Solo Boss Encounters in D&D-Like TTRPGs

 Solo boss encounters are a common thing that people want to do in D&D-likes, but the way the system is set up, they don't really work unless you mess with it.

This post is a description of how I mess with it to make them work better.  It might not work at all for you or maybe it will be the most brilliant thing you've ever heard of.  These ideas aren't new but also it's the result of mashing together decades of blogs and different RPGs and trying things out so I don't remember what the sources are.

So:  Solo boss encounters.  We're defining this to mean a challenging, interesting battle against a single combatant.  There's lots of other ways to make a 'boss' encounter but I'm not talking about those here.  The most common thing people try to make this work is to just use a higher level monster; this has various issues depending on system, but most often, makes for a frustrating experience because its AC is too high, its saves are too good, its damage is too high, or more than one of these things.  Then the action economy doesn't let it actually do enough things to feel like an active fight, because these games aren't designed for a 1vX fight, they're designed for lots of things to be on the field on both sides, so it just stands there getting missed/making saves and then one-shotting people.  Tonberry is a boss fight, all right, but it's not really the one that people are looking for most of the time.

The trick I use is basically, just duct tape a bunch of monsters together and make it a single monster, then invert the action economy.

Duct taping them together is relatively understandable; just mash them all up as if the party was facing multiple monsters.  Inverting the action economy only takes a tiny bit more explanation.  If the party was actually facing multiple monsters (let's say five ogres), then the enemy team would start out with five actions per round and go down to one action per round as the party dealt damage.  This leads to a cleanup phase and an anti-climactic finish.  Inverting the action economy means that the solo monster starts with one action per round, and as it takes damage, this increases until it's up to five actions per round.

For crowd control effects, obviously those have impacts on the action economy, and the answer like most answer is based on thinking 'what if it was five separate monsters'.  For each unique CC effect that would prevent them from taking actions, they lose one turn.  If they're paralyzed, they lose one of their turns each round; a second paralysis effect does nothing.  If they're paralyzed and stunned, they lose two turns each round, but another paralysis or stun wouldn't make it any worse.  This makes AoE CC less valuable against the duct taped version than it would be against the individual monsters, but because this lines up with the desired villain fantasy, that's all right, and it allows for CC to be useful against the boss encounter without ruining it.

You could probably figure out how I'd do this from what's written here already, but let's make an example monster instead.  I'll use the Ogre (CR2) from D&D 5E as an example here because basically everyone knows how to read 5E statblocks and Ogre is an SRD monster.  I'll start by going through each stat and describing what the effect of duct taping a bunch of them together (five, specifically, in this case) has on that stat.

Armor Class:  Unchanged.  Five ogres each have the same AC as one ogre.
Hit Points:  Multiply by five; five ogres have five times as many hit points as one ogre.
Speed: Unchanged.  Five ogres can move more often than one ogre, but not further, so speed changes are covered by action economy changes instead of altering the speed.
Ability Scores: Unchanged.
Senses, Languages, CR: Unchanged.  However, for CR, of course when encounter building you should consider this to be a number of creatures equal to the number you duct taped together; five ogres is five CR 2 creatures.  This means that the XP value listed in the statblock should be multiplied.
Actions:  Unchanged.  Just like speed, five ogres can attack more often than one ogre, but they don't do any more damage.

And then the only change needed outside the statblock is initiative/action economy.  Check the number of hit points a single creature of this type has.  Each time the monster loses that many hit points, it gets to take another turn in the round.  One ogre has 59 hit points, so each time five ogres duct taped together loses 59 of its hit points, it gets to take another turn each round.  (The five combined have 295 hit points, which sounds like a lot but is exactly as many hit points as you'd have to chew through to kill five ogres.)  You can roll initiative for it multiple times if you want, but usually it's easier to assign fixed numbers that each turn occurs on; you can either count down or count up.  Ogres are slow, so we'll have this one count up; they take their first turn on initiative 5, second on 10, third on 15, fourth on 20, and fifth on 25.  It'll start out slow as the party expects, and then become blindingly fast and dangerous at the end.

Depending on the party and the monster, you might find that damage values are scaling fast enough that your monster isn't getting to access all of its turns because it's being blasted through HP lines.  If this is happening, optionally, you can give them a bonus immediate turn right when the line gets passed.  This is also a great time to do any sort of phase transition you might want to do; maybe the ogre lights its club on fire and the damage becomes fire when it gets up to taking three turns per round.

And that's all there is to it.  Here's the statblock.

Five Ogres Duct Taped Together
Large giant, chaotic evil
Armor Class 11 (hide armor)
Hit Points 295 (35d10 + 105)
Speed 40 ft

Initiative:  Five Ogres Duct Taped Together don't roll initiative; instead, they act at initiative 5.  Each time FODTT loses 59 hit points, they can take one more turn each round, at an initiative count 5 higher than their highest current value (5, 10, 15, etc, up to 25 when they are down to 59 hit points or less).  (If you rolled hit points for FODTT, this occurs each time they lose 1/5 of their maximum hit points.)

Str 19 (+4), Dex 8 (-1), Con 16 (+3), Int 5 (-3), Wis 7 (-2), Cha 7 (-2)

Senses Darkvision 60 ft, passive Perception 8
Challenge 2 (2,250 XP)

Actions
Greatclub.  Melee Weapon Attack:  +6 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target.  Hit:  2d8+4 bludgeoning damage.

