Cold Iron a D&D-like homebrew from my college friend

[ffilz]

Back in college, I connected with a group of somewhat older gamers (including Mark Christiansen), several who were running games using Mark's homebrew, which eventually was called Cold Iron (for a long while, we all called it either CD&D (Christiansen D&D) or "Banned in White Plains" (for the attempt to codify the rules one player did that Mark did not accept as binding on his campaign, by that time, he had graduated and lived in White Plains NY).

Cold Iron clearly descended from D&D, but also clearly borrowed from other games, and would classify as a "Fantasy Heartbreaker".

The single most unique mechanical feature of the game to my mind is that Mark figured out an elegant method to use the normal distribution for open ended die rolls. Mathematically what he did (and this math is one of the things that discourages people from the game, even though you don't need to be a math wiz to play the game...) was thus:

Take the normal distribution and place a scale of positive an negative integers on it such that +0 is at the center. Three standard deviations is + or - 20. These modifiers will be combined with character abilities against target numbers (which may be other character's abilities) to determine degree or success or failure. Now, the method to generate these modifers randomly, here's where the elegance comes in... Instead of rolling dice to determine the modifer, you roll dice to generate a random real number between 0 and 1 (exclusive). Roll 1d10 for each digit of this number. Of course that would require an infinite number of dice... So initially you roll two dice (the tenths and hundredths). Then, since the normal distribution is compressed the closer to 1 or 0 you get, for each leading 0 (if the first two dice generate 0.00 to 0.09) or each leading 9 (if the first two dice generate 0.90 to 0.99) you roll one more die. This provides plenty of "accuracy" at any point on the normal distribution. Then you do a table lookup to convert real number into a modifier.

This seems slow with all the die rolling and table lookups, however, because of the symetry of the table, and the scale (1 standard deviation is close to 7), and the fact that MOST of the time you need a positive modifier to succeed (and a really low number to fumble), you rarely need to consider the negative modifiers, and thus if you can memorize 7 two digit numbers, you don't need to look up (I pulled the first 5 .50, .56, .62, .67, .73 out of my head having not looked at a table in at least a year, and could have gone further if I hadn't questioned my memory of .73...).

Degree of success is most heavily used in combat, where if you succeeded by +7, you did double damage, with one more multiple of damage per additional +2 from there (with most armor having a critical protection factor that made it harder to score more that 2x damage, for example, plate had Crit Pro 3, which meant 2x damage on +7, 3xon +12, 4x on +14, etc. - armor also absorbed damage). With this system, I have seen incredible crits take out a dragon with a single hit.

For fun, I actually have a modified table that generates results usable in place of 3d6 resolution systems.

Some of the other features of Cold Iron I really like:

A spell point system that really felt like it worked, and the extensive and "logical" set of spells.
A magic item economy that allowed for PC purchase (and even eventual creation) of magic items to serve a strategic aspect of play.
All monsters were rated using the same attributes as PCs, and all monsters had a character class and level (even if it was always level 1).
Borrowing some ideas of priestly/clerical magic and cults from Rune Quest.
No raise dead, but ways to keep someone from dying (basically a stasis spell) and ways to heal grievous wounds, also, limit to how much healing you could get in one day.

Well, there's a bit of a start...

Frank

[Admin Pete]

That sounds like a really cool variation of OD&D and I look forward to hearing more. I am going to put together some specific questions, I think I may borrow from this.

[ffilz]

If you read through my blog archives I've posted quite a bit about Cold Iron:

Welcome to Frank's World

There's one thing I found really interesting with character generation/improvement.

Attributes for humans are on a 3d6 scale, with an additional 1d6 "potential". At 1st level, you raise one attribute to it's potential, and each level gained thereafter, you increase one attribute one point towards potential. The actually rolling mechanism I used was 4d6 take the best 3 for the attribute, and if you rolled an 18, you re-rolled 3d6 and for each 6, you added 1, and got to roll that die again. Potential was best of 1d6 and 1d4. There was also something about instead of increasing one attribute at start to potential, you could spread 3 or 4 points.

Another interesting bit is that everyone had a ranking in the Fighter character class and that defined your complete fighting ability. Additionally, there were character classes for Magic User and Cleric, with some folks (including me) adding other character classes for other skill groupings (like Scout). There were also skills, primarily associated with Fighter, with the base rules stating that you got to increase one skill each time you gained a level (I split the skills up and gave pure fighters the ability to track 5 skills (roughly corresponding to 2 1/2 skills from the base game), while Magic Users could only track 3, and Clerics from 3-5 depending on how beefy their cult was). Additionally, in the base game, you could apply experience points directly to skills (which I did not do since I used class advancement for all skill improvement).

