D&D 3.x [Let's Read] The Frank & K Tomes

[Cergorach]

Not to be a "well, ackshually" guy, but I'd argue that Loren Coleman was the creator of such drama. If he didn't embezzle company funds and paid freelancers the work they were owed, none of the ensuing fallout would've happened.

That was never proven or admitted, they mixed company and private funds, something that happens often with small companies. And don't get me wrong, CGL has had 'issues' paying their freelancers since that drama as well. CGL isn't a good company to work for imho. But so are so many other small RPG companies and those had never the amount of drama that Trollman created. I'm not saying that there was no fire, but we have a saying: "Making from a mouse and elephant..." This drama primarily happened on the Shadowrun side of the business and the Battletech side was largely unaffected by the drama, even though they were also employing a ton of freelancers...

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 8: Money and Equipment​

Image taken from the Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants and Magic

Besides being heavily into dark magic stuff, another pet focus of the Tomes series was highlighting the stress points of D&D’s fantasy economic systems. Although discussed in other chapters as well, this is the first one that really touches upon this topic in-depth.

We first start off with an overview of equipment as it stands in 3.5, specifically Weapons. The authors note that they’re more or less fine with the diverse assortment of weapons in 3.X and don’t see the need to rebalance them, but they do have an issue with 3.5 introducing the concept of variant sizes for weapons. For example, a flail designed by halflings and other Small creatures is going to weigh less and do less damage than one designed by humans or ogres. The Tomes pretty much move back to 3.0’s simplification, and also adds in some restrictions to prevent Hulking Hurler cheese, such as not being able to use weapons that are larger than the character or that are too heavy to lift as a light load.

The section then moves onto bows. In the original 3.X rules, bows had composite versions which basically let you add a certain amount of Strength to damage rolls, with higher effective Strength being more expensive to craft and purchase. The authors describe this as “dumb,” saying that this made such weapons very cost-prohibitive to use effectively for orcs, giants, and the like. The alternative fix is that composite bows could still be made with a certain Strength requirement, but their cost would remain the same. The limiting factor is that bow-making civilizations only really make what is practical for the realistic Strength ranges of their people. Bows also have alternate ranges based on the intended size of its wielders.

Thoughts: First off, I disagree with the initial statement that 3.X weapons are more or less balanced with each other. Besides the existence of the Spiked Chain, there were definitely weapons that saw more use at tables due to practicality. Crossbows were notoriously weak in comparison to bows, while rapiers and scimitars were the preferred choice for crit-fishing builds given their high threat range. The return to simplification is a common complaint, and one that future Editions moved back to, treating weapons wielded by larger-than-Medium races as effectively unique equipment (albeit with its own can of worms). The Tomes have a step in the right direction, but it feels that it’s more of a patch than a fix, and ironically the “can’t wield weapons past a certain size/weight” does punish martials who already have things hard enough in this ruleset.

We continue to see some obfuscated meta-discussion by the authors. While they do go into detail about what they don’t like about weapon sizes, they don’t really talk about why strong bows being more expensive is dumb in and of itself when other gear made for large/strong races also gets price hikes. The 3.X rules already make armor for larger creatures more expensive, something that the Tomes don’t really change or address. One could logically assume that a bow made for a frost giant would require stronger materials in order to support the increased draw strength, so why is one form of expense an ill-designed decision, and the other not? Additionally, the reduced range on bows for smaller creatures is also a punishment. The increased bow range and removal of expense for higher Strength scores not only reinforces players to not pick halflings, goblins, and other small-sized races for archer builds, it encourages them to pick options such as Goliaths and Half-Ogres instead.

There’s some talk about making magical ammunition cheaper and more easily recoverable, along with new weapon materials for necromantic weapons. For the latter, we did talk about Boneblades in the Prestige Classes section, but we also get Blood Steel (+2 damage on a hit) and Black Steel (adamantine that has Ghost Touch and Wounding properties at no additional cost, but cause Wisdom drain when wielded). I don’t have strong opinions on these overall.

