Atlantean RPG Classes, Part I...Also Alchemy

I would say that I'm still working on those swell numbers, but I kind of haven't for a while.  Took an almost-last-minute trip to visit family at the beach, played a fair amount of games (the board game Red Dragon Inn and video games Papers Please and Keep Talking and No One Explodes), and after returning home, got some gamer ADD and decided I needed to build a Saturn V rocket using the GURPS Vehicles rules.  But I will get back to it soon; every time I get online and see this neglected tab in my browser, I feel a little pang of guilt over it.

But until I have something swell related to post, I'll talk a little more about the Atlantean RPG.   Classes in this game are considered either single class or dual class (combining aspects of two single classes and/or two differing styles of magic).  I think it'll be easier to describe the single classes first, as dual classes can be most easily described in terms of the single classes they're comprised of.  Similarly, spellcasting classes will be more easily described after a survey of how magic works.  With this in mind, today I present the single class, non-spellcasting classes of the Arcanum.

The Beastmaster, obviously inspired by the 1982 Marc Singer movie, are wilderness oriented, with good fighting skills, survival, and tracking at first level.  They also can understand two (out of eight) animal languages, picking up more as they level up.  At higher levels, they learn to brew up herbal remedies, giving them some pretty good healing powers.  The central defining ability of the Beastmaster is the ability to Influence Animals.  This works kind of like clerical turning in D&D, but the Beastmaster can (with increasing levels of difficulty, and also modified by the level of the animals in question) call animals native to the surrounding area, turn animals (causing them to leave the immediate area), befriend animals (thus acquiring their help for the next 24 hours), and master animals (making them a more-or-less permanent follower).  First level Beastmasters can attempt to Influence animals of up to fifth level (but forget befriending or mastering them...the penalties are too great).  I don't know if the movie's copyrights deter other game systems from making similar types of characters (although Tarzan and Mowgli of the Jungle Book are also similar), or if other game systems just prefer to roll these types of powers into the more standard druid class, but this was an interesting take, and one I wouldn't mind seeing more of in fantasy games.

The Gladiator is a pretty standard fighter type, specializing in one-on-one melee fighting.  They learn Boxing and Wrestling skills at first level, making them pretty useful in the typical fantasy game tavern brawl, and are able to pick up other combat skills (and missile weapon proficiencies) as they level up.  The game's weapon list includes the cestus and throwing net, along with other more common gladiatorial weapons (tridents, swords, etc), so there is a lot of flavor there for those interested in playing Spartacus.

The Harlequin is a performer, sort of a non-magical bard in practice.  They are not front-line combatants, but are not useless in a fight either, much like D&D style thieves.  Where they really shine is their wide range of skills.  Their Oratory skill allows them to manipulate large groups, their Acting allows them to impersonate others, Acrobatics allows wall climbing, reduced damage from falls, and increased leaping distance.  Legerdemain allows sleight-of-hand style "magic", and Juggling allows them to catch thrown objects (including weapons).  At higher levels, improved Acrobatics allows pole vaulting and tightroping, and Knife-throwing allows called shots, with a chance of incapacitating opponents.  To be honest, when I first saw this class back in high school, I couldn't see why anyone would want to play them, but while they may not be badass fighters or wield mighty magical power, they are pretty good charisma type characters, good for courtly political campaigns or getting by on their wits and some luck.  I'd be happy to give it a shot these days.

Hunters get the full gamut of wilderness skills, as well as Riding and Archery skills.  At higher levels, they learn to brew up Herbal Remedies.  If you want a character that's any more like an AD&D Ranger, you'll have to spend some experience points to learn some magic as you level up.  If you want a ranged weapon fighter with tracking and survival, this class is great as-is.

