Random Regnal Nickname Table

So there's this super useful random reign length table I've used many times to populate my setting's history, but every time I use it I find myself ad-hoc-ing anew... well, the contents of this post. A list of monarchs is dullsville if they don't have any nicknames! So, culled from real life and Crusader Kings II, I give you: a table of random regnal nicknames.

1-209	[not notable enough to have a nickname]
210-211	[pick a color]-Beard
212	Blood[weapon]
213-214	Crooked/Fork/Twisted-Beard
215	Do-Nothing
216	First-Crowned
217	Flatnose
218-219	From Overseas
220	Half-Hand
221	Iron Hand
222-224	Lackland
225-226	Longhair
227	Moneybags
228	New-Day
229	of a Thousand Faces
230	of Good Memory
231-234	of Noble [parent]
235	of the Empty Pockets
236	of the Wilds
237	One-Eye
238	One-Hand
239	One-Leg
240	Peg Leg
241-242	Priest-Hater
243	Roundhead
244	Stern Counsel
245	the [compass direction] Wind
246-248	the [conquered culture, as a victory title]
249-253	the [cultural weapon]
254-263	the [culture of origin]
264	the [culture]-Marauder
265-266	the [culture or religion]-slayer
267	the [fruit or vegetable]
268-270	the [mother/father]
271-280	the [pick a color]
281-288	the [pick a metal]
289-293	the [pick a mythological beast]
294-303	the [pick a real beast]
304-313	the [priest]
314-323	the [religion]
324-325	the [religious weapon] of [deity]
326-328	the Able
329	the Abomination
330	the Absolutist
331-334	the Accursed
335	the Adopted
336-337	the Affable
338	the Aggressor
339	the Alchemist
340	the Allower
341	the Ambitious
342	the Ancient
343	the Apostate
344-345	the Apostle
346	the Armorsmith
347	the Artist
348	the Astrologer
349	the August
350-351	the Avenger
352-355	the Bad
356-359	the Bald
360	the Bane of [location]
361-365	the Bastard
366	the Battler
367	the Beanstalk
368	the Bearded
369	the Beautiful
370	the Beguiling
371	the Beheader
372	the Beloved
373-374	the Benefactor
375	the Betrayer
376-377	the Bewitched
378-382	the Blessed
383-390	the Blind
391	the Bloodthirsty
392-393	the Bloody
394-398	the Bold
399-400	the Boneless
401	the Bookish
402	the Brash
403-408	the Brave
409	the Brilliant
410	the Brute
411-412	the Builder
413	the Burden
414	the Candid
415	the Capable
416-417	the Careless
418	the Caulker
419	the Ceremonious
420-424	the Chaste
425	the Chief
426-431	the Child
432	the Cleansing Flame
433	the Clerk
434	the Clubfoot
435	the Clueless
436	the Clumsy
437-438	the Confessor
439-446	the Conqueror
447	the Constant
448	the Courteous
449	the Crosseyed
450-459	the Crowned
460-465	the Cruel
466-469	the Crusader
470	the Curly
471	the Cyclops
472	the Damned
473	the Debonaire
474	the Decadent
475	the Deed-Doer
476	the Defender
477	the Depraved
478-480	the Desired
481	the Despoiler
482	the Destroyer
483	the Determined
484-488	the Devil
489	the Diplomat
490-493	the Drunkard
494	the Dung-Named
495	the Edifier
496	the Educator
497	the Effeminate
498-501	the Elder
502	the Elegant
503	the Eloquent
504	the Enlightened
505	the Evil
506	the Executioner
507-508	the Exile
509	the Faceless
510-519	the Fair
520-521	the Farmer
522-528	the Fat
529-530	the Fearless
531	the Festive
532	the Fighter
533	the Flayer
534-536	the Fortunate
537-538	the Fowler
539	the Frail
540-542	the Fratricide
543-545	the Generous
546-549	the Gentle
550	the Giant
551-554	the Glorious
555	the God-Given
556	the God-Like
557	the God-Loving
558	the Goldsmith
559-568	the Good
569	the Gouty
570	the Gracious
571-585	the Great
586	the Guardian
587	the Hairy
588-592	the Handsome
593	the Hardy
594	the Headless
595	the Heathen
596	the Hideous
597	the Hollow
598-601	the Holy
602	the Hopeful
603	the Humane
