People who spend time in online discussions sometimes have to deal with spergs. It’s the nature of the beast. Mr. Wargaming, last week, posted this video of his ongoing AD&D solo game. Within it featured an encounter with some Ogres. I made a lighthearted comment with the idea that with a more favorable reaction roll, one might get the Ogres to help out with the Castle’s giant frog problem. A few minutes ago, I received a comment on my idea. See below.

I’m not sure what this has to do with my comment other than my mentioning reaction rolls. Apparently, this guy thinks the refereeing of the monsters hasn’t been fair in this solo campaign. Now, I’m not getting into how Mr. Wargaming (a friend) runs his game. However, the comment did give me an idea for a follow-up on my earlier Racism in Role Playing games post.

Now, this guy’s comment says that reaction rolls are neither charm person spells, nor change the personalities of the monsters. I take from this that he feels an Ogre would never cooperate with a human, even if offered tasty giant frog legs. In fact, he says that the earlier trolls and ogres would likely team up against the castle. Well, would they? Maybe. Maybe not.

AD&D has the humanoid racial preferences table to help us determine this. From the table, ogres will tolerate trolls and trolls are neutral about ogres. From the notes on the table, tolerate means “open hostilities are not likely to be evident”. But neutral means “N indicates neutral negative feelings on the part of these races, and that there will be no move to aid them if anything ill befalls.” Neither quite seem like cooperation to me. Trolls wouldn’t pull ogres out of a burning building. Ogres aren’t going to spit in a troll’s face, but are they buds? I don’t think so.

But, democracy, in-laws, and business meetings are proof that people that even hate one another sometimes (oftentimes) will nonetheless cooperate to some degree for mutual benefit. Now a week back or so, I made a joke on Twitter, saying I’ve corrected a gross oversight in AD&D because, while the game has racial preferences for humanoids and the various player races, it has no table for how the humanoids view the races, etc. So, I provided one. The joke is, of course, the table is unnecessary because they all hate one another. This is what that commenter was getting at.

But might they sometimes cooperate, despite the hate, like I suggested? Or, like the commenter suggested, might the humanoids sometimes cooperate despite not being friends?

The commenter says reaction rolls aren’t charm persons, or change the nature of the creatures. And, of course, I can but agree. However, this made me realize, the racial preferences tables only go so far. What I wanted to know is how much does the level of racial animus affect reaction rolls? AD&D isn’t silent on this, but it’s not too helpful either. It says, “Have the troops behave according to the letter key.”

But there is a solution, the context of the racial preferences table is for when the creatures are already in some sort of alliance or army together (perhaps forced together by some high level big bad). And, there is something akin to this in the DMG on page 37. This is the henchman loyalty roll. The loyalty roll is much like a reaction roll but includes a lot of factors that might affect a henchman’s loyalty. Racial preferences and alignment being among them.

My proposal is that these adjustments also be applied to Reaction Rolls. Given that, let us look at this Ogres and Trolls proposal. Trolls are neutral to ogres and ogres tolerate trolls. Oh, and look at that, the rules say I should apply loyalty modifiers as appropriate.

Given that Mr. Wargaming hasn’t indicated that the trolls and ogres are working under a common liege, I’d say I should use the “Associated Group” column. I guess. So, trolls have zero modifier in reacting to the ogres and the ogres have a -5 modifier when reacting to the trolls. And, both ogres and trolls are chaotic evil so are in alignment. Now, as you can see, the alignment modifier table does not have an entry for when creatures are in the same alignment, but it’s not a negative modifier. I might even argue for a +5. For this example, I’m using a zero modifier.

Now, for the trolls and ogres to cooperate, I’d say both sides would probably need a friendly result on the roll. So, the Trolls need a 76 or greater unmodified value. And, the ogres are less friendly and need an 81 or better to be friendly. That is 25% for the trolls and 20% for the ogres. So, the odds of both cooperating are 0.25 x 0.2 =0.05 or 5 percent chance of the ogres and trolls cooperating (ignoring other factors). Given this, I’m not sure if I agree with the commenter that the two “should” cooperate automatically against the humans.

Now, my proposal that the humans get the ogres to attack the giant frogs? Well, the ogres and humans have mutual hate (-15%) and diametrically opposed alignment (-20%, I’m assuming the humans are lawful good). This gives both sides a -35 percent modifier, to the roll. Absent other incentives, it’s literally not possible for either side here to roll into the friendly region of the reaction table. So, in that regard, clearly my suggestion is infinitely less likely than that of the commenter. But, of course, I was mostly making a humorous comment. But maybe the ogres could be swayed? There are, after all, those frog legs.

It’s tough, even if bribed/paid exceptionally, the best modifier I could add is ten percent. This would give a modifier of -25 percent. Even if I rolled 100 I’d be at 75 rather than 76 percent. But maybe then that “uncertain but 55% prone toward positive” kicks in, and I get another chance. If so, then the overall chance of the ogres agreeing to hunt the frogs is 0.01 x 0.55 which results in a 0.55 percent chance of the ogres agreeing. So you’re saying I’ve got a chance. Well, it’s not zero.

But what about the other side of the equation. Would the Lawful Good even make such a proposal to the ogres? Well, the long and short of it, it that’s the same odds the ogres have of accepting the proposal. 0.0055 x 0.0055 = 0.00003025. I mean 0.003 percent isn’t zero. It might happen, but probably not anytime soon. But, of course, this is why we have a reaction table, to allow for variability in responses beyond either my or that commenter’s or any DM’s knee-jerk opinions. It still could happen, but realistically very infrequently. And, that’s the beauty of the reaction roll mechanism. Still, the commenter’s proposal is a hundred-eighty-three times more likely than my own suggestion.

This all reminds me that I’ve covered this territory before. My very first post was a method of opposed reaction rolls for solo role players. And, indeed, also inspired by Mr. Wargaming. Thanks, Mr. Wargaming.