The Martial Artist is another specialist fighter type.  They start out with Acrobatics (the lower level form that Harlequins have), Stealth, and Martial Arts, which gives improved hand to hand damage, increased number of unarmed attacks, and the ability to throw opponents or dodge attacks.  As they level up, their Martial Arts improve, allowing them to inflict debilitating blows, dodge missile weapons, attack with a jump kick, and smash wooden planks (that last might not sound too impressive, but doors are made of planks, so...).  They also get the ability to dual-wield things like sais or nunchaku, allowing them to double their attacks when using them (up to six attacks per round at the highest levels).   High school was a long time ago, and I don't remember many details about the characters my friends played, but one guy played a Martial Artist, and he was pretty effective (and memorable) in a fight.

Rogues are pretty much like Thieves from whatever version of D&D.  Lockpicking, Stealth, Climbing, Hiding, Picking Pockets...the main differences are that Rogues start with the ability to Con others, and in addition to Back Stab, they can Waylay victims, knocking them unconscious but leaving them alive.  As Rogues level up, they have a pretty free hand as to the skills they add, so they can pick up Acrobatics and become cat burglars, for example, or pick up Forgery and become counterfeiters. 

The Scholar is a pretty interesting class.  They generally appear in other games as NPC sages.  In the Arcanum, they start out with six Arts and Sciences type skills, a category which includes Diplomacy, Drafting (allowing the chance to discover potential secret doors and passages if a map of an area is available), Chirography (allowing accurate copying of maps and magic scrolls), Ancient Lore, and even Read Magic and Analyze Mixtures (allowing identification of potions, powders, oils, and other such things).  As the Scholar levels up, he is not limited to these types of skills, and can choose any skill in the game, including Alchemical skills, Thief skills and Combat skills; don't expect to make this character into a combat monster, though.  The Scholar can also trade in two new skills for the first level of spells in up to two different magic styles.  This can be a very flexible, useful class, but won't overshadow more focused classes in their area of specialization.

The Spy is an alternate Thief class, without Back Stabbing, but with both Waylaying (as Rogues above) and Assassination, which works pretty much the same as the AD&D Assassin's ability.  Most of the skills are what you would expect for a Thief, but in addition, Spies get some information gathering skills: Lip Reading, Deciphering, and Interrogating. 

The Warrior is a pretty vanilla fighter class.  They have the heaviest armor options of any fighter type we've looked at so far, and have no restrictions on their weapons.  The only restriction they get is unarmed combat styles...those are for Martial Artists and Gladiators starting out.  Warriors can pick them up later, if they want.  The only other thing setting Warriors apart from other fighting classes is that they pick up their extra attacks per round earlier. 

This leaves the Alchemist as the last non-spellcasting single class.  Alchemists are unskilled combatants, and are not spellcasters, but make up for it with their wide range of skills.  Touching on these alchemical skills will be useful for illustrating the range of the Alchemist's skills, and also later when discussing the spellcasters.  So, starting out, the Alchemist gets several skills related to finding and growing herbs, Healing Arts (a non-magical healing skill), Read Magic, Analyze Mixtures, and Herbal Remedies.  Herbal Remedies are pretty simple healing brews, taking a little water, various herbs depending on the effect desired (and this is one of the strengths of the alchemical system in this game, I think...keeping a good supply of a range of ingredients in order to make whatever concoction you need), a small pot to boil it in, and about an hour of prep time.  As long as the ingredients are available, the 15 minute adventuring day does not apply; you just need to take an hour break for each 15 minutes of adventuring...haha.  These remedies will keep for a day before losing their properties, so they are best prepared as needed, or at most brewed up the night before in anticipation of a particular hazard, such as burn remedies before venturing into some volcanic caves.  There are 20 different variations of Herbal Remedies, most removing some type of harmful status effect, such as blindness, paralysis, fever, pain, etc.  The Healing remedy heals 1-8 points, with specialized healing for burns or poisons providing 2-16 points.  Lastly, a Sedative is available that can double the effect of other healing concoctions at the price of needing to sleep for several hours after taking it; devious Alchemists can also use it for skulduggery if they can get a gullible mark to drink it.