• Javelin (Melee). Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: (2d6 + 4) piercing damage.
• Javelin (Ranged). Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 30/120 ft., one target. Hit: (2d6 + 4) piercing damage.

Rules Fragment: Nightfall Tactics

 Today I had a thought and had to write it down, so here we are.  This is the design fragment of a tactical wargame using the basic core of the Nightfall Engine (from Against the Fall of Night).  Rules terms that are referenced, but not defined here, are the same as in Against the Fall of Night.

Nightfall Tactics

A wargame/SRPG/tactical game built off an extension of the Nightfall Engine.

Tactics Skill:  Your default Tactics Skill is equal to half your Combat Skill.  Tactics Skill is used as the basic resolution roll for this layer (for example, if you're determining the effect of your infantry attacking, you roll Tactics Skill instead of an attack roll).

Strategic Skill:  Your default Strategic Skill is equal to half your Mind.  Strategic Skill is used to determine starting setup, layout, limits of units you can command, and so on.  It would be tested to determine if you can successfully ambush someone, get to the high ground before combat starts, etc.

Units can be actively commanded, or just on your team.  The number of units you can actively command is determined by your Strategic Skill, but you can have as many units on your team as you can hire (see the note on Wealth and Economy later).  You can only use your Tactics Skill to benefit units that you’re actively commanding.  (Thus a character with very high Tactics Skill, but low Strategic Skill is a fantastic sergeant or lieutenant who commands a single unit; a character with high Strategic Skill but low Tactics Skill is still useful as a commander of a large number of units to prevent them from default-stats.)

Feats can increase or affect both Tactics Skill and Strategic Skill.  (For example, a feat Magical Tactics:  You can use your Magic Skill instead of Combat Skill to calculate your default Tactics Skill.)

Strategic Spells:  Big battlefield versions of magic.  They take 10 minutes to cast (which is 1 round at this combat scale) and require the support of a company of mages (60 people who each have Magic Skill +1 or higher).  (Optionally, a total Magic Skill of 60+ is required, so you could have ten 6th-level thaumaturges cast one, if you somehow have those available.)  Caster characters can learn strategic versions of spells that they know with a feat.

Strategic Techniques:  Combat techniques scaled up to battlefield scale.  Martial characters can learn strategic versions of combat techniques that they know with a feat, and then units they command can use those techniques.

Units would be designed like monsters, with levels, stats, and basic attack and defense techniques.  The commander stats can replace certain stats here (like the unit would have a Combat Skill of its own, but a commander can use their Tactics Skill in place of it).

Units have Cohesion and Health in place of Vitality/Wound.  Cohesion reflects their ability to keep it together, Health is how many of them are still alive.  Like AFN, melee attacks that are not defended against deal damage directly to Health, while those that are defended against attack Cohesion first.  Ranged attacks always deal damage to Cohesion first, unless their attack test is a modified 21+ and the attack was not defended against.  Undead, constructs, and other mindless/controlled troops have Cohesion -, because they never break Cohesion and need to be actually destroyed.  Cohesion is also the Morale rules; when a unit hits 0 Cohesion, they need to make a check of some kind to stay on the field or else they disperse.  Whatever the check is by default, it can be replaced with a Tactics Test if the unit is being actively commanded.

Initiative phases are Ranged, Cavalry, Infantry, Magic.  (Flying cavalry, as a special ability, get to act in the Ranged phase.)

Strategic spells can’t be cast if the unit has been attacked that round, though the mage unit can still use their normal techniques.  Only a character with Magic Skill +1 or higher can actively command a magic unit; they just use their default stats if you don’t have at least Magic Skill +1.

Economy:  For balancing units against each other, there is some form of economy.  Units cost Wealth.  You can only keep a number of units supplied with total Wealth cost equal to your Wealth.  Default Wealth cost is Level, double for cavalry, but specific units may be more or less expensive.  (Note that multiple people can combine their Wealth to supply an army.)  (Note:  This makes it difficult for normal players to bankroll an army, and right now I don’t care, integration can get figured out later.)

Units don’t use Attack Points, Defense Points, or Magic Points, because a round is 10 minutes long and they have a ton of all of those points.  Instead, every technique or spell they have is very situational with distinct strengths and weaknesses.  If the unit has something that’s always useful?  That’s their special ability, being generically useful.  Each technique can only be used a specific number of times per round, usually once unless specified otherwise.

Units normally can’t do things that would make them Vulnerable while in melee.  Unlike individual characters who get to choose that kind of thing, units just aren’t given the choice.  A successful Tactics Test can get them done, or units with – Cohesion can do so automatically.

Damage is generally the same thing as on personal scale.  Rough default is 1d6 + Combat Skill, reduced by Armor which is usually approximately equal to Level.  Aura for undead, constructs, and anti-magic units.  Cohesion/Health is roughly half what Vitality/Wound would be on personal scale; units die faster than heroes (but it’s rounded to even numbers to make things easier to track).  Like personal scale, units can be ogre-sized or giant-sized as well, which makes them terrifying.

Units have facing.  We’re making a square-based wargame because I’m a heretic.  A unit has three front squares, two flank squares, and three rear squares.  Attacks from a flank have slight advantage, attacks from the rear have high advantage.

