute by a minor increment (this option can only be used twice per rank).

GMs using the "Spell Trappings" guidelines from Savage Spellbook might also allow characters to gain a single new trapping for a power they've already purchased with a Minor Advance. For example a character who had previously purchased New Power (with a Major Advance) to take Blast with the "Fireball" trapping could spend a Minor Advance to take "Ice Storm" as a second trapping for their Blast power.

Similarly, when using the "Skill Specialization" setting rule from SWD, one additional specialisation would cost a Minor Advance.

Dramatic Odds for Dramatic Tasks

The PCs have finally tracked down the evil cultists and cornered them in their lair, interrupting the summoning ritual before it can be completed. As most of the heroes move to engage the cultists in combat, the professor rushes towards the pentagram in the centre of the room, reciting a guttural incantation from an ancient grimoire in the hope that he can close the magical rift. While he chants, an infernal entity begins to take form within the pentagram - will it break free before the professor can banish it?

In order to give the professor a challenge, the GM decides to treat this final showdown as a Dramatic Task.

But what is the professor's chance of success?

Calculating the Odds

Working out the probabilities for a standard task is fairly straightforward: An Extra with d6 in the appropriate trait would obviously have a 50% chance of success, while a Wild Card with d6 would have a 75% chance of success. But what is their chance of succeeding at a Dramatic Task? What if the character has one or more bennies? What if others are helping with Cooperative Rolls?

The probabilities for Dramatic Tasks are not easy to predict, and miscalculating the challenge can turn an important encounter into an anticlimatic cakewalk...or a total party kill. To make the process easier, I've written a Dramatic Task Simulator tool.

Using the tool, we can see that an Extra with d6 in the appropriate trait would only have around a 2% chance of success! The odds for a Wild Card are somewhat higher, but still not great:

Wild Card with d6: ~8%

Wild Card with d6 and 1 benny: ~14%

Wild Card with d6 and 2 bennies: ~19%

Wild Card with d6 and 3 bennies: ~23%

If the character has Wild Card allies making Cooperative Rolls with d6 in their traits, the chances improve further:

Wild Card with d6: ~13%, ~18% or ~23% (for 1, 2 or 3 allies)

Wild Card with d6 and 1 benny: ~20%, ~27% or ~33%

Wild Card with d6 and 2 bennies: ~26%, ~34% or ~42%

Wild Card with d6 and 3 bennies: ~32%, ~40% or ~48%

Of course the odds increase significantly when the character is more skilled. If the professor has Knowledge (Occult) d8 and the Scholar Edge (granting a further +2), even without allies his odds would be as follows:

Wild Card with d8+2: ~41%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 1 benny: ~58%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 2 bennies: ~69%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 3 bennies: ~77%

The tool also includes options for tweaking the mechanics. For example you could rule that failure on Clubs means losing 1 success (instead of resulting in total failure of the task), which would have the following odds:

Wild Card with d8+2: ~56%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 1 benny: ~68%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 2 bennies: ~76%

Wild Card with d8+2 and 3 bennies: ~81%

You can also adjust the length of the task. For example I sometimes run 3-round Dramatic Tasks (requiring 3 successes), for situations that aren't quite so crucial. On other occasions I'll run a full-length Dramatic Task, but allow for partial success, similar to the Social Conflict rules.

By adjusting the mechanics and looking at the odds based on the traits of the PCs, you can help make your Dramatic Tasks appropriately challenging for the players.

Cooperative Rolls with Alternative Skills

When making a Cooperative Roll, you should normally use the same skill as the lead character. However I will often allow those making Cooperative Rolls to use a different skill if they can justify how it would help.

For example, if the Dramatic Task involves picking a lock before a guard patrol walks past, one character might use Persuasion or even Taunt to distract the guards, buying time for the main character to complete their Lockpicking attempt. As the objective of the Dramatic Task would be to pick the lock before the guards arrive, slowing down the guards would be just as useful as speeding up the lockpicking effort.

House Rule: Combining a skill with a trick/test

In some situations you may wish to perform a trick or test of will that, based on its description, would appear to heavily depend on a combat or arcane skill.