604-606	the Hunchback
607	the Hunger
608-610	the Hunter
611	the Ill-Ruler
612-613	the Ill-Tempered
614-617	the Illustrious
618-619	the Impaler
620	the Impotent
621	the Inconstant
622	the Independent
623	the Indolent
624	the Inexorable
625	the Inquisitor
626	the Invincible
627	the Jolly
628	the Jovial
629-634	the Just
635-638	the Kind
639-641	the Lame
642-643	the Last
644-646	the Lawgiver
647	the Law-Mender
648	the Lazy
649	the Learned
650	the Lecher
651	the Legendary
652	the Leper
653	the Lewd
654-656	the Liberal
657-659	the Liberator
660	the Lisp and Lame
661-662	the Loyal
663	the Lucky
664-668	the Mad
669-677	the Magnanimous
678-682	the Magnificent
683	the Maid
684-685	the Maiden
686	the Manifest
687-690	the Martyr
691	the Memorable
692-693	the Merry
694	the Middle
695	the Mighty
696	the Mild
697	the Missionary
698	the Monster
699	the Moon
700	the Mouth
701	the Mule
702	the Mutilator
703	the Navigator
704	the Nimble
705-707	the Noble
708	the Oath-Taker
709-718	the Old
719-723	the One-Eyed
724	the Oppressed
725	the Oppressor
726	the Orphan
727	the Outlaw
728	the Pacific
729	the Pale
730-733	the Peaceful
734-735	the Peacemaker
736	the Perfect
737	the Persevering
738	the Pest
739	the Philosopher
740-742	the Pilgrim
743-747	the Pious
748	the Plaguebearer
749	the Popular
750-752	the Posthumous
753	the Powerful
754	the Precious
755	the Princeling
756	the Prodigy
757-759	the Proud
760-761	the Prudent
762	the Purifier
763-765	the Quarreller
766	the Quiet
767-768	the Rash
769	the Reaver
770	the Redeemer
771	the Reformer
772	the Repulsive
773	the Resilient
774-778	the Restorer
779-781	the Righteous
782	the Rightly Guided
783	the Ruthless
784	the Sacrificer
785	the Sailor
786-792	the Saint
793-797	the Savior
798	the Scholar
799	the Scourge of
800	the Sea-Devil
801	the Seducer
802	the Seer
803	the Servant
804	the Shadow
805	the Sheriff/Constable
806	the Shieldmaiden
807-808	the Short
809	the Shrewd
810-812	the Silent
813-816	the Simple
817	the Singer
818	the Sluggard
819-822	the Soldier
823	the Son of [deity]
824	the Sorcerer
825	the Spirited
826-827	the Stammerer
828	the Star
829	the Stout
830	the Strange
831	the Stranger
832-834	the Strict
835-841	the Strong
842	the Sun
843	the Survivor
844	the Swift
845-848	the Tall
849	the Tattooed Monk
850	the Taxer
851	the Temptress
852	the Tenacious
853-857	the Terrible
858	the Terror of [location]
859	the Theologian
860-861	the Thunderbolt
862	the Timely Rain
863	the Tiny
864	the Tormentor
865	the Tough
866	the Trader
867	the Treacherous
868	the Trembling
869	the Tremulous
870-873	the Troubadour
874-875	the Tyrant
876	the Unavoidable
877	the Unchaste
878	the Undying
879	the Unfaithful
880	the Unique
881-883	the Unlucky
884-885	the Unready
886	the Unrestrained
887-888	the Usurper
889	the Vain
890-893	the Valiant
894	the Valkyrie
895	the Vengeful
896-900	the Victorious
901	the Virgin
902-908	the Warlike
909	the Warrior
910-911	the Weak
912	the Wealthy
913	the Weaponsmith
914-915	the Well-Beloved
916	the Whirlwind
917	the Whisperer
918-921	the Wicked
922	the Wily
923-929	the Wise
930	the Witch
931	the Witch Hunter
932	the Wizard
933	the World Burner
934	the Wrymouth
935-938	the Young
939-942	the Younger
943	Wartooth
944-945	Who Fights Alone
946-970	[roll again, appending "king"/"prince"/specific whatever]
971-980	[roll again, appending "little"]
981-990	[roll again, appending "most"]
991-1000	[roll again, appending "son/daughter of"]

Asya, Goddess of Disgust

Asya is the goddess of everything a reasonable person might find disgusting, formerly a major pantheon member. She is represented as a horrible, corpulent, festeringly tumescent humanoid woman.

Pretty much any bodily fluid or excreta, disease, incest, corpses, maggots, tumors, cannibalism, and mayonnaise are holy to Asya.


In the last century before the Inundation, a nation of plaguelords following Asya arose, but it transpired that lack of personal hygiene, incest, unburied corpses, defecating in the streets, and so on is not, in fact, a social plan with much longevity, and the plaguelord nation collapsed. Soon after, running short on worshippers, Asya found herself demoted from the primary pantheon in the tremendous shakeup following the Inundation and Quasxthe's ascension.

Asya is Chaotic Evil. She lives on the Deathly Plane of Shadow.

Her favored weapon is the bastard sword.

Her holy symbol is an open, infected wound -- usually a literal one the cleric carves open daily with a dirty knife, not a mere facsimile of wood or silver.

Her priests usually wear minimal clothing.

Her holy text is a collection of books with such names as the Book of Pus, the Book of Vomit, the Book of Bile, the Book of Incest, and so on. It is agreed that there are thirteen canonical books, but various priests consider different books canonical or apocryphal.

Her domains include: (3.5) chaos, death, decay, evil, gluttony, lust, pestilence, and slime; (PF) chaos, death, evil (including cannibalism, corruption, or plague), vermin, plant (decay subdomain only), charm (lust subdomain only), animal (insect subdomain only).

What To Ask About Your Game's PCs

So there are about a million lists like this floating around, some long, some short, of questions for your players to answer about their characters to generate a backstory or deepen their character or give you hooks to plot upon or whatever. Here's my contribution.

I recently asked my players to, for a new campaign I'm running, give me the answers to any three of these questions:

• a goal, something your character wants or something you want for your character
• something your character hates or fears
• an NPC your character knows positively (a childhood friend, a romantic interest, etc)
• an NPC your character knows negatively (an enemy, a rival, etc)
• a secret your character knows, or one about your character that they do not know
• something your character regrets
• your character's zodiac sign (for my campaign, that's "what Wanderer was in prominence in what Constellation when your character was born?" -- you can use your own setting's zodiac-equivalent if you've made one, or one or more real-world ones, or whatever)
• a virtue or vice your character prizes, partakes of, or strongly disapproves of
• what motivation your character has for joining the campaign
• some connection/bond your character has with another character in the party

I only asked the party to do any three, but then I did all of them for a major NPC by way of demonstration. Example:

• Tess Corm's main goal is to make the colony into a powerful nation. A stretch goal involves conquering and subjugating Shell.
• Tess has grown to hate the whole corrupt oligarchic establishment of Shell, a place she has not been since she was 10.
• Tess's closest advisor is a human named Tristram Groxer, who has been a good friend and retainer of her father's.
• Tess's nemesis is Bob Varakas, Serene Doge of Shell, who ruined her father.
• Tess has taken out many debts, mostly monetary, in the service of financing this expedition. One dark secret, known by few but suspected by more, involves the exact natures of some of her creditors.
• Tess's first true love went awry when her drive and ambition got in the way. She regrets this, but not enough to actually tone it down with the drive and ambition or anything.
• When Tess was born, red Othag (which represents change) was in the Fist (which represents taking what you want by force).
• Tess approves of industry, diligence, envy, and pride. She disapproves of sloth.
• Tess set up this expedition as her ambition is to rule a great nation.
• Employment is the connection Tess has with the rest of the party. She hired them. (This one wound up being a bit of a cop-out.)

BY CROM

So the Iron Heart Surge maneuver (Tome of Battle) has many known problems. Among them:

• It doesn't limit what Conditions it can end, leading to preposterousness like ending the Dead condition, or only-slightly-less-preposterous ending Ability Damage or Drain.
• When it ends a spell or effect, it ends it entirely, not just on the initiator. Drow uses IHS to BY CROM away the blinding effect of the sun? No more sun.
• It takes a standard action to initiate, meaning that most of the most devastating Conditions in the game (Stunned, Paralyzed, Nauseated, etc) are not susceptible to being IHSed away.

Any IHS fix needs to address at least the first two problems. The third is a misfortune (and perhaps unintended) but not outright dysfunctional, so an IHS fix doesn't need to address it, but it's nice if it does.