The next skill the Alchemist gets as he levels up is Herbal Elixirs.  Elixirs are small time potions, with many of the same effects, but for a shorter duration (d6+4 minutes).  They require water, various herbs (again depending on effect), mortar and pestle, and a heat source, and take several hours to brew.

Alchemical Devices include poison needle rings, prisms that reveal illusions, cusps (like contact lenses) that provide night vision, lenses to find secret doors, and other similar minor magical devices.  They require a fairly decent supply of metal- and glass-working tools and a lab, and take about a week to build.

Magical Mixtures include oils that provide protection against summoned creatures, inks for scroll creation, powders used to conjure animals, and several types of incenses for divination or dealing with spirits.  They require mortar and pestle, cauldron or crucible, a heat source, and various herbs, chemicals, or other ingredients.  They take a day to prepare.

Toxic Powders can be slipped into food or drinks, or can be thrown or otherwise dispersed onto enemies in combat.  There are 17 types, with effects ranging from amnesia, vertigo or itching to coma or death.  Toxic Powders take a day to prepare, and require mortar and pestle, heat source, various herbs, and a vessel of some sort to heat them in.

Philtres are potion-like substances that induce an emotion in the drinker. The Love Philtre is the most immediately recognizable of the bunch, but there are others that induce apathy, recklessness, sorrow, and treachery, among others.  They take 5-8 hours to make, and last for 5-20 minutes.  Philtres are made with a wine base (making it fairly easy to trick others into drinking them), and also require mortar and pestle, heat source, and various herbs.

Venoms and Poisons take a day to make and require the usual tools.  Ingredients can get tricky to find, since venomous animals are a little more dangerous than your average plant.  As I mentioned in the first post on the Atlantean RPG, there are very few save-or-die situations in this game.  Three of them fall under this skill: curare and wyvern's tail venoms and black death poison.  Most of the other substances here reduce Constitution or cause direct damage over a period of time, but even that can swing the outcome of a combat drastically; the weakest does 2-8 damage per minute for 10 minutes...nothing to sneeze at.  As an aside, one of the characters I played in high school was an Alchemist, and by the time I learned to make Venoms and Poisons, I was well on my way to becoming the richest one in the party.  We had a lot of guys who threatened (and occasionally followed through) on PvP conflict, and I was often hired out to make some nasty toxin by one PC, and then hired out to make a series of anti-toxins by several other PCs immediately after.

Potions mostly follow the types you'd find in other versions of D&D.  They take a week a brew up, and required a pretty costly list of ingredients: powdered gold, silver, copper, and gemstones, as well as other rare ingredients based on the effect.  Whereas lesser alchemical concoctions mostly require herbs for their effect, potions call for things like minotaur horn, vampire blood, or lion heart.  Their duration lasts 41-60 minutes.

Alchemical Dusts, like Toxic Powders, can be thrown or otherwise dispersed onto a group of enemies in combat.  Their effects range from blindness to charming to paralysis to poison.  Several types also exist that should be familiar to D&D players: disappearance, sleep, and itching.  Alchemical Dusts take two weeks to prepare, although help from a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Magician can cut this down to a week.  Their effects last for an hour.  Ingredients are pretty pricey here too...in addition to requiring a base made up of platinum, gold, and silver, they also generally require the ingredients of a potion as well.  For example, Dust of Disappearance requires the ingredients of Potion of Invisibility.

At this point, the Alchemist is hitting the big leagues.  All previous processes could be carried out in a decent apothecary's lab, if not by a campfire, but to do more impressive works, you need an Aludel (a type of vase) and an Athanor (a type of furnace).  Advanced Alchemical Equipment skill lets you make them, assuming you can take the down time required to gather ingredients, construct, and properly prepare the devices, at least two months for the Athanor.

Once you have your alchemy lab fully stocked with professional level equipment, the next step is making Advanced Alchemical Substances.  These are Alchahest (the universal solvent, left with some flaw in the formula so that it can actually be contained in something), Orichalc (a refined magical metal that can be used to make weapons and armor of up to +3 bonus), and Vitriol (the sovereign glue, dissolvable only by Alchahest).  Each of these substances takes two weeks to produce.

