GLOG 5 Daggers Edition: Skills

As mentioned previously, the lack of a "proper" skill system in the GLOG has been a bit of a source of frustration for my players in one group, and I already know the players in my Yoon Suin 5e campaign would not accept a system with no skill checks.

This skill system has to be simple/easy to use, but substantial enough to be worth bothering with.  However, the most important rule is that (one of the) GLOG principle be respected:  Only roll when there is a chance of failure.  A good sound plan to cross the chasm shouldn't require any rolls.  Jump accross and hope for the best?  Yeah, you better roll.

So what fits the bill?  A modification of the 5e skill systems seems reasonable.  (scroll to the end of the post to see the design notes) The central mechanism goes like this:

Do a stat check - roll 1d20 and try to roll equal or lower than the relevant stat.  If you are proficient in the skill, add your proficiency bonus to the roll (effectively "increasing your stat" momentarily).

The proficiency bonus is = the attack bonus implied by the increase in attack bonus.  In clearer terms, at level 1 it's +1, level 2-3 it's +2, level 4-5 it's +3, level 6-7 it's +4, and it maxes out at level 8 at +5.  Certain classes will get bonuses to specific skills, of course.

If a task is easy, or you came up with a solid plan to deal with it, you don't need to roll (DM's call).  If you are jumping through a paper wall, or knocking down an ordinary door with a sledgehammer, it just works.  The best skill remains player cleverness.

If a task is particularly difficult, or there are circumstances making things more difficult than it should be, the check is made with disadvantage (roll twice, take the worse roll).   If on the other hand the task is easy (but not so easy to get auto-success), you gain advantage - roll twice, take the best roll.

It should be noted that a 20 always fails. 

Trying again:  Sure, if it makes sense.

Group Stealth.

Stealth as a group is overly challenging in many cases, because if everyone rolls, odds someone will fail.  So, in cases where the most stealthy characters assist the others in some way - by keeping out an eye for sentries, creating a minor distraction etc, a group check is made.   Not everyone has to pass the check, instead, everyone rolls, and if at least half the group succeeds, they make it.

Example: Bob the thief, James the wizard, Lucie the figher and Blorf the priest try to sneak by a bored goblin sentry.  The DM rules that this is possible, but the cover is not great - there are gaps in the hedge the party is using to stay under cover, so a check is required.   Bob is observing the goblin and letting the others know when it's distracted.  

Bob has a dex of 13 and +4 to his check - he rolls a 7 and makes it. James the wizard had a dex of 8, isn't proficient in the skill but gets lucky and rolls a 6 - success.   Lucie has a dex of 12 and a +2 (yes, fighters can have stealth!) but rolls a 15, a failure.  Blorf is roaring drunk and rolls with disadvantage - a 7 and a 16 is a failure.   However, half the group succeeded and with the assistance of Bob distracting the goblin at a key moment, they manage to sneak by it and move on.   

Had the goblin been drunk, everyone would have rolled with advantage (except Blorf - the advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out).   Had the goblin been warned that intruders were imminent and on very high alert, everyone would have rolled with disadvantage.

Skills  for a generic medieval game:

Strenght skills:

Athletics (includes swimming, climbing, jumping, but not feats of raw strenght)

Dexterity skills

Acrobatics 

Sleight of Hand 

Stealth 

Disable device/open lock

Constitution Skills

Drinking/carousing (this is to party but somewhat keep your wits about you)

Intelligence Skills

Knowledge: Arcana 

Knowledge: History 

Knowledge: Nature 

Knowledge: Religion 

Knowledge: something else 

Investigation 

Wisdom skills

Animal Handling

Insight  

Medicine 

Perception 

Survival 

Charisma Skills

Deception 

Disguise 

Intimidation 

Performance 

Persuasion 

Variable stat skills:

Vehicle: land (dex or cha)

Vehicle: water (dex, int or con)

Craft/ profession (alchemy, bow-making, etc) (int or dex)

Some skill check have more than one ability.  If you are trying to discern the best way to navigate a complex passage, this is an int check.  If you are trying to tough out a storm, it's con, for example.

Some skills have multiple instances.  A character could have both craft alchemy and craft armor-smithing, but not the other crafts such as shipbuilding.

Skills and relevant ability modifier for a Yoon Suin game:

As above, but knowledge golemology, knowledge intoxicants (opiums, certain teas) could be added.

