11/11
2009

Alternity: Action Check Tracker

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Alternity, WotC’s late, lamented sci-fi RPG, has a pretty interesting way of doing “initiative” (known as action checks): You make a roll against your action check score, and get an Amazing result, a Good, an Ordinary, or a Marginal. That represents the first phase, out of four, that you’ll be able to act.

Your next action comes on the following phase, and if you have three actions, your third is on the phase after that — assuming that you rolled high enough on the action check. A hero with 3 actions needs to get a Good result on the action check to use all of her available actions in a given round.

So, it can get kind of complex, and you roll an action check each round — which means this all needs to be tracked. Back in the day, ten years ago, I would use a whiteboard on a wall, with columns drawn representing each of the phases and rows representing each hero or enemy. I’d place a checkmark in the appropriate square to represent their action on that phase, and then erase it when they acted.

Alternity Action Checks: Amazing, Good, Ordinary, Marginal

Now that I’ve started up Alternity, I figured there must be a better way — and there is! I have a lot of craft-foam tokens and markers that I use in 4e D&D, and they’re in a variety of colors. (Most are 1-inch square, although some are 1-inch-diameter round.)

Each hero gets to choose a color, like pink or yellow or blue or green, that will represent them on the action check tracker. I have them give me one token for each action they can (theoretically) take in a round.

When combat starts, I choose another color (or colors) for their opponents, usually something like brown or black or white or tan. I ask the players for their action check results, and then place their colored action token in the appropriate phase on a my action check tracker, and do the same for their opponents.

Then it’s just a simple case of going through the phases and removing each token as the action is taken, and setting it aside. At the end of the round, I’ve got an empty action check tracker, and a pile of tokens — ready for next round’s action checks!

If you play Alternity and would like to download a copy of my action check tracker, here’s a link; it also includes a tracker for the current round of combat. Of course, a piece of paper with four phases written on it is pretty easy for you to make up youreself; I created the prototype of the action check tracker with two 3-by-5 cards and a Sharpie!

10/27
2009

Star*Drive Character Sheet for Alternity

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Updated! I’m running a campaign of Alternity — TSR’s late, lamented science fiction game from the end of the 1990s — and so I whipped up a character sheet for the Star*Drive setting. You can download it, if you want:

Changelog

7 Nov 2501 2009: Newly updated to include better layout for skills, enough durability boxes for werens, the Stealth skill (which was accidentally left out), and a footer with the download URL.

10/15
2009

Combat tracking tables, by character

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Last Friday, during the middle of RinCon, I got a great idea for a D&D one-shot that I wanted to run — “DragonSlayer”: a one-shot with Epic-tier, level 26 characters. Sadly, due to a lot of bad luck and an outbreak of serious depression, I never got to run the game, but I may do so sometime in the future; I still have the character sheets.

One thing I discovered was that level 26 characters don’t necessarily have that many more powers than other characters — sure, they’ve got 17 powers (roughly) compared the 4 at first level, but level 13 characters have 13 — but they’ve sure got a heck of a lot more things you’ve got to look for. Conditions that may or many not apply, powers or feats that trigger off of certain situations, times you need to check not what you are doing but what an enemy or ally does as well.

Even in the regular campaigns I play in or run, which are levels 2, 4, and 6, we’ve got multiple instances of players simply forgetting to use a power when they could have. Our bard in last night’s game did this quite spectacularly well, including forgetting to give us temporary hit points and bonus on healing surges spent during a short rest.

e at Geek’s Dream Girl describes a similar situation she had last weekend, playing level 27 characters:

Will it be hard to keep track of everything my character can do?

Short answer – yes.

Long answer – as a Leader, there were a lot of things I could do that added bonuses not only for myself, but for other members of the party. Some of these affected those next to me (for example, I bought an armor set), some affected those next to my battle standard (which I only used in one out of the three encounters, and not to any great effect), and others affected those next to my spirit companion. To top it off, I had one that affected me, but only for the first round of combat before I was attacked. What’s my AC? F- if I know!! Hahaha!