Essences are the next step in the Alchemist's progression.  To produce an Essence, the Alchemist must have a quantity of the metal or other substance he wishes to refine, some Alchahest, and a fully stocked (Aludel and Athanor) laboratory.  There are 11 Essences to choose from, including Variable Mercury (the Philosopher's Stone, used to turn lead into gold), Waters of Sulfur (which can restore the dead to life), and True Platinum (which can be used to create items that function similarly to a Ring of Spell Storing).  A particularly interesting Essence is Essential Earths, which can be made into an Elixir of Elemental Power.  This elixir can be used by the Alchemist to gain powers related to one of the four elements, such as the ability to breathe water, walk on water, and speak with water elementals, or immunity to fire, the ability to set flammable items alight by touch, and the ability to speak with fire elementals.

At the highest levels, Alchemists gain the ability to make Golems (fairly self-explanatory), Machina (constructs like the Iron Cobra...several others are listed as well), and Homonculi (which can be of any size and shape the creator wishes, as long as he has the materials for it). 

So, a pretty impressive list of magic for a non-spellcaster.  When I started composing this post, I really didn't intend to get this detailed about alchemy, but I think to do less would do the Alchemist class a disservice.  Additionally, it will be easier to describe the spellcasting classes now that alchemy is out of the way...I can just refer to the alchemical skill now, without having to delve into any further detail.

Next time I post, hopefully I will have worked out something useful related to swells, but if not, I will go over non-spellcasting dual-class classes of the Arcanum.

Races in the Atlantean RPG

I'm getting closer to some kind of swell system.  I've crunched the numbers for about ten different real world shorelines, and while the average swells are probably higher than we see in real life (my model is obviously making some wrong assumption somewhere), I think I can tweak the numbers to work.  I can make a set of swell tables that would work well enough for a historical real-world setting with what I already have, but I think I'll run some more numbers and try to make a generalized table that would work in any given fantasy world (or at least most of them).

But while I ponder these details, I'll talk a little more about the Atlantean RPG.  The game provided some new races with some pretty exciting abilities, and had a few twists on some old favorites that made them a little more interesting as well.

Humans in this game, like most games, are kind of the default.  They don't get a whole lot of abilities, and don't have to deal with a whole lot of drawbacks.  The only thing they get, aside from the ability to take any class in the game, is a +1 bonus to any one saving throw.

The Aesir are the first new race in the game.  They are essentially small giants, or maybe more civilized ogres, averaging just above 7 feet tall, and weighing in at about 350 pounds.  They have an increased racial maximum for Strength, at the cost of penalties to racial maximum for Speed, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Perception.  Aesir get a +2 bonus to Strength saves, and get +1 damage to all attacks.  They also have the smallest list of potential classes, limited only to Warriors, Corsairs, Gladiators, and one spell-casting class - Shamans.

The next new race is the Andaman.  Andaman are animalistic humanoids, most often resembling wolves, jackals, lions, leopards, tigers, or panthers.  Their increased racial maximums are Speed and Perception, while their reduced maximums are Intelligence, Will, and Charisma.  They get a host of animal type racial skills, including night vision, scent tracking, stealth, leaping, and natural weapons.  They also get bonuses to Speed and Perception saving throws.  They have a fairly restricted class list, including Bounty Hunter, Corsair, Gladiator, Hunter, Rogue, Spy, Warrior, Martial Artist (Tiger style Kung Fu, anyone?), and while they have no spell-casting class options, they can become Beastmasters, which have some pretty magical abilities.