Weapon triangles:  We’re adding weapon triangles based on weapon qualities.  Cunning, Brutal, Reach.  Brutal > Reach > Cunning > Brutal.  If you’re on the good side of the triangle, you have slight advantage.  If you’re on the bad side of the triangle, you have slight disadvantage.

Basic unit statblock:
Wealth Cost, Level
Combat Skill, Magic Skill
Armor, Aura
Cohesion, Health
Attack Techniques/Defense Techniques/Spells

Two example units.

Militia (Infantry)
Wealth Cost 1, Level 0
Combat Skill +0, Magic Skill +0
Armor 0, Aura 0
Cohesion 2, Health 2
Attack Techniques
Swarm – The militia make a melee attack.  1d20+0, 1d4 damage.  On a miss, the militia take 2 damage.

Spearfighters (Infantry, Reach)
Wealth Cost 1, Level 1
Combat Skill +1, Magic Skill +0
Armor 1, Aura 0
Cohesion 4, Health 4
Attack Techniques
Long Strike – The spearfighters attack a target one square away from one of their front squares.  1d20+1 to hit, 1d6+1 damage.  This technique cannot attack adjacent targets.
Defense Techniques
Brace – The spearfighters set their spears to defend.  If the attacker misses, they lose 1 Cohesion.

A Rule Is An Answer

As is eternal, there is discussion about RPG design theories, what is a rule, what is the purpose of a rule, etc.  I offer a definition that may be of some use, by looking at what might be the most fundamental way to define it (or, at least, the most fundamental way I can think of).

I don't think it's useful to try to say that all rules have the same purpose.  Obviously different rules, in different games, are designed for different things and for different reasons.  To actually get something universal, I think we need to go deeper, to a definition so obvious that it's almost useless on its own (but we can still use it in context to analyze things, and get use out of it when combining it that way).

So.  A game is made of rules.  Some of these rules are obviously game-rule types; a pawn can only move one space forward, while a rook can move any number of spaces in a straight line.  Other rules are less apparently part of the game, but are part of the game nonetheless; a Dungeon Master builds encounters following guidelines.  A player builds their player character and chooses their actions.  These are rules of a game as much as a rule about movement.

Combined, all the rules form the system or the game.  We're not debating whether or not the text on its own counts as a "game", we don't need that level of pedantry here right now.  Now that the game exists, the next question becomes; how does one play it?

Regardless of what the game is or what its rules are, you play the game by asking it questions, by interrogating it; what can I do, what can you do, what does this do, what's over there.  In TTRPGs, the process is the same whether you're trying to resolve a mechanical loop or if you're trying to explore the imagined world the game takes place in.  The way that those questions are resolved is by consulting the rules of the game.  A rule is an answer.

The most fundamental question to ask is "What happens next?"  and every game will be able to answer this.  Whether the answer is move to the next phase, roll some dice, ask someone at the table, end the game, or do something else, the game will provide an answer when you ask it what happens next.  As players (including GMs), your actions set up the context for the next question that the game is asked, and the rules provide the answer.

For example, a player says "I attack the guard".  This implies a question; what happens when you attack the guard?  The rules will answer that for you.  In another game, the player moves their pawn into a square containing an opposing piece; what happens next?  The rules answer.  Most TTRPGs have examples demonstrating that this is their core gameplay loop; the player declares an action, the GM consults the rules, and the GM says what happens next.  The rules are how the GM determines what happens next; they provide the answer to the player's implied (or explicit) question.

This is equally true for questions about the fictional world the game takes place in, such as "what's over that hill" or "what's in the chest".  The game will provide rules to determine that.  Depending on the game and what it cares about, these may be distinct rules, or they may be guidelines.  The way most RPGs are written, there's no real distinction between GM rules and GM guidelines, for the purpose of this discussion they're both rules.  The rule might be "the GM decides", "the GM rolls on a table", "the group determines by consensus", or anything else.  The point is that the rule is the answer.

Depending on what the rules care about, the answer might vary.  Some possible answers might be "You can't do that" (no, your bishop can't cast Meteor Swarm), "I don't care.  Three." (for things that the game doesn't really care about, it just gives you a quick answer and you move on), or "That's a great question!  Here's ten pages of charts to figure out the answer." (for things that the game wants to spend time understanding and resolving).  In some ways, this might cause the rules to abstract a complicated task.  Sometimes it might add complexity to something that seems like a simple task.  Sometimes the rules will restrict you with their answer, and sometimes they will empower you.  Most TTRPGs that lack a specific answer do have a general rule covering that situation, "Ask the GM/group", while most board games default to an answer of "You can't do that" if it's not covered by a rule.  (No, the Air Bud clause does not work in Monopoly.)  (The two types of games are more alike than most people think.  This general rule is the biggest difference between them.  The reason you can do anything in TTRPGs, and not in Monopoly, is because TTRPGs have a general rule that says if there's no rule that covers the situation, there's a person at the table empowered by the game rules to add a rule.  If Monopoly had Rule 0 for the banker, you could reinvent financial derivatives and sub-prime loans just like real banks!)

The only thing that every rule will always do is to answer you, when you ask the game a question.  To make this interpretation useful, we need to think about questions.  What we can do to use this is to think about what questions people will be asking our games, and what answer will we give?  How long will the answer take to understand and implement?  Do we really care about this question; is it really that important to have a good answer to it, or do we want to just pick something and move on?

