Fit or Fat

For me, a steaming hot cup of (black) coffee in the early morning sunshine is just about my favorite vice to indulge, especially if I can savor it alone (i.e. before my family awakens). It beats even an ice cold (dry) gin martini or frosty pint glass of beer on a warm summer evening. In fact, just about the only way I can think to make the experience better (other than sitting on some outdoor veranda on Orcas Island with a view of the ocean and San Juans in all their splendor) is by adding a slice of apple pie, as I am doing this morning: home-baked (though not by me) with a buttery, flaky crust, and picked up at the local (Ballard) farmer's market yesterday. It was totally worth waiting in line the ten minutes (in mask) for a chance to buy one; Deborah (of Deborah's Pies) is only showing up every other week these days.

Unfortunately, I know that it's doing nothing good for my waist line (nor did the two pieces I had last night after dinner). Even before the pandemic hit, I was about 20 pounds overweight (floating around the 170s); in the last five months, I've added around 10 pounds to that figure (I'm somewhere between 185-188). For a 5'9" guy with a skinny frame (even at the height of my athleticism...in my early 20s...it was tough for me to get my weight much higher than 150), the extra pounds are noticeable. And it doesn't help that one of the "running beagles" tore his ACL a couple weeks back (though in a dog, it's called a CCL) so I'm not even getting the minimal daily walking exercise I was getting. I've tried limiting my caloric intake (cutting out the nightly booze for example) the last ten+ days just to stem the bleeding. But who can say no to fresh apple pie?

In working with encumbrance the last week or so (oh, you didn't see where I was going with this? Here are the prior posts, in case you missed them), I've been giving a lot of thought to how I want the system to run in my own game. And one of the things so many RPGs fail to take into account is how our own body weight encumbers us...carrying an extra 20-30 pounds of unnecessary body mass is the equivalent of strapping a couple bags of flour to your waist: if you add normal adventuring equipment and loot found on top of that, you're going to move slower and tire faster than someone who's fit and (relatively) svelte.

But "most RPGs" doesn't mean all RPGs: Jacob Norwood's fantasy RPG The Riddle of Steel was the first game (the only game? Maybe) to hip me to the concept. TROS's claim to fame is its ultra-realistic simulation of medieval combat, and so the ability to maneuver needs to take into account whether your character is slender swashbuckler with a case of rapiers or an obese bruiser ponderously swinging a cudgel. Crunchy as the system is, encumbrance in TROS is still more abstract than D&D (you base your encumbrance level on how well your character matches an illustration!) even as it divides characters into five categories: unencumbered, mildly encumbered, moderately encumbered, heavily encumbered, and overburdened. As far as tactical movement goes, these map fairly well to D&D's standard 12"/9"/6"/3" levels of encumbrance/movement, though making a distinction at the low end that D&D doesn't.

[what do I mean by that? Well, in D&D, so long as you're not wearing bulky armor, a lightly encumbered person moves 12" regardless of whether she's carrying minimal equipment or no gear at all. In TROS, "unencumbered" means nothing more than a single scabbarded weapon or a light bag/satchel; if you're carrying both (light bag AND satchel)...or a small backpack, or robes (which restrict movement), or a few extra pounds (ditto)...then you move into the "mildly encumbered" category. This would be the (D&D) equivalent of an 11" movement. In TROS it also subtracts one die from your combat pool, but the D&D rules do not provide combat adjustments for encumbrance]

[hmm...should D&D provide combat adjustments for encumbrance? A post for another time, perhaps]

When determining a character's encumbrance in TROS, you're not only looking at load and bulk, but also your character's body weight (relative to frame), i.e. how fat are you. An overweight character starts at moderately encumbered (D&D equivalent of 9" movement); an obese individual starts at heavily encumbered (D&D equivalent of 6" movement). Thus, while a trim "fit" warrior would only be overburdened (3")with an excessive amount of gear (a heavy and fully loaded back pack, multiple weapons, quivers and scabbards, both back-strapped and carried) an obese individual would count the same just by adding some light armor (say, a breastplate), a single hand weapon, and a large belt pouch.

But D&D doesn't take into account body type or fitness level. Heck, only AD&D has charts for (randomly) determining a character's height and weight, if you use the NPC tables found in the DMG (we always did, back in the day). I think most players (not all) probably think of their characters as reasonably fit with chiseled features and (in the case of fighters especially) washboard abs and rock hard biceps...a mental image drawn from adventure movies and comic books and supported by the illustrations found in modern day RPG texts.

