Barrows And Borderlands 2: Secret of the Ooze

Because That Was a Movie About Mutants, And This Is a Game About…

Oh, Never Mind

So, spent most of the morning not writing this, but, instead, trying to find a GUI editor for WordPress I liked and which worked. I failed. I just want something that gives me fine-grained control over text, like I have in Word. If I want to have a box or a sidebar, I should be able to do it easily. In particular, I want to be able to use non-standard fonts and see them in the editor. Sigh.

Anyway, back to BaB, which does not mean “Basic Attack Bonus”, any more than “B&B” means “Bunnies & Burrows” or “BnB” means “Bed ‘n’ Breakfast”. Now, if you recall from last time, I was going to use a class from the “Radioactive Boogaloo” supplement, and I think there should be a brief aside here. The “Noun 2: Adjective Boogaloo” snowclone comes from a movie that came out when I was in college, which was so long ago that we didn’t have FORTRAN, just THREETRAN. Hah! So it’s weird to me it survived, especially since the movie, as I recall, wasn’t exceptionally popular or culturally significant. Anyway, were was I? 

Ah, yes. I am going to try to make him a Geiger, which, you will recall, I describe as “a Paladin, but for mutants”. Indeed, the rules make this clear: 

A radioactive form of Paladin whose powers are closely related to the mutating flow of the
Borderlands. [sic]Either stoic guardians from the toxic steam or conduits of it’s[sic] dark power.

I shall stick to my belief that the typos and sentence fragments are a conscious effort to maintain the old-school style, despite evidence (as discussed in the first part) to the contrary.

I had the following stats, generated by 4d6 keep 3: 10, 14,12,11,18,16, 8.

So, let’s dole them out:

STR: 16
DEX:  12
CON: 16 (14, +2 from Saurian race)
WIS: 11
INT: 9 (8, +1 from Saurian race)
CHA: 18
RAD: 12

Seems pretty good. As a Paladin sub-class, I need to choose an alignment (which can be anything, none of this ‘only Lawful Good’ stuff!), then I get a Devotion score, which I guess starts at zero? Doing things to further my cause raises it; harming my cause lowers it. If it’s over 10, I get a blessing, like “Devotee may prepare 1 of their spells each day without risk of miscast. Additionally Paladins may choose 1 weapon and gain weapon mastery in that weapon”. If it’s low, I suffer a curse (such as “Devotee loses bonuses to Saving Throws from class”, and if it falls below -10, I lose my palad… Geigerhood. There’s a pretty decent range of both blessings and curses, for each of the five cardinal alignments. (Nothing on bluebird or raven alignments, sorry.)

Unlike most old-school games, B&B has no apparent limits on class and race. I can be a mushroom Geiger if I want! But I kind of like Saurians. They have no attribute penalties and a +20 to “psychic potential”. (Oh, yeah, borrowing from Eldritch Wizardry and AD&D 1e, any character has a (low) chance of having “wild” psionic powers. Due to my charisma, it would be 6%, plus the saurian bonus makes it 26%… might as well roll for that!

(Spends five minutes hunting for a set of percentiles that match. I will not make an important roll using mismatched dice!)

(Gets a 72, Sigh.)

So much for that. Stupid matching dice. 

Getting back to my alignment, I guess Chaotic Good works. This affects how my class abilities manifest. All Geigers, regardless of alignment, get “radioactive hands”, but if you’re good, this allows you to grant 2 points of radiation resistance per day, per level. (If you’re evil, you can inflict radiation damage instead.) It also allows me to suppress mutations, which can be used, I imagine, to aid an ally with a negative mutation, or hinder a foe with a positive one. I am also immune to all diseases (not including lycanthropy/vampirism), and reduce incoming radiation damage by one. Lastly, I have an aura which grants radiation resistance to all near me. At low levels, it’s probably below their natural value, but by 4th level+, everyone’s gonna want to “hug the Geiger”. 

Possibly worth noting: The Law/Chaos axis seems less relevant to a Geiger than the Good/Evil axis. 

As an optional rule, I can turn mutants as Paladins turn undead. Per the rules, this ability was popular w/players but the author was less than impressed. I like that it’s thrown out there as a “thing you can do”.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

I now roll a birthsign. This is a D20 to determine the sign, and a d2 to determine if it’s positive or negative. That last bit is kind of vague. You don’t get a penalty instead of a bonus, rather, a ‘2’ means a ‘harsher’ version of the sign. Precisely what that means seems to be up to the GM. In any event, I rolled a 2 on the D20, giving me “Crown”, which means “authority, earthly, power”, and gives a +1 to melee damage. I also rolled a 1 on a d2, so I experience the… uh… “not harsh” version. Go figure.

(This trope of ‘random ability that may or may not be relevant to your class’ was fairly common in early TTRPGs, often linked to some kind of pseudo-astrology, either based on real-world traditions or on the serial-numbers-filed-off cosmology of the game setting. Having an aptitude for something useless, or an arbitrary penalty, was often deemed ‘realistic’.)

The Odds of Mods

Modifiers, that is. Roll bonuses. Plusses and minuses.

Ability scores tended to be less impactful in Old School, and Barrows & Borderlands is no exception, except where it is. It uses a “roll a d20 under your ability score” system as a default “the rules don’t cover it” mechanic. Well, that’s one of them. Another is a “Roll under the ability on 3d6”, with additional dice for harder tasks. I’ve used both, and the “roll dice under” tends to be more reliable with a higher score, while “roll a D20” is better with a lower score. For example, there’s a 70% (roughly) chance of rolling 12 or less on 3d6, but only a 60% chance on a D20. Conversely, there’s a 25% chance of rolling 8 or less on 3d6, but a 40% chance on a D20.

You might well ask, “Given such disparities of probability, why offer both as options? Doesn’t that make it hard to assign a meaningful difficulty to a task in the rules?” And the answer is “Forget it, Jake. It’s Old School.” Besides, there’s few, if any, times where the rules say “This is a Dexterity check”, and even fewer where they give a specific difficulty or modifier. Cases where this does happen usually have their own bespoke mechanics.

(Please note that some things, such as thief skills, use a single d6, with a ‘roll under’ mechanic. If you have a score of ‘2’ in ‘Pick Pockets’, you succeed on a roll of 2 or less. If your score is 6, you must roll 2d6 and you fail if both die show a 6. It’s implied, but not explicit, someone lacking those skills may not attempt them. Otherwise, you’re much more likely to succeed using either of the alternative resolution systems, at least at low levels. I’m not sure why this system was used instead of the more ‘traditional’ percentile system (as per the OD&D Greyhawk supplement which introduced thieves, AD&D 1e, and AD&D 2e.)

Multiple incompatible resolution systems in the same general gameplay space (‘skill use’) is a hallmark of Old School, so, let’s just go with it. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and who wants to have to deal with hobgoblins?)

Back On Track…

I was supposed to be talking about modifiers due to ability scores, not about task resolution systems. Those are, to restate, generally minor. Let’s see what I have:

First, a 10% bonus to experience for a Prime Requisite of 15-18. In the earliest days of D&D, this was almost all attributes were used for. In original “brown box”, Strength affected only encumbrance, not to-hit or damage; Dexterity gave a +1 to missile weapons if >12 and a -1 if <8, and a high Constitution meant you would “survive adversity” and possibly get a +1 per hit die. This was expanded somewhat in Greyhawk, and Barrows & Borderlands uses something close to that.

My Strength of 16 gives me a +1 to hit and damage. (Please note that there’s not a firm formula; a 17 also gives a +1 to hit, but a +2 to damage!)

Dexterity also gives, in theory, a bonus to hit and to damage, but a 12 gives bupkis. Granting a damage bonus for a high Dexterity was not a common mechanic. Dex can also give a bonus, or penalty, to breath weapon saves and Armor Class.

A 16 Con gives me +1 HP/hit die, and a +1 on saves against Radiation. Might as well roll now: I got a 6, for a total of 7.

Intelligence only affects languages. I can learn no extra languages.

Wisdom of between 7 and 16 is basically the same, making it an excellent dump stat for any class where it’s not a Prime Requisite. If it were 17+, I’d have a +1 save against sorcery. 

My highest score, a Charisma of 18, gives me a +2 on reaction rolls, which I never recall ever seeing used in Actual Play, and I can have up to 8 retainers. However, if the GM is using the task resolution system above, and I’m sufficiently canny, I can try to find an excuse to use Charisma to get around a lot of problems. (As there are no formal diplomacy/lie/intimidate rules, the effectiveness of this depends on how the GM is feeling at any moment.)

Cash and Carrion

We’re almost done, so, equipment time! I get 3-18 silver pieces…. I roll a perfectly average 10. I also start with a weapon of my choice. The table is a little confusing… a lot of weapons have damage listed as 1-8(1-10). Based on the specific weapons, I am guessing the second number is 2-handed damage… and a little more checking reveals, that, yes, if the weapon name is followed by (*), it means “can do more damage if wielded 2-handed”. There are a lot of little marks next to weapons.

It’s a good thing I get a weapon of my choice for free, because, damn… they’re expensive! As I am going for the whole “Paladin of the Wastes” vibe, I will take a bastard sword, normally 25sp, which does 1d8 or 2d6.  

My 10 remaining SP will buy… pretty much nothing. I can spend all of it on the weakest armor possible, a padded doublet. I can’t afford a backup weapon. I can buy some “adventuring” gear, such as a bedroll (1sp), backpack (4sp) rope (3sp), and a tinderbox (2sp), and that’s that. This is… not merely old school, but sole sort of primal edlritch school! A typical 1st level “Brown Box” character had a lot more cash to start with. Well, it’s the apocalypse, I suppose. The economy isn’t that great.

That’s pretty much it for character creation. But not the end for this series! There’s enough high weirdness that it deserves an article covering it… including the fact I can identify some unusual sources it is pulling from. Hint: There’s a spell that summons a flying saucer.