More Knave-ified 5E Spells

I posted last year about going through the spells from the 2014 5E Player’s Handbook and reimagining them as one-sentence, level-less Knave spells. Readers enjoyed that post, so let’s pick up where we left off, halfway through the letter A, and go through the end of the letter B. 

Bolded text is my revised version of the spell; where not specifically stated otherwise, characteristics like duration and range are left to DM discretion, common sense, or an appropriate roll of the dice. These spells use advantage and disadvantage, assuming both PCs and NPCs/monsters roll for themselves; but could easily be adjusted for a game using player rolls only. L stands for level, but could be replaced by INT under Knave 2E's draft rules, which aren't yet finalized. Non-bolded text represents some thoughts on the design philosophy that underpins 5E spells, and how Knave and other rules-light systems differ from it.

Arcane Eye. You can see through an invisible floating eye that you control for L rounds; it can pass through small openings but not solid barriers.

Arcane Gate. You create linked misty portals connecting two points you can see for L turns.

D&D 5E has a suite of spells and abilities – Misty Step, Dimension Door, Arcane Gate, and others – doing similar things with varying power and duration. Beyond the scope of this exercise, it might make sense to either condense them into one spell with variable power (scaling with L), or sharpen the distinctions between them.

Arcane Lock. A closed door, aperture, or container is magically locked for anyone besides you and your allies, and can only be temporarily unlocked by the Knock spell.

Armor of Agathys. A freezing aura grants you armor as chain for L turns; creatures that touch you take L damage.

I complained about temporary hit points before, and here they show up again, in a spell that eponymously implies AC improvement. This is another recurring 5E problem, where the flavor of a spell or ability gestures at something different from the mechanical effect (Chill Touch neither dealing cold damage nor serving as a touch-range spell is the most famous example). I’ve attempted to push this spell closer to its flavor... but are two different “L effects” too finicky for Knave?

Arms of Hadar. Creatures within reach must make a Strength saving throw or be pushed far enough away from you that they can no longer reach you.

Astral Projection. You and your allies enter a state of suspended animation while traveling to another plane of existence; you arrive unerringly at your intended destination, but your bodies are vulnerable while you travel.

Astral Projection is a holdover from the early days of D&D, when a lot of ‘70s esotericism, science fiction, and pseudoscience was baked directly into the game. This spell has little practical applicability in 5E, where characters will use Plane Shift as a simpler option available at a lower level. I’ll solve this by making Astral Projection a reliable way to travel the planes, and (if I ever reach the letter “P”) make Plane Shift more like Teleport (which is to say, unreliable).

Augury. You ask an otherworldly entity about a course of action you may undertake, and it advises if the outcome will be weal, woe, mixed, or uncertain/unclear.

Except for some needlessly crunchy mechanical details, this one is fiction-forward and mostly fine as-is in 5E. The cumulative chance of false readings is nominally interesting, but I think most players would simply never cast the spell more than once in a day, so I’m just cutting that detail and leaving any penalty for overuse to DM adjudication.

Aura of Life. You and your allies gain advantage on saves related to the undead for L turns.

Aura of Purity. You and your allies gain advantage on saves related to poison, disease, or similar afflictions for L turns.

Various 5E spells interact with damage types and status conditions at a level of detail beyond what we’re really interested in here. We’ll just condense these down to their underlying ideas and leave the specifics to DM adjudication.

Aura of Vitality. L nearby creatures in danger heal L damage.

Healing spells are boring. While running Knave, I’ve enjoyed how seriously players view damage; they can’t just shrug it off the way 5E characters usually can. We’ll see how many 5E healing spells we can get through before we run out of creative ways to steer them away from the game's damage-sponge arms race.

Bane. Your enemies have disadvantage on attack rolls as long as you loudly chant and point at them.

Last time we did this exercise, I trashed Aid because it just changes numbers without changing the fiction in an interesting way. Bane is even worse, because it’s useful enough in the math of combat to be a correct tactical choice, but only gradually affects the battle in a way that feels very numbers-oriented. Our “fixed” version makes it stronger, but with a risk, putting a target on the caster’s head for as long as they persist.

Banishing Smite. The next time you hit a creature with half HP or less with an attack, banish it to its native plane, or a random location L miles away if it is already on its native plane.

Banishment. Banish a creature to its native plane, or a random location L miles away if it is already on its native plane.