(Generally, the less the game cares about a question, the more abstract and quick-to-resolve the answer will be.  If your game doesn't really care about traveling the wilderness, fine, make a single check for your journey.  If your game thinks this is an important and valuable question, provide a whole system for the experience.)

Appendix:  Semi-Related Rambling

Rulings over rules is a popular phrase these days (not quite as popular as it used to be, which is good).  It fits into this paradigm without any issues; it just means that it is not providing answers for many things, and answering those questions follows the default rule of ask the GM.  This is also totally consistent with the feedback that GMs of this game often give, which is that they feel like the game isn't helping them answer the questions that come up in play.  A rules-light game can avoid this problem by focusing the questions being asked.  If you only expect players to ask one or two questions in gameplay, then you only need one or two answers.  If you bill your game as an anything game that can do anything, you're going to need either some very broad answers or a whole lot of answers.  

This is where the importance of a game setting expectations comes in; these expectations can be set with prose, art, layout, and many more parts of a game.  If your game as a whole can get players to understand which questions to ask, and provide answers (in the form of rules) to those expected questions, it will generally be a smooth and understandable experience.  Conversely, if your game prompts players to ask questions that it doesn't provide answers for (again, in the form of rules), it will tend to be a frustrating experience that feels like it requires a lot of patching.

Seize the Initiative

 Thoughts on an initiative system, to be used with any game that uses initiative.

First, we assert that the game has a designation between combat and non-combat, and that normally, combat is started by rolling initiative.  In this system, instead, only the first actor acts; everyone else reacts.

Combat begins when someone in the fiction takes an action that would start combat.  Stabbing someone, casting an offensive spell, firing a crossbow, glove slap, whatever action is agreed that it starts a fight.  This character takes their action first.  If you want to act first, then you should declare your fight-starting sooner.  (Does this incentivize players to be sociopaths?  Yes.  But it's also the same incentives that reality has, so it also incentivizes things like not letting diplomats wear weapons.  Except for an old dwarf wizard's walking axe, of course.)

All actions that characters can take have triggers.  These actions can only be used when an actor triggers them.  The most basic triggered action would be Counterattack, which lets you make an attack when you are attacked.  More complex ones may include things like; use when fire damage is dealt, use when an ally is attacked, use when an enemy is reduced to 0 HP, etc.

Actions cost action points.  Characters have some number of action points determined by their class, level, or other appropriate stats (in Cyberpunk 2020/RED, for example, you'd probably get action points based on your REF).

When an action is taken, it's reasonably likely that more than one character in the battle will have a reaction to it.  Priority, in general, is given to actions with more action points spent on them.  You can spend extra action points to raise your priority if you want.  There are two ideas here to resolve multiple characters reacting.

1) Only the character who bids the most action points can take their desired action.  This is called seizing the initiative.  Only the character who seizes the initiative actually spends their action points, everyone who loses gets to keep theirs.

2) Everyone who has an action triggered can queue their action up.  The actions are resolved in order of action points spent, from most to least.  A triggering action and all reactions to it are referred to as an action cloud.  No one can take any further action until the action cloud is fully resolved, but then they can react to anything that happened as part of the action cloud.

When no one in the combat has any more actions they want to take (or are able to take), everyone gets their action points back.  If everyone has full action points, and no one is able to (or chooses not to) take an action, combat ends.  This may result in combat starting again after a brief interlude, if combat ended because no one had an available triggered action.

The primary challenges in turning this system from a concept into a mechanic would be

1) Defining available action points and costs.  This is a nontrivial grid-filling task, depending on system, because you would need to define this for all available actions.

2) Defining triggers for actions.  As above, this might be a lot of work, depending on the system.  For some systems, everything is covered by a set of basic actions that would make this relatively easy.  If you decide to define a separate action point cost and trigger for every spell in a D&D-like game, I wish you good luck.

E6 in PF2

 I plan to use a bunch of jargon in this post.  I may or may not explain it.

So to explain at least what the title means:  PF2 is, of course, Pathfinder Second Edition.  E6 refers to "Epic 6", a variant invented for D&D 3.5.  The exact details of how it's implemented in 3.5 aren't needed here, but the important parts to know if you haven't heard of it before is that in E6, once you hit level 6, you stop gaining levels.  Instead, every (some number) of XP, you gain a new feat.

Since everything is a feat in PF2, it seemed to me like it might be interesting to implement this idea in PF2 and see what happened.  These mechanics have not been tested and are probably not totally complete, but people were talking about PF2 on twitter and it made me think I should post these up.

First, the core:

E6 Core Rules

-Once you reach level 6, you cannot gain any further levels.
-Every (X) XP after reaching level 6, you can choose a new feat.  You can select any feat that you qualify for, in any category.  The exact number of XP should be chosen by the GM/group to calibrate the rate of advancement to the desired rate.  Some good defaults are 1,000 XP and 500 XP (so you gain feats at the same rate you would gain levels or double the rate, respectively).
-You cannot gain Master or higher proficiency in any game element that your class does not already have Master proficiency at level 6.  You cannot increase your proficiency rank for your Class DC or weapon specialization effect beyond what it was at level 6, except with the Expert Attacker feat (described later).  You cannot gain a class feature higher than level 6 that increases your proficiency rank with any game element.
-You cannot unlock, learn, or cast a spell of 4th rank or higher.  Any cantrips or focus spells you know never scale beyond 3rd rank.  You cannot increase your level for Spellcasting past 6.