I think it would be much easier if I had “grown up” with BigByrde rather than trying to run her at 27th level. It’s easier to remember things when you’re only adding them a bit at a time.

And here I was expecting people to sit down at the convention table and run level 26 characters they’d never seen before and didn’t even create themselves? Madness!

So here’s what I did.

I went through each pre-gen character’s sheet, page by page, feat by feat, class ability by class ability, power by power, item by item — and I created a table in OpenOffice that listed each thing that each player had to keep track of in combat.

Here’s the example for Nalla, the level 26 Goliath fighter pre-gen:

An enemy marked by you…
…shifts. Make a melee basic attack against the enemy, if adjacent to you. If you hit, you do an extra +6 damage. Combat Challenge (fighter), Potent Challenge (feat)
…makes an attack which doesn’t include you. Make a melee basic attack against the enemy, if adjacent to you. If you hit, you do an extra +6 damage. The marked enemy takes a -3 penalty on attacks against anyone except you. Combat Challenge (fighter), Potent Challenge (feat), Daunting Challenge (feat)
You attack with…
…an opportunity attack. +2 on the attack roll. If you hit, the target’s movement ends. You push the target 1 square, whether you hit or miss. Combat Superiority (fighter), Knock-Back Swing (feat)
You miss with…
…your hammer. You do 6 points of damage. Hammer Rhythm (feat)
…an opportunity attack. You push the target 1 square and do 6 points of damage. Knockback Swing (feat), Hammer Rhythm (feat)
You successfully hit with…

…a melee attack.

 You can use the Encounter power on your Giantkind Gloves. You can use the Daily power of your Belt of Giant Strength. Giantkind Gloves (item), Belt of Giant Strength (item)

…a 19 or 20.

 You score a critical hit. You do +5d6 damage. You make a saving throw against one effect that a save can end, with a +5 bonus. You can use the Daily power of your Legendary Craghammer. You can use the Encounter power of your Citrine Solitaire. Bludgeon Mastery (feat), Legendary Craghammer (item), Amulet of Double Fortune (item), Citrine Solitaire (item)

…an attack granted by Combat Challenge.

 You do an extra +6 damage. Potent Challenge (feat)
…an attack that pushes or knocks the target prone. The target takes 6 damage. Trample the Fallen (Iron Vanguard)
…an attack that drops your foe to 0 hp. You regain 6 hp. Enduring Warrior (Iron Vanguard)
…an attack that adds a condition a save can end. Your enemy takes -2 on the saving throw. Thunder Hammer (feat)
You spend an action point…
…to take an extra action You gain +4 to your defenses until the start of your next turn. You regain the use of an Encounter power you have already expended. Ferocious Reaction (Iron Vanguard), Martial Mastery (feat)
An ally…
…is adjacent to you. The ally gets +1 on Armor Class. Phalanx Warrior (feat)
…rolls initiative, within 5 squares of you. The ally gets +2 item bonus on initiative checks. Helm of Battle (item)
You are…
…hit by an area or close attack. Immediate Interrupt: You can use the Daily power of your Dragondaunt Shield. Dragondaunt Shield (item)
…hit by a critical attack by a non-minion. Gain a +6 bonus to damage rolls against that enemy until the end of the encounter. Tattoo of Vengeance (item)
You…
…roll an Athletics check to jump or climb. Roll twice and use either result. Powerful Athlete (Goliath)
…make a saving throw. For the first saving throw in an encounter, roll twice. Markings of the Blessed (feat)
…drop to 0 hit points. You can spend an action point to take an action, and you gain +4 to your defenses until the start of your next turn. You can use your No Surrender daily power. You can use the Daily power of your Ring of Invigoration. Enduring Warrior (Iron Vanguard), No Surrender (Utility 10), Ring of Invigoration (item)
…make a Strength check or a Strength-based Skill Check. You can add +10 to the result, once per day. Unending Strength (Eternal Defender)
…use your Stone’s Endurance power. You gain 19 temporary hit points. Unyielding Stone (feat)
…spend a healing surge. You gain 6 temporary hit points. Grit (feat)