If I ran again, I think I would handle skills somewhat closer to the original, though I think I would still set up so pure fighters tracked more skills, but instead of having lots of additional classes, I would just have additional skills, and probably allow applying XP to any skill as in the base rules.

One feature I DID find frustrating (and that drove my skill changes) was that a character who had the stats to be a decent caster was almost always a better fighter than a pure fighter. I prefer to have a role where a pure fighter is valuable in the game.

The combat system is pretty interesting to run, but combats can take awhile, especially before players start to get used to the system. I've also run some epic combats, with the longest running something like 8 hours. When you combine armor absorption (improved in various ways by magic) with skilled defense, a 2x damage crit might do a small amount of damage, while it would take a solid hit to do more, and when defensive rating is higher than offensive rating (at least with a shield), the result could be needing a +18 (0.9965) to score 3x damage and a decent hit.

Which does help inform tactical play. If you are double teamed, your defense vs. the 2nd opponent is 6 lower for a 2-handed weapon, 3 lower for a shield. The 3rd opponent can not be parried (which plummets your defense and makes size count much more which helps), while the 4th opponent is at dodge - 4 (and at least the way I play it, for humanoids, 4 is the most opponents that can attack you, even though we play on a hex grid). If you are all alone and don't have a wall or tree behind you, the 2nd opponent may not be parried (since he can easily dance around you). In a way, 3E's Flanking rules are a simplification of the positioning mechanics I use in Cold Iron.

Frank

[Admin Pete]

I will need to spend some time looking at your blog:


I am interested in more about these teasers:

A spell point system that really felt like it worked, and the extensive and "logical" set of spells.
A magic item economy that allowed for PC purchase (and even eventual creation) of magic items to serve a strategic aspect of play.
All monsters were rated using the same attributes as PCs, and all monsters had a character class and level (even if it was always level 1).
Borrowing some ideas of priestly/clerical magic and cults from Rune Quest.
No raise dead, but ways to keep someone from dying (basically a stasis spell) and ways to heal grievous wounds, also, limit to how much healing you could get in one day.

[finarvyn]

The "cold iron" in the thread title made me think that you were using fey elves like in Poul Anderson's works where the touch cold iron hurts them.

Beyond that, sounds like you've got some neat ideas and I'd like to hear more about them. The open-ended die roll approach is one that I've not tried by find intriguing. I like spell points and use a system like that myself, and would be interested in seeing what your spell lists look like.

Nice post!

[ffilz]

Lets see if I can type something sensible from my phone...

Spell casters get a number of memorization points that from a formula that includes the square of level and also factors Int (or Wis). A spell costs it's level in memorization points, and all lower level versions of a spell are included for free. Familiarity with a spell costs 1/10 and is useful for recognizing spells with detect magic (and I allow for faster casting from spell books of famIliar spells).

A caster also has 6d6 magic points for casting (Clerics also get Spell Points based off level and Wis). Almost every spell has some cost to cast (Clerics must use SP for this cost) and most spells with a duration have a continuing cost (pet round, minute, hour, or rarely some other period). MP also regrnerates at 1/6 pet hour (Clerics are at 1/12 per hour) and this can be used to power continuing spells. So if you have 12 MP left after casting a spell that is 2/hour (a common continuing cost) you can maintain that spell indefinitely. An

[ffilz]

Hmm can't edit from phone...

Another math point. MP regeneration is like compound interest so is exponential. A scientific calculator is your friend...

Another point of interest I'd casting time. A spell takes it's level in segments to cast. A caster gets his level in segments every two rounds. Casters can cast continuously.

So the spells...

Spell levels correspond to class level so you get new spells each level. Clerics get some spells a level earlier than Magic Users (and some 1 or even 2 levels later, and many not at all, with selection depending on cult, they also have a few Cleric only spells, most specifically healing and reverse cause - lots of RQ influence here).

Details of spells in another post.

Frank

[ffilz]

There is quite a list of spells, but here are a few representative spells:

Oh another note... Spells have a casting roll to succeed. Spell level serves as a negative modifier to success. Combined with casting time means spell casters tend to focus much of their combat casting on lower level spells.