That's the core set of rules; with just those, you can get the basic E6 experience.  But to make it better, we have more to add.  You might notice that the core rules reference that you can't gain a class feature higher than level 6 that improves your proficiency; if you stick with the core rules, there's no point in mentioning that, you can't gain new class features.  But if we add new feats, that suddenly becomes an option.  And we have some new feats to add that will help let characters choose to increase some tricks or balance out a few things that might come out odd at 6th level.  It's also worth thinking about whether you want to use the optional rule for Proficiency Without Level (Archives of Nethys can auto-calculate this for monsters so you don't have to subtract it out yourself).  If you do use PWL, you unlock a significant amount of content for yourself, making a lot more monsters usable.  If you don't, it contributes to a dangerous world where there exist monsters that the PCs simply cannot fight in a meaningful way; a level 6 PC against a level 15 dragon, no matter how many extra feats the level 6 character has, is not going to go well.  The sheer weight of numbers that the dragon has will crush the PC.  (Even with PWL, the dragon's higher proficiency will give it an advantage that might be insurmountable, but it'll be less impossible.)  It's up to you which of these options you prefer.  And now, feats to use with E6.

New feat - Expert Attacker

Prerequisite:  You are level 6, have at least 5 additional feats, and have no way to apply Expert or higher proficiency to an attack roll.

Choose a weapon, spell type, or other method of attack that you are Trained in.  You become Expert in that attack form.  If you choose a spell type, you also become Expert for save DCs.

New feat - Hardiness

You gain hit points as if you had gained a level in your class.

Special:  You can take this feat multiple times.  Its effects stack  Each time you take this feat, increase its rarity by one step (Common, Uncommon, Rare, etc).

New feat - Increased Spell Capacity

You can cast one additional 1st-rank spell per day.

Special:  You can take this feat multiple times.  Each time you take it, increase the rank of the extra spell you can cast until you gain a spell of your highest available rank, then reset it to 1st level next time.  For example, a 6th level sorcerer can cast spells of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd rank.  The first time they take this feat, they can cast an additional 1st-rank spell.  The second time, 2nd-rank; the third time, 3rd-rank.  The fourth time they take this feat, they get another 1st-rank spell.

New feat - Increased Focus Capacity

Prerequisite:  Increased Spell Capacity x3

You gain an additional focus point.  Your maximum number of focus points increases to four.

Special:  You can take this feat multiple times.  Your maximum number of focus points stays four, but if you took the feat and still didn't have four points, you can keep taking it until you get up to four.  (You would probably rather learn more focus spells but it's an option if you want to.)

New feat - Advanced Learning

Increase your effective class level by two for the purpose of qualifying for class feats, class features, and ancestry feats.  You do not actually gain any features or feats when you take this feat.  You cannot gain a banned feature or ability through this.  You do not gain hit points, spell slots, increase your proficiency bonus, or any other effect of gaining levels.   If you take a class feat or class feature higher than 6th level, it may need to be scaled down as described below.

Special:  You can take this feat multiple times.  If your effective class level is 10 or higher, this feat is Uncommon.  If your effective class level is 14 or higher, this feat is Rare.  If your effective class level is 18, this feat is Unique.

New feat - Advanced Class Feature

You gain one class feature above 6th level that your effective level qualifies for through the Advanced Class Learning feat.  This feature cannot contain any banned elements and may need to be scaled down as described below.

Special:  You can take this feat multiple times.

Scaling Down Items and Feats

Many items have cool powers but are too high level; they can easily be scaled down.  If the item deals damage, its damage should be reduced to around 6d6 damage (21 average) (and lower if it has utility effects, large AoE, etc).  If it gives an item bonus to something, the bonus should be no more than +1.  If it has a save DC, the DC should be around 20.  If it has an attack bonus, the bonus should be around +10.  If the item is scaled down to a level below 6, these numbers of course should be even lower.  Use the tables for creating items with magic item bonuses, DC by level, etc, in GM Core.  (Remember an attack bonus is just a DC - 10).  If an element would give resistance, it should be no more than 5 if permanent, 10 if temporary, and halved if it is a particularly broad resistance.

The same is true of higher-level features or feats that may be unlocked.  In many cases the GM's discretion will be required to decide what the exact effect available from a higher level feat or feature will be, or if it's available at a choice at all if it cannot be scaled down to an appropriate level of power while retaining the essential effect.  Some feats or class features may simply deal flat damage and can be scaled down, while others provide significant non-numerical power such as teleportation or flight that are inappropriate and can't be easily scaled down.

D&D-Like Ability Scores

 It turns out I can just post whatever I want here and no one can stop me.  

Ability scores are boring in modern versions of D&D.  If your ability scores are randomly generated, then they make sense as-is; but if you can arrange them or use point buy or standard array, there is a trivially correct choice for almost all characters, and that's boring.  Here are a few different options for how to make them interesting again.  These are written from a 5E perspective because I'm just recycling notes out of my ideas file and not really writing them from scratch, you can probably convert them to any D&D-like game without too much effort.

Option 1: Redefine Ability Scores

Redefine the six stats as follows.

