We’ve given a boost to the underdogs and everymen – ways to make them more interesting and add a little more to the game. What about heroes – those lucky bastards with high ability scores (i.e. everyone in the game by the time we get to AD&D 2nd edition). Why should they get anything good?

First, let’s define heroes beyond the ability scores – and maybe explain those ability scores. In ancient Greece, heroes were the issue of gods and goddesses, whether major or minor, and mortals. Hercules and Achilles are a couple famous heroes. These folks have amazing abilities and ridiculous luck because they are kissed by the divine … but it ain’t all wine and roses.

Being a hero in ancient Greece is like being the child of an Asian tiger mom – the expectations are high. Let’s not mince words – life in the mortal realms sucks and eventually, you die. If you’re a demigod, though, you have the wonderful option of joining ma or pa in heaven and living forever. Getting there, though – that’s the trick. Heroes need glory.

How do you earn glory? Through heroic deeds. Not “four adventurers beat up a kobolds and took his 7 cp” types of deeds, but “one hero takes on dragon alone” sort of stuff. For a deed to fetch a hero glory, it has to be at the envelope of his or her abilities and he or she must risk death in achieving it. If it’s about fighting a monster, it needs to have at least as many hit dice as the hero. If fighting a monster with others, the monster has to have at least as many hit dice as the total party. If fighting a group, the hero must do it alone (perhaps with one allowable henchman) and the opponents, collectively, must have as many Hit Dice as he does. If it is some sort of skill challenge, it needs to have a less than 50% chance of success and, as I mentioned before, be deadly. Fighting a dragon or giant, jumping across a precipice, bathing an otyugh, picking a lock that contains a poison needle – all of these things can be heroic.

What do you get for glory? For every 500 XP earned heroically while 1st level (and every 1,000 XP earned while 2nd level and every 1,500 XP earned while 3rd level – you get the idea), the hero earns what we’ll call a Hero Point (stayed up all night thinking of the name – I’m very proud). Hero points measure your progress towards becoming a true hero:

At 6 Hero Points, you achieve a measure of fame that grants you a +2 bonus on reaction checks.

At 12 Hero Points, you acquire a small cult consisting in its entirety of a 1st level cleric or druid (they are restricted to no higher than 3rd level spells, granted by your divine parent) as a henchman. If he or she dies, a new one is attracted when you earn your next Hero Point, still at 1st level.

At 24 Hero Points, you are granted godhood upon your death. In the meantime, your cleric, if they are at least 5th level, may build a small temple in your honor and attract followers.

But there’s another aspect to being a hero – family troubles. Heroes are related to the gods, and the gods are, frankly, a pain in the ass. Heroes suffer the chance of being cursed by their own parents when the rile up the other gods, usually in two ways:

1) Killing another hero (or monster with divine blood)

2) Defiling another god’s temple

Do these things, and mom or dad have to hear about it and deal with it. They do so with a geas or quest, couple with a curse (i.e. bestow curse or whatever spell works in your system). To relieve the curse, one must complete the geas or quest. Gives heroes something to think about while adventuring and gathering up glory, don’t you think.

Last week, I threw out some ideas for dealing with the underdogs – characters with crappy stats – in fantasy games. Today, I want to look at the everyman.

In the mists of time, when 3d6 were used for rolling ability scores and when ability scores really didn’t give much in the way of bonuses, every character was an everyman. By everyman, I mean common, average, ordinary folks. That was part of the beauty of the game, really. Everybody that delved into that dungeon was hopelessly outmatched by the things lurking therein. I think the average human being tends to root for other average human beings, and in this respect there is a similarity between the everyman and the underdog – when you’re a normal guy surrounded by Conans and Merlins, you are, in a sense, an underdog.

I think the concept of an everyman also hinges on the idea of regular folks – the peasantry – versus the aristocracy and nobility. The notion of rustic honor and the value of honest labor and the full-throated enjoyment of life versus the restrained and condescending nature of the nobility.

Okay – enough explanation. What do we do with these folks?

1) Common Sense

Most of us remember the scene in Lord of the Rings – Gandalf the Wise can’t figure out the riddle, but the little hobbit hill lives in a hill does it easily. Common people have common sense (well, maybe not in reality, but in stories), and that common sense gives them the jump on the over-educated. Perhaps, once per day, an everyman can request a special clue or a re-roll when trying to figure out something that a more qualified person has already failed at.

2) Regular Fellers Stick Together

Regular folks have to stick together, and this might suggest a special perk of the everymen. If there is more than one everyman in a party, perhaps they can swap ability points back and forth – one guy drops a couple points of intelligence or takes a saving throw or attack penalty for the next 24 hours so another guy can get a needed boost. Or maybe one everyman can forgo an action and lend it to another.