Sills and relevant ability modifiers for a Post Apocalyptic game:

As above, with the addition of: 

Knowledge: Technology (int)

Knowledge: History (pre-fall) (int)

Knowledge: History (post-fall) (int)

Gun-smithing (int)

Electronics (int) 

Mechanics (wis)

Drive (dex)

Design notes:

I was originally going to have a skill system closer to 5e with variable difficulty classes (DCs), but I thought further about it and realized that I wanted to keep the "stat check" nature of the GLOG.  I also realized that there ARE DCs in the GLOG too, they are just implicit.  In 5e, 90% of the time you will use DC 10, 15 or 20 (for skill checks).  In the GLOG it's "don't bother rolling you got it", DC 10, and "don't bother rolling you can't do it".  Again, 3 levels of difficulty.  If you add advantage and disadvantage as a mean to increase or decrease the difficulty, you can have a reasonable amount of granularity.

So what the heck do I mean by saying that the GLOG has DC 10 checks?  Well... if your dex is 10, it's a DC 10 check isn't it?  Mathematically, it's identical.  

The main difference is how much bonus you get per stat.  In 5e your stat bonus tends to be +1 per 2 ability score above 10 (so strength 10 is 0, strenght 12 is +1, strenght 14 is + 2 etc etc).  In the GLOG, it's +1 per stat point - a strenght of 12 is +3 better than a strenght of 9.  

This seemingly would means that stats are "more" important in the GLOG than in 5e... but that isn't really the case, because your combat bonuses are a lot less dependent on your stats, so that balances out.

There is one flaw here with this system, and it's that very high stat, high level characters could reach a "I can't fail" level of competency - if you have 17 dex and +4 to your skill, you can't roll higher than it.  This is why the "20 always fails" rule is very important.  Humans *are* fallible creatures, after all...

I'll expand on who gets what skills in a further post!  

The Sword of Lurm and more armor options.

While running my occasional GLOG game, the party traveled back to town to resupply and sell loot.  Needing some medieval city, I simply grabbed the City of Elderstone by Skerples.  This city has an enchanter, Lurm.

Lurm the Enchanter is an Orthodox wizard, although a bit on the roguish side (has been known to associate with summoners, or worse).  It is know that he will put a "work a day" enchantment on a sword...  but what is that exactly?  I suppose it could be a +1 bonus, but that's not very interesting.  So here I give you, the Sword of Lurm:

The swords of Lurm have thin angular runes that are designed to attract and trap a very minor fire elemental.  When the user of the sword hits an enemy (a successful attack), they can shout the sword's command word (LURM!!) to release the sword's power in a burst of flame, inflicting an additional 1d6 points of fire damage.  This exhausts the fire elemental, and the sword's energies must be recharged by putting the blade in a fire - a campfire would suffice - for one hour.  While the sword is charged, the runes glow with a very faint orange - when there are no other sources of light, they are visible and shed an amount of light equivalent to a small candle, enough to light a single 5 foot square.  The enchantment process makes the sword immune to fire damage (although the blade will turn black with time), but the wielder has no such protection.  

If asked if the command word is a form of publicity for his shop, Lurm will coyly imply that it is, but the reality is more cynical - Lurm does not want his creations ever used against him, due to some vague prophecy about his death.  Should someone dare so, he can pre-emptively activate (and de-charge) the magical items he created (and prevent his foes from using them) by simply shouting "LURM"!


Second, for my Five Dagger edition project, I present my armor rules - more armor types, and who can use them.  This is probably the easiest and least interesting of the rule changes I intend to make.  

Leather armor and arming doublet can be slept in without a penalty.  Gambeson and chain impose 1 point of fatigue, and heavier armor can't be slept in.

Armor proficiency:  Everyone can wear armor up to gambeson.  Classes with some fighting background (ranger, thief, barbarian etc) can wear chain, but only fully trained classes (fighter, knight, paladin, tactician) can wear all armor types.  

The new armors are as follows:

- Improvised armor:  Doesn't last long and encumbering, but might just save your life.  Pots and lids, sticks tied to limbs with twine, wearing 5 shirts.  

- Arming doublet:  The thick shirt you wear under your metal armor to prevent chaffing and absorb some of the blows.  The average warrior's is sweat and rust strained (it comes included with chain and heavier armor free), but the upper nobility can wear extremely elaborate doublets.  