Strength - Your ability to project force into the world, whether physical or magical.  Whenever you would add an ability score to a damage roll, add your Strength modifier instead.

Dexterity - Your precision and aim.  Whenever you would add an ability score to an attack roll, add your Dexterity modifier instead.

Constitution - Your health and survivability.  Continues to add to hit points.  No changes except based on what the other stat changes do.

Intelligence - Your ability to do skillful things.  Whenever you would add an ability score to a skill check, add your Intelligence modifier instead.

Wisdom - Your strength of will and ability to enforce your will on the world.  Whenever you would add an ability score to a save DC or use as part of another class feature, add your Wisdom modifier instead.

Charisma - Your sense of self and ability to keep yourself together.  Whenever you would add an ability score to a saving throw, add your Charisma modifier instead.

(Wis and Cha could easily be swapped, idk, I wrote this in two minutes)

With this method, suddenly it's no longer just "Wizards want Int, fighters want Str".  Every stat becomes useful for every character.  (PS - I stole this idea from Pillars of Eternity.)

Option 2: Remove Ability Scores (Flexible Version)

Remove the 1-20 ability scores.  Keep the ability score names.

All characters are proficient in two ability scores, and deficient in one, of their choice.

If you are proficient with an ability score; when you make an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw based off that ability score, add your proficiency bonus.  (This is separate from adding your proficiency bonus if you're also proficient in that roll, so you'd add it twice if you are proficient in both Strength and Athletics and you made a Strength (Athletics) check.)

If you are deficient with an ability score; when you make an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw based off that ability score, subtract one.

If your class references an ability score for a reason (such as save DC or uses per day), use your proficiency bonus.  Optionally, you could require that the character actually be proficient in the referenced ability score in order to use your prof bonus.

You can use an ASI to become proficient in an additional ability score or select a feat.

Option 3: Condense Ability Scores

Remove the six stats.  Replace with Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.  If the game refers to Str or Con, use Fortitude; if it refers to Int or Dex, use Reflex; and if it refers to Wis or Cha, use Will.  Exception:  Hit points gained by level are a flat value for all PCs chosen by the GM based on campaign style (+0 for life is cheap, +2 default, +4 for superheroes) and are not gained via Fortitude.

You have proficiency in one of Fortitude, Reflex, or Will based on your class.  You are deficient on another one, and neutral on the third, also based on class.  Some classes might let you pick between options.  You can go from deficient to neutral with one ASI; neutral to proficient takes two ASIs.

When making any attack or replacing any stat in a class feature, use the new stat that you're proficient in.  (For example, fighters are proficient in Fortitude; a fighter making an attack would use Fortitude for the attack.  Clerics are proficient in Will; a cleric's attack would be based on their Will.  This is true whether the cleric is attacking with a spell or a staff.  Clerics would also use their Will in place of their Wisdom modifier if a class feature says, for example, you can use this Wisdom modifier times per day.)

Diegetic Character Advancement

This post is an overview of different types and methods of diegetic character advancement.  First, a definition.

Diegetic Character Advancement: Advancement based on specific in-world actions, items, or events, rather than abstracted or based on the story as a whole.  Generic experience points would be an example of abstraction, while milestone leveling would be an example of story-based progress.  These options listed here are neither of those.

Why would you want this?  Diegetic character advancement as a concept has two major benefits to it.

1 – It rewards players for taking the actions that you want the game to be about.  If you make a game that’s about shoveling snow, and you reward players for shoveling snow, then players are going to want to shovel snow in game.  They’re not going to want to use a snowblower to get rid of the snow more efficiently or a flamethrower to get rid of the snow in a more ridiculous way, they’re going to want to shovel it.  (Sorry it was snowing as I wrote this.)

2 – It is extremely intuitive and understandable.  By giving players direct goals that interact with the world, players know what they need to do to advance, and they know how to do it.  It being so understandable reinforces player attachment to the fictional world and helps them treat it as a more real place that matters, instead of as a series of setpieces that they travel through without attachment.

As an overview, these types will be listed and given a brief description, but not fully detailed with everything about them, because I don’t have that much time.  In theory future posts might cover one or more types in more detail, but for now we’re just going over the basic things about them, pretty much just what they are and a simple list of pros and cons.

Types of Diegetic Character Advancement

Note:  There is no requirement that a game, or a campaign, use exactly one of these types of advancement.  It is fully possible to mix them, and this is particularly true if using specific advancement; certain game elements might use one type of advancement (say, skill feats being unlocked only through job paths), while other game elements use a different type of advancement (spells being unlocked only through discovery).  You can do pretty much whatever you want with any of these advancement types, it just adds more work the more of them you use.

For each type listed here an example game or source that uses them is listed.  These are not exhaustive at all and are just off the top of my head when putting this together.  Some of them are RPGs, some are video games, and at least one of them is something I wrote that hasn’t been really publicly released.

Gold for XP (Used In:  Older versions of D&D, OSR games)

Or, more generally, advancement through collection of in-game currency or other items.  Whether it’s actually 1 XP for 1 GP isn’t important so much as it being advancement through collection of valuables in-game.  This is distinct from some other categories because the currency or item collected can be used for in-game things as well as for gaining XP; after you get your XP from the gold collected, you can then spend the gold, you don’t need to consume it or any such thing.