A player once told me they felt bad about using Banishment as a get-out-of-jail-free card, ending a potential combat before it really began by sending an enemy off to another plane of existence. While I have issues with some of 5E’s save-or-suck spells, because they invite players to optimize the fun out of the game, I told the player I actually rather like how Banishment just kicks the can down the road. A banished enemy may show up later with a score to settle – and they’ll be better prepared for the PCs’ tricks the second time around.

Barkskin. You gain armor as brigandine for L turns, and can easily conceal yourself among trees while motionless.

I couldn’t resist adding a little flavor with the second clause; it feels like an idea one of my players would propose, and I would gladly allow.

Beacon of Hope. Name something dangerous you have seen recently; you and your allies gain advantage on saving throws while confronting it.

I recognize that I may be leaning too heavily on advantage and disadvantage to generalize out from 5E’s highly crunchy 5E spell descriptions. Advantage is a great tool, but it yields diminishing results when too many effects grant it. Any serious adaptation of the 5E spellbook to Knave would require condensing the total list of spells, or at least carefully controlling how many spells acquired by the party rely on it for their effect. An alternative approach for Beacon of Hope would be to apply it to henchman and hireling morale.

Beast Sense. After touching a beast, you can sense what it senses for L hours.

Bestow Curse. Choose one of the five senses; as long as you point at a creature while muttering curses, that creature has disadvantage on any saving throws related to that sense.

Bestow Curse in 5E is flavorful, but the actual effects are kinda crunchy and, like Bane, feel like more of an ongoing nuisance for enemies rather than something that immediately changes the situation in an interesting way. 

Bigby’s Hand. For L rounds, you control a giant glowing hand that can punch, shove, and grab with the strength of a dozen people.

Blade Barrier. You conjure a wall of spinning blades, either as a ring around you or a long wall; creatures attempting to pass through the barrier must make a Dexterity saving throw or take Ld6 damage.

Blade Ward. Weapon attacks against you have disadvantage for L rounds.

Bless. Your allies have advantage on attack rolls as long as you are in as much or more danger than them.

As with Bane, we need to attach some kind of condition, although I fear these are getting a little too vague. I do like the idea of the spellcaster leading from the front and hoisting a metaphorical battle standard to inspire the group, which is easier in a classless game like Knave.

Blight. Drain all moisture from non-magical plants roughly equal to L people in size, reducing them to dust; a plantlike creature takes Ld10 damage instead.

Blinding Smite. The next creature you strike is blinded until the next time it takes damage.

Blindness/Deafness. All nearby creatures are blinded or deafened (your choice).

Blink. You become shadowy and immaterial on the round you cast the spell – and every other round afterward – unable to be harmed by solid things, but also unable to harm them in return.

Blur. Attacks against you have disadvantage.

Branding Smite. The next creature you strike glows with tell-tale light that they cannot extinguish for L turns. 

Burning Hands. A cone of fire either deals Ld6 damage to one creature, or ignites all flammable objects in the vicinity.

Closing Thoughts

The "D&D Next" process that led to 2014's D&D 5E seems to suggest that there was some appetite for removing needless complexity from the game, and... I think that included a desire to condense the byzantine spell list. They removed many of the “greater” and “mass” variations on spells. The option to upcast spells provided a model for varying the streamlining effects like simple damage and healing spells.

But the design feels compromised. A lot of cruft obviously stayed in. The designers didn't use those tools nearly as much as they could have, or should have. I don’t know that 5E would really work with the truly level-less/balance-agnostic magic of Knave; but I do believe 5E could have gone much further than it did, and would have played that much better if it had.

The Steelman Argument for Fudge

Last week: The Argument for Fudge-Free D&D

Obviously, I am anti-fudge. I am against fudging rolls of the dice, and equally against fudging other aspects of the game via Mike’s “dials.” But for any strongly held belief, it’s worthwhile to take some time and try to find the strongest arguments against one’s own position. A “steelman argument” is the opposite of a strawman argument – attempting to look at an opponent’s argument in the strongest possible light. Below are my attempts to steelman the fudge.

It's worth acknowledging that many home games are built around untested alpha content. Many DMs don’t have the luxury of running scenarios multiple times. If they are running published content, it has (hopefully…) been tested, but who knows how extensively. If the DM is homebrewing their game content, that content is reaching the table in a purely untested form. Most of the content I have run in long-running games was like this. And as such, it was untested, and I (as the adjudicating DM) had to address instances where I (as the planning DM) had made mistakes or failed to anticipate how the content would actually work in practice.

My solution to this was usually to use diegetic solutions and flexible adjudication tools rather than fudging the dice or the dials. But I understand why many DMs find that so challenging, and it can sometimes be really difficult to find a diegetic solution to a particular game situation (whereas fudging avoids the need for a diegetic explanation).   