When this occurs, use the lowest of the two traits. If the skill normally requires the use of a tool or weapon, has a limited range, or expends a resource, then those restrictions still apply, as do any penalties which would normally apply to the skill (such as range, cover, etc). However you receive a +1 bonus to the roll, and in the case of an arcane skill, any penalties are also reduced by the PP cost of the power (although this never provides a positive bonus).

If you roll 1 on the skill die, then the action is resolved as if you were actually using the combat or arcane skill, without the +1 bonus. 

Note: This is based on a throw-away proposal I made on the Pinnacle forums in the past. The subject came up again recently, and I had to really dig around to find my post, so I'm repeating it here.

Examples

You want to shoot at the ground and make your opponent dance: Expend a point of ammo and roll the lowest of Shooting and Intimidation with a +1 bonus. The result must be high enough that it would have hit if it were a Shooting roll. If you roll 1 on the skill die, but the Wild Die was successful, resolve the action as a normal Shooting action - you accidentally shot them. 

You want to carve your initials onto your opponent's shirt: Roll the lowest of Fighting and Taunt with a +1 bonus. The result must be at least equal to their Parry, and you must be within melee reach. If you roll 1 on the skill die, but the Wild Die was successful, you accidentally cut through their shirt and into their flesh - resolve as a normal Fighting action. 

Your only offensive spell is a firebolt, and you don't want to kill the guard who's chasing you - so you decide to shoot the tree next to him and spray him with hot splinters: Expend 1 PP and roll the lowest of Spellcasting and Agility (trick) with a +1 bonus, ignoring 1 point of penalty (from the PP) for range/cover/etc. If you roll 1 on the skill die, you suffer backlash, and if the Wild Die is successful you accidentally hit the guard directly with your firebolt.

Guild of Shadows: Character Builder and the Thief Edge

One of the Kickstarter projects I backed that I've been particularly looking forward to getting my hands on is Guild of Shadows - a dark urban fantasy setting based around the nefarious activities of a thieves guild.

With the project now so close to completion, I was recently hired to take a look over their mechanics, making any final edits for balance and consistency. As I'm a big fan of the genre, I also took the opportunity to propose a further 14 Edges and 3 Hindrances, all inspired by various rogues from history or fiction.

I've obtained permission to produce a web-based character creation tool for the setting, which you can access here:

Guild of Shadow Character Builder.

I'd also like to give an overview of a potential problem with the Thief Edge that some may have already wondered about, along with my solution...

The Thief Edge in a Thief Setting

Savage Worlds has two Edges in the core rule book that provide a Stealth bonus: Thief gives +2 Stealth in urban areas, while Woodsman gives +2 Stealth in rural locations.

The Thief Edge is particularly nice in that it also boosts Climbing and Lockpicking, as well as trap-related uses of the Notice and Repair skills. The large number of bonuses are somewhat balanced by the fact that it's usually a fairly niche Edge, and has some very tough requirements.

However because Guild of Shadows is an urban thief-focused setting, the Thief Edge is no longer even remotely niche - it boosts several of the most useful skills, and is the only way to get a Stealth bonus. When I ran a similar style of campaign in the past, most of the players invested in Thief simply because it was so useful.

But it gets worse. The tough requirements mean that each Thief also needs to boost one attribute, and assign around half of their skill points in a specific way, leaving them much less room to differentiate themselves from each other - and even if they're able to stand out in smaller ways, because most of their starting points are tied up in heavily boosting the same set of abilities, they're still likely to feel quite similar to each other (at least mechanically-speaking).

Removing the Thief Edge wasn't an option, because Guild of Shadows is designed to be slottable into existing settings and campaigns if the GM wishes, and such campaigns could well have characters who have already taken the Edge.

So I approached the problem from a different angle, and added two new Edges: Highwayman and Urban Ranger. Like Thief, they are Professional Edges, which means their bonuses don't stack with each other - thus there are now three different Edges which grant the much-coveted +2 Stealth bonus, each of which provides other benefits as well, and Urban Ranger also has a 'backdoor' through another Edge. The end result is that characters in Guild of Shadows can obtain that +2 Stealth bonus without sacrificing diversity.