So here's my proposed fix:

---

Iron Heart Surge

Iron Heart

Level: Warblade 3

Prerequisite: One Iron Heart maneuver

Initiation Action: 1 standard action

Range: Personal

Target: You

Duration: See text

By drawing on your mental strength and physical fortitude, you break free of a debilitating state that might otherwise defeat you.

Your fighting spirit, dedication, and training allow you to overcome almost anything to defeat your enemies. When you use this maneuver, select one of the following effects currently affecting you. That effect ends immediately.

• Blinded
• Confused
• Dazzled
• Deafened
• Entangled
• Shaken
• Sickened
• Ability or HP Bleed (does not restore lost ability score or hit points, but does stop further loss)
• Poisoned (does not remove the effects of poison you've already taken, but does prevent the poison's secondary effect)
• Any spell, power, spell-like ability, maneuver, or other effect with a listed duration other than Instantaneous

When you use this maneuver, the effect ends on you. It does not end at its source; other characters may still be affected.

While this maneuver can end most charms and compulsions, your character (depending on the exact nature of the effect) may not realize they are affected by such an effect, or may not be able to act against the will of the caster of the compulsion by initiating this maneuver.

When you initiate this maneuver, you also surge with confidence and vengeance against your enemies, gaining a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

If your initiator level is at least 10, you may initiate this maneuver on your turn even if a condition or effect currently renders you otherwise unable to take Standard actions. The effects you can end at this level include the above, and:

• Frightened, Cowering, or Panicked
• Dazed
• Fascinated
• Nauseated
• Paralyzed (unless paralyzed because of Ability Damage or Drain)
• Petrified
• Stunned
• Turned or Rebuked

On Stacking Metabreath Feats

Ok, so, it is generally accepted (and possibly even RAW-correct) that you can stack metabreath feats (Draconomicon) with themselves on a single breath attack. For example, you can use Enlarge Breath twice to turn a 50-foot cone into a 100-foot cone in exchange for increasing the recharge time by +2 instead of +1.

Do you see the problem yet?

Consider that there is nothing preventing you from stacking Enlarge Breath on your breath weapon a billion times, and therefore blowing up most of the world (or all of it, depending on the world shape involved and your location on it -- if all else fails, you can throw on a couple uses of Split Breath and breathe in four directions simultaneously), at the low cost of never being able to use your breath weapon again.

That is, to say the least, a little silly.

The obvious solution is to say no, you can't stack metabreath feats with themselves after all. (This is probably the real intended solution, considering metamagic feats stopped being stackable with themselves in the 3.0-3.5 changeover, so metabreath feats should have, too.)

Or you can say you can, but you can only do it up to 3 times or 5 times or your Constitution modifier times or whatever.

But today I had a better idea: You can take metabreath feats more than once, and you can stack them with themselves as many times as you've taken them.

This is better because soft caps are always better than hard caps.

The Four Mary Sue Races

The Drow. Drizzt Do'Urden. Synonymous with Mary Sue.

But "Mary Sue" isn't actually quite exactly what I'm talking about, despite the title of this post.

I want to throw in the word "edgelord", but that only has aspects of what I'm talking about.

But between "Mary Sue" and "edgelord", we're about 78% of the way there, so maybe you'll be able to figure out what I mean.

The four races are Drow, Tiefling, Dragonborn, and Warforged.

I suppose "edgelord" applies mostly to Drow and Tiefling. But all four are... if you want to play a character for whom their race is the primary focus, you play one of these? (Or maybe a Half-Orc or a Dwarf, I guess.)

Newbies and noobs like to play these races and tell inferior stories with them -- but that's not right, that comes off as much more judgemental than I'm actually inclined to be here.

(I'm talking as someone who's currently playing one Drow and one Warforged, and not long ago played a Tiefling, so I'm not actually inclined to be very judgey at all here. Although the Tiefling-ness of Dr. Blelyj was secondary, Keyla the Paladin of Bahamut keeps being annoyed and infuriated when people keep bringing up her Drow-ness, and Tanner's Knife is attempting to craft himself into a more perfect organic meatbag through Fleshwarper levels, so the race isn't the primary focus of any of these characters like it is for the kind of characters I'm almost-but-not-quite-criticizing.)