Nalla’s tracking table was the simplest; some, like the warlock’s, were pretty damn crazy when certain synergies started piling up on top of each other:

You successfully hit…
…with a roll of 20, a Large or larger dragon affected by your Warlock’s Curse with an attack while concealed due to Shadow Walk and you have combat advantage against that enemy, which is also the target of your your Immortal Curse:

You score a critical hit. You do an extra 13+5d12 damage. The target grants combat advantage to you and gains vulnerable 5 fire, until the end of your next turn. If you deal your Warlock’s Curse extra damage to the target, you do an extra 30 damage. You gain 1 action point that must be spent before the end of your next turn. You ignore any resistance to fire the target may have.

I still need to work out how to generalize this solution and come up with some sort of form, chart, reminder tool, or other physical artifact to create something like this that doesn’t involve just opening a word processor — but for now, this is an approach I’m probably going to use on my own characters in the future so that I actually can keep track of what I can and can’t do in any particular situation.

10/13
2009

Skill challenge tiles, one more time

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@gamefiend asked me to try setting up one of his skill challenges with the tiles.

Here’s what I’ve got — sorry about the crappy picture.

skillchallenge-demo-08

A few things to note:

  • I don’t have enough tiles printed up — only one set — which means that I wasn’t able to fully model the skill challenge. The black tokens mark the tiles which have the wrong difficulty level, and which would be replaced with the correct tiles if I ran off another sheet of them.
  • The white tokens to the left of some of the tiles indicate “assassin caught.”
  • The little stacks of 2 green tokens are supposed to show “this counts as 2 successes” but in retrospect, that would have been better represented by a die on each, turned to the “2″ value.

It seems the tiles sorta work for this, and would have gotten a lot closer if I’d printed and cut out more sets. It does come out to be a pretty complex arrangement of tiles — but comparable to some of the more elaborate layouts of dungeon tiles I’ve seen or used as well.

10/13
2009

Easy-prep skill challenges with skill challenge tiles

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I just sent out my weekly announcement to my players about gaming on Wednesday evening, and that reminded me that the PCs had captured a hobgoblin archer and are likely to interrogate and/or question him to try to find out why the archer’s (still unseen) cyclops boss took over the centaur village in the first place.

I sat down with the skill challenge tiles in front of me and in about two minutes had the skill challenge all planned out. No flipping through rulebooks for skills lists or DCs, no writing down actions the PCs could take — just moving a few tiles around, and a couple markers.

skillchallenge-demo-06

Here’s how you’d read these skill challenge tiles:

  • This is a Complexity 2 challenge, because the green die — for number of successes needed — reads “6″ as per the chart on the central tile.
  • You can use Intimidate against the guy, and it’ll be easy — you already shot up all his friends last week — but it’ll only give one success (the blue token). You can’t really get the guy any more scared of you than he already is.
  • Diplomacy and Bluff will both work to get information out of the hobgoblin.
  • If you make an Insight check, albeit a hard one, you’ll unlock an easy Streetwise roll. This guy would really just like it if you’d be nice to him and offer him a drink.
  • Also, he was just in a fight and took some damage. If you Heal him, it’ll actually make the Diplomacy checks easier — a green (easy) tile instead of yellow (moderate).
  • Religion, History, and Arcana are secondary skills that will tell you about the area you’re in and help you figure out the right questions to ask the hobgoblin; they’ll give +2 on the next check (or -2 on a failed knowledge check).
  • A successful Arcana check will also unlock an easy (green) Nature check. Ooh, mysterious! What could it mean?
  • The DCs for the skill checks don’t need to be calculated out — they’re already on the center tile. The players are level 2, so easy is DC 5, moderate is DC 10, and hard is DC 15.

For more example of how I’m using skill challenge tiles, see this blog post. You can download and print your own copies to use in your game also.

10/13
2009

Skill Challenge Tiles

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So, 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons uses maps and miniatures and dungeon tiles and markers extensively in combat.

