Dungeons & Delvers: 2nd Edition Development

Really quick: if you want something similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but which focuses on fun, usability, and quality—yet isn't grossly overpriced—as opposed to social justice progressive politics, propaganda, and irrational, obsessive hatred over mere disagreements and arbitrary thought crime violations, check out Dungeons & Delvers.

My oldest daughter is running a game tomorrow, and had the wife and I make characters. I wanted to take the opportunity to make an even more simplified Dungeons & Delvers game, as our kids have a somewhat harder time juggling all the rules, but when I broke out and started going through Rules Cyclopedia, I realized it wasn't that much more complicated.

Mostly it's all the talents classes get, as well as some more fiddly bits like the Wound Points/Vitality Point split and Damage Reduction (since those definitely add more math to processing damage), but I'm not sure just how much more complicated our magic systems are compared to the pseudo-Vancian model, specifically sorcerer and wizard magic, what with largely rolling for Drain and sometimes combining spell talents to do different things (mostly for the Illusionist tree).

Personally, in our home games no one really picks the fighter special attack stuff, preferring to stick with all the passive talents like Improved Critical, Slayer, Deadeye, choices you can just note-and-forget (I'm also guilty of this). And when our kids play wizards, they gravitate towards the simpler Evocations, as well as occasionally Necromancy, but focus on Animate Dead (ie, stuff they can Sustain and forget about).

Of course, that's one of the selling points of the game: controlled complexity. You can largely choose how complicated you want your character to be, sticking with passive stuff and simple spells, or going with the situational options, if that's your thing. But I think some of those things could be further streamlined, and/or made more appealing, and that's something we're going to try out.

In addition, we're going to take this opportunity to try out a slew of different ideas, because we like fiddling with mechanics and new ideas:

• No more skill point at every level. Instead, you get a new skill at certain levels (think 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons). This will also make it easier when dealing with high-level monsters (or even high-level animals), who can technically receive many skill points (the rules specify you don't have to give them all those skill points), and get their modifiers to degrees that strain credibility. This removes the need for rogue and ranger Bonus Skill talents.
• Instead of a skill modifier, going to try a mechanic where your check is just Assisted if you have it. Not sure what to do with the rogue's Skill Mastery, but this would make it easier to handle, and also make characters more reliable at certain tasks.
• Removing Perception as a skill choice. It's essentially a "skill tax" at this point. Some classes might be able to fiddle with it, though. Not sure, as I don't want to add in a "talent tax", either. Could be a baked-in class feature.
• You must roll ability scores, in order. No point buy, as that leads to "samey" characters. Can still discard if you get a total modifier of +0 or less.
• Considering requiring you to roll for race. Or, roll for race but default to human if you don't like what you got. This is an option currently in the core game.
• All classes must roll for your gear and starting cash (ie, a low fighter roll would get a spear, light armor, an empty sack, a few days of poor rations, and a couple coppers, while higher rolls get more weapons, better armor, some supplies, etc).
• Action points, as mentioned here.
• Anyone can use any weapon, and wear any armor. Certain classes get damage bonuses, so they'll be better than everyone else, and warrior classes will be able to effectively ignore some or all armor/shield weight, so it won't be as big a deal for them. Fighters and paladins would shave off more weight than barbarians, encouraging lighter armors.
• Favor mechanic for clerics is the same.
• Might tweak wizard magic to use something like spell slots, but that might be too close to cleric Favor. I like the "danger" element, though, and want wizards to suffer damage or some other calamity on a bad roll, but don't want to make things too specific for each spell. Maybe based on school? Also probably going with random starting spells.
• All classes get attack bonuses, sort of like 2nd and 3rd Edition. Justification is that even wizards will benefit from being able to use a spear or crossbow, because their magic is finite or sometimes useless. Could also give some classes an option that boosts this a bit, so your "war priest" or "spellsword" will be a bit better at stabbing things.
• WP and VP will be randomized. You'll have to roll it, but there's a table to determine how many of each you get. For example, a 1 means you gain 1 WP, a 2 means you gain 2 WP, 3 is 2 WP and 1 VP, and it scales up like that so you always have more WP than VP (which is the point). Better than rolling for WP and VP separately, as the dice used with be d2s and d3s, but could result in more VP than WP. I suppose you could still get more VP and WP with a low Constitution, anyway, but this way it's far less likely.
• Barring very specific in-game events, no ability score increases as you gain in level. You basically get what you get.
• Slight tweak to certain weapons.
• Going to playtest armor with a different AC spread and higher DR value, but make it so that every point you beat the target's AC your Armor Penetration is increased by 1, to a minimum of 0. So, if someone has an AC of 16 and DR 5, a 16 means you hit, but deal damage normally, 17 means the DR is reduced to 4, 18 it's reduced to 3, etc. Had thought about bonus damage, but for fighters this would get pretty ridiculous.
• Armor doesn't throttle Dexterity. Probably also lower skill penalties. Or, that could also be a baked in class feature for warriors.
• Strength is damage for all melee attacks, as well as ranged attacks that are from thrown weapons and bows (you throw harder, or can pull the bow back further).
• Dexterity for all attack rolls, because I saw a YouTube video that mentioned something like this, and thought it made sense. Maybe add in a "Strong Arm" talent that lets you default to Strength, in case you end up with crap Dexterity. But, then, you can always game the "Ganging Up" mechanic to hedge your bets. Or don't play a warrior.
• Definitely need a more persistent way for weapons to degrade or "break", thereby forcing players to actually bother with backup weapons. I think random combat events help, but perhaps something could trigger on a natural 1.
• Something I'll try at some point, is giving each weapon a "reach" value. For example, unarmed strikes would be 0, dagger 1, shortsword 2, arming sword 3, etc. Highest value strikes first, even if it's not your turn (triggers as an opportunity attack). Otherwise, ties go to whosever turn it is.
• No Dexterity cap for wearing armor (which never made sense anyway, except purely from a "game balance" perspective).
• Tweaking money to use a "copper" standard.

Mind you, this is all "theorycraft" right now. Nothing definitive or set in stone. We still need to playtest this stuff to see how it works out in the long run, in actual play, a process which will take at least a year or so (depending on how much game time we get in), and would be more likely to see use in other, Delvers-related games first.