1st Level:

Detect Magic I: MP Cost 1, lasts 2 rounds or as long as concentration is maintained.

Light I: MP Cost N + N/hour, cast on the caster or a held object (must be continuously held by the caster). This is the first example of a variable power spell, and also a continuing spell. The initial MP cost (N) is limited by caster level. The more power, the brighter the light.

Light Fire: MP Cost 1, will light something flammable (works like a match).

Magic Protection A: Cost 1 + 6/hour. This spell improves the recipients magic resistance rolls. There is also a 2nd level version. There are higher level versions but they are not considered quite the same spell for memorization and recognition purposes (thus the A/B names as opposed to Roman Numeral level numbers many other spells have).

2nd Level:

Clumsiness (Short): MP Cost 1. Requires a physical resistance roll (which makes this not a good spell to cast at beefy targets), lasts 12 rounds (1 minute), reduces Dex by 6 (or to 1/2 for low Dex targets). This is the first decent offensive spell.

Cure Light Wounds (Cleric only): SP Cost 2, cures 1d6 damage, which takes 10 minutes to take effect, and then at 1 point per round (healing is slow, at least at low levels).

Empathic Healing (Cleric only): SP Cost 2, additional MP Cost 1/10 hit points transferred. This spell transfers hit points from a willing creature (or creatures) to an injured creature at a rate of 1 per round. It is the only spell that will heal a critically injured creature (damage below zero more than 1/2 full hit points). Once that creature has been healed their full hit points during a single 24 hour period, the recipient will only receive one point of healing per 5 points transferred (and it gets even worse if the creature needs more than twice their hit points of healing). A critically injured creature must be healed to at least -1/4 HP by this spell, and this spell must be started within 6 rounds (not counting time spent in stasis). Range is touch (think laying on hands).

Fireball II: Cost N for Nd4 damage. Requires a to hit roll (at +5). The spark that flies to hit the target has a proximity sense (so if you try and fireball someone hiding behind a bush, you just lit the bush on fire...). It is a single target spell. Fun and flashy but usually there are more effective ways of spending MP. There are higher level versions that do bigger dice (d6 at level 3, d8 at level 5 for example). Energy spells bypass most armor (even magic armor).

Light II: Cost N + N/hour. The same as Light I, except it may be cast at any target, location, or object in range. Is sufficiently diffuse that it can not be used to blind a target.

Lightning Bolt II: Cost N for Nd4 damage. Requires a to hit roll (at +1). Not nearly as trigger happy as fireball and also single target. Other than different energy, a pretty similar spell.

Magic Missile II: Cost 1 for 1d8 damage (+1 armor penetration). Requires a to hit roll (+1) and can critical.

See Invisible II: Cost 1. Lasts 2 rounds.

Level 3 Spells:

Demoralize (Short): Cost 1. Lasts 12 rounds. Requires a mental resistance roll. Target is -6 to hit and spell success and generally of low morale. This is one of the combat power house spells. Clerics that get this spell at level 2 have something going for them (of course the Cleric that gets Clumsiness at level 1 has quite a neat little spell...).

Entrancement (Short): Cost 1. Lasts 12 rounds. Requires a mental resistance roll. Target is in a daze, they will defend themselves and strike back at those that attack them. They will likely wander out of the thick of combat. This is another power house. It's great for thinning the oppositions ranks, not so great to cast at the singular creature you want to take down...

Magic Protection III: Cost 1 + 2/hour. This spell improves the recipients magic resistance rolls. There are higher level versions.

Stone Flesh: Cost 2 + 1/round. This spell adds 4 points of magical protection (that is one of the few types of protection against energy spells). Higher level versions add more protection. Fighters love to have magic items of this spell (the cost means that casters don't cast it in combat very often).

Strength III: Cost 2/STR + 2/STR/hour. A nice little buff spell. Higher level versions are more efficient.

Weakness (Short): Cost 1/2 STR. Requires a physical resistance roll (which makes this not a good spell to cast at beefy targets), lasts 12 rounds (1 minute).

Well, that's enough for now...

[ffilz]

Oh, and I just remembered, I have a web page, where you can actually download reasonably up to date rules (I'm not sure that stuff reflects communication I had with Mark Christiansen several years ago).

www.mindspring.com/~ffilz/Gaming/ColdIron.html

There's also stuff showing how I adapted things to Tekumel and Talislanta.