The Druas look pretty much like D&D Drow, and they have a bad reputation as mysterious wanderers.  I never really got into Druas myself, but their ability to send a short telepathic message once a day came in handy.  They had increased maximum Will and Perception, with reduced maximum Strength, Constitution, and Charisma.  They got +2 to Perception saves, +1 to Will saves, and infravision to top it all off.  Their class choices were fairly varied, including Assassin, Astrologer, Wizard, Bounty Hunter, Rogue, Hunter, Warrior, Martial Artist, Witch, Monk, Witch Hunter, Mystic, Mage, and Savant.

Dwarves in the Arcanum are pretty familiar.  Mining related skills, infravision, tough but slow.  They get increased Constitution and decreased Speed, Dexterity, and Charisma maximums, as well as a +1 to CON saves.  What's interesting in this game is that they are not locked out of magic-user type classes; the class list includes Magician, Priest, Alchemist, Paladin, Scholar, Shaman, Savant, Rogue, Warrior, and Thaumaturge.

Elves are also pretty familiar.  They get increased Dexterity and Perception maximums, and decreased Strength, Constitution, and Will.  They have +1 to all Perception, Dexterity, and Charisma saves, and also infravision.  Elves in the Arcanum seem to me more like Warhammer Elves than the D&D type, with more high civilization type classes available (High Elves) as well as more woodsy classes (Wood Elves).  I never really understood how D&D Elves (at least in earlier editions) weren't able to be rangers or druids.  Arcanum classes available for Elves are Thaumaturge, Witch, Rogue, Paladin, Magician, Spy, Druid, Wizard, Scholar, Warrior, Hunter, Priest, Sorcerer, Bounty Hunter, Witch Hunter, and Enchanter.

Nethermen are Human/Goblin hybrids, making them Half-Orc analogues.  They fill the same general niche...kind of shady, prone to brutality, not accepted in polite society.  Nethermen have no increased racial characteristic maximum, but take penalties to maximum Dexterity, Intelligence, Will, and Charisma.  They get +1 to Strength saves, and have a 95% chance of infravision.  Their potential classes are Assassin, Witchdoctor, Bounty Hunter, Shaman, Rogue, Spy, Gladiator, Corsair, Warrior, Hunter, and Necromancer.

Selkies are a new race.  In fact, Wikipedia says they didn't appear in the early editions of the Atlantean RPG.  I don't clearly recall anyone playing a Selkie when we played back in the 80s, so maybe that's right; when I got my copy of the Arcanum they didn't stand out as a change to me, though.  At any rate, Selkies are Human/Triton hybrids, and as such, are good swimmers, and are able to stay underwater for an hour per level, before having to resurface.  They get increased Perception maximum, at the cost of a reduced Constitution maximum.  Selkies can be Beastmasters, Corsairs, Druids, Priests, Rogues, Scholars, Warriors, or Witches.

The last race available as PCs are Zephyrs.  Appearing as winged humans, Zephyrs are able to fly for one hour per level before stopping to rest, and while flying move at double their normal Speed.  They get increased maximum Charisma and Perception, with reduced maximum Strength, Constitution, and Will.  They have keen eyesight, and get +1 saves vs Perception and Charisma.  Lastly, they get +1 to hit with missile weapons.  Zephyrs can be Hunters, Scholars, Spies, Rogues, Harlequins, Priests, Bounty Hunters, Warriors, and Enchanters.

So some fairly interesting choices there.  Next time I get around to talking about the Atlantean RPG, I'll start on classes.  As you can see from the lists above, there is a pretty long list of classes available, and some might even be Humans only, from what I remember at the moment.  I'm going to break these down by type, starting with non-spell-casting single classes.

And of course, all the while, I'll be working on swell numbers...

The Horseman's Flail is a Lie!

