 Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash For part one of this series, click here. For part two, click here.
With this installment, we're going to dive into the nitty-gritty of one of the coolest innovations in James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess: The Specialist class. One thing LotFP does better than any other B/X clone is that it streamlines the skill check system. Every character, regardless of class, has the same Base 1 in 6 chance to perform some common activities. Those activities include things like stealth, climbing sheer surfaces, and picking locks or disarming traps (combined under the name "tinkering" in Raggi's system). The assumption is that any adventurer would have been at least partially exposed to these skills, and have some chance of succeeding at them. Compare this to giving the Thief (and only the Thief) a percentile dice check for, say, moving silently and hiding. For new players, this can create the impression that only the Thief is capable of these things (wrong), rather than that he or she is simply better at them (right). Further confusing the issue is that the Thief is using a resolution mechanic none of the other classes use. If the entire party declares that they want to hide from an approaching group of sentries, what's the best way to determine success or failure for the non-Thief characters? Enter, the LotFP Specialist class. The Specialist starts the game with the same Base 1 in 6 skills that all player characters have, plus 4 skill points to distribute as they see fit. At each level, they gain two more skill points. Not only does this greatly simplify the concept of "Thief skills" for new players, it also allows for plenty of player customization. Prefer playing an assassin over a standard Thief? Put all your points into Stealth, Climbing, and Sneak Attack. Want a Bard-type character steeped in dungeon lore and history? Focus on Languages, Sleight of Hand, and Architecture. Even a Ranger-type character would be feasible. Just put all your points in Bushcraft, Climbing, and Stealth. Add to this the relative simplicity of introducing "custom" skills (seamanship for example), and just about any kind of character is possible. Even something as crazy as, say, a wall-climbing pirate captain in the Carpathian Mountains... SPECIALIST : Not all who oppose Dracula are skilled warriors, masters of magic, or cursed half-breeds. Some are ordinary people, forced to rely on skill rather than physical might or arcane power. Most would call these souls foolish for thinking they could stand against the armies of the night. Maybe they are. But the more sentimental among Wallachia's terrified populace look to these men and women as courageous beacons of hope. Specialists are those characters who, through vocation, background, or sheer determination, have mastered skills that most only dabble in. Some are highwaymen and criminals. Some are adventurers and explorers. Still others are simple tradesmen, applying their mastery of locks or animal trapping to the war against Dracula's minions. Whatever their background, Specialists begin the game at the same default skill level as all other characters, plus or minus applicable modifiers. At first level, they are awarded 4 additional Skill Points to distribute as desired, and an additional two skill points per character level. Each point applied improves the skill roll by one (1 in 6 becomes 2 in 6, for example). The exception is the Sneak Attack skill. Each point applied to Sneak Attack acts as a damage modifier. Spending no points grants no damage bonus. Spending one point multiples damage by two on a successful sneak attack. Spending two points multiples damage by three, and so on. Additionally, spending any points in Sneak Attack grants the Specialist a +2 bonus to hit on all sneak attack rolls. If any of the Specialist's skills are rated at 6 in 6, the player rolls 2d6 for every skill check. The check fails only if the player rolls a 6 on both dice. The Specialist must be unencumbered to use any skill that requires movement, or suffer a penalty of one skill point per point of encumbrance. Using the Tinker skill to pick locks, or disarm traps requires special tools. Specialists begin the game with a minimum of 4 Hit Points (roll 1d6 and apply Constitution modifier, ignore any result lower than 4). Grant DaNasty Specialist / Level 5 / Neutral Hit Points: 17 (d6 Hit Die) Melee Attack Bonus: +2 Ranged Attack Bonus: +3 Base Armor Class: 14 (Unarmored 12, +DEX bonus) Parry: +2 to AC Charisma 13 ( +1 to Retainer Recruitment, Loyalty) Constitution 12 ( +0 to Hit Points, Daily Travel Distance) Dexterity 16 ( +2 to Armor Class, Ranged Attack Bonus, Initiative) Intelligence 7 ( -1 to Saves vs Magic Effects, Languages) Strength 14 ( +1 to Melee Attack Bonus, Open Doors) Wisdom 10 ( +0 to Saves vs Non-magical Effects) Common Activities: (Base 1 in 6, Plus 12 Skill Points distributed) Architecture 3 in 6 Bushcraft 1 in 6 Climbing 6 in 6 (Roll 2d6, check fails only on a roll of 12) Languages 0 in 6 (Base 1 in 6, minus INT penalty) Open Doors 1 in 6 Search 1 in 6 Sleight of Hand 1 in 6 Sneak Attack damage x2, +2 to attack Stealth 1 in 6 Tinkering 1 in 6 Seamanship 3 in 6 (New Skill, character specific) Saving Throws: Paralyze Poison Breath Weapon Magical Device Magic Base: 11 12 14 13 12 With bonuses: 11 12 14 14 13
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 Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash This is a continuation of my previous post on the subject. For part one, click here.