It’s possible I’m underestimating the DM's capacity to make the game “more fun” in the moment. Perhaps some DMs can make these adjustments in a way that reliably does push the game in more interesting or fun directions. Perhaps I have a below-average sense of these adjustments when adjudicating the game, and it's easier to do without risking player engagement than I think. I’m skeptical, but I could be wrong.

It could be that a game has more tolerance for fudge than I believe it does, as long as the players trust the DM. Mike includes some caveats in the article suggesting that frequent or arbitrary fudging is bad. I would obviously go much further than he does. But a steelman argument for fudge would suggest that fudging has to be very frequent or severe to really harm a game. In this view, the degree of fudging Mike suggests won’t be nearly as apparent as I suspect it will be.

A Player Transparency Compromise

Acknowledging that one, two, or all three of the above steelman positions could be true, I would offer one final position of compromise between my position and the pro-fudge DMs out there. I believe the DM who wants to fudge in this manner should clearly state their intent to do so during session zero, or an equivalent communication before the game begins. (It’s possible Mike does in fact do this in his games; the article in question doesn’t specify either way.)

Fudge as a session zero topic can sit right alongside the discussion of the desired level of lethality and challenge in the game. The DM who intends to do this should simply say “I’ll sometimes fudge monster HP in the interest of making the game more fun.” If I were a prospective player, this would at least alert me that this wasn’t the game for me. And other players could build their expectations for the game around this expectation.

I believe this compromise position doesn’t contradict either Mike’s points in his article, or the steelman positions I outlined above. I would challenge fudge DMs – are you transparent with your players about what you’re doing? If you are not, I’d be interested to know why.

The Argument for Fudge-Free D&D

“Fudging dice rolls is bad” is now a truism in most online RPG discussion spaces. Along with familiar phrases “don’t railroad” and “talk to your players,” “don’t fudge” has been repeated exhaustively wherever RPG advice is shared. I wrote about this subject previously because I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper, but I don’t harbor any illusion that those posts were particularly novel. This is well-trodden ground.

But pro-fudge people don't give up easily. They look for other ways to bring the fudge back into the game. For example, moving the fudging action from the results on the dice to other parts of the game. I don’t believe this is any better than conventional dice fudging.

Before I proceed, I want to contextualize my criticism. I don’t write a lot of posts criticizing other writers’ views. The reason I’m doing so here is because Mike Shea’s (AKA Sly Flourish) GMing advice is generally sound, particularly for his putative audience of new and mid-level GMs who are still figuring out how to run games. I also think his signature “lazy DM” style has much to recommend it in a hobby larded with excessive, useless session prepping. I have his Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master book and would recommend it for a new 5E DM looking for prep tools. If Mike routinely gave out bad advice, I wouldn’t bother to comment on a post I disagreed with.

I further recommend you read Mike’s article in full before proceeding, so you can make your own evaluation of his argument before you read mine. While I have endeavored to convey his statements accurately, I welcome counterpoints in the comments about anything I missed, misread, or interpreted unfairly.

“Fudge monster hit points whenever it leads to a more fun game”

When and to what degree fudging would be “more fun” than the alternative is not as obvious as it sounds.

Gauging what is more or less “fun” while an RPG session is in motion sounds like it would be easy. But it’s not. It’s like trying to figure out what is wrong with your car while you are speeding down the highway.

Why? I contend that one of the most appealing characteristics of TTRPGs as a form of entertainment – contrasted with what board games and video games and sports and many other pastimes have to offer – is just how hard it is to predict what is going to happen. The incredibly wide range of unexpected (but organic and logical) outcomes from the fiction, which the players never would have seen coming, is a big part of the appeal to the hobby. 

When the DM starts tinkering with the fiction to make it “more fun,” they are constricting that range of outcomes. I remember very clearly the first time I realized, as a player, that the DM was doing this. The DM in question (who did a great job overall) confronted our mid-level party with a beholder. The other characters fled, but my character fell behind. I prepared to make a last stand and hold back the beholder for as long as possible, to buy more time for the rest to escape. I obviously hadn’t planned for this outcome, and the idea that this character would suddenly die in this manner was interesting, and interesting in a way that I’ve really only encountered in TTRPGs.

But the DM fudged. To their credit, most or all of the fudging was diegetic – deus ex machina by NPC. I’m sure the DM was trying to make the game “more fun.” But for me personally, the cost of the intervention outweighed its supposed benefits. 