We move onto Armor, which has a much more significant rules overhaul. The authors note that most armor types are passed over in favor of just a few, so they created a set of new rules to make armor of all types more broadly appealing. We first start out with advice on not mixing and matching incompatible-sounding armor types and qualities, such as not applying Mithril to plate armor. Ironically, the Tomes’ take on Armor Non-Proficiency adds in some punishments not in the original 3.X rules, such as reduced movement in non-proficient armor if its armor check penalty exceeds the wearer’s Base Attack Bonus by a certain amount, and that armor of more unique and exotic origins (such as extraplanar types) require training in it for a day in order to gain proficiency. But there is one boon the Tomes grant to dextrous armor-wearers: they increase the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armor for every two BAB higher than the Armor Check Penalty.

We then get an expanded set of tables for new and existing armor types in the Tomes. In addition to straightforward protection, armor and shields also grant bonus benefits based on Base Attack Bonus and ranks in particular skills in line with the principles of Scaling Feats. This wasn’t just a Frank and K endeavor, for they were assisted by Mister Sinister in rounding out the scaling armors. For example, Dragonscale Suits grant stuff like Energy Resistance and eventually Immunity based on the type of dragon its armor is made from, Hide Armor can make the wearer undetectable by scent and harder to track, and Spiderweb Clothing lets one be more spider-like such as unrestrained movement through webs as as well as gaining poison immunity.

Thoughts: There’s an awful lot of armor types, and the scaling benefits help make them stand out. However, these rules suffer from the option paralysis effect that the Scaling Feats do, and there are still certain armors that have more broadly applicable benefits than others. For example, Padded Armor still sucks, with the 8 rank benefit (gain benefit of 8 hours of sleep with 7 hours) actually being weaker than the 4 rank benefit (can reroll a failed Tumble check under certain circumstances), while the Adamantine Breastplate’s +1 BAB has a better benefit (Damage Reduction equal to BAB vs non-adamantine weapons) than most of the Ringmail armor’s (its +1 BAB merely negates 5 points of non-lethal damage from any attack).

The Economicon is the final section of this chapter, moving on from raw crunch to the discussion of more ephemeral concepts that are split into 8 different subject matters. This is also the first time that the Tomes talk about the Wish Economy in more depth. Although the PDF goes into proper detail in the Book of Gears in back, I believe that giving the readers a brief run-down here can help provide a better understanding.

The Tomes operate with the expectation that D&D societies are separated into three broad economic systems:

1. The Turnip Economy, representing subsistence agriculture and hunter-gatherers, societies that rely on barter systems, and others that have not developed or are sufficiently removed from more intricate systems such as banking and minted coinage.
2. The Gold Economy, representing the pseudo-medieval adventuring standard, with Material Plane cities and major population centers being the nexus points of trade.
3. The Wish Economy, representing archmages, extraplanar bastions, the courts of archfiends and divinities, and other people and places operating by immortal principles.

The Wish Economy is further outlined by several core rules: the first is that coins in D&D are 1/50th of a pound; that an Efreet can produce a Wish for any magical item of 15,000 gold or less; that a Balor can cast Greater Teleport at will, but only carry 30 pounds of currency while doing so, and that even with platinum pieces that’s only 15,000 gold worth of currency.* Thus, any magic item worth more than 15k is only bought for more valuable things, such as immortal souls and other planar currency. And as the Tomes are built around the expectation that captured Efreeti are easily accessible, that PCs of powerful enough status can be assumed to more or less acquire magic items worth 15k or less without any effort.

*This is actually wrong: a Balor can Greater Teleport with 50 pounds of objects at most, not 30.

The Economicon bounces between different subject matter, such as an attempted in-universe justification for the universal price tag increase for masterwork weapons and armor by saying that D&D functions on a war-time economy. As to why, this doesn’t make sense to the authors that a masterwork dagger is worth more than their weight in gold. Or that silver/gold/etc pieces are unreasonably heavy in comparison to real-world coins. But there are some choice essays I want to focus.

8.3.4 Bad Money Drives Out Good: The Penalties of Paper

This essay attempts to explain why fiat currency and paper money don’t really exist in D&D. It basically boils down to the claim that such currency only came about with the rise of Nationalism in the real world, and that D&D societies are still operating in the Iron Age. The authors point out that D&D settings can have expansive empires and kingdoms, but “that’s it as far as civilization goes.” Since they aren’t countries in the modern sense of the word, people can’t place trust in a higher governmental authority beyond what can be enforced through labor and force of arms.

This is wrong from an historian’s perspective: first off, the real-world Iron Age predated the feudal era by several centuries to a millennia, depending on where you are in the world. Additionally, many pre-Industrial societies have made use of paper currency. The Mongol Empire, the Tang and Song Dynasties of China, even the Knights Templar all had paper currency. And if we really want to be in the Iron Age, Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi and the city-state of Carthage also made use of paper for the tracking of debts.

8.3.5 Powerful Creatures Have a Powerful Economy

This focuses on what forms of currency that archmages, demon lords, and the like use in place of vulgar metal. The Tomes provide five major types: gems, souls, concentration, hope, and raw chaos. Gems are useful because they are used as material components for all manner of spells, souls are useful for necromantic stuff and for the lower planes’ slave trade, concentration represents ideas so powerful that they take the form of an amber-like substance and are valued by Lawful outsiders, hope is a shining weightless material valued by celestials, and raw chaos is the essence of possibility that can take innumerable forms. All of these materials can be used in the crafting of magic items.

Our final essay in this chapter brings things to a close. As we covered in prior posts, D&D 3.5 and the Tomes grant characters (not just PCs) powers and abilities that can fundamentally change things on both a personal and societal scale. And that’s before getting into high-level Wish-granting shenanigans! The Tome authors are more than aware that many gaming groups have asked the question of why the PCs and powers-that-be haven’t used their influence to reshape D&D settings into something much more advanced. This is pretty much a fantasy equivalent of the “Why Doesn’t Reed Richards Cure Cancer?” type of questions you see bandied about in superhero fandoms. This next subject is what the Tomes attempts to answer.

8.3.8 Bringing the World out of the Dark Ages

It is historical fact that you can take a ridiculous and crumbling imperium with serfs and horse-drawn carts managed by a tyrannical and squabbling aristocracy and boot strap it into being a technologically sophisticated global power that can win the space race and such in a single generation even while being invaded by an evil and genocidal empire. The people at the top don't even need to be nice or sane, they just have to understand that economics is an entirely voodoo science, and the limits of production can be broken by thousands of percentage points by getting everyone to buy on credit, work on projects that people looking at the big picture tell them to work on, continuously invest in productive capital, and believe in the future.

Right. That's called Communism, and it ends the dark ages immediately even if it isn't run well. Presumably if it was being run by Paladins who actually radiate goodness and Wizards who are inhumanly intelligent and can cast powerful divinations to determine projected needs and goods could be distributed to the masses with teleportals - it would work substantially better. That sort of thing is not outside the capabilities of your characters in D&D. It's not outside the capabilities of the people in the village your characters are saving from gnollish invasion. It's not even technically complicated. But it isn't done.

Partly it isn't done because we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Logistics & Dragons. While it is true that you can fix the world's ills in a much more tangible fashion by industrializing the production of grain and arranging a non-gold based distribution system such that staple food stuffs are available to all, thereby freeing up potential productive labor for use in blah blah blah… the fact is that to a very real degree we play this game because telling stories about slaying evil necromancers and swinging on chandeliers is awesome. But the other reason is that the society in D&D really isn't ready for a modern or futuristic social setup. No one is going to understand how they are supposed to interact with Socialism, Capitalism, or Fascism, things are Feudal and people understand that. Wealth is exchanged for goods and services on the grounds that people on both sides of the exchange aren't sure that they would win the resulting combat if they tried to take the goods or wealth by force of arms.

Rome had steam engines. Actual difference engines that propelled a metal device with the power of a combustion reaction through the medium of the expansion of heated water. Really. They never built rail roads because slaves were cheaper than donkeys and the concept of investing in labor saving devices was preposterous. In D&D, the idea of having an economy based around trust in the government and labor/wealth equivalencies is similarly preposterous.
It's not that the idea wouldn't work, it's that every man, woman, and child in society would simply laugh you out of the room if you tried to explain it to them.