We're approaching zero day with my group of first time D&D players, and I've selected a couple of easy, introductory adventures to run them through. But I'll admit, with Halloween around the corner and Castlevania returning to Netflix later this month, I'm sorely tempted to run them through Transylvania instead. The more I read through Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the more convinced I am that it's the perfect version of D&D to run a Castlevania-themed adventure with. Almost everything can be done with rules as written, and the rest can be handled with a simple re-skin. To prove the point (and flesh things out a bit more), today I'm tackling Alucard. Bit of background: I was a huge Ravenloft nerd back in my AD&D 2e days, and I bought every supplement for it I could lay my pimply little hands on. One of the neatest was the Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales boxed set, an alternate Victorian Earth in which player characters faced off against the likes of Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and Frankenstein's monster. Masque of the Red Death spawned a couple of supplements itself, one of which was A Guide to Transylvania. I ended up leaning heavily on it for my off-the-cuff Castlevania campaign. Anyway, one thing 2e was bad for (especially towards the end) was introducing new races and classes for every little character variation. Want to play a Gladiator in old school, B/X D&D? He's a Fighter. Done. But late 2e had the Gladiator Fighter's Kit (from The Complete Fighter's Handbook) the Gladiator class (from Dark Sun), and The Complete Gladiator's Handbook (which contained several kits for the Dark Sun Gladiator Class). Not to mention the Gladiator kit introduced in the The Glory of Rome sourcebook. Or the one introduced in Player's Option: Skills and Powers. Ravenloft and Masque of the Red Death were no different, and Guide to Transylvania introduced the new dhampir race. It was a half-human, half-vampire hybrid with way too many racial abilities and nowhere near enough disadvantages to make up for them. To avoid making the same power-creep mistakes here, I'm simply going to re-skin the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Elf as a dhampir. No, it doesn't have many racial abilities, but according to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, most of Alucard's abilities came from his magic items and learned spells. I'll put a couple at the end here, like I did with Trevor's Vampire Killer whip. As before, I'll preface the stats with a new, Castlevania-appropriate class description. DHAMPIR: Dracula and his vampire spawn prowl the night, and while their hunger for blood is legendary, the darker truth is that some harbor other appetites. While the Prince of Darkness is known to have loved only one woman, the same cannot be said for the other vampires stalking the lonely mountain passes of Wallachia. Some vampires charm their way into their victims' bedchambers, dropping them into a dreamlike state and ordering them to remove crosses and garlic from the windows. Others entice them out into the night, promising dark pleasures no human lover could hope to match. Whatever method the undead sire chooses to seduce his target, dhampirs—the children of these unholy unions—are truly damned souls. Neither human nor vampire, they live a grey nether-existence, hated and shunned by mortals and undead alike. Dhampir physical appearances vary as widely as those of humans, but often there is some feature telling of their unnatural parentage. Many have pale, almost porcelain-white skin. Others have odd, striking eye colors such as gold or cerulean blue. Still others have oversized, sharp canine teeth. Due to their supernatural blood, dampirs are naturally gifted in the arts of magic. Unlike human Magic Users, dhampirs only require one free hand in order to cast spells, and they can cast while heavily encumbered. They use the same spell list and spell progression table as Magic Users. Dhampirs have a certain physical prowess above that of most humans. As such, they get access to the Fighter's Press Attack and Defensive Fighting abilities, as well as sharing the Fighter's +4 AC bonus when choosing to parry. They do not gain attack bonuses for leveling up. Additionally, their senses are more acute than those of full-blooded humans, enabling them to notice more while Searching (2 in 6 at first level). They are only surprised on a roll of 1 in 6. Dhampirs begin the game with a minimum of 4 hit points (Roll 1d6 and add CON bonus, ignore any result lower than 4). Alucard Dhampir / Level 5 / Chaotic Hit Points: 29 (d6 Hit Die) Melee Attack Bonus: +2 Ranged Attack Bonus: +2 Base Armor Class: 17 (Alucard Mail 16, +DEX bonus) Press Attack: +2 to hit, -4 to AC Defensive Fighting: +2 to AC, -4 to Hit Parry: +4 to AC Charisma 16 ( +2 to Retainer Recruitment, Loyalty) Constitution 13 ( +1 to Hit Points, Daily Travel Distance) Dexterity 15 ( +1 to Armor Class, Ranged Attack Bonus, Initiative) Intelligence 