Found the most ridiculous
image I could. There
were a lot of choices.

Consider, for a moment, that your campaign setting is some sort of pseudo-medieval one...or ancient bronze age one...or post-apocalyptic fantasy wasteland one. Consider for a moment that maybe there aren't 24 hour gyms, or pilates studios, or hot yoga classes to attend. Consider that maybe...maybe...the adventuring character isn't so much concerned with body sculpting, but rather with day-to-day survival, earning (or looting) gold coins, and using her skills in those pursuits. Maybe she doesn't have a battalion of hair and make-up artists to get her ready for her photo shoot; maybe she gets into a lot fights (fights that do damage), and spends a lot of time in dark underground caverns, going days (if not weeks) without bathing.

Maybe, in such a scenario, your character's ability scores are a reflection of her native ability and strength is simply a combination of genetics and raw "beef," not something carefully honed with nutritional experts, cross-training, and hours spent in the weight room. You have a high Strength score? You're big. And in OD&D, that's only really helpful if you're a fighter.

[here, again, is a good reason to play with the stripped raw OD&D rules. A high strength can help build a better fighter (bonus to XP earned as a prime requisite) but it provides no other (or minimal) bonuses. I actually really like Gygax's house rule (STR>14 gives a +1 attack/damage for fighters only) in this regard..the higher QUANTITY of muscle mass does not equal a lot of extra QUALITY]

Country strong, if you will. All those hours spent swinging a sword, riding a war horse, and trotting around in armor builds up certain muscle groups, endurance, and skill but this is all modeled with hit points, class, and level abilities (higher attacks and saves, etc.).  Your character isn't "cut" but she is harder...and she knows the proper way to use her size and weight to her advantage. And she probably has eating habits to match (and the metabolism to maintain it).

The fact is, being bigger and heavier puts a greater strain on your body regardless of whether it's muscle or fat. Large humans (even...and especially...professional athletes) tend to have far shorter life expectancies. More weight is more stress on muscles (including the heart), tendons/ligaments, and fragile joints.

You just don't see
enough portly wizards
(well, I don't).

SO, assuming you want to take this into account (and why else would I be writing this if I didn't?), is there a way to model a character with extra bulk in the D&D game? Sure, lots of ways. I could use random height/weight charts from the DMG, cross-reference them with the Adult Body Mass Index provided by the CDC and base my encumbrance calculations on that. But I prefer something simpler and a bit more abstract...especially as I'm using a rather abstract system of encumbrance and movement.

In OD&D, the Strength score represents (for me) size and mass, with muscle being a component of these (larger persons have larger muscles to move larger bodies). Constitution, on the other hand, represents a combination of health and fitness, and it is the intersection of these two things that determine how fat (or not) a character is.

[manual Dexterity isn't taken into account because, for me, it represents hand-eye coordination rather than agility. DEX does not provide a bonus to armor class in my game]

STR is thus compared to CON to determine how "svelte" a character is, relative to her size. If a character's strength exceeds constitution by more than three points, then the character is overweight ("husky," if you prefer). If a character's strength exceeds constitution by more than six points, then the character is obese ("fat," in other words).

What are the ramifications of this? A reduced movement rate in D&D. Since D&D uses a four-tier system (unlike TROS), being overweight would reduce you to three-quarter speed (9" movement) while being obese would reduce you to half speed (6" movement) with a reduced carrying capacity (for encumbrance purposes) in both instances...you're already carrying an extra load, buddy!

Is it realistic to consider this aspect of human life in your game? I think so. Do these rules suck? Sure...but I allow PCs to arrange their ability scores to taste, so I'm not forcing them to be a high strength character with a low constitution. It's your choice if you want your PC to be "big boned."

But can't my character go on a diet? You heard the part about no gyms and pilates classes, right? There's no Weight Watchers, or Atkins, or Jenny Craig, either! I have some starvation rules (for characters who lose their rations) that will result in a gradual loss of Strength points over time, so a fat character could eventually have her weight balance as her mass comes more in synch with Constitution...but a character regains Strength after resuming regular meals (ah, the bounce back! It's why starvation diets don't work), so that's a short-term "solution" at best. Maybe a magical tome or manual of healthful eating? Oh, wait: that already exists in AD&D (the manual of bodily health: raises your Constitution by 1 point after following "a regimen of special dietary intake;" good enough).

All right, all right...I can see some players will still hate these rules. Sorry. Personally I like the variation they add (at least, I'm intrigued enough to try them out). However, to help mitigate complaints, I'll throw folks a bone: the extra "padding" your character has is worth a few extra hit points:

Overweight characters: add +1d4 hit points
Obese characters: add +1d6 hit points

This is a one-time bonus, received at 1st level only, unlike the bonus for a high Constitution which is added every level as long as a character gains hit dice. Note that because OD&D doesn't award a HP bonus for anything less than CON 15, it's impossible to receive both a bonus for "fitness" and for being overweight: the two are mutually exclusive.

Cheers, folks. Stay safe (and sane).

This jolly soul only moves 6".

Re-Tooling Combat (for FUN!)

Another "thought exercise;" AKA Putting Off The Taxes.

Part of the problem with addressing a single element of RPG combat (like the form and function of armor mechanics) is that you're messing with a complex system that's elements have been designed to work in tandem. At best, it's a "patch" that (often) causes other problems to raise their head, not the least of which might be an impact on that all important playability (making a system clunkier in play, reducing the overall "fun level"). At worse, a change in a single element might cause the whole system to fall apart, and/or wreck playability to a point where it's more fun to not play (or play something different).

"Ooo, how melodramatic, JB." Look, folks...I'm not saying you can't tinker. But I'd guess there are other folks out there (like myself) who have tried other RPGs and simply found they disliked their mechanics for one reason or another, and have set aside a system completely because of it. In fact, I know there are, judging by the blog posts I've read around the internet of people adapting specific game settings to their own favorite system rather than use the system intended by a game's designer. Sometimes a "patch" just doesn't work...and people have different preferences when it comes to the games they play. It happens.

ANYway...when it comes to a complex game system (like combat), tinkering with important elements of said system simply to match your "world view" can have problematic consequences. To really make your system work, sometimes you've got to go for a complete rebuild...if only to ensure that all the different interconnected elements are working together.

FOR EXAMPLE: say you're using the standard D&D combat chassis. You roll a D20 and compare the result to your probability of hitting based on two parts: your character's class/level, and the defender's "armor class." Simple enough, right? But if you restructure "armor" to act as a form of damage reduction (as many game systems do), then what are you rolling against? A reduced "AC" based solely on dexterity and/or magical bonuses? As the alternate rules in Dawn of the Emperors points out, this will result in "a lot more hitting" with less damage being inflicted (at least against armored types). Perhaps this will appeal to some folks ("hey, I whiff less often!"), but it feels like it would simply draw out a fairly simple (often uninteresting) combat system.

There are other alternatives: Saga Star Wars bases a target's AC (I think it might be called "defensive class") on the defender's level of experience (higher level characters are harder to hit), and something like that might be adapted. Games where combat rolls are unopposed skill checks (like Chaosium's base system) only tracks the attacker's proficiency ("If I roll under 75% I hit, and then your armor reduces damage!"), but doesn't account for the defensive ability of the opponent except as an additional system (parry skill, dodge skill) made to resist. Palladium kind of splits the difference: melee rolls use a D20 and any roll over 5 "hits" (yay!), but then needs to exceed a defender's defensive roll (parry/dodge) IF the defender chooses to do so, and THEN perhaps another roll to reduce damage (roll with blow), before finding out how armor reduces damage (which is dependent on the initial roll and the armor's Armor Rating and Structural Damage Capacity).

Palladium system's are over on the extreme side of granularity in combat (though I'd argue against them modeling any type of "reality") but they're certainly not the MOST granular. That distinction belongs to The Riddle of Steel, whose system I won't bother to detail here, as it's system mastery requirements are a bit outside the pay range of myself and most of the dudes I play with.

Instead, let's just stick with D&D for the moment. What's nice about D&D (for me) is it's ABSTRACT nature. In a ten second round, my mind's eye imagines two combatants attacking back and forth and the success of their attacks can all be boiled down to a couple D20 rolls. Still, though, there are aspects that bug me: should a 1st level cleric really have the same chance to damage a 3rd level fighter, given that they're both wearing plate-&-mail and they're weapons do D6 damage? Should a wizard really be wicked in a knife fight? I had the chance to watch a midnight showing of The Revenant last Friday (need to write about THAT), and the whole climactic battle I'm thinking, who the hell thought it was a good idea to make the dagger the go-to weapon of a spindly academic?

SO (just to keep going with the thought exercise), if we take armor out of the equation, and we decide we want to leave combat abstract (unlike the multiple maneuver monstrosity of TROS), how can we determine if a character's attack is successful? Well, just looking at man-to-man...er, human-to-human combat for the moment, let's consider perhaps the concept that (given both individuals are aware of each other and fight-worthy) the chance of inflicting mortal injury comes down to your own combat ability in relation to your opponent. In other words, if you're a better fighter than your opponent, you'll have an easier time, and if not, you'll have a harder time.

Sound good? Well, I'm going with it anyway. Exactly what determines "combat ability" is pretty easy with respect to humans: training and experience (i.e. class and level) with fitness/athleticism (ability bonuses) playing some part, too...perhaps as a bonus or penalty. It would be a ridiculous exercise in "clunk" for me to do up tables cross-referencing every level of every class against every other level of every class, so what I need is some sort of short-hand for cross-referencing. For example, what level of experience would a cleric need to be to have the same combat ability as a 4th level fighter? 7th? 9th? In B/X a cleric of levels 5-8 have the same attack abilities of a fighter of levels 4-6, and while I may not agree with the scale of B/X, I do agree that when determining combat proficiency, there should be tiers of ability, with each tier containing a range of levels. It's not just as simple as "gain a level, earn a +1 base attack bonus."

[of course, that's my own bias when it comes to modeling. For me, there just shouldn't be much difference between a 4th level fighter and a 6th level fighter when it comes to attack ability...we tend to learn in stages and have sudden "leaps" of realization. In my experience fencing, I can easily take apart someone who has little or no experience, but would be hard-pressed against people of equal experience unless I had some advantage in athleticism (not bloody likely). Meanwhile, I might score a few touches against an opponent with a couple more years of experience, but would be hard pressed to win...and against my old instructor (only a few years older than myself) I probably wouldn't score even a point. And he wasn't even in the same league as individuals who pursue the sport on a national or international level...]

So, strike bands (as in bandwidth)...that's what I'm calling my "tiers of combat ability." Consider a range of about five bands (labeled A-E), with A being your average "normal, non-combatant trying to fight" and E being reserved for truly legendary fighters (and non-fighters being limited to D as their maximum ability). Strike bands would be cross referenced to find the target number needed for an attack to succeed, with two opponents of equal ability having a 50% of succeeding on an attack and success being adjusted upwards (and downwards) from that baseline.

It's not really a new concept...very similar to Warhammer (the war-game's) comparison of WS versus WS in melee combat to determine the number needed on a D6 (WS stands for "weapon skill" and represents hand-to-hand ability). My initial thought would be to have the percentages scale like: 95% (the maximum...for an attacker with 3+ strike bands more than the opponent), then 85%, 75%, 50% (even ability), 25%, 15%, 5% (the minimum...against a defender with 3+ strike ranks more than the attacker).

[there is a degree of diminishing returns. I would fare no better against an Olympic-level fencer than I would against my instructor (at least, back when we were both in our primes)...but I'd fare no worse, either. I mean, how do you do worse than "losing quickly and embarrassingly?"]

The neat thing about the strike band idea is that it's fairly easy to slide them up or down to account for  specific circumstances. A fighter using a shield increases her strike band by one when defending (for example). A magic weapon increases a strike band by one (when attacking). Characters using missile weapons would simply use strike band A, and then range would be considered for defense (with A, B, and C corresponding to short, medium, and long). Specialist marksmen could increase their missile strike band to B. Cover could increase range by one step (to a maximum of D).

Monsters would be assigned strike bands based on their size, speed, and general ferocity. I can see something like:

A: used for creatures who are small (kobolds) or slow (skeletons and zombies)
B: used for man-killers (orcs, tigers, etc.)
C: used for exceptionally large monsters (ogres, trolls, etc.)
D: used for incredibly fast, strong critters (dragons, bloodthirsters, tyrannosaurus rex, etc.)

You could even combine it with 5E's advantage/disadvantage mechanic. A (slow) giant might use strike band D with disadvantage, while super heroic types (vampires, wraiths) might use strike band C with advantage. Ability bonuses (for strength and dexterity) would still add to the D20 roll (yes, I'd change those percentages into D20 target numbers) rather than shifting strike bands.

Anyway...that's just one idea. I'm sure there are others. Now, I really need to get back to my taxes.

+1 Strike Band (offense AND defense)
when attacking unmounted opponents