Behind the Screen: You Miss....

“You miss.”

Two of the least interesting words that can be uttered by a Game Master. 

      When running a game it is the responsibility of the GM, DM, Story teller, what ever you want to call them, to facilitate an engaging stories and exciting adventures.  It’s apparent to any player that they missed a skill check, or missed with the swing of a sword, or missed with a gun shot, but what isn’t always apparent is HOW they missed. 

     Regardless of system there is always a target roll to hit or miss and the closer a players’ roll is to this number the more spectacular a miss can be.  After all, just because someone didn’t deal damage, it doesn’t necessarily mean they “missed”.  When fighting creatures with thick hide or a soldier with thick armor a “miss” is often a hit that didn’t deal damage. 

     There is, in fact, a combat session that has gone down in history as one of the best just because of such color.  Both sides, goblins and heroes, were rolling poorly and the deciding factor came down to a critical fumble taken advantage of with smart decisions on the part of the players.  But the whole combat was nearly an hour of “You Missed” that had everyone laughing and trying again just to see what would happen!

“Your arm jolts from the swords impact on his shield and sparks fly, but it bounces ineffectually off of his shoulder plate.”

Or
“Chips of stone fly and dust puffs into the air as your bullets riddle the wall just next to their head.”
Or
“You can feel the tumbler in the lock starting to give before it snaps back into place”
Or
“After nearly an hour of studying the book some of the concepts still seem foreign but they are starting to make sense.”

A little color to the “you missed” can do a lot for the moral of a player whose character may not be suited to the situation they might find themselves in or the player that is rolling poorly.  Some players even try for the one in a million rolls because if they succeed it will be cool but failing can still be fun and interesting. 

Character Building: I want to do that!

Some game systems are fairly lenient on what skill set you can select for a given character.  Others are much more ridged.   For the purposes of this article I’ll focus on Dungeons and Dragons.  Both 4^th and 3^rd editions have caused me more headaches, both as a player and DM, when it came to skill selection than other systems. 

            What head ache you ask?  The question of players wanting their character to have a certain skill or ability but it’s a “cross class skill” or is comes from another class.
           The first thing to understand about published game systems and modules is that skill and ability selection have been played and tested so that they are, hopefully, balanced with the rest of the game classes, monsters, and encounters.

Story Trumps Rules

            Let us say a fighter, as a young person, worked as an apprentice in a print shop and learned the ins and outs of printing, pressing, and creating documents but was then fired because they were using this knowledge to create fake invitations to royal parties, or writes of property.  Then, after being fired the fighter ends up on the street and becomes a thug really learning a tough life, thus earning the class of fighter.  However, part of what the fighter did to make ends meet, was to take this knowledge of printing and forgery to work as a doorman at certain events catching people that were using forged invites, writes and the like in the same schemes he was facilitating as a youth.  Does it really seem like Forgery would not be in this characters skill set?  Or a cross class skill at that? 

And there in lies the rub.  From a GM stand point, if a player offers a plausible portion of back story for their character and is willing to spend their meager supply of skill points in the case of a fighter on something that isn’t normally in a fighters skill set  Why should they be penalized for that?   

          Something to take into consideration as both a DM and a Player you do need to is balance.  Ultimately it’s the responsibility of the one running the game to make the determination about a change being requested. Is it within the balance of the game system? With the rest of the group?  With monsters or enemies that they might encounter?    
            Skills within the D&D realm are pretty easy to swap out without out too many concerns for balance.  If a character would like a skill as a class skill that would not normally be it is easy to trade with one that is. However, when swapping out things like Class abilities it may get a little tricky. This is when you should ask a few questions both before making the selection or allowing it as a DM.

1.  Is the Ability within the same ability level of the character?

2.   What is the player giving up in order for their character to have this new ability? 

This can help with the first question a bit. Usually when a player would like their character to have an ability that is normally associated with another class they will have to give up something their class would normally have at the same level. 

3. Where does it come from? 

Even if another class gains ability at the same level there may be other things that class does not have to compensate for the power associated with a given ability it.  Spell casting, Turning undead, Back Stabbing, Free Feats.  All have different levels of usefulness and balance issues that come with them.  So as the GM make sure you understand the full extent of the requested ability before agreeing to a character having it. 

4. Will it need limited?

Say a rogue wants to Have Turn Undead in exchange for their backstab ability?  Assuming the player has a plausible and well thought out story reason for this of course. Since the rogue does not have ranks in cleric the ability will be limited to begin with.  So do you leave it at the weaker form or,  like the ability it’s being traded for, will it become stronger as the character levels up? 

In the end, the biggest piece of advice I can offer when allowing characters to swap abilities or skills in any game system is: Be familiar enough with the system enough that you can recognize balance issues and address them.

And remember, multiclassing is  almost always an option.