"Fan favorite" may be a word to throw around in this context, too.

The point I'm gradually angling towards is this: in 3.5, none of these races were Player's Handbook races. Two (Tiefling and Drow) were Monster Manual, two were other splatbooks. Two came saddled with level adjustment (unless you consult yet more splatbooks for Lesser Planetouched and I think there was some sort of Lesser Drow variant floating around at one point).

In Pathfinder, Dragonborn and Warforged were not available for non-SRD reasons, and Tiefling and Drow were eventually made slightly more playable by virtue of being a bit more race points rather than having LA.

In 4e, Dragonborn and Tiefling were Player's Handbook, Warforged and Drow were Monster Manual. (These choices bumped previous PHb classics like Gnomes to later PHbs -- somebody in development said "which is more central to D&D, Dragonborn/Tiefling or Gnome?" and was answered "Dragonborn/Tiefling".)

In 5e, three were Player's Handbook and the last (Warforged) was recently Unearthed Arcana'd. At long last you can play a Drizzt clone right out of the box without pulling from any books other than PHb.

The point I'm making is this: Over the course of 3.5 to 5e, the design philosophy has shifted. Put deprecatingly, we're shifting towards being more fanservicey; put less deprecatingly, we're shifting towards letting players play what they want without restriction.

(Or it could just be that nobody publishing 3.5 yet realized just how popular these four races would eventually become. Although Drizzt first appeared in 1988 -- early 2e -- so there should have been some clue there.)

I'm not really making any deep point here, just pointing in the general direction of a vague observation.

Loot as Balance Solution

So it's well-known (by me) that 3.5e's biggest flaw is balance between classes. (This flaw is slightly lessened but not really entirely fixed by Pathfinder.) Monks are crap, druids are boss. It is known.

In my opinion, the best way to fix this is to go well beyond standard wealth by level guidelines.

You can just spam extra gold and it'll ameliorate the problem, because a fighter is more improved by doubling his WBL than a druid is.

But there's an even better way, and that's to drop extra loot tailored to the party. Specifically, loot that the underperforming characters can use and characters performing adequately can't.

Is the party's monk underperforming? (Yes of course he is, don't be silly.) Give the next encounter a Monk's Belt and a Necklace of Natural Attacks.

Warlock? Chasuble of Fell Power (Magic Item Compendium). MIC has a lot of these items, tailored to specific classes in this way. Vest that gives the rogue more sneak attack, boots that give the scout more skirmish, etc.

Got a fighter that's getting outperformed by a warblade? Give a Holy/Unholy/Anarchic/Axiomatic weapon opposed to the warblade's alignment. Or the Crown of White Ravens and its brethren from Tome of Battle (this is useful to a warblade, so you'll need to encourage the warblade to give it up to the fighter), which serves as an introduction to ToB and might encourage the fighter to multiclass to an initiator class (which, unlike multiclassing into a spellcaster and being forever behind, is a favorable choice, because your initiator level is half your non-initiator-class levels plus your level in initiator classes, and which maneuvers/stances you can pick depends only on your initiator level, so a fighter 4/warblade 1 has an IL of 3 instead of 1 and can pick 2nd-level maneuvers right off the bat).

Even a wizard or an archivist can underperform through being played by an unsavvy player, so you can drop scrolls of better spells for them to copy into their spellbooks to subtly encourage their use. E.g., archivist wasting all his time healing? Drop him some divine scrolls of entangle and hold person and stuff. Alternately, and this works for pretty much any caster, drop a wand of something useful that's on the underperforming caster's class list.

Rust Monster Ecology

So it's a long-known problem that rust monsters, which eat metal, are difficult to justify in an ecosystem containing, say, locks, iron doors, and so on.

Lore Sjöberg: Speaks With Monsters

Possible partial solution: rust monsters don't actually eat rusted metal; that's an assumption that in-character scholars make which is not entirely accurate. Instead, the rust monster's antennae deliver a catalyst that induces rapid oxidization (i.e., rusting), and the rust monster actually feeds on the energy released by this oxidization reaction. (Mumbo-jumbo about the catalyst is magical and that's why it can rust kinds of metals that normally don't rust.)

So if a door or a lock is already rusted all to heck, it's no good for the rust monster to feed on, unlike, say, combat-ready weapons and armor. (Allowing for metal objects in the dungeon to exist at a very specific level of rusted, not fresh enough for the rust monster to eat but not rusted enough to be inoperable.)