13 ( +1 to Saves vs Magic Effects, Languages) Strength 14 ( +1 to Melee Attack Bonus, Open Doors) Wisdom 13 ( +1 to Saves vs Non-magical Effects) Spells Per Level: 1st Level / 2nd Level / 3rd Level 3 2 1 Common Activities: Architecture 1 in 6 Bushcraft 1 in 6 Climbing 1 in 6 Languages 2 in 6 (Base 1 in 6, plus INT bonus) Open Doors 2 in 6 Search 3 in 6 Sleight of Hand 1 in 6 Sneak Attack damage x1 Stealth 1 in 6 Tinkering 1 in 6 Saving Throws: Paralyze Poison Breath Weapon Magical Device Magic Base: 11 10 13 11 13 With bonuses: 10 9 12 10 12 Dark Metamorphosis 2nd Level Spell Duration: 2 rounds/caster level Converts enemy blood to life force. Once cast, this spell heals the caster for the equivalent of 1/2 hp for every point of damage dealt to an enemy, rounded up. The regenerated HP cannot exceed the caster's current maximum, and the enemy must be capable of shedding blood. Hellfire 1st Level Spell Duration: Instant Range: 100' + 10'/Level This spell causes a small ball of fire to shoot forth and strike a target of the caster's choosing, causing 1d6+1 damage. The target must be at least partially visible to the caster. For every three caster levels after 1st, an additional fireball is generated: two at 4th level, three at 7th, four at 10th, and the maximum number of five at 13th level and above. Crissaegrim (Medium Sword, +2) Crissaegrim is a medium-sized sword with an elegant, curved blade. It grants its user +2 to attack, and does 1d8 points of damage. Additionally, Crissaegrim has has a "cyclone attack" power, which can be used twice per day and lasts for one turn. When activated, every successful attack with Crissaegrim allows the user to make another, instant attack roll for an additional 1d8 damage. These attacks continue until an attack roll fails, the target is killed, or the maximum number of four attacks is reached. Soul of Bat (Artifact): When activated, this artifact enables the user to cast a limited polymorph spell, transforming him or her into a giant bat. The spell lasts for 1d10 turns, or until deactivated. It can be used three times per day.   As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've been drafted to run a D&D game for a group of new players. We're getting close to running our zero session, probably by the end of this week. I have two players interested in elves, and a third that apparently likes to play healing classes whenever he plays MMO's. I'll lay out all the options and see if that changes come game day, but for now I'm going to run with the assumption that this will be the makeup of the party.
If so, it throws a small hiccup into my plan of using Lamentations of the Flame Princess as my base. In LotFP, only Fighters get an increase to their attack bonus as they level up. I actually think this is one of James Raggi's more inspired decisions. It clearly blocks off combat as a the sole specialty of the Fighter, which then encourages the group to work together. After all, you're going to need at least one character to get better at hitting things as the game progresses. Otherwise, your band of adventurers is going to have a very short career. That said, as much as I admire Raggi's design choice, I'm not about to force a first-time player into a class they don't want. But one of the wonderful things about OSR games is the ability to mix and match them until you arrive at just the right combination. So, my options:
However I do it, I'm still planning to use the LotFP encumbrance system, as well as swapping out the Specialist class for the Thief. I also plan to keep the D6-based skill check system. Anyway, I'm rambling a bit here. The main thrust of this post is about a weird feature of Old-school D&D, and just how I'm planning to introduce it to a bunch of new players. That's right. I'm talking about Vancian Magic. I'll admit, I absolutely hated Vancian magic back in the day. I could never wrap my head around the "fire and forget" nature of the spells. How could a character spend hours studying a spell each day, only to forget it once it was cast? It never made sense to me, and when I ran my games I used a house-ruled "mana" system instead. Granted, now that I've actually read some Jack Vance, my opinion on the matter has changed. And as in so many things, context is everything. Part of the problem is that none of the more experienced guys in my old D&D group ever ran magic as anything other than a character's superpower. In every campaign, spells were widely known. You got access to spells automatically at new levels (no studying or finding a mentor), and there were mid-to-high level mages operating public shops in every jerkwater little village. Before every adventure, we could buy magic items, potions, and scrolls to our heart's content. I distinctly recall abandoning +1 Magic Swords when we found them on certain adventures, because they weren't even worth the effort of bringing them back to town to sell. Compare that to this passage from Vance's The Dying Earth: "At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam—Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East—swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated—though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Ponticella the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others. "Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort, forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal's Gyrator, Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipresent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch." In Vance's work, magic is mysterious, ancient, and virtually forgotten. Less than a tenth of the spells once known to humanity are left. Powerful wizards hoard them in hopes of getting one up on their rivals. Magic is the currency of power in this world, and great effort is spent to seek it out. Furthermore, the spells themselves aren't passive. Mazirian has to force them into his brain. Once there, the syllables and symbols struggle to escape his consciousness. Casting a spell in these stories isn't so much a matter of reciting words as it is releasing a chaotic force, one the magician is just barely holding in check. In this context, D&D's default "fire and forget" magic system makes sense. And while I can see why alternative spell systems are popular (like Sorcerers from the 3.X and later editions), there's a kind of pulpy weirdness to the Vancian method I really like. As for introducing it to the players, I'm probably going to kill two birds with one stone here, once again taking some inspiration from Vance. I'm thinking about giving the party a mid-level Mage as their patron/employer. He'll pay them on a freelance basis for recovering bits of magic for him. He's looking for anything at all: half-torn scrolls, pages from spell books, items he can research. In his quest to re-discover lost spells, he's spent decades tracking down minuscule scraps of them to re-assemble like a jigsaw puzzle. This also gives the PCs a specific reason to go dungeon delving, as well as reinforcing the overall mystery and rarity of magic. Plus it allows any magic-using PCs to have easy access to a mentor/teacher when it comes time to learn new spells. Sure, the set up has the potential to be a little railroad-y. But also I think it can give the PC's a little bit of forward momentum, provided I let the adventures themselves evolve organically. Hmm... I just might have to roll up a paranoid, power-hungry Wizard NPC along with the rest of the campaign splat.  Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash Back when I was still playing D&D regularly, I ran a mini-campaign for my brother and his friends based on Castlevania. It was a spur of the moment, on-the-fly thing, something to entertain us all for a weekend sleepover. I had no plan in place. All I really did was re-skin some stuff from the Ravenloft boxed sets, and run it with my usual, heavily house-ruled version of AD&D 2E.
Looking back, that weekend mini-campaign is still one of my all-time favorites. The off-the-cuff nature of the game, coupled with using someone else's established characters, gave it a kind of bootleg, punk-rock feel. It also ended in a total party kill, which wasn't common for my AD&D groups at the time. The "Belmont" character ended up getting bitten by a vampire and turning on the other players, the thief ran off alone and got torn apart by zombies, and the cleric killed the Belmont just in time to be eaten by werewolves. Needless to say, we had a blast. What got me thinking about this campaign again is a recent request some friends made. They've never played a tabletop RPG before, and they've apparently been looking to find a D&D group without much success. As soon as they found out I used to DM, they conscripted me to the cause. Not that they exactly had to twist my arm, mind you. Anyway, having been out of the hobby for almost twenty years, I realized I had to do a little research. I tapped out of D&D around the same time I joined the Marines, back in 2001. The big switch to 3E was just coming to my old gaming group, and since I was going away I never bothered to buy the rulebooks or learn the system. Of course, 3E is coming up on its 19th anniversary, and Wizards of the Coast has churned out three more editions since then. Four, if you count Essentials. I looked into all the various editions of D&D that have hit the market since I quit, including "kinda-D&D" games like Pathfinder and 13th Age. I was looking for a system that would be fairly light on rules and bookkeeping, easy for new players to pick up, and inexpensive. At the same time, I wanted something that definitely had that classic D&D feel. You know: the standard ability scores, the iconic character classes, d20 to attack, etc. Long story short, I ended up settling on James Raggi's excellent Lamentations of the Flame Princess. While the game has a (somewhat exaggerated) reputation for gore and extreme horror, at its core LotFP is exactly what I need:
Now, with everyone at the table being new, I don't plan on running any LotFP's published adventures. While I happen to like the "Weird Fantasy" aesthetic of the game, I want to break everyone in by running some vanilla D&D to start off. If everyone likes it, and everyone else is game, then maybe I'll start taking things off in some bizarre, horror-inspired directions. Which brings me back to the subject at hand. While familiarizing myself with the rules earlier today, it occurred to me that LotFP would be the ideal system to rerun that Castlevania mini-campaign with. For one thing, it's just stupidly lethal. Even by OSR/original D&D standards, LotFP is an unforgiving game. If the party doesn't work together (and work smart), their characters are going to die. And as anyone who's been knocked off the stairs by those motherf*cking medusa heads can tell you, "frequent player death" is a running feature of the Castlevania franchise. For another, LotFP has a baked-in grimdark feel. Maybe it's not as present in the core rules as in the adventure modules. But little things like the class descriptions and the slightly tweaked spells convey an overall sense of doom and darkness. If you wanted to run something that felt as violent and gritty as the recent Netflix series, this would do a better job of it than any of the other D&D retro-clones. The other thing is that being as rules-light as it is, any tweaks and house rules would be easy to incorporate. LotFP, like any other OSR game, is built with the idea that it's easier to add something you need than it is to cut out something you don't. Taking the mental experiment a little further, I decided to generate a sample character based on Trevor Belmont. For fun, I also wrote up some altered splat text for the Fighter class, to reflect the 1400's Transylvanian setting: FIGHTER: Most Wallachians live and die beneath Dracula's yoke, hollow, terrified souls too broken to look evil in the eye, much less stand against it. Better to die an ignoble death in obscurity, than to risk bringing that evil upon themselves. Fighters are different. Fighters are those who have seen the evil that Dracula's forces have brought to the land, and have vowed either to put it to the sword or to die trying. Some fighters learned their bloody skills serving in armies or mercenary bands. Others learned through necessity, desperately protecting their homes from Dracula's nightmarish hordes. Then there are those who simply dedicated their lives to learning the ways of the warrior, sworn to hunt evil wherever they find it, as if it were some sort of divine calling. Whatever their background, fighters are natural survivors. The rigors they've endured have toughened their bodies, so all first level fighters begin the game with a minimum of 8 hit points (roll 1d8 and add Constitution bonus, ignore any result lower than 8). Fighters start with an attack bonus of +2 at first level, and are the only class to gain an additional attack bonuses as they level up. Trevor Belmont Fighter / Level 5 / Lawful Hit Points: 42 (d8 Hit Dice) Melee Attack Bonus: +6 Ranged Attack Bonus: +8 Base Armor Class: 16 (Leather Armor 14, +DEX bonus) Press Attack: +2 to hit, -4 to AC Defensive Fighting: +2 to AC, -4 to Hit Parry: +4 to AC Charisma 7 ( -1 to Retainer Recruitment, Loyalty) Constitution 16 ( +2 to Hit Points, Daily Travel Distance) Dexterity 16 ( +2 to Armor Class, Ranged Attack Bonus, Initiative) Intelligence 13 ( +1 to Saves vs Magic Effects, Languages) Strength 11 ( +0 to Melee Attack Bonus, Open Doors) Wisdom 13 ( +1 to Saves vs Non-magical Effects) Common Activities: Architecture 1 in 6 Bushcraft 1 in 6 Climbing 1 in 6 Languages 2 in 6 (Base 1 in 6, plus INT bonus) Open Doors 1 in 6 Search 1 in 6 Sleight of Hand 1 in 6 Sneak Attack damage x1 Stealth 1 in 6 Tinkering 1 in 6 Saving Throws: Paralyze Poison Breath Weapon Magical Device Magic Base: 12 10 13 11 14 With bonuses: 11 9 12 10 13 Vampire Killer (Whip, +2) The Vampire Killer is the Ancestral Weapon of the Belmont family. When used against humans or other natural creatures, the Vampire Killer is a standard whip, as described in the equipment section of the LotFP Rules & Magic book: It is capable of making melee attacks on enemies up to 10' away, but has no effect on creatures with an unadjusted Armor Class of 14 or greater. On a successful attack roll, it does 1d3 damage (no magical bonus). When used against evil or supernatural creatures, however, the Vampire Killer takes on special properties. All successful attack rolls hit, regardless of unadjusted Armor Class. Damage is rolled as Great Weapon (1d10), with an additional +2 magical bonus. OPTIONAL RULE (Lightweight Weapon): Some weapons don't require muscle. They require finesse. As such, fighters have the option of applying either their strength bonus OR their dexterity bonus when using a whip. |
AboutI'm an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer based out of North Carolina. This is where I scream into the digital void. I like cookies. Archives
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