I'm having some thoughts about a possible simple way to make Fighters exciting again without much rules bloat. Pray tell me whether you think it's worthwhile. Basically, it's a simple overhaul that lets Fighters (and only Fighters) maim or even one-shot certain opponents, but in a way that shouldn't nerf all combat, and which still gives non-Fighters important jobs to do in fights.
MY SAD ORIGIN STORY FOR THIS POST
Quite a few years ago, I was a player in a fun little Dungeon World campaign, and my PC was some sort of martial fighter-type character. During an exciting, dynamic fight, I told the GM about a special maneuver I wanted to try. In real-world German medieval longsword fighting, there was a rather nasty maneuver that involved closing in or opening up distance while using blade pressure to slice incisions around the opponent's wrists...a horrifyingly effective move that, obviously, would hamper follow-on strikes by said foe. Eww!
Anyway - I said that I wanted to attempt that maneuver against an ogre, so that it would have trouble hefting its big ax for the rest of the fight, suffer disadvantage, etc. The GM gave me the green-light; I rolled well (!) ... and ... the ogre took some HP damage and the fight continued as usual - with no extra mechanical penalty to the monster. Despite DW's vaunted narratvist "to do it, do it" mentality, things fell kinda flat that time. Now, I've run a fair bit of DW since then myself, and I'm sympathetic to the GM. There are other ways we could have adjudicated things, but one of DW's shortcomings as written is that it tries to combine the dynamism of PbtA fights with the book-keeping hit points of trad D&D ... and the result isn't always as successful as one might hope.
I've long idly dreamed of a combat ruleset with true narrative dynamism but the precision of trad/d20-based rules. I tend to like any well-executed "combat stunts" system, for example. However, such stunts often (not always) are limited to things that don't directly cause damage - since, reasonably, the extant combat and HP-ablation rules are already thought to represent your best available efforts to damage opponents.
Hmm. Well, my recent review of the Brimstone game rules got me thinking again about how I would try to combine dynamism with OSR compatibility. Think I did, and now I've got some rough ideas to share. I welcome - nay, I request - feedback.
MAKING A DYNAMIC FIGHTER - SOME RULES FOR MYSELF
Here are some key assumptions/design pillars:
+ In a game centered around fighting monsters, Fighters should be a lot of fun to play. In reality, most old-school rulesets feature Fighters that are only slightly less boring than watching print-on-demand rulebook spines come unglued. Yes, I know that you can narrate what they do anyway but I can just play a freeform game if I want rules that don't match what actually happens very well.
+ In combat, skill is even more important than strength or armor coverage.
+ compatibility with printed OSR bestiaries makes Johnny a nice boy who gets invited to parties.
+ Fighters should get better at killing things impressively as they get more experienced. No, correction: Fighters should get much better at killing things impressively as the level of relative experience between them and their foes increases. In other words, fighting equal-level foes should always remain risky; but against lower-level foes, Fighters should be unspeakably terrifying in close combat.
+ from a Gamist perspective, giving players meaningful choices attached to risk is a good design move.
+ giving players meaningful ways to mitigate risk is also a good idea.
+ keep it as simple as possible.
'ERE WE GO - DEADLY STUNTS FOR FIGHTERS
I thought at first about letting any character attempt these, but I think it's fitting to limit it to martial characters (then again, I'm also toying with a ruleslight approach in which all PCs are some form of Fighter or Wizard, but that's a side-matter...).
So - please bear with me as I outline this idea in a series of definitions and rules.
Bloodied = ripped off from 4e. When you're at 50% hp or less, you have this status.
Staggered = you're having trouble in the fight. You automatically have this status when you're bloodied (which is important for what's to come - it means that even characters who DON'T do the cool lethal stunts still have a useful attritive role to play). But you can also get Staggered because somebody knocked you down, tripped you, threw Mordenkainen's Lime Mojito mixed with Alka-Seltzer in your eyes, etc. (normal, non-damage-inflicting "combat stunt" stuff).
Maimed = you've taken some kind of specific, narrative damage that changes your fictional/mechanical abilities.
Attritional Attacks = what you already know as "normal attacks in D&D." These involve a to-hit roll and, if successful, degrading the foe's hit points. As usual, if such an attack reduces a character/monster to 0 hp, they are taken out/killed. Cool. But why might we want more?
- because flashy killing blows are cooler.
- because, sometimes, terrible things will happen if you don't kill the thing blocking the escape route RIGHT NOW. Or maybe Larry is a goner, for sure, if we don't kill the thing possessing him ASAP.
Deadly Maneuvers = risky but highly consequential "stunt"-like maneuvers that Fighters can attempt. These are combat stunts that can also deal damage - nay, not just "reducing hp," but causing immediate, narrative-shaping wounds or even fatalities. You know: chop off the goblin chieftain's head. Slash around the ogre's wrists so it can barely lift its axe. Slice off the giant scorpion's stinger so it can't poison you all. That kinda stuff.
Now, how to implement this in light of my earlier-listed ground rules?
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| Art by Justin Sweet. Realistically, this guy is either about to pull a successful Deadly Maneuver (or two), or he's going to die. |
There are 3 levels of possible Severity:
Severity 1: a Staggering blow, opening up Advantage on any further attacks. Note that this allows them to get up and rectify the situation: it's a contextual disadvantage, not a bodily effect.
Severity 2: a Maiming strike, this Staggers the foe AND changes their abilities/capabilities; they become Maimed (you're actually crippling, imposing ongoing disadvantage and loss in ability for the foreseeable future - certainly for the duration of this fight, barring some magical means of restoration). The scorpion loses its stinger, the ogre can gets its wrists to support much weight, etc.
Severity 3: a Killing blow; you outright kill/incapacitate the foe in a single, gory move. DEAD!
When a Fighter launches one of these moves, the GM compares the Fighter's LEVEL (skