Carcerian Stones – The one with blue robes

August 10, 2009 By

We’re continuing the D&D adventure story. Previously, the party found themselves surrounded by skeletons. We have Ryan the human DM, Dan playing Toth the goliath warden, James playing Heoriss the eladrin invoker, Ian playing Iofae the eladrin sorcerer, and Klenn playing Phileas the half-elf bard. And now…

*****

Clanking softly, a skeleton clad in chainmail closed in on Toth, slashing with its sword. Another skeleton swung its sword on Phileas, while its brethren rained arrows on Heoriss and Iofae.

“Feel the light!” shouted Heoriss. The air blurred around him, and he vanished… into the midst of the archer skeletons. A column of pure white light burst from Heoriss. As the light enveloped the skeletons, lightning was already dancing on Iofae’s hands. 3 of the archers fell as dust, and Iofae pointed at the remaining archer. Lightning danced from his hands to the archer, disintegrating it, and danced again to the skeleton attacking Phileas.

Phileas moved around to shield Iofae, and swiped at the skeleton’s neck, dislodging its skull in the process.

Dan: How come I always get the hard ones?
James: Because you’re the defender. Now go defend us!

Toth swung his greataxe at the chainmail skeleton, staggering it. The skeleton seemed unaffected by the blow, and swung its sword upwards at Toth and nicked his arm. A beam of light, a crackling of lightning, and a well-timed sword thrust, and the skeleton collapsed.

The giant form of Mathea flew out from the cottage door, and he hit the ground with a groan. The wolf creature stood at the door, black drops of blood dripping. Mathea pointed at it, and vines burst from the ground to wrap around the creature’s feet. It howled, and black tendrils wrapped around Mathea, slowly engulfing him, and he disappeared. The creature stood still, staring at the party for a while. Then it lifted its maw and howled again, and it too disappeared in tendrils of black.

“Mathea!” Toth knelt at where the great goliath laid before he disappeared. The baying of wolves sounded in the distance. “We have to move now. I don’t think the creature’s done with us yet.” Phileas placed his hands on Toth’s shoulders.

“We can’t go back to the village.” Heoriss looked at Iofae. “The creature already found us there.”

“You came from Havenswerd, didn’t you?” Iofae asked Phileas. “We can go there.”

“And there’s an abbey along the way. We can seek shelter there for the night. Come on, Toth!”

The party moved quickly, staying in the trees to avoid detection, but close to the road. The road was clear, but they didn’t want to try outrunning the wolves on flat ground without any cover. Several times, shadowy forms sprinted ahead of them. The howling was getting louder.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” panted Phileas.
“They’re waiting for the entire pack!” Toth shouted. “Keep running!”

“Get away from my brother!” Heoriss blasted lightning at a vicious canine closing in.
“And get away from mine too!” Iofae cracked lightning at another wolf behind them.

“There’s the abbey! On the road!” Phileas sprinted left, and the rest followed.

4 figures shot out from the edge of the forest, running straight for a simple structured building across a well-travelled road. As they did, a swarm of wolves emerged from the forest as well, barking and howling. Toth reached the other side of the road, turned around and hefted his greataxe. The others fled past him.

Ian: Wait, what are you doing?
Dan: Role playing. *winked at Ryan*
James: Cool, a last stand! I’m in.
Dan: Besides, Ryan’s not gonna let us die like this. Something’s gonna happen. I wanna see what it is.
Ryan: *sigh* Busted… Not giving it to you so easily though.

A particularly savage wolf lunged at Toth. Another snapped at Iofae. “To battle!” as Phileas struck back. Toth rammed his attacker towards the other wolf, and it burst into flame as Iofae backed away.

“What did I tell you about keeping away from my brother?” Heoriss flew shards of solid light towards the wolves. One of the wolves howled in pain as the flames consumed it. The other continued to snap at Toth. Toth brought his greataxe down on the wolf and fell it. As another 3 wolves entered the fray.

Dan: Any time now…
Ryan: *laughing* ok, fine…

A sonorous hymn was heard. A group of 5 humans, dressed in plain white robes, moved towards the party, their voices slow and steady. The advancing wolves had stopped in their tracks, swaying gently in the grasp of the song. “Come with me,” said the closest of them.

Dan: That was some “You shall not pass” moment…
Klenn: I say we take it. I’m all out of powers.

“The wolves will be of no further trouble to you. For now, simply rest.” And he showed them into the abbey, and provided rooms for them to sleep.

Ian: That was tough. I was about to use my daily power.
James: Yeah, me too.
Ian: Thing is, I don’t know what mine’ll do. It’s random.
Ryan: Well, I’m not quite done yet.
James and Ian: WHAT!
Ryan: Nothing to worry about. It’s story time.

That night, all of them had the same dream. It was the abbey, the same one they’re staying at. The sky darkened, and the grass field around the abbey blurred, and tall trees of bright green stood around the abbey. The leaves swayed wildly as they’re buffeted by the wind. Above the abbey, the clouds opened up and shimmering waters floated. Upside down.

A tall man emerged from among the trees, his blue robes staying still without so much as a ruffle. As he marvelled at the scene, a small part of the shimmering waters closed up, and a dark vortex swirled, threatening to suck everything up.

A black orb dropped from the vortex onto the ground, and a creature with four legs stood. It looked curiously at the tall man, and then it loped away. His eyebrows creased ever so slightly. Then he looked around him one more time, and held his hands out in front of him.

Misty particles floated between his hands, formed by a trickle of the glowing water above. Leaves flying in the wind formed a circular wall around the man. The light in his hands grew brighter and brighter. And then it was gone.

And the man held two babies in his arms. His eyebrows creased ever so slightly again. “Odd.” he said.

to be continued… here.

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Exploding dice

August 6, 2009 By

My Dungeon Master (DM) was worried. The fights were getting a bit lengthy, or as they say, “grindy”. There were 2 ways to speed things up. One, to make it easier to hit. The other, was to make any hits more damaging.

Exploding die
[image by heizfrosch]

So my DM used the exploding dice concept. Basically, for any damage die roll, if you roll the maximum, you get to roll that die one more time. In theory, you could keep rolling dice till the penguins flew. Oh wait a minute…

Common sense says that, the more dice you get to roll, the higher chance of you rolling an exploded die. Thus 4 six-sided dice (hence denoted by the short form 4d6) is better than 2 12-sided dice, even though their totals are the same.

I think there’s also a probability result that says the more samples you get, the closer to the mean you’ll be. Thus 4d6 is “safer” than 2d12, because an average of 14 from 4d6 is better than a 2 from seriously flawed rolls of 2d12.

[corrected average value of 4d6 from 12 to 14. Thanks to ugasoft for pointing it out.]

Anyway, I’ve played with my group using this exploding dice concept for some time now. From personal experience, it speeds up combat somewhat erratically. What I mean is, one game battle could drag for some time, while another has us taking the monsters down quickly. I’m playing a character that deals more dice rolls than others, yet I don’t seem to roll exploding dice often. Just roll a critical, a 20 on a d20 (does maximum damage, no need for die rolls). Much faster that way.

Anyway, I wanted to do some mathematical analysis on this exploding dice concept. You can probably tell from the above that I probably know very little about probability. Well, I hated statistics in university.

I was trying to come up with some lame math formula, then I had the brilliant idea of searching on the Internet. And I found Eric, who did an actual math analysis of exploding dice. Much better than my feeble attempt. I almost wanted to tear up all my calculations in shame. His conclusion:

For any N-sided die numbered 1 to N with all sides equally likely, the exploding modifier will increase the die’s expected value by a factor of N/(N-1)

Reading his article, some faint memory came back to me. Expected value, huh? So the expected value of a d6 is
(1+2+3+4+5+6) / 6 = 3.5

And the expected value of a d12 is
(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12) / 12 = 6.5

So the expected value of 4d6 is 4 * 3.5 = 14,
and the expected value of 2d12 is 2 * 6.5 = 13

Even without Eric’s conclusion, we can see 4d6 is better than 2d12, but let’s finish the calculations. Expected value after explosion for 4d6 is 14 * 6/5 = 16.8, and expected value after explosion for 2d12 is 13 * 12/11 = 14.18…

The takeaway? If you have to choose between 3d6 and 2d10, go for the 3d6, even though 18 (3 * 6) is less than 20 (2 * 10). You’re more likely to roll more stable higher results. Knowing this does nothing for my unlucky rolls of 1′s though…

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Carcerian Stones – A Dungeons and Dragons adventure story

August 3, 2009 By

I’m going to try something new here, at the blog. I’m going to write an adventure story, based on the Dungeons & Dragons world. It will be fantasy fiction (to encourage creative thinking on my part), mixed with daring moves, devious puzzles (once I can think of some, like in the Mind Trap series), and out-of-character conversations (if you play D&D, you know what I’m talking about).

In case you don’t know, Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role playing game, played with dice, pencil and paper (usually, but you can go high-tech), battlefield maps (square grid paper, or full-scale miniatures). I’ve played a few sessions now, and with my history of reading fantasy novels (David Eddings, Terry Brooks), D&D is like a no-brainer. Which makes writing about it, a no-brainer too.

I have a different format in mind though. It’ll probably be faster to understand if you read, instead of me explaining to you. So, here we go…

*****

Ryan: Hey guys, I have a new campaign idea I want to try out. But I need the 2 of you to play fixed characters to move the story…
James and Ian: No problem!
James: I was getting tired of thinking up new characters anyway.
Ryan: Thanks.
Dan: So, what are the twins *pointing at James and Ian* playing?
Ryan: A pair of eladrin twins, 1 a sorcerer, the other an invoker.
Ian: Ain’t that a coincidence…

*****

Ryan: So are you interested in playing?
Klenn: Sure. I’ve never played before though.
Ryan: That’s fine. The others and I will help you. How does a bard work for you?
Klenn: I’m ok with it. *pause* Uh, do I actually have to sing?
Ryan: *laughs* Not if you don’t want to.

*****

Dan: Ok, I want to be a goliath warden.
Ryan: That’s new.
Dan: I’ve never played that before. We have a new story, so I might as well try something new. Will that fit into our campaign?
Ryan: It will fit perfectly.
Dan: Who’s the new guy again?
Ryan: Klenn. Please try not to scare him off. Ian picked up the rules quickly, but you kept giving him *air quote* “advice” *air quote*.

*****

Ryan: I’ll be railroading the story once in a while. I know all of you are excited to start playing, so I’ll fast forward some of the storyline to get to the action. I’ll fill you in with the background story as and when I have an opportunity. Basically, worry about the “why” later, like “why is my character doing this?”.

I’ll start by telling you about the night that seemed normal but not quite. You, James or *refer to some notes* Heoriss, was about to fall asleep when you hear “Quick! Run!” in your mind. Long story short, Heoriss felt a very strong need to heed the warning. Because Heoriss saw a dark figure prowling around the village, matching the description of a large wolfish creature “emanating pure evil”. Or so the folks at the tavern were discussing, spilling ale as they gesticulated wildly. Iofae, Heoriss’ younger brother heard him packing, and wanted to go along.

Cutting things short, while the 2 were fleeing, the travelling bard who arrived a few days ago, followed them.

Dan: Wait, that’s a lot of railroading… and why would the bard follow them?
Klenn: I’m a bard. It’s in my nature to sing about great adventures. A pair of eladrins sneaking off in the middle of the night smells thickly of trouble and great tales.
Ryan: Thank you, Klenn.
Dan: So, what were you doing in the middle of the night?
Klenn: I’m somewhat of a troublesome fella, don’t you know?
Dan: *laughing, turns to Ryan* Where did you find this guy?

Ryan: *smiles* I’m glad you approve. Oh this works out just fine. And after a brief exchange, the bard
Klenn: Phileas.
Ryan: the bard Phileas suggested looking for Mathea to seek help.
James: Who’s that?
Ryan: Mathea is a respected caretaker of the forest near the village. Toth, played by Dan, is Mathea’s student.
Dan: Oh, so I have a mentor. Hey, we’re finally connected!

Ryan: Yes. The 3 of them finally reached the cottage where Mathea and Toth lived. Mathea invited them in, heard the story, didn’t quite believe it.

Then he froze. The candle on the table snuffed out, and the room went dark. The forest was quiet. Moonlight shone through the open window. A growl came from the corner of the room *grrrr* and a midnight-black paw stepped into the pool of moonlight by the window. A rattle sounded from somewhere in the room… and please roll initiative.