Pros: Compatible with existing systems, doesn’t require tracking anything that you weren’t already tracking, intuitive, matches existing incentives.
Cons: “Collecting massive piles of gold” as a primary motivation doesn’t suit every character or campaign style.  Still uses XP as a generic advancement currency.  May require numeric conversion to provide a satisfying advancement rate, depending on game system being used with, if the game was designed with a different advancement mechanic in mind.

Discoveries (Used In: Skies of Arcadia, random reddit post I’m referencing without a link)

One such example of this would be that reddit post where a GM had scattered obelisks around their world, and when the PCs found one, they gained a level.  Another example of discoveries is in Skies of Arcadia, where locating specific landmarks in the world can be reported for a reward.  Discoveries here refers to specific terrain features or environmental effects, and locating or exploring them provides advancement.  (Whether it’s a whole level, a specific feature gained, or a generic partial progress are all viable variants of this method.)  An argument could be made that Discoveries is a subset of Achievements, below, (achievement to reach a specific place), but I separate the two generally in that Discoveries are always a specific location in the game world, while Achievements can be anything but usually require repetitive action.

Pros: Joy of discovery and wonder at finding new parts of the world, incentivizes exploration, provides opportunity for GM to focus on making their world cool and let the players experience it.
Cons: Requires careful GM placement to feel good about how often they’re found, without feeling like they’re guaranteed to appear in the players’ path or otherwise unearned.

Job Paths (Used In: Aces and Eights)

Job paths are when you select a path of advancement, and it provides you with the conditions to advance.  For example, a Fighter path might say “Practice your sword”, while a Dentist path might say “Treat a patient’s sore tooth”.  The biggest distinction between job paths and other types listed here is that job paths allow not only different characters to have different goals required to advance, but allow the same character to have different goals at different times, if the game lets you change between job paths.  (In Aces and Eights, you can change your job path each session, but you only progress towards the goals of your current job path; if the Dentist job path says to treat 50 patients, any patients treated while you’re a Fighter doesn’t count.)  It is also worth noting that these job paths are not classes, and do not affect your actual abilities, just the conditions under which you gain advancement.

Pros: Allows players to define their own advancement in ways that align with their goals, requires little to no GM prep after defining the paths themselves.
Cons: Bookkeeping is required to track goals, higher player investment required for them to select the correct path for them.

Achievements (Used In:  Every Video Game)

For example, kill 100 jerks, collect 14 eggs, slay a dragon, do this list of things.  An achievement can be a single task, a collection of tasks, or a counting repetition forming a collective task.  Achievements can have additional narrative weight added to them by including flavor to what is functionally the same requirement; there’s not a lot of difference in terms of challenge between ‘slay a dragon’ and ‘drink the blood of a freshly slain dragon’, but significant narrative weight to the latter.  (At least, not the way most people would run it.  If the requirement is that you personally deliver the killing blow to the dragon, that actually is different.)

Pros: Familiar to most modern players, strong gratification when completed, provides strong control over advancement to players.
Cons: Requires significant setup in creating achievements for advancement options, repetition can feel like a grind that’s difficult to complete, requires carefully watching events to see if they match any of the achievements (since you can unlock any achievement at any time, not just a subset).

Consumable Items (Used In: Godeaters of the Astral Sea, Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk)

In Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk (which is sort of a d6 system Ars Magica in the desert), there are a variety of magical skills.  The titular Sorcerers go on quests to retrieve items that can be consumed to provide progression towards those skills, with each item being worth progression on a specific skill (to use a D&D example, you might find one item that boosts Evocation or another that boosts Conjuration).  Godeaters of the Astral Sea does it a little more generically, with crystalline godsblood being consumed to raise what is effectively your level cap.  In either case, these are examples of a consumable item; characters must physically locate and consume an item in the game-world to progress.  This is distinct from Gold for XP because the item is not generic, but specific and rare; Gold for XP refers to any kind of currency or fungible item, while Consumable Items are non-fungible.  (They’re never tokens, though, these things actually have value.)

Pros: Provides another kind of exciting loot to find, lets players portion out progression between party in-character
Cons: May require loot distribution between players, potential for in-game shenanigans around progression

Equipment-Based Advancement (Used In: Terraria, other survival games)

With this type of advancement, you don’t necessarily have character abilities.  Your abilities are your equipment (or, at least the type of abilities that are controlled by this advancement type are like this).  If you change your equipment, you change your abilities.  If your character dies, that’s fine, they were just a carrier for the equipment; as long as the equipment survived and was retrieved, your new character can put it back on and have the exact same abilities immediately.

Pros: Highly customizable character options, very understandable progression, exciting loot options
Cons: Limited character investment, possible loot competition between players

Faction-Based Advancement (Used In:  Roguelites, MMOs)

Faction-based advancement is similar to equipment-based advancement in that it has skills and abilities provided by a source other than your character.  As you progress with a faction or factions (whatever ‘progress’ means in your context, but usually it’s filling up a bar somehow), you gain new abilities.  These abilities are maintained between your characters if your character should die or retire, because they’re granted by the faction. 