Expanded Rule: Disguise

There are no explicit rules for disguises in Savage Worlds - somewhat ironically, not even the Disguise power allows you to simply disguise your appearance, it only lets you impersonate a specific person.[Reference]

The recommended approach is usually to treat disguise as a Persuasion roll (to convince people that you're someone else), or in some situations a Stealth roll (if you just want to appear nondescript).[Reference]

However a recent discussion about Stealth made me wonder if perhaps the disguise mechanics could be a bit more clearly defined. In particular, applying the active/inactive guard concept (which is normally used for sneaking) to disguises would seem to make a lot of sense.

My proposal is therefore as follows:

Disguise

There are typically two parts to a disguise. The first part is your bearing and mannerisms, which are covered by the Persuasion skill, and the second is your physical appearance, which is covered by the Stealth skill. You don't roll when applying a disguise, instead you roll when other people interact with you.

There are two types of observer, "attentive" and "inattentive". Inattentive observers are those who aren't interacting with you or paying any particular attention to you. Under normal circumstances a standard TN 4 Persuasion roll is sufficient to maintain your disguise against inattentive observers, but on a failure you draw attention to yourself; those nearby become attentive observers.

Attentive observers make an opposed Notice roll against your Persuasion (typically only once per scene unless something occurs to draw additional scrutiny), and if they succeed they notice that you're acting strangely. They can then make another opposed Notice roll against your Stealth to try and penetrate your disguise and determine your identity - or at the very least, they will recognise that you're trying to disguise your appearance, and notice any distinctive features.

If an observer beats your Persuasion but not your Stealth, they will only realise you're an imposter if you're impersonating a specific person, and they're familiar with that person. Otherwise they'll usually just do a double take, then continue with whatever they were doing.

Modifiers

• Without the necessary tools (such as makeup and suitable clothing) you suffer a -2 penalty to your disguise rolls.

• Charisma bonuses from Attractive, Very Attractive and Noble do not typically apply to Persuasion when used for disguise rolls, except in specific situations (e.g., impersonating another attractive person when you have Attractive, or using your Noble manners and bearing to impersonate another nobleman).

• If you are wearing clothing that partially conceals your appearance (such as a deep hood, or a masquerade ball mask) you receive a +2 bonus to your disguise rolls, as long as such clothing doesn't appear out of place.

• If you attempt to imitate a specific person, anyone closely familiar with that person is automatically treated as an attentive observer, and receives a +2 bonus to their Notice roll against your Persuasion. This bonus increases to +4 for a lover or close family member.

• Anyone who is very familiar with you (such as a friend, relative, or sworn enemy) receives a +2 bonus to their Notice rolls against both your Persuasion and Stealth.

• Other situational modifiers may apply at the GM's discretion, although these should usually be limited to +1/-1 for a minor advantage or disadvantage, and +2/-2 for a major advantage or disadvantage.

New Edge

Here's a new Edge to take advantage of the expanded disguise rule:

Master of Disguise (Professional)
Requirements: Novice, Persuasion d8, Stealth d8
  You receive a +2 bonus to Persuasion and Stealth when making disguise rolls. If you apply a disguise to someone else, they also receive a +2 bonus to Stealth (but not Persuasion) when making disguise rolls; this bonus does not stack with other Stealth bonuses granted by Professional Edges.

Savage Archery: Overview and design insight

Savage Insider volume 2 issue 2 has been released, and it includes my first "officially" published article: Savage Archery. Here's an overview of my article, for anyone who's not yet bought a copy of Savage Insider, along with some insight into the weapon design guidelines.

Savage Archery gives an overview of ranged combat, along with some tips and tactics for creating and playing an archer. There are also three pre-generated starting characters: Egil, Robin Hood, and William Tell.

After that comes a two-part weapon design system: Choose a type of bow (self, composite or compound) or crossbow (standard, arbalest, repeating or pistol), and then apply a draw-string pull (light, medium, heavy or great). The section finishes up with several archery accessories, such as tabs, bracers, and sights.

The next section covers arrows, which consist of a shaft (wooden, footed, fiberglass, aluminum, or carbon), head (pile, soft, bodkin, broadhead, blunt, fire cage, forked, signal, bowfishing, or quarrel) and fletching (handled as cosmetic trappings, to give each archer a unique flavour).

Edges come next (Born to the Bow, Crossbow Speed Shooting, Fast Shooter, Improved Fast Shooter, Precision Shooting and Stab and Shoot) along with a Hindrance (Reckless Shot).

Finally there's a section on botches, which includes a critical failure table for archers.

Backward Compatible Bows

One of my design goals with the bow and crossbow creation system was that the weapons should be backward compatible with those in SWD. This was a bit tricky, because the English longbow costs $200, while the standard bow costs $250. After some consideration I realised that it's never specified what type of bow the "bow" is - if it were a composite bow, then of course it would make sense for it to cost more. Following that assumption, each weapon can be created as follows:

• The default "bow" would be a medium-pull composite bow, using soft headed arrows with wooden shafts. The medium-pull grants the 12/24/48 range and the Strength d6 requirement, as well as the weight and price.

• The "English longbow" would be a heavy-pull self bow, also using soft headed arrows with wooden shafts. The heavy-pull grants the 15/30/60 range and the Strength d8 requirement, as well as the weight and price, however the price of self bows is reduced to 40%.

• The "crossbow" would be a heavy-pull standard crossbow, using square-headed quarrels (AP 2 for a heavy-pull weapon). They'd be a bit less likely to break than the SWD bolts, but that's the only difference. The heavy-pull grants the 15/30/60 range, but crossbows always reduce their Strength requirement by 1 die step (in this case to d6) and double their weight (to 10).

But of course you're no longer limited to those three weapons. You could create a medium-pull self bow for example, it would have the same stats as the regular bow but cost only $100, however it would be long and cumbersome, and therefore difficult to use from a mount. Or you could create a heavy-pull composite bow for $500, it would be as as powerful as the English longbow but smaller and easier to carry around (a great choice for a mounted archer).

You could even create a medium-pull standard crossbow - it would have range 12/24/48, require Strength d4, have a weight of 6 and cost $250, but the quarrels would only have AP 1 (due to the weaker pull).

Superior Arrows

I choose to justify the AP of the crossbow through its quarrels rather than as an innate bonus of the weapon itself - so the quarrel is what gives the crossbow its AP 2. This means an archer can also gain AP (by using hardened bodkin arrowheads). However arrowheads only provide their full bonus when using a heavy-pull bow, and most people are only strong enough to use heavy-pull crossbows (because of the lower Strength requirement).

While the archer can raise his Strength to d8 to utilise a heavy-pull bow, the crossbowman can use that same advance to take the new Crossbow Speed Shooting Edge, so I think the two options (archer and crossbowman) should balance out.

Disclaimer: The compound bow also reduces the Strength requirement in the same way as a crossbow, however it's a modern weapon, and should therefore be compared with modern crossbows (which can be fitted with optic scopes).

Repeating Crossbows

Right from the beginning, I knew I wanted to include rules for Chinese repeating crossbows, however I wanted them to be at least reasonably realistic. An article I'd read suggested that a repeating crossbow could fire 10 bolts in 15 seconds, which is an average of 1 bolt every 1½ seconds. A round in Savage Worlds lasts 6 seconds, which meant the repeating crossbow should be able to fire 4 bolts per round.

The Automatic Fire rules state that the Rate of Fire (RoF) is multiplied by the number of Shooting dice to determine how much ammunition is actually used. Thus by giving the repeating crossbow RoF 2, it will indeed fire 4 bolts per round.

However the article also described how the repeating crossbow could be modified to fire 2 bolts at a time. While the Double Tap maneuver might seem a thematic fit for such an option, I felt it would make the modification a no-brainer, so instead I had it give a slight damage increase along with a range decrease.

The modified variant also allowed me to justify the Suppressive Fire maneuver. Suppressive Fire uses five times the RoF of the weapon, which in this case would be 10 bolts in a 6 second round. While that's fine for guns, the Chinese repeating crossbow is simply not able to fire bolts that fast - however the modified version can shoot twice as many bolts (8 in 6 seconds), which I felt was close enough.

Summary

Savage Archery was a fun article to write, and quite a lot of thought went into the weapon design system. If you like my other fan stuff then I think you'll enjoy this article as well.

But of course that's just one article, and Savage insider is packed with loads of excellent content by a number of different authors. Please do check it out if you haven't already.