It is interesting that at least one existing example is now being reinterpreted as a horse whip, though.


https://curiosity.com/paths/the-medieval-weapon-that-never-really-existed-nerdalert

Fourth Age of Middle Earth

Several years ago, there was a thread on the Hero Games forums discussing ways to make a game set in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth work.  It was agreed that there would be no elves or dwarves, or at least there would be next to none.  Someone pointed out that in order to feel like Middle Earth, you needed a big bad guy...after all, in the Silmarillion, you had Melkor/Morgoth causing trouble in the First Age, and Sauron filling the role in the Second and Third Ages.  There were some suggestions that maybe Saruman or some other corrupted Maia would be the bad guy; it was pretty generally accepted that the Fourth Age would have a lesser bad guy in keeping with the lesser grandeur of the age.  After all, even Sauron wasn't as powerful in the Third Age as he was in the Second, and he didn't hold a candle to Morgoth even then.  But the final demise of Sauron and Saruman was too well-documented in the source material.  The thread wound down around that point, without really finishing what it had started.

The naysayers won that one, and no suitable enemy was to be found.  I think Andres Diplotti figured it all out, though:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/snow-white-lord-rings-share-same-universe/

Number crunching interlude and an underappreciated RPG

Doing all these probability manipulations for this swell project is going to take some time, and once I'm done with that, if the numbers come out reasonably well, I'll have to find patterns I can use to develop a system to generate random swell patterns without all this fiddling with spreadsheets in between.  But rather than leaving the blog to sit unattended while I churn my way through, and sometimes make no progress at all when I get tired of it all, I'm going to spend a little time here and there talking about a game that I rarely see discussed online, despite the fact that it was both fun and ahead of its time in many ways.

The Atlantean RPG was first published in 1983 by Bard Games as the "Compleat Series"...The Compleat Alchemist, The Compleat Spell Caster, and The Compleat Adventurer.  It was later expanded into the "Atlantean Trilogy" consisting of The Arcanum (the main rules, including all character classes), The Beastiary (the monster book), and The Lexicon (the oddly named setting book, giving a decent overview of the whole game world, although not much detail on any given area).

I first ran into the Arcanum around 1987.  A friend of mine had it (as well as a ton of other good stuff...I was really envious of his gaming library at the time), and while I was fairly prejudiced early in my gaming career against any game that wasn't D&D, and particularly those games that were very similar to D&D, I became intrigued by some of the changes the Arcanum had made.  Eventually, we made characters and ran at least one Arcanum campaign.  I know I made three different characters, but I don't remember if it was because one died, or because I got tired of one character, or if the group as a whole got tired of the campaign and started a different one later.  We never used the Lexicon, and I don't recall if the DM used the monsters from the Beastiary, the AD&D Monster Manual, or some combination of the two, but the Arcanum had made enough of an impression on me that I kept my eyes out for all three books for years, and finally bought them from Noble Knight Games a few years back.  For what it's worth, at least one of those Arcanum campaigns we played was set in the Forgotten Realms, which was also my first exposure to that idea; the Forgotten Realms never made the same kind of  impression on me as the Arcanum did.

So what makes this game different from D&D?  I'll save details on the races, classes, and magic system for later, but here are some quick bullet points about the game:

• Point-buy stats:  At a time when AD&D classes had stat requirements that could be frustratingly difficult to attain randomly, you were assured of getting the class you wanted in the Arcanum.  There was some minor randomization involving the number of points you had to spend, and if you wanted a stat at the racial maximum, you only had a 10% chance to get it (otherwise you had one point less), but there was no chance of rolling straight 8s and having to play a dumpy character while your friend rolls a bunch of 16s.
• Speed and Perception stats: The Atlantean system had eight stats instead of D&D's six.  Most were the same, with Will and Wisdom as obvious analogues, but the Arcanum added Perception (allowing characters different chances to notice an ambush or find a secret door...yes, Elves had a good Perception maximum) and Speed (giving characters different base movement rates).
• No combat tables:  By the time I ran into the Arcanum, THAC0 was a well-known concept in D&D.  THAC0 requires subtraction,though, and while that's not overly hard, it is still harder than adding.  In the Arcanum, 11 is the number to hit, and characters get periodic bonuses to hit based primarily on class and level, similar to 3rd Edition BAB.  Also saving throws don't have a table, but are based again on the number 11, with bonuses or penalties based on stats.  If it makes sense to dodge a trap, save vs Dexterity.  If it makes sense to tough it out, save vs Constitution.  There are really no save-or-die effects, so while higher level characters fail their saves more often than in D&D, it doesn't matter as much.  Also, lower level characters are more durable because of this.
• Characters are more durable at lower level: Besides easier saving throws and fewer save-or-die effects, characters have more hit points.  Hit points for all characters are equal to their Constitution score, with an additional fixed amount per level based on class, plus a bonus per level for high Constitution.  Even a pretty scrawny mage-type ends up with at least 10 or 12 hp at 1st level most of the time, and since it's a point-buy system, if you feel screwed over, it's your own fault.  No worries about getting mauled by the innkeeper's cat and left for dead.
• Armor absorbs damage: While I've mellowed towards the abstract nature of D&D armor classes, at the time, I was unhappy with it, to say the least.  I suppose it comes from the idea that you need to roll over a certain number to hit, and therefore if you roll too low, it's a miss.  This in turn leads to the idea that there are to hit rolls that will hit a nimble, dodgy thief with a 5 AC, but miss a guy loaded down in platemail and 80 pounds of gear.  The Arcanum foreshadows later editions of D&D in that heavier armor penalizes Dexterity rolls.
• Characters are more customizable:  Most of a class's description breaks down to a list of skills.  These skills can be bought separately by spending experience points, so if your paladin really needs to know how to sneak around, he can delay gaining a level and learn Stealth.  Spellcasters can even learn spells from other lists.
• No more single-use magic users:  All spellcasters have (level+2) spells per day, so even 1st level characters can cast three times before they're out.  Even at that, the skills associated with each class give them something more they can contribute, usually including some sort of minor alchemical ability.
• "I don't want to be the cleric!":  Parties without a cleric in D&D spend a lot of time holed up licking their wounds.  It's hard for a small group of heroes to keep pressure on a large group of bad guys if they have to take a few days between fights, so someone has to be the cleric.  Not everyone wants to be a cleric though, and sometimes it gets passed along as a rotating duty from campaign to campaign.  In the Arcanum, any character with Divine magic, Elemental magic, Low magic, Healing Arts, or Herbal Remedies can heal at 1st level, so whoever's turn it is to be the healer has a choice of 10 different classes.  More characters pick up healing abilities at higher levels, too.
• No walking magic-item hoards:  All my early games of D&D and AD&D seemed to end up swimming in magic items.  Most of them ended up being kept around "just in case", charges hoarded away until the absolute perfect time, which kind of just added to the problem.  (Encumbrance should have kept this under control, I suppose, but like many people, we usually ended up handwaving that in the interest of getting on with the game.)  The Arcanum specifically forbids any character from carrying more than seven magic items or they ALL stop working (one use items like scrolls and alchemical mixtures excluded).  Still plenty of room for a magic shield, magic armor, magic boots, magic sword, dagger, spear, and magic helmet.  But when you find a ring or something, you need to prioritize what you want and what you can do without...

 Okay, plenty of that for now...back to the spreadsheet for me.  I'll post about Arcanum races later.

Possibly onto something

Trying to streamline the determination of swell in a given area of the game world's ocean.  Every other part of this wave project so far was fairly straightforward, each piece following on the last naturally, and merely requiring hours of patient number crunching and typing out into tabular form to produce.  Turning a whole world's worth of weather into a table takes a little more thought, and a little effort into making it elegant and easy to use.  More so than just rounding off heights to whole numbers, anyway.

At first, I was thinking that I would simply use the icosahedral world map template that came with the AD&D 2nd Edition World Builder's Guidebook (now available on DrivethruRPG.com; I've never regretted buying the print version, and I highly recommend the PDF for anyone interested in world building). For an Earth-sized world, that comes out to 600 miles per hex.  I'm making the call that weather systems generally run about that size (Wikipedia says storms are in the vicinity of 60-1250 miles diameter, so not far off).  For my purposes here,  a weather check (determined through whatever method, but here mostly concerning wind speed), covers a 600 mile hex, at least over the ocean where terrain doesn't break it up.