Dan: WHAT!!??
James: *claps hands*
Ian: That, was awesome.
Klenn: Indeed.
Ryan: Thank you. I needed to get all of you together. And quickly arriving at the fighting part *glancing at Dan*.
Dan: *surprise fading* I thought you wanted more role playing in our games?
Ryan: I do. Besides, we have Klenn here.
James: Why’s that?
Ryan: *looking at Klenn* Tell them what you studied in university.
Klenn: Uhm, I did theatrical studies.
Dan: Holy smokes!
Ryan: If we role played the story beginning, it might take a while before we meet Toth. So I had to handwave quite a bit. Alright, let’s start the action.

*****

A bright flash of light erupted from the window. An orb of brilliance surrounded a wolf-like creature as Mathea struck it. The room was temporarily illuminated and Heoriss saw 2 lumbering skeletons surrounding Iofae. As the light faded, the creature slashed at Mathea, and the room was dark once more.

Dan: Wah, this is hard. Why’d you plunge everything into darkness?
James: Hey I have something that might help!
Ian: And push him here!
James: Why… oh!

Heoriss’ hands started to glow, and he pointed them at the nearest skeleton. A beam of light as bright as the sun shot out. The skeleton gave a silent cry as the light enveloped it, and was pinned against the table. Iofae backed away, his hands already weaving designs in the air, and sparks burst into flame around that skeleton. With a twitch of his fingers, a spark jumped onto the candle on the table, lighting up the room.

Ian: It worked!
James: High five.
Ryan: Good thinking.
Klenn: Is it my turn now? Uh, how about this?

Phileas charged towards the hapless skeleton, humming and brandishing his short sword, and plunged the sharp point into the skeleton’s mouth. He gave a twist, and the skeleton disintegrated and fell apart.

Dan: One more to go. This battle smells fishy… Something’s up.

Toth raised his greataxe and charged at the other skeleton. He raised the weapon high and brought it down. At the last moment, he twisted the handle and brought the flat of the axe on the skeleton’s head. A shower of bone exploded from the force of the blow, and the skeleton went down.

It grew cold. Chill air swirled furiously around Mathea. Shards of ice were forming in the air, then coalesced when Mathea punched the creature. Ignoring the ice constricting it, the creature lunged towards Toth.

“Out of here!” Mathea roared. The front door burst open, and strong cold air blew all of them out. The cottage went dark. A growl. Then a howl of pain. And outside, the party found themselves surrounded by more skeletons.

Dan: I knew it! Ryan, you’re wicked.

to be continued… here.

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Unpredictable next moves

July 20, 2009 By

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a while now, and starting to get the hang of it. This group of friends are, shall we say, very tactics-focused. If you’re a D&D player, you should know what I mean. D&D is a tabletop role playing game, and we just happen to focus on the “tabletop” and “game” part. Nothing wrong with that, and it’s still fun.

Now, these friends are very tactics-focused (I think I said that…), and being the new kid on the block, I want to decide on my moves fast, so that gameplay moves on smoothly for the whole group. The moment my turn ends, I think of what I want to do when my turn comes again.

At first, it was easy. There were few enemies. We were a small group at first (4 players including me and the DM). We were playing low level characters, so we had few powers to select from.

Then we decided to play the higher levels (paragon tier, if you happen to know D&D). And a couple of other players wanted to join. The game was starting to get complex, with a lot of paperwork going on. More players, more powers to choose from, more deadly monsters (the DM had to delegate initiative tracking to another player because he was too busy tracking monster hit points and powers).

There were these power cards that I had, together with the character sheet. Basically, they contained the essential information that power has, such as how to determine hits, damage, and any special effects. At the higher levels, I was holding maybe 30 cards.

This became a problem, because of analysis paralysis. “What do I do now?” was a difficult question to answer. One of my friends gave an amusing solution. He said he’d shuffle the cards in his hands, and then a “I will use this one!”, and randomly picked a card out of the stack.

As we played together, I got used to the tactics used by them. We had teamwork. Yay. Which still didn’t completely solve the problem “What do I do now?” when it’s my turn. I would pick, based on the positions of the enemies and my allies, a power to use that was most advantageous. Which changed, the moment an enemy moved out of my reach, or an ally moved into my planned spot of devastation, or an enemy came after me and practically killed me.