Thoughts: A long-ass time ago, when I first got interested in the Tomes, the “economics is voodoo science” was the major thing I tripped over. It’s pretty uncontroversial in academia that economics is a legitimate social science. Heck, it’s one of the few things that libertarians and communists agree on! I first thought (and saw the defense of) the bolded line that it’s being discussed in the context of Soviet-style centralized planning. But it’s not, for the term "entirely" applies to an objective stance of authority. It’s also not talking about “Voodoo Economics,” which was a criticism of Ronald Reagan’s policies, as it’s quite clearly about the Soviet Union which was hardly a laissez-faire capitalist society.

This is perhaps the prime example of obfuscated authorial intent: the writers not only drop a contentious declaration that is hardly a popular opinion, they don’t really explain why they came to that conclusion and presume that the reader will accept it at face value. What makes this line worse than other examples is that the Tome authors go into a lot of detail about fantasy economics. For a STEM example, this would be the equivalent of reading a D&D sourcebook talking about fantastical poisons and diseases, and then out of nowhere the author says that vaccines cause autism in real life. This served as my first shelf-breaking moment in not just the Tomes, but the future works of Frank and K. Even if what they were talking about appeared to make sense, I always had that lingering seed of doubt that what I was reading could in fact be incredibly wrong.

But more broadly, this essay is a good example of the Selective Realism I talked about in the original post. This isn’t the first time that the Tomes take an implied “feudal people are too dumb and unenlightened to take advantage of magic and other society-shaping tools,” but it does showcase the authors’ attempts at explaining why there’s a dissonance between the rules presented and the world as it is presented. I am reminded of how Ars Magica had sourcebooks talking about how the magical powers and creatures presented in its rules could change medieval Europe, which is quite solidly feudal. Instead of retreating from the world-breaking expectations that could arise out of handing great power to the PCs and NPCs of the setting, it reinforces the feeling of a living world full of people making decisions that feel plausible to the reader. The Tomes’ take is antithetical to this.

Thoughts So Far: There are some things I like in this chapter, some things I dislike. The latter outweighs the former, for where the Tomes falter, they falter hard.

Join us next time as we get our war face on in Chapters 9 through 11: Combat Basics, Advanced Combat, and Conditions & Special Abilities!

 

[Libertad]

Chapter 9: Combat Basics​

Image is the Duel by Shen Fei

This post is going to be a three-parter on account that these chapters cover a lot of material that exists in the core rules. Most of Chapter 9 covers basic concepts such as how to calculate one’s attack bonus, initiative and surprise, and the different action types. They do include descriptions for Swift and Immediate actions which is appreciated. Such action types did not originate in the 3.5 core rules, but were repeated enough in future material to the point that they became virtually core.

What is new in this chapter are the three essays at the beginning. The first outlines how in older Editions of D&D, certain classes were intentionally unbalanced due to having harder prerequisites: for instance, the paladin was harder to qualify for due to having strict ability score minimums at a time when such scores were all rolled. The Tome authors argue that the acceptance of the Fighter as a “weak” class has carried over into 3rd Edition, and thus the Tomes are designed so that the Fighter and other classes are intended to be important characters in their own right rather than meat-shield speedbumps for the monsters.

The next essay talks about how the set-up of fantasy elements fundamentally changes the face of warfare. In short, heroes and adventuring parties are akin to special forces who are sent to take care of problems that you can’t just throw hordes of peasant militias (or goblins, or dretches, etc) in order to solve. Non-magical aristocrats who don’t have Cú Chulainn levels of super-strength still have a place in the world, as the day-to-day management of a realm includes stuff that adventurer skills aren’t necessarily specialized for doing. However, it is an open secret in the halls of power that adventurers are the real power in the lands, but it’s an easier pill to swallow for the populace to have apparent leaders who come from stable-looking dynasties rather than nomadic bands of murderhobos.