Next, starting with the 2d6 wind speed roll used in the D&D Expert rules, I figured the probabilities of high winds across multiple 600 miles hexes.  Swell is produced by high winds, so when looking at multiple hexes, you really only need to worry about the highest wind among them.  I did the math by hand to figure out the new probability curves for a 2 hex region, but somehow couldn't get it to work out for more than that.  I still don't know what I was doing wrong.  Luckily, the Troll Dice Roller and Probability Calculator was there, and didn't take too long to figure out.  Thanks, Torben Mogensen; Troll was invaluable.

My idea at this point was to look at all the ocean in a straight line out from a given point in all directions and use that number of hexes to figure out what swell was hitting that point, thus taking into account every direction it could come from and the fetch in those directions.  This way, an island or a point on the tip of a peninsula is more likely to have a large swell than a point in a protected bay or inland sea. 

I decided to look at the Hawaiian Islands to see how well this system maps out to the real world.  The Hawaiian Island chain fits pretty much into a single 600 mile hex, at least the main islands do.  There are six hexes of ocean surrounding that, and 12 more surrounding those, so I worked out the probability curve for winds across 19 hexes.  And that's where the problem came in.  With 19 hexes, there's an 80% chance of winds of Beaufort number 11 or 12, and since it's only three hexes out, the waves have little time to dwindle down.  Hawaii is a surfer's paradise, but swells over 20 feet (growing higher as they start running inshore) are not an everyday thing.  I distinctly remember, when I was stationed there, going to the beach and not being swept away or pounded by massive plunging waves (I did see some some frighteningly large ones, though, on occasion).  And those 19 hexes aren't even all of the ocean hexes that could possibly be the source of a Hawaiian swell.

But, I think using a larger hex might work.  A 1200 mile hex would mean fewer chances of a really high wind result, and also double the average distance the swell would travel, giving it time to diminish to a more reasonable (from my perspective) level.  I'm going to work some numbers for a few different real-world areas at 1200 miles per hex and see where that takes me.

Last waves project (probably)

I've posted already about how swell is formed and propagates across the oceans, but it is based on swell created by local conditions.  But in an RPG, we're generally not concerned with the size of the swell created where the PCs are and how far it goes, we're more concerned with the size of the swell generated elsewhere and now arriving where the PCs are.  The system I posted earlier is fine for this, if you're willing as DM to generate weather for the entire world, work out the swell generated in dozens of separate weather systems, and then figure out how much it decays in the distance it has to cover to get to where the PCs are.  If you want to get really technical, you'd have to figure out how long it takes that swell to reach the PCs' area from its source weather system, not to mention all the lesser swells generated by that weather system (it stands to reason if it takes 50 hours to fully develop the waves, that there would be less developed waves created beforehand, which would also travel until they hit a shore). 

No, the best thing to do here, from a game feasibility standpoint, is to work out some sort of statistical stand-in that would take into account all the directions a swell could come from, the likelihood of strong winds somewhere in those directions, and how far the swell generated by those winds would have to come.  Roll some dice to see a generalized picture of the world's weather and go from there.  A simple table wouldn't meet my standards here; the Hawaiian Islands, surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean in all directions, should not get the same results as Galveston, Texas, which only has any kind of long fetch distance to the southeast, and even that gets buffered by Florida, Cuba, and Mexico.  I'll have to figure out some sort of equation, or a table complex enough to take everything into account, but not so complex that it can't be used on the fly if need be. 

I'll probably have to dredge up my old statistics textbooks, too.  If I can't figure out a decent way to math this problem out the smart way, I'm going to have to brute force it, and generate a world's worth of weather for several hundred days, and then figure out what kind of swells that produces in different places.  I'm not entirely sure I want to take on that kind of number crunching if I don't have to.