- Gambeson:  not merely an "armor undershirt" but a fully protective garment in its own right, made of over a dozen layers of linen quilted together.  They were hot, stiff, but very effective.

- Brigandine.  Also known at the coat of plate, a series of smallish metal plate sandwiched between 2 layers of leather, with rivets holding everything together.  Worn over chain to protect the torso mostly.  A more primitive form of armor than plate mail, it stayed in production due to its lower cost/ease of production and slightly better flexibility.  

-  Wicker shields:  A cheap, flimsy shield who's sole advantage is costing less.  Reduces 1d6 dmg if sacrificed to absorb damage (instead of 1d12), and is automatically broken (no damaged reduced) if the foe rolls a critical.  

	defence	slot	penalty	cost (GP, city/village) + notes
Improvised	1	1	2	?  (pot on your head, wooden slats and twine etc)
Arming doublet	1	0	0	1+   (can be *very* elaborate, ie cost can be very high)
leather	2	0	0	2.5/5
Gambeson	3	1	1	6/8
chain	4	1	2	10/-
Brigandine	5	3	3	40/-
Plate	6	3	4	100/-
Shield	1	1	0	0.5/0.5
Shield, wicker	1	1	0	0.15/0.15

(the other armors are by Skerples)

Announcing the "GLOG: Five Daggers Edition" Project

I've been playing with the GLOG for a bit now (we've had 5 sessions) and the qualities of the system have become clear to me.  However, some of the limits have shown as well - mostly the lack of a proper skill system.  Back in June, I had speculated about merging the GLOG and 5e , and the feedback was positive.  This idea has been dancing in the back of my mind ever since.  

After some thoughts, I realized that a 50/50 mixt is not really feasible.  You can have a somewhat simplified 5e, or you can have a 5e flavored GLOG, but you can't fully integrate the two.  Some of the basic design principles of each game simply don't mixt.  So I decided that I was going to leave 5e alone and modify the GLOG by bolting on a skill system inspired by 5e.  Simple right?  The GLOG is *made* to be hacked, after all.

Well... I have to re-do the backgrounds (which are very good in 5e, and impact the skills).  And I also have to tweak the classes (what skills does a knight have?), especially classes that are skill focused (the thief essentially).  And if I'm tweaking the classes, well I might as well update them (Skerples did a great review of his edition with suggestions on what to change).  And if I'm doing all these changes to the classes, it means I get to choose which classes are in, so I might as well add a few from Arnold K Arnold K 's martial list (too many wizards!) along with a few others (I like the Sawbone by Iron and Ink), and remove some I don't.  And the 5e skill system doesn't have the same mechanic as the GLOG (it's roll high, not roll low), and I prefer roll high, so now I have to update the combat system and...

… Well it's turning into a new edition isn't it?!  So be it!  Because I love how good daggers are in the GLOG, and because of the origin of the skill system, I am naming it "the Five Daggers Edition".

So why make an announcement?  I hope it may get me a bit more feedback, but mostly I figured that by announcing it, it will motivate me to actually finish it!  I intend to work on it in "chunks" - publishing drafts of sections/concepts here, getting feedback and advice from readers, and then pulling it together.  I hope to be done in 6 months.  

A major conceptual obstacle initially was how to write this up as a complete document.  I'm not changing everything (I am not re-writing all those spells!), so how do I incorporate this into the edition?  I don't want to have a document I give my players where half of it is "click here for the spells", I want it to be complete.  But now I'm "stealing" stuff from others, and I don't want to do that...  I really was struggling with this but then it dawned on me - just contact the authors and ask for their advice/permission.  I have and they have given me their blessing, for which I am very grateful.  The GLOG community really is something!  I will do my best to be very transparent as to who made what and provide full credit.  

That being said, there are still uncertainties (how to layout things properly is one, if I do this myself it's going to be very basic...), but I hope that some of these questions will be resolved before I pull things together and publish the final package.  As this will be a free product (respecting the GLOG ethos), I hope that my readers will be forgiving.  There probably won't be any art, but maybe something will come up.

Lastly, when I'm finished, I will start working on a Yoon Suin Edition, which will essentially be the same but adapted for Yoon Suin (changing the classes and races essentially).