“Fudge When it Ends a Battle That's Overstayed It's Welcome”

Most fights should end well before either side hits 0 HP.

It’s wild to watch people twist themselves into knots trying to “solve” a “problem” that was sufficiently addressed 40 years ago in Moldvay Basic. If the DM uses basic D&D morale, or an equivalent system, monsters will flee once the battle has overstayed its welcome.

Mike writes that “It doesn't make sense for [enemies] to just quit and walk away” after the enemy boss is dead or the main goal of the battle has been achieved… when this is exactly what would make the most sense. Excepting constructs or other “unthinking” monsters, most minions would certainly surrender or flee in that circumstance, and the battle would end in a logical and interesting way.

This is not arbitrary or immersion-breaking; quite the contrary. The idea that enemies break and run is a much more realistic depiction of fantastic (medieval or, more generally, pre-modern) combat than the video game slog to zero Mike appears to be envisioning. Most of the casualties in historical battles occurred after one side was routed and fled the battlefield. I’ve often run D&D 5E combat this way, and it works perfectly fine.

Based on other things he’s written, I don’t think Mike is opposed to non-lethal conclusions to combat in general. He may just consider that outside the scope of this particular article. But a diegetic solution like morale solves this problem so much more elegantly than rigging the fight behind the screen, and I'm left wondering why fudging “dials” is even a viable option by comparison. Combats that end when enemy morale breaks should be one of the most common resolutions to combat. 

“When You're Beefing Up Bosses” and “When It Makes Sense for the Story”

Fixing monster HP totals should happen during prep, not while running the game.

These two are addressing the same idea – changing HP mid-combat to hotfix D&D 5E’s creaky design.

Hacking the game is hard enough during prep. Trying to do it while running a session is even more difficult. To return to my original analogy, this is like saying to a passenger in your car, “Sorry, I didn’t have time to go to the mechanic this week. I’m just going to lean out the window with this lug wrench and do some tightening!”

For emphasis: It is perfectly fine for the planning DM, during prep, to adjust the HP of monsters they’re considering using. The planning DM can alter the fiction in many ways during prep, and that’s fine until the PCs encounter the fiction in-game. The adjudicating DM has a different responsibility, and should be skeptical of their own instinct to patch the game while it is underway (on top of their many other responsibilities as master of ceremonies and referee).

This use of fudging also raises a further question: “why have hit points at all?” It may sound like I’m being glib, but it’s a serious question. In a Free Kriegsspiel Revolution game, the fight with the lich would simply continue until the game participants agreed it made sense for it to end. Everyone understands that there is no number for the PCs to push to zero, so there’s nothing to fudge. 

There are other RPG systems that are otherwise designed to better facilitate the cinematic thrill of fighting the boss – with the dramatic moments arriving at just the right time, and the boss dying right at the climax of the fight. D&D 5E is not that game, and trying to force it into that box just chips away at the game’s verisimilitude and shared investment.

And yes, there is a cost. Players are not dumb. They will figure out what’s happening, and learn that the resolution of combat isn’t based on their skill, or an impartial and genuine engagement with the fiction, but rather the DM uncommunicated and ambiguous sense of fun, and their desire to perform emergency maintenance while going 70 miles per hour.

Next week: The Steelman Argument for Fudge

They Don’t Even Notice You

It’s easy to think of the PCs as the main characters of the game. Even if we run a game where we avoid writing a plot, or railroading the players, or beginning with an assumption that the characters are predestined heroes; the camera is almost always focused on them. They’re indubitably protagonists.

This is all well and good – but over time, it can feel like every room, hex, encounter, scene, and scenario revolves around the PCs. If it happens too much, it’s a drag on the verisimilitude of the world. 

So throw in a few encounters that are definitely not all about the PCs.

• An enormous monster – a t-rex or a kaiju – walks past (or over) the PCs, in search of bigger game
• Two armies clash, and the PCs are treated as bystanders, if they’re noticed at all
• Bickering town merchants are only interested in interacting with the PCs insofar as it advances their respective side in their endless argument 
• Powerful wizards, liches, or demigods are locked in battle; the PCs barely register amid the minions, summoned creatures, and particle effects crowding the battlefield  
• A (non-magical) storm, earthquake, or volcanic eruption hits the area where the PCs are; they can not "defeat" it, only endure it

Sometimes a living game world is just happening around the PCs. Sometimes the creature almost steps on them, not because it's attacking them, but because it just doesn't know or care that they are there. Sometimes they don’t even notice you.