Ever get annoyed with the extreme unbelievability of the d20 combat system? Do you like d20 overall, but want to make your players fear creatures larger than them? Want your players to know that any fight might be their last if they're not smart about it?

I came across an older version of Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty rules a while ago. They promised a simple mechanism to make combat more realistic and dangerous. Although I was initially suspicious, a quick skimming of the rules impressed me. It became quickly obvious that this was not simply the latest of a mass of weak attempts at verisimilitude, but a viable, easy to use alternate combat system. The quality of the older version led me to decide to buy the updated and polished version for the very reasonable price of $3.95 -- and I'm glad I did.

I called the Grim-n-Gritty rules an alternate combat system, but that's not entirely accurate: the rules were designed to overlay the existing d20 rules as closely as possible, working as part of the existing system. For instance, attack roll modifiers are calculated exactly the same way as in the core rules, and there is no change to saving throw mechanisms or special maneuvers such as feinting. For d20 Modern fans, there are firearm (and energy weapon) rules as well as D&D-type fantasy stuff. Best of all, the complexity of play does not have go up much or at all (unless you add in the variant rules; see below).

The three main changes are to Hit Points, Defense and Protection:

Hit Points: a character's HP do not increase as quickly as in the core rules. Lower-level characters find themselves with more HP than usual, while high-level characters have far fewer (there are some comparisons in Appendix 3). Size also factors in, multiplying (for larger-than-medium creatures) or dividing (for smaller) the HP total. This means that big monsters are a lot more scary than small ones, even for high-level characters.

Defense: The GnG rules abolish AC and introduce the Defense roll. Defense includes such modifiers as Dexterity and shield bonuses, as well as a base defense score based on class and level (or monster type and HD), and represents your ability to stop an attack from hitting you. This puts the emphasis on avoiding being hit rather than having enough hit points to absorb damage.

Protection: Protection is a sum of your armour bonus and your natural armour. It works like damage reduction, reducing damage taken from most sources of damage (including fireballs but excluding environmental damage and poisons) and stacking with any energy resistance or other similar damage reduction you might have. This resolves the age-old D&D complaint: that armour makes you more difficult to hit instead of reducing the amount of damage you take.

Relative Degree: The unifying principle of these rules is the concept of Relative Degree: the better you do on your attack roll versus your opponent's defense roll, the more damage you do to your opponent. This means that how much you hurt your opponent depends far more on weapon skill, especially at high levels, than what type of weapon you chose.

There are a bunch of corollary rules as well, and some optional and variant rules. There is a called shot system that can be added on to the other rules, an "effects of damage" section that will satisfy people who are annoyed at the idea of people being at full capacity all the way down to 1 hit point and a fairly thorough section on special attacks like grappling and burst fire. Some of the optional rules are pretty cool, such as the concept of "Abort Actions". These allow you to take a defensive action to block a strike, roll with a hit, dive out of the way of an area effect or stand your ground against a bull rush -- at the cost of actions in your next turn. Some are less useful, such as the advanced wound trauma rules, which add detail to the effects of damage and add layers of rules unnecessarily (in my opinion). These are not intrinsic to the rules system, though, and can easily be ignored.

The one place where I found these rules fell flat was in their handling of magic. The problem is that, unmodified, damaging spells do way too much damage: if a typical 20th-level D&D fighter has 35 hit points, a typical 10th-level wizard's fireball will likely take that fighter out in one shot. Four different options are given to scale magic to match the HP rules, but there is no mention of how well each has been playtested or what sort of balance each provides. I wound up playtesting the rules in an extremely low-magic world just to avoid having to deal with it. The GnG rules have been used by enough people, though that there will be a modification somewhere that suits your campaign and playing style.

With few drawbacks and some very interesting modifications to the d20 rules, this supplement is well worth trying out -- especially for four bucks. It will completely change the way you play d20.

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