[ffilz]

The next bit that I have really appreciated is magic items.

One basic idea of magic items is that they all basically are another mechanism to cast spells. The second part of this is that the spells must always be powered by something. This resolves most of the issues 3E has with spells fitting magic items. There is one sort of exception. Since magic swords are fun, the system assumes magic weapon enchantments that are effectively self powered and permanent. There are other permanent magic items, but they just allow the user to invoke the spell, powered by the user's MP (and all creatures have MP, caster or not, casters just end up with more). With that, here is the classes of magic items:

Potions: These are single use, and are the one item that provides MP. They are the slowest to deploy, taking two rounds to consume, and then another round for the spell to take effect. A human sized creature may also only consume 4 potions in a short period of time (regaining one potion capacity per hour). Potions continue to be of use at high level because there are several high MP spells, in particular, one that effectively gives the recipient additional hit points. They can also be a great way to get a maintainable spell for a long period of time (a potion of See Invisible V (Cost 1 + 2/hour) lasting a day is perfectly reasonable. Low MP potions are also pretty cheap. Cleric in a bottle is a common potion, or a See Invisible V potion lasting a couple hours. 6th level casters can brew potions. Potions are also the one magic item that doesn't have to roll success (unless the recipient has magic resistance that affects casting success, or the spell requires a resistance roll).

Charged Items come in four varieties. A charged item doesn't have a set number of charges. Instead, it has a spell casting success chance. This chance goes down with use (which in my game leads to a market in discounted used charged items, which gives PCs an early cheap entry to magic items, even allowing starting PCs to purchase one or two that have poor success chance but are also very cheap). For most spells, the success can be improved with additional MP. They also have a maximum number of MP that can be run through them for a single use. Unless a spell has no maintenance cost, a charged item may only sustain one spell at a time.

The first charged item type can be made by 8th level casters. It can only target the spell on the item itself. These items can be used for things like Stone Flesh (though Stone Flesh cast on armor doesn't confer energy resistance), temporary magic weapon enchantments, flame sword, Light II, and a few other things.

The second charged item type can be made by 9th level casters. It may target its spell on the user of the item.

The third charged item type can be made by 10th level casters. It may target its spell on a creature struck by the item. This allows for swords that pack an additional punch.

The fourth charged item type can be made by 11th level casters. It may target its spell at range. Note that anyone can use these items, you don't have to be a Magic User to use a Wand of Fireballs... These items tend to be pretty expensive. The most common wand purchased by lower level parties is a Wand of Stasis so that critically injured PCs can be saved from a distance.

Permanent magic items come in the same four varieties (at 9th, 10th, 11th, and 13th level). They are much more expensive, however, for a frequently used spell they pay themselves off against charged items reasonably fast. They have no limits on the amount of MP that can be run through them.

A Ring of See Invisible V costs about 18 times as much as a charged item that would allow maintenance of the spell for 10+ hours, and 36 times as much as the cheapest See Invisible V charged item that would still allow running the spell for several hours. The cheapest See Invisible V potion would be less than 1/4 the cost of the charged item.

Magic Weapon Enchantments can first be made at 8th level (though then only +0 and various protective enchantments). These enchantments do theoretically have an MP cost though it is usually ignored because it is so low.

There are VERY expensive items that will store MP, and even more expensive items that actually effectively have live MP that will regenerate, such an item combined with another permanent item could continuously run a spell on the wearer. Live MP items require sacrifice from living creatures. These items are pretty close to artifact status.

So what makes this all interesting to me is that there is a wide variety of spells and different strategies and tactics for how to utilize them as a caster or in the various magic item types. On the flip side, this creates a commodity nature to magic items, so Cold Iron is not a great game to instill mysterious magic in. I have introduced a few D&D magic items in a high level campaign, it added some fun without breaking the game due to judicious choice or magic items to provide.

[ffilz]

The fact that creatures are statted out much like PCs is also interesting (probably more RQ influence here).

There is a correlation between Size and Strength that gives a basis for starting to stat out a creature. It's then easy to decide on Dexterity and any other attribute that is meaningful. With these base stats, then it's simple to progress the creature from 1st level Fighter to what ever level makes sense (most creatures I only do 4-6 levels for, intelligent creatures I do more levels for). I tend to not use too many special abilities in monsters.

[ffilz]

A few more bits and then I'd like to do an analysis of how I might use the system today.

Spell casters are not limited in weapon and armor use. Encumbrance can affect spell casting, but it doesn't have a huge impact. I think I didn't stress enough that Magic Users gain an additional 2 MP with each level, while Clerics gain 1. At 5th level, Magic Users gain the use of a focus that allows them to store some amount of MP (more as their level improves), but to do so, they need prop it up with continuing MP use (so any continuing magic they have running reduces how much they can save up - more math here... the focus is basically a leaky bucket that loses charge like a capacitor). At 8th level, Magic Users gain certain spell effects as innate. Spells may also be countered by 5th level magic users which reduces the chance of success. So there's quite a defensive magic game between protection spells, counters, and dispel magic, with everything using MP. MP can also be used to improve the chance of spell success, make a spell stronger against a resistance roll, or harder to dispel.

Even non spell casters have some experience with magic, and gain levels in Passive Magic. This improves their mental resistance roll and also gains additional MP at 1 per level.

Higher level Fighters gain some abilities also. At 6th level, they can attack as if they had a magic weapon. At 8th level they have some ability to perceive invisible opponents, reducing the penalties to attack them.

Oh, and hit points are interesting. For most humans, hit points are equal to the greater of Con or Con/2 * Figher Level. Constitution is also correlated with size, so big monsters have lots of hit points (but Constitution above the human range gives less than Con/2 HP per level). Any hit points above Con are "magical" in nature and there are powerful anti-magic effects that can negate them. In fact, since hit points are the biggest part of the physical resistance roll, some bars are rumored to have such powerful magic to high level Fighters can actually get drunk (since alcohol is basically a poison with a physical resistance roll...).

I'm sure there are other interesting bits I'm missing...

[ffilz]

So how would I run this today?

I think I would run closer to the base rules. I would still give more skill to Fighters if they are not Magic Users or Clerics (with some in-between place for weaker cults). But I'd dramatically change non-combat skills. Perhaps running them as the original rules where each non-combat skill must have XP assigned to it. Note that the way XP is awarded is that most XP is awarded in the area you were using (so fight and get Fighter XP, cast spells and get Magic User XP). I would look for more objective ways to award XP. I'd also look to run the game in a more sandbox way, and let the game be the more wargame-like game it is (there's still plenty of room for role play in such a game).

The trick these days would be to get enough play time to be worth it. If people were dedicated to mastering the rules, it COULD be run with 4 hour sessions, but I'd have to have a group dedicated to playing frequent enough to attain and retain mastery. One way to solve the pure Fighter discrepancy would be for each player to run two PCs, one a pure Fighter. This would address the issue that a small party is very vulnerable, but these days, and especially with a 4 hour session, a large group of players would not be practical.

I'd expect the players to read the game rules out of game session, and try and handle magic item shopping out of session also (and treasure division could probably be handled by e-mail too).

As to borrowing ideas for other game systems, I've come to the conclusion that I want to run each game pretty close to pure, so I'm not sure I'd borrow much from Cold Iron for use in D&D.

Frank

[ffilz]

I've been thinking a bit about what sort of campaign I might run. Cold Iron is definitely not a good system to run a dungeon in, it's way too crunchy, and casters really can only do one good fight (and if you aren't playing good fights, you're not really utilizing the system).

I think I would set up some kind of "taming the wilderness" campaign. The PCs initially would be working for others. Perhaps initially they are patrolling cleared, but not yet civilized territory, and as they gain levels (and renown) would be given more challenging assignments. Eventually presumably the PCs would feel like they could carve out their own holding. PCs might also get sent on quests by the Magic Users they desire to purchase magic items from.

I'd maybe have some kind of charisma skill, or maybe a series of skills, and players could choose their style and focus of social interaction. There should also be a scouting skill. Additional skills could even be defined as needed.

I'd work out some kind of objective experience award, and experience for an encounter would be assigned to classes based on how the character approached the encounter. Resolving an encounter by avoiding a combat might give a fraction of the XP for fighting the encounter, and it would just go to the character(s) instrumental in the fight avoidance. I'd even say that if a caster was able to avoid a fight with just one or two spell castings, that would count as a fight avoidance (with the fractional Magic User or Cleric XP to that caster).

Frank

[ffilz]

With that, I'm happy to answer any more questions, but that's probably enough info-dump without addressing more specific questions.

Thanks

Frank