This in turn suggests the possibility of a related, perhaps more powerful species of monster, one that induces oxidization not in iron, but in carbon-based (i.e., flammable) materials. Which is to say, it sets you on fire and eats the resulting heat.

Some Math on Removed Iterative Attacks

Recently, a Pathfinder DM I play with instituted the Removing Iterative Attacks rule from Pathfinder Unchained. A player immediately objected on the basis of a perceived negative effect on critical hits. (I don't have a dog in this fight because I'm playing a sorcerer who won't get iteratives until level 12 and won't use them even then.) Let us now analyze its actual objective effect on critical hits (and fumbles), using the power of math!

(I'm not super-great at probability these days, as high school algebra was a long time ago, so feel free to correct my math.)

I don't know if we're using the "half minimum damage if you miss by 5 or less" rule, it didn't come up, and seems an unnecessary complication, but it shouldn't really affect critical hits or fumbles. We definitely don't seem to be using the part of the rules regarding natural attacks.

We're using a fumble rule where a natural 1 is a critical fumble threat, which you need to confirm like any critical threat: if the confirmation roll would hit, it's only a miss; if the confirmation roll would miss, it's a critical fumble.

In this setting, where critical hits and critical fumbles are precisely mirrors of one another, our first and most obvious conclusion will be that any effect the Removed Iterative Attacks rule has on critical hits, it will have pretty much the same effect on critical fumbles. (Human psychology is such that we will tend to want to avoid risk, so anything that reduces both critical hits and critical fumbles should ultimately be considered more desirable than something that increases both. But that's not math, that's psychology.)

Now, let us consider the variant's actual critical hit rule:

When you threaten a critical hit, roll to confirm at your full bonus and apply the effects of the critical hit to any one of your hits. If your original attack roll scored multiple hits and the critical confirmation roll also falls within your weapon’s critical threat range, you score two critical hits and can apply them to any two hits.

 Jeez, that actually makes the math way complicated. This will be harder than I thought.

Okay, so: under normal rules, you can potentially score up to n critical hits, where n is the number of attacks you make. Under the variant rule, you can potentially score up to 2 critical hits, if you are making at least two attacks. It's starting to not look good for the variant rule, at least in situations where you have more than 2 attacks.

---

Okay, to make it as simple as possible, let's imagine a situation where you're getting two iterative attacks (so you're a 6th-level fighter or the equivalent) and your opponent's AC stacks up against your total tohit such that you hit (or confirm) on an 11-20 on the die, and your weapon is a 20/x2 crit range. (Increased critical multiplier, such as  a scythe's 20/x4, won't have much effect on the numbers, though it makes critical hits more desirable; increased critical threat range, such as a rapier's 18-20/x2, may have significant effect on the numbers and will be scrutinized second.)

Under the regular rules, you have a 5% chance -- 1/20 -- per die roll to threaten a critical hit. On two dice, therefore, you have a 9.75% chance -- 39/400 -- to threaten at least one critical hit, and 1/400 -- 0.25% -- of threatening two. But since you only confirm 50% (10/20) of the threats, that's a 4.87% chance of confirming one critical hit and 0.12% chance of confirming two.

Under the removed iterative rules, you have a 5% chance -- 1/20 -- to threaten one critical hit. Of those 5% of rolls that will be critical threats, you will confirm 50% and confirm an additional critical hit on 5%. So that's a 2.5% chance of confirming one critical hit and a 0.25% chance of confirming two (the case where you roll a 20 and then roll a 20 to confirm -- 1/400).

So, in this situation, you're a bit better than half as likely to confirm one critical hit but twice as likely to confirm two.

---

Consider two attacks (as a 6th-level fighter or equivalent) with a rapier, with its 18-20/x2 crit range.

Under the regular rules, you now have an impressive 27.75% -- 111/400 -- chance of threatening at least one critical hit (getting at least an 18 on at least one die), and a 2.25% -- 9/400 -- chance of threatening two (getting at least an 18 on two dice). Again, halved for the 50% chance of confirming the critical hit, that's 13.87% chance of one confirmed critical hit and 1.12% chance of two.

Under the removed iterative rules, you have a 15% chance -- 3/20 -- of threatening one critical hit. This has a 50% chance of confirming (7.5% chance of one confirmed critical hit), and a 15% chance of confirming a second critical hit (2.25% chance of two confirmed critical hits).

Again, you've got a bit better than half the chance of one confirmed critical, and twice the chance of two confirmed criticals.

---

Now a harder one: a 16th-level fighter (or equivalent) getting 4 iteratives with a 20/x2 weapon.

I don't know that I understand probability enough to do this, but... there are 130321/160000 ways to not get any 20s on a die roll of 4d20. That's an 81.45% chance of no critical threats, meaning an 18.55% chance of at least one. If one of your dice is a 20, there's 6859/8000 -- 85.73% -- ways for the other three to turn up no 20s, so of the 18.55% of the time you get one critical threat, 14.26% of the time you'll get a second -- so 2.64% of total rolls, you'll get at least 2 critical threats. Of those times, there are 361/400 -- 90.25% -- ways to not have any 20s, so 9.75% of the times you get two 20s, you'll get a third -- 0.26% of the time you'll get 3 20s. And there are of course 19/20 -- 95% -- ways for the remaining die to not be 20, 5% chance of 20, for a total of 0.0129% chance for 4 20s. And then halve all the numbers for the 50% chance of not confirming.

The math is the same as the first example for the variant rule, because you can only get at most two critical hits. 2.5% chance of confirming one critical hit, 0.25% chance of confirming two, 0% chance of more than two.

• Chance of one confirmed critical hit: 9.27% vs 2.5%
• Chance of two confirmed critical hits: 1.32% vs 0.25%
• Chance of three confirmed critical hits: 0.13% vs 0%
• Chance of four confirmed critical hits: negligible vs 0%

Now the player who objected is right, it's looking much more in favor of the old way.

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However, as mentioned above, everything that applies to critical hits also applies to critical fumbles.

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An additional concern: consider how you do damage for a critical hit. Some DMs want you to roll once and multiply, other DMs want you to roll multiple times. Rolling once sucks because you could get a 1 (woo, my critical hit did 2 damage!) or you could get max (woo, pretty much instant kill!) -- it's way too swingy. Rolling multiple dice gives you a nice bell curve, and bell curves are always more pleasant than straight lines.

The same applies here: if you roll a 20 under the removed iteratives rule, you've hit four times; if you roll a 1, you've missed four times. If you're using the base rules, you're much more likely to hit some of the time and miss some of the time, which is much better.

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So for that last reason, not the critical hit/fumble reason, I ultimately side with using the base rule instead of the variant rule.

Ettin Genders

Have you ever encountered or used an ettin that was anything other than two male heads and an implicit penis (or two)? I don't think I have (I don't think I've ever actually encountered or used an ettin at all, though I once used an ubue, which is a giant with three heads, three arms, and three legs -- this one was basically the Three Stooges sharing a body).

But never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to slip some genderfuckery into my setting, as I have decided that in this setting, ettins (of which there are probably rather fewer than a hundred in the world, so this may never actually come up) can have differing genders between the two heads, either of which can be the same or different from their genitalia (of which they have one set per ettin, Lore Sjöberg notwithstanding). Which of course leads to eight different possible combinations (though if you count "male right head, female left head" as the same as "female right head, male left head", then it's only six).

• male left head, male right head, donger
• male left head, male right head, verguba
• male left head, female right head, donger
• male left head, female right head, verguba
• female left head, male right head, donger
• female left head, male right head, verguba
• female left head, female right head, donger
• female left head, female right head, verguba

Naturally, any given ettin is willing to bang whatever (even more than the usual "90% of NPCs in Gus are bi"), because trying to navigate the murky waters of only being attracted to some set of specific combinations would be far too difficult for the feeble ettin brain to handle and would probably result in the extinction of the ettin race.

But I suppose we must now think of mammaries, as ettins seem to be mammals. Simplest solution: no ettins have enlarged mammaries like humans do (leading to the assumption among adventurers that all ettins encountered are male), but all ettins are capable of giving milk (or else the half of ettins with female genitalia can give milk). Less simple solution: each ettin either has or does not have breasts, regardless of other characteristics, doubling the number of combinations. Least simple solution: each ettin has zero, one, or two enlarged breasts, quadrupling the number of combinations. I think I'm going to go with the simplest solution.