Stories instead of Skills

In my last session recap I mentioned using a special table to establish characters pasts. The idea was partially inspired by Warhammer's professions table and partly by reading a similar thing here. However, unlike Akrasia, I decided not to add any specific descriptions and make the whole thing as open to interpretation as possible. The reason for this is very simple, I decided to use character past as a guideline for ruling what skills the PCs posses.

Instead of including another elaborate system of rolling for stuff, I decided that it's way better to just roll once and gain some character depth along with the information about the skills they acquired before becoming adventurers.

For example, in my game there is a cleric of Skaghe who used to be a jester on a court of some northern lord. Not only is this funny, but also grants her some knowledge and abilities other characters don't have.

Perhaps she's able to juggle extremely well, or perhaps when the need comes, she might remember something about the heraldry of northern noble families?

In other words, anytime the player of the jester cleric feels her background can aid her, she can try and play that to her advantage. I might ask for some kind of a story from the characters past (that the player will have to improvise) to justify such use of this rule, or I might just say no.

Finally, here's the aforementioned table:


Character Background Table:

1-2 Slave
3-4 Tax collector
5-6 Acolyte
7-8 Bandit
9-10 Farmer
11-12 Armorer
13-14 Whore
15-16 Circus artist
17-18 Healer
19-20 Squire
21-22 Fisherman
23-24 Gladiator
25-26 Messenger
27-28 Candle maker
29-30 Miner
31-32 Jester
33-34 Bartender
35-36 Medium
37-38 Gravedigger
39-40 Card Shark
41-42 Hunter
43-44 Bounty hunter
45-46 Artisan
47-48 Wagon Driver
49-50 Sailor
51-52 Rat catcher
53-54 Nun
55-56 Potter
57-58 Mercenary
59-60 Thief
61-62 Barbarian
63-64 Noble
65-66 Cultist
67-68 Scribe
69-70 Bodyguard
71-72 Forester
73-74 Servant
75-76 Scout
77-78 Minstrel
79-80 Guard
81-82 Grave robber
83-84 Ferry man
85-86 Tanner
87-88 Blacksmith
89-90 Beggar
91-92 Bastard
93-94 Smuggler
95-96 Torturer
97-98 Wizards apprentice
99-00 Roll twice

Saves, not "safes"!!!

This is probably the last post on modifying S&W saving throws (here is the first and second entry on the subject).

Below is my proposition of two new save progressions. On the side there is the % chance of succeeding depending on the bonus from the ability linked to the save.

Save progression #1

Level	Save	Chance, no mod	Chance + 1	Chance +2
1	16	25%	30%	35%
2	15	30%	35%	40%
3	14	35%	40%	45%
4	13	40%	45%	50%
5	12	45%	50%	55%
6	11	50%	55%	60%
7	10	55%	60%	65%
8	9	60%	65%	70%
9	8	65%	70%	75%
10	7	70%	75%	80%
11+	6	75%	80%	85%

Save progression #2

Level	Save	Chance, no mod	Chance + 1	Chance +2
1	17	20%	25%	30%
2	16	25%	30%	35%
3	15	30%	35%	40%
4	14	35%	40%	45%
5	13	40%	45%	50%
6	12	45%	50%	55%
7	11	50%	55%	60%
8	10	55%	60%	65%
9	9	60%	65%	70%
10	8	65%	70%	75%
11+	7	70%	75%	80%

So as you see, the base save values are now a bit lower compared to the original ones, but thanks to the addition of the ability modifiers there is more variety.

The idea is to give each class one save throw based on progression #1 and two based on progression #2.

Let us see how it would look in the case of a level 2 cleric, with stats:

16 WIS (+2 mod)
11 DEX (no mod)
13 CON (+1 mod)

His "main" saving throw is Will:

Fortitude Save: 16 (+1 on the roll from CON)
Reflex Save: 16
Will Save: 15 (+2 on the roll from WIS)

He's chances for a successful saving throw would be: Fort: 30%, Ref: 25%, Will: 40%.

Additionally the original rules state that the cleric class has a special +2 bonus on saving throws against poison and paralyze (which would here belong to Fort save).

If you compare the saving throws of that 2 level cleric with the original save table for clerics, you will see, that altho his "secondary" saves are lower than they would be according to the original rules, his "primary" one is much higher.


The bottom line is , that even though I'm not completely convinced by my save house rules, they do seem to bring a bit more variety into the game. I'll try to go with them for now...

If you see a good reason why this post sucks, please inform me. I will greatly appreciate any input!

Roll against html tabels! or How I spent the weekend

Disclaimer: today's post contains a lot of numbers and math, even some %. Read on your own responsibility or skip to the end.


I will continue my musings on the problem of saving throws in S&W. I've decided to at least try to transform the single saving throw into a triple saving throw system like in 3.x e.

But first let's look at the original saving throw of S&W. There are two advancement tables, the first one is used by fighters and dwarfs, the second - clerics and magic users:

Level	Save#1	Save#2
1	14	15
2	13	14
3	12	13
4	11	12
5	10	11
6	9	10
7	8	9
8	7	8
9	6	7
10	5	6
11+	4	5

In order to be saved from doom you have to roll a d20 and get a number even to, or higher than the save score. It means that at first level the chances of successful save check are respectively 35% and 30 %. On level 11, the chances are: 85% and 80%.

Now. What I want to do:

divide it in to three save categories called Endurance, Reflex and Will,

each based on an advancement table similar to the above, but additionally modified by the abilities - Con, Dex and Wis respectively.

Yes, so basically it was already done in 3 e. I know. Move on.

So, let's suppose that I count ability modifiers like this:

3-4	-2
5-8	-1
9-12	0
13-15	+1
16-18	+2

And let's suppose that I use the S&W save progression #2 for Will saves of a character whose Wis is 18. Here's how that character's chances of making a successful save would look like:

Level	Old Chance	New Chance
1	30%	40%
2	35%	45%
3	40%	50%
4	45%	55%
5	50%	60%
6	55%	65%
7	60%	70%
8	65%	75%
9	70%	80%
10	75%	85%
11+	80%	90%

Ok. I wrote that shit down, because I'm a mathematical retard and this whole table clears things up.

As we can see, my idea is overpowering the players (duh) significantly. And as much as I like to awesome up players, making them invincible is a short path to boredom.

All this boring stuff leads us to one conclusion: in order to make this thing work, I to make need new save advancement tables...

The real question behind this conclusion is, is there any point?

Ok that was really boring!!!!!!!

This anecdote comes from fishlemons blog ( the other one):

" (...) so we ended up going to this lame party where some of our amusing friends were. yay. we smoked the joint walking up to the main door of the building and rang the door-communication-bell-thing, i take a drag as someone answers and squidman suddenly jumps up to it and says
- "Police!"
-*silence* *click*
i stare at him and he rings again quickly
-"no! its just me! Chri-!"
-*Click*



we look at each other, shrug and i give our friend who is at this party a call to tell her to let us in. (its freezing cold out there) This entire exchange has taken less than a minute... at the inner door we are met by some guy, who might have been the host or not, whatever. and only then does he realize that it really is only us. We walk into the middle of an eerily quiet party, because people are apparently HIDING. people managed to flush a substantial amount of weed down the toilet in that tiny amount of time.

god people are stupid.

turns out the entire party is a total of about 12 people, all but 4 of which are playing poker. with poker chips and a green felt table thingy and for money. .... seriously?
we found our friends (the 4 people not playing poker) in a room deeper in the apartment that was full of instruments like Mongolian violins, miniature banjos, lots of African drum things and guitars. Adam is cradling the banjo and plucking randomly to the beat of whatever strange electronic music is coming from the computer speakers.
there were some amusing moments when we lost 2 of our group to poker and just 4 of us played silly songs from J's ipod and we danced like strange, retarded, stoned and tipsy prehistoric birds. or something. (...)"