Whatever plans I had was only static when it’s my turn. Which might make all that pre-planning useless. There was this game session where I saw a bunch of monsters grouped together (3, which was a lot, considering the sparsity of monsters in most encounters), and I planned a deadly spell to unleash on the lot of them.

I waited for my turn, keeping track of what my allies were doing, and what the monsters were doing (particularly those 3). And when it was just before my turn, a friend before me teleported right smack into the area I was going to blast. I had to make a quick decision, and ran through my stack of cards to see what else I could do.

He made his attack and was done with his turn. Fortunately, I found something that hurt 2 monsters, thus leaving him unhurt (as well as the lucky third monster). It wasn’t the best choice, but I’d rather not set him ablaze.

With all the available choices and moves of the enemies and allies, it’s hard to foresee how the battle was going, and how I was going to respond. Everything was fairly unpredictable.

The worst thing was, I played the only character with special effects, such as blinding, dazing or moving the enemies. The others had marginal similar effects, but they were mainly the damage dealers. I could best contribute by making the battles harder for the enemies, and easier for my friends. So I was searching for a combination of ok damage, and debilitating effects on my cards. It’s hard.

All this is a long winded way of saying, if you’re designing a user interface, make it as unambiguous as possible. The user do not want choice. You, do not want unpredictable next moves from the user. Unless you planned it, of course.

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If you miss, little else matters

June 11, 2009 By

I’ve played 2 more game sessions since I last failed at rolling dice. I’m starting to get the hang of playing Dungeons and Dragons. In case you’re not a D&D person, I’ll keep most of the deep references out.

Here’s my general observation: It’s actually very easy to miss. Generally speaking, in a neutral setting, where there are no bonuses to hit, the percentage to hit range from 20% to 40%. Let me give you an example.

Suppose our hero fighter is engaged in battle with a kobold minion. He swings his sword at the kobold as a melee attack. In DnD terms, this means to roll 15 or higher on a d20, 15 being the kobold’s armour class (or AC). In mathematical terms, that’s a 6 out of 20 chance of hitting, or 30% chance.

And most of the hit rolls are like this. The most one could hope for, was to need to roll only an 11 or higher on a d20. That’s a slightly less than 50% chance to hit. And that’s the best case scenario.

My experience with video game role playing games was that, you issue an attack and it hits. Usually. Most of the time. I’ve never found the use of support skills or spells significant. I would cast a protection spell to reduce the amount of damage, and that would be the extent.

So I was in a bit of a quandary when playing Dungeons and Dragons. I like magical stuff. The characters wielding magic are controller types, meaning they can deal damage to multiple enemies but do less damage. They are supposed to slow the enemies, daze them, teleport them, immobilise them, lower their defenses, increase their vulnerability and so on. Basically supportive skills.

Now for my previous game, I was offered help in creating a character. So I took it, and let the helper create whatever he deemed fit. And I got a character geared towards those supportive skills. I thought, “Interesting. I thought boosting damage might be better. Oh well.”

And I truly saw the error of my ways for that game. The enemies had super high defenses. The miss rate was like 70% or 80%. Until the bonuses started to stack.

We had 6 players (which was large), and we buffed the 1 or 2 players with high damage. Because if we didn’t, we would never get any of the enemies killed, because we would never hit them. A +1 to your next attack roll, a -2 to the enemy’s defense, a +2 because of that power, a +2 because I used mine.

As for me, I shone at one particular part, where a few enemies bunched up together, and my spell disintegrated them in one shot. Ok, maybe not all of them, but it cleared most of them. Because it allowed the other players to concentrate on that demon with tons of hit points.

And for the last battle, the buffing really helped. There was this ranger, who could hit using two weapons with one of his skills. After we buffed him, he was able to hit with anything better than 1 (because a 1 was an automatic miss). He hit, and started rolling dice for damage. I believe he needed to roll 6 d10′s (and an additional d6 or d8 because he had a critical hit). After stacking all his damage bonuses, he dealt 73 points of damage. He simply needed to hit.

So from the few games I played, I finally realised the power of team work in DnD. As the characters I favoured, I was to harass the enemies, and disrupt them from harassing my team members. My job was to make it harder for the enemy, and make it easier for us to destroy them. My supportive skills are crucial to this.

Because if my team members miss the enemy, little else matters.

Filed Under: Curiosita Tagged With: , , ,
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