3) The Sergeant Major

It’s a well known fact that veteran NCO’s run the military in every practical way, with the officers (especially those damned lieutenants) just getting in the way. Well, it’s a well known fact in tons of books and movies, and that’s what we’re interested in here. That everyman might have some hidden depths of practical knowledge that the heroes and underdogs lack. Perhaps a newly created everyman gets three “life events” that are initially kept blank. As he or she adventures, those life events can be filled in, giving them a boost of practical knowledge when its most needed. When the party is surrounded by bugbears, for example, the everyman fighter breaks out with, “Well, in my younger days, I was in a patrol in a very similar situation to this one. One of the henchmen was a cook, and he happened to know that bugbears cannot resist the smell of burning meat – drives them nuts. We made a quick fire and started roasting what meat we had, and in no time, the bugbears were tearing each other apart in their madness for food. Once they were fewer in number, we unbolted the door and slaughtered the lot of them. Could be that the same idea would work for us here.” Things like this are fun in a campaign because they allow players to invent a few bits and pieces for the campaign world, though of course they do need a bit of refereeing to keep them from becoming silver bullets – i.e. saving throws are always permitted, and those berserk bugbears that survive the initial bloodletting might be tougher customers than they might have been normally.

Okay, I said I would hit this yesterday, but then I remembered that I had a review ready to go and I didn’t want to delay. So sue me.

Underdogs – I defined them last time around, but for a refresher, an underdog is a character with ability scores that total 18 to 54, and who must have one ability score no higher than 6. Frankly, these folks shouldn’t be adventuring – OMG no ability bonuses! – but back in the day (when there weren’t ability bonuses, and even when there were), I’m sure many of them did adventure and probably survived about as long as their more generously endowed comrades (read that however you like).

So, what can we do, mechanically, beyond the stats, to make these characters more fun and interesting. I definitely do not want to just make up some bonuses to throw around – i.e. roll ability scores with no bonuses and get some anyways – so what to do? Well, here are a few ideas:

1. All Honor to the Underdog

Underdogs are normally going to follow a strategy of staying out of the way as long as possible. Let the others do most of the work, take a share of the experience and treasure, and live to fight another day. In movies, though, the underdog is usually set up to be the secret hero, striking at just the right moment to win the day. What if, when an underdog applies the final blow to the foe, or the underdog’s player solves the riddle or figures out the trap, the underdog gets all of the experience points for that challenge. This gives the underdog a great reason not to hang back all the time, cheeses off the other players (always good for the GM) and gives a mechanical boon without it really offsetting the underdog’s challenges.

2. The Seeds of a Hero

What if, whenever the above scenario happens, the underdog can forgo the experience (it is divided among the others), and instead increase an ability score. Maybe the underdog isn’t the hapless twit or sniveling weakling he at first appeared. Of course, there are a few provisos and quid pro quos here. The underdog only gets to raise one ability score, ever – if he chooses Strength, he’ll always be raising Strength. Moreover, he can only raise this score to a maximum of 13, and once it has hit 13, he’s no longer an underdog.

3. Root for the Underdog

Instead of (or in addition to?) the above, maybe the other players can lend the underdog a hand – after all, everyone roots for the underdog, right? During play, a player can lend the underdog their own bonuses, losing those bonuses either for the duration of a combat (if they’re in a combat) or for the remainder of the day (if we’re talking about saving throws or skill rolls and such). Naturally, this creates a much different group dynamic than 1 and 2 above.

Well – three ideas for the underdog. I’ll be in the air tomorrow and away from my computer, so no Friday post. But Saturday I’ll ruminate on the Everyman and see what we can do for them. I might also post an old class I invented called … The Everyman. If I can find it, that is.

Cheers!

I was listening to a pod-cast today that was discussing the Iliad – a story every gamer geek should probably be familiar with – and an idea struck me.

The Iliad is set in the Age of Heroes (yeah, a TSR, AD&D2E-era book), in which the children of the gods, the heroes, were competing for glory and immortality among mortal beings, and bringing the blessings and the curses of the gods with them. What marked these heroes? Well, if nothing else, their incredible ability scores, to put it in D&D terms. Thus, the idea …

In a campaign that ignores “race” – i.e. and all humans campaign – might it not be fun to divide the characters into broad categories based on their rolled ability scores. Now, this makes the most sense to do if you’re rolling 3d6 (either in order or not doesn’t really matter for our purposes). These categories might go as follows:

Ability Score Total / Category

18-54 / Underdog (and must have at least one score of 6 or lower)

55-77 / Everyman (and may not have any score lower than 8 or higher than 13)

78-108 / Hero (and must have one score of 16 or higher)

Now, what special abilities might go along with these categories? More on that tomorrow.