The final essay concerns the concept of honor, specifically as a social construct rather than a cosmic law. What do such codes look like in a world where magic isn’t assumed to be a tool of the Devil, or where certain fantasy races have innate powers that give them particular advantages such as seeing in the dark? The Tomes explain that honor codes primarily work to keep the powerful in power and the rest of the “little people” in their place. Several examples are given of what this looks like: for example, getting a lot of help on a single project is dishonorable, as powerful mages have great power at their fingertips, but most Commoners can only do so much by themselves. Or destroying magic items, even corrupted and innately dangerous ones, is dishonorable. As to why, you’re removing a source of power from the world that other people can use.

The authors note that whether or not someone is honorable doesn’t necessarily map to alignment, and in the end boils down to whether or not society at large is willing to ostracize the person. Meaning that even Chaotic Evil societies have their own twisted forms of honor.

Thoughts: I like all of these essays, as they give food for thought when it comes to world-building and how fantasy elements can apply to otherwise feudal medieval worlds. The Fighter essay is rather interesting, in that 3rd Edition’s Fighter actually lost a bunch of things that the class could do in earlier Editions, such as a surfeit of bonus attacks against 1 Hit Die mooks or overall having the best saving throws. The essay doesn’t point such things out specifically, but it is related to the overall perception of certain classes being more…prestigious, if you will, among players.

Chapter 10: Advanced Combat​

Image is Duel by Antonio J. Manzanedo.

This continues the process of copying stuff from the core rules, although the subjects covered are more situational such as difficult terrain, cover and concealment, and modifiers to attack and Armor Class based on various factors. This chapter does feature several major changes: the first is that the Expertise and Power Attack feats are now made into universal options that anyone with at least +1 Base Attack Bonus can perform. Power Attack is made so that the damage bonus is a fixed rate of +2 for every 1 BAB sacrificed, so two-handed weapons no longer have an inherent advantage and you can Power Attack with light weapons now.

The second major change is a mechanic known as the Edge. It is a pseudo-condition where a character “has the Edge” against an opponent if they have a greater Base Attack Bonus than said opponent. Various feats and class features can grant the Edge in other ways, too. For example, the Swashbuckler gains the Edge against an opponent until that opponent strikes them. The Edge grants new and improved uses of existing combat maneuvers: for example, a disarm attempt against a target you have the Edge against doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, and can choose where the disarmed object lands or even grab it with a free hand. It’s particularly good for grapplers, as having the Edge makes it so that the target cannot attack you at all once you successfully perform and maintain a maneuver against them. In fact, this section significantly streamlines the infamous grapple rules by dividing them into 3 distinct maneuvers: Grab On (attach yourself to an opponent), Hold Down (basically pinning them in place), and Lift (can move around freely while carrying the opponent).

The third major change is actually near the end in its own essay, concerning the new and improved [Leadership] feats and their shared system. Basically, it’s an optional element, and a character gains a Leadership score once they have a Leadership feat. They can take more than one, but the Tomes say that it’s a common house rule to limit people to one such feat. Leadership in base 3.5 derives from character level and Charisma plus several situational modifiers. In the Tomes, it is based on the feat: for example: Army of Demons is based on ranks in Knowledge (the Planes) plus Charisma modifier, while Lord of Death is one’s ranks in Knowledge (Religion) plus Wisdom modifier. In the base game, one’s Leadership score determines the level of Cohorts and Followers (the latter of whom were limited to 6th level at best), but Tomes swaps this out by measuring such NPCs by Challenge Rating. In fact, the maximum Challenge Rating of one’s Followers now is 10, although the book states that Followers are “traditionally of the crappy classes” such as Expert and Warrior, and Cohorts are always 2 CR lower than the PC. Certain [Leadership] feats grant one the ability to recruit monsters as Followers: Lord of Death and Army of Demons are pretty obvious, although the latter feat isn’t specific to demons but rather the Outsider type in general, and said feat also has the [Celestial] as well as [Fiend] tag. Monster Rancher is the most broad feat for follower species, for the “your followers can and must be monsters” doesn’t limit by creature type like the other ones do.