Pros: Ties characters to in-game groups of NPCs, investment is maintained between characters, provides social choices
Cons: Limited character investment, doesn’t always offer opportunity for players to set their own goals, may cause some players to feel pressured to join a group they don’t totally agree with for mechanical rewards

Expenditure (Used In: Godbound, some OSR games)

With Expenditure, advancement occurs through expending a currency.  This currency may be something specific for advancement, or it might be useful for something else.  For example, in Godbound, characters earn Dominion points, which they can spend to alter the world.  Godbound characters can’t gain levels until they have spent sufficient Dominion.  Some OSR games use a carousing rule, where instead of earning XP for finding gold, you earn XP for spending it.

Pros: Ties characters to find a reason in-world to spend, rewards players who use their resources
Cons: Not all players want to spend in these ways, still requires collecting the currency.

Practice-Based Advancement (Used In: Cyberpunk 2020)

With practice-based advancement, you improve at a skill or feat by using it.  If you want a new ability, you try to use it untrained until you practice it enough to unlock it.  For example, in Cyberpunk 2020, at the end of sessions each of your skills gains IP based on how you used it that session.  You can spend the IP to improve that skill – and only that skill, you can’t spend it on anything else.  This can be done more generally if desired, for example by splitting into categories like Combat, Social, and Magic, and rewarding progression that can be used anywhere in the category when a part of the category is used.

Pros: Possibly the most intuitive system there is, rewards players for doing the things that they did
Cons: Large amount of bookkeeping, advancement rates can be challenging to get right

 

A lot of these options (or perhaps diegetic character advancement in general) are best used in games that have an assumed baseline of character power after which additional power is good to have but not necessary for basic combat effectiveness, such as Godbound and E6.  The reason for this is because when advancement is tied to specific in-game events, the exact amount of time for those events can be estimated, but not guaranteed.  Abstract or story-based progress can be guaranteed to occur at specific times or specific rates; diegetic advancement being based on the actual events in-world can only be guaranteed to the same degree that the events of the game can be guaranteed.  If you are running a game that includes player agency and the events of the game in-world are not guaranteed, then this also introduces uncertainty into your progression.  Uncertain progression that results in some characters having strongly different levels of combat effectiveness from others can be frustrating for groups (though it is also specifically desired for other groups and games; this is a question about asynchronous advancement and the options and effects related to it, which is out of scope for this particular rambling.)  Even with fully synchronous advancement, uncertainty about progression can make gameplay more difficult or less interesting if there are troughs.  It can also make it more interesting.  Having the level of baseline effectiveness guaranteed, and advancement providing things that are useful but not needed, smooths this out and prevents it from causing issues.  You don’t need to have that, but it’s nice.

Specific Rewards vs Abstracted Rewards

Any of the listed types of diegetic character advancement can be split into two general categories; specific rewards or abstracted rewards.  Specific rewards is what most people will think of when they hear or talk about diegetic character advancement, and in my opinion, is the real way that we get a strong benefit out of it.  But some of the same benefits can still be gained from generic rewards so I’m mentioning it as an option.  In a sense, modern D&D-type experience points can be considered a type of diegetic character advancement, because they are rewarded purely from combat* and serve primarily to make you better at combat by gaining level; that would be an abstracted reward.  They aren’t really diegetic the way they’re usually used, because most campaigns do not do the worldbuilding support that’s needed to make experience points actually fit into the world; but if you did, then they could be a weak form.

*(Yes, I know a lot of people reward XP for noncombat tasks, and some DMGs depending on edition mention this as an option.  We all know it’s basically just for combat though and any noncombat rewards are an afterthought.)

The distinction between abstracted rewards and specific rewards is what you put down on your character sheet after doing the thing.  After you complete whatever in-world task it is that allows you to advance, what form does the advancement take?  If the advancement is a specific thing, then we’re talking about specific advancement; if the advancement is something generic that you then spend or otherwise convert into a specific thing, then it’s generic.  For example, if discovering the Lost Temple of Ra gets you an advancement roll, that’s generic advancement; if it unlocks the feat Sun-Kissed for you, then it’s specific advancement.  Generic advancement still offers benefits over non-diegetic character advancement with tying characters to the world, but specific advancement is wrought chains of adamant turning a character sheet into a chronicle of heroism.  The drawback, of course, is that it’s way more work to build a world that has these rewards directly built into it, and it also requires a system that can support it; if your system doesn’t have enough unique game elements for it to make advancement feel different and rewarding, then there’s not a lot of point in using specific advancement, you’ll run out of things to reward.  This kind of specific advancement is analogous to the experience of magic items in old-school D&D, particularly the case in a play culture that prioritized modules.  If you had the Sword of Rainbow Lashes, it meant that you got it by going through the Pit of Despair, because that’s where that sword was.  Modern MMORPGs also brought this style forward, with drop tables in dungeons.  If you want that item, you go to that dungeon, it’s not going to be anywhere else.  As mentioned above I feel that the real power of diegetic advancement comes in when you’re doing specific advancement, because it ties your progression directly to your actions.  Every element on your character sheet becomes a specific thing that happened; it’s not just “I gained a level and selected this feat”, it’s “I stabbed a dragon with a magic sword, was splashed by its blood, and my world was changed thereby”.  A spell you learned isn’t something you selected on level up; you got that spell from the spellbook of the evil wizard you hired a thief to steal, and you avoid casting it with witnesses around so they don’t notice.  Every element on your character sheet becomes not just something you picked while playing a game, but a mark of valor, and carries its own story with it.

I have no ending to this planned and am done with words.  Ok bye.