But when it comes time to do skill challenges — the structured, non-combat “encounters” that let characters put their non-violent training to work — the tiles vanish, the markers disappear, and everything becomes very abstract.

What’s more, players are often left guessing which skills the Dungeon Master is hoping they’ll choose to use in order to proceed with the encounter. Sometimes, it feels like half the “challenge” is reading the DM’s mind to discern how she’d solve the problem she’s set up, and the other half is hoping your character has the skill training necessary to participate.

In short, skill challenges are a neat idea, but they usually bring the game to a screeching, derailing halt and go off in a very non-D&D-4th-edition direction whenever one pops up.

I’ve got several ideas, ranging from subtle to wholesale rewrites, on how to “fix” skill challenges, or at least make them something I’d like to run and play. Here’s the first of my ideas.

Skill Challenge Tiles

Just as you’ve got maps for combat, so also should you have something tangible, out there in front of the players, for them to look at and scrutinize and strategize over while facing a skill challenge. So I’ve created skill challenge tiles.

There’s one big central tile that serves as the framework around which the other tiles are placed. It’s a 7 x 7 square — all the tiles are made to fit on the battlemaps beside your dungeon tiles — and it includes a handy reference to skill check difficulty classes (DCs) and the types of things you can do with skills.

It’s also got places to track the number of successes and failures, using dice or markers.

4e-Skill-Challenge-Central-Tile

The other types of tiles are the skill tiles. There are three tiles per skill, one each of easy (green), moderate (yellow) and difficult (orange). These correspond to the three levels of difficulty for skill challenges; the exact DCs, based on the challenge’s level, are printed on the central card.

nature-tile-easy

athletics-tile-moderate

streetwise-tile-hard

The skill tiles are placed around the central tile, with the primary skills of the challenge — those which grant successes or failures — on the left side of the central tile, and secondary skills on the right-hand side.

Example: The Negotiation

skillchallenge-demo-02

This skill challenge is from the Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 76 — the sample skill challenge named “The Negotiation,” which also has an example of play. The orange d12 is showing that 8 successes are needed to complete the challenge, and the green d12 shows that 4 have been achieved. The red d6 is marking a failure — strike one out of the three that would end the challenge.

The primary skills are Bluff, Diplomacy, and Insight, and they’ve all got moderate DCs (yellow). The History skill is offset to the side, beneath Diplomacy, indicating that it’s only available to be used once a successful Diplomacy check has been made.

Example: Urban Chase

skillchallenge-demo-04

Also from the DMG (page 78), this example shows Acrobatics and Athletics as moderate DC checks, and Streetwise as hard. The Perception skill is easy (green) but it doesn’t give any successes or failures; instead, a successful Perception check gives a +2 bonus on the next character’s skill check, while a failure gives a -2 penalty.

Example: Lost in the Wilderness

skillchallenge-demo-01

I have some tokens of various colors made out of craft foam cut into one-inch circles. They’re good for marks, quarries, oaths, curses, bloodied, and other effects because they’re still readable when stacked under a miniature.

In this example (from DMG page 79), I show how you can use these kinds of tokens instead of dice. At the start of the skill challenge, I placed six green tokens on top of the “successes needed” box. As the players got successes, I moved the green tokens from the “needed” to the “achieved” box; the two failures (so far) are indicated by the red tokens on the fail boxes.

Example: The Angry Druid

skillchallenge-demo-05

This is a more complex skill challenge created by Mike Mearls for his “Ruling Skill Challenges” column in Dungeon Magazine. Here I am using the orange d12 to show the number of successes needed, and the tokens to show the number achieved so far.

Each of the primary skills can grant only two successes in this encounter, and so I’ve stacked them with two counters each — blue and green, just to make them more distinct, but they both mean the same thing. With a success, the tokens will be moved from the skill tile onto the central tile — as has been done already with the blue token that used to be on the Diplomacy tile. One success!

If you’d like to give these a try, you can download and print PDF versions of the skill challenge tiles from my game design website, Bold Pueblo, using the following links:

Enjoy!