The final set of explicit rules in this chapter is the Mass Combat Mini-game, an abstracted version of large-scale warfare for D&D. The Tomes note that this isn’t meant to be a complicated or stand-alone system, noting that if you “wanted to play Warhammer 40K, then you wouldn’t be playing D&D.” In short, this mini-game takes place on a map, with two or more opposing forces known as Armies. Armies are composed of Units with values for Hit Points, Damage, Move, and Morale, which are pretty straight-forward. Morale is like a secondary set of Hit Points that apply to your Army Morale Rating as a whole, and the value decreases the more Units you lose. Once that Rating hits 0, surviving Units on that side flee combat. Each Unit has a Commander, who has a Commander Rating that is added to the total Morale Rating and determines how many Tactics they can give each turn. Tactics are special actions a Commander can order for a Unit to undertake, such as fortifying the square they’re in to gain Damage Reduction. PCs can take control of Units as Leaders if they have a Commander Rating, which is obtained by having a [Leadership] feat.

This chapter ends with a series of essays talking about what war and its consequences look like in a generic D&D setting. The first set is called A World at War, which first starts out with individual entries for popular fantasy races and monstrous civilizations. For example, it talks about how gnomes’ propensity for illusion magic and ability to speak with burrowing animals makes them excellent guerilla fighters, or that the sahuagin rule the largest empires by physical size given that oceans cover the majority of most Material Plane worlds. The essays also talk about how non-human lifespans can shape perspectives, such as how dwarves are very good at multi-generational prolonged conflicts when fighting orcs, goblins, and giants. The dwarves see and judge such conflicts as part of a larger “eternal war” and thus take very long-term perspectives, while their enemies see the war as a series of separate conflicts with their own individual goals and stakes, and also don’t have as long-held a tradition of record-keeping so they take longer to learn from their mistakes. After the War is a more specialized set of essays talking about what happens when certain races (and necromancers) win in warfare, along with sample adventure hooks. One such example is a “resource rush” in a region, when a necromancer’s army kills everyone living but leaves all the inorganic resources behind for the taking.

Logistics and Dragons is our final set of essays, and is also where the changes to Leadership are which I already covered earlier. It more or less discusses population demographics, but starts out with discussing handling of magic items at higher levels. The latter example says that by the time PCs start interacting with the Wish economy, the DM should be more lax in handwaving keeping track of minor magic items. The authors note that different groups have different expectations on book-keeping and to first talk things out to ensure that everyone’s on the same page.

The discussion on demographics further builds upon the “let’s give everyone classes and levels” of 3rd Edition: notably, it says that most high-level NPCs are spellcasters, because “NPCs go up in levels in situations appropriate to their class, unlike Player Characters” and that “NPC Fighters rarely survive in the environment required to become 20th level, while NPC Wizards often do.” Also, the Tomes get rid of the concept of the Commoner class, instead replacing it with Humanoid Hit Die to represent non-combatant laborers, and that “normal people” NPC classes only go up to 5th level.

Thoughts: The essays on how various fantasy races and monsters go to war are my favorite in this chapter. I also like the concept of the Edge, in that it gives martial classes a much-needed push. While it’s still rather cumbersome in requiring multiple die rolls, the Tomes’ take on grappling reads easier than what exists in 3rd Edition’s default. The Mass-Combat Minigame is incomplete in that it doesn’t have any sample Units, and it’s already heavily competing with a lot of other minigames and stand-alones out there. I do find it amusing how despite how far the Tomes went to bring martials and non-primary casters up, that the fantasy world it portrays is still dominated by high-level mages. And while it’s optional, I am not as fond of the Leadership changes, as it’s empowering an already-powerful feat and set of rules; they don’t need the help. I understand that it would be cool to have an army of monsters at your beck and call, but it just doesn’t work with how the action economy is in play.

Chapter 11: Conditions & Special Abilities​

This chapter pretty much covers the relevant entries from the core rules. As far as I can tell, they’re the same as base 3.5, so I’m not going to cover this one.

Thoughts So Far: These chapters contain my favorite bits of “fluff” from the Tomes, and the “crunch” isn’t too bad either. The Edge, the universal unlocking of Expertise and Power Attack, and the treatises on warfare provide martial-friendly content, which is nice when two of the Tomes are very mage-friendly by comparison.

Join us next time as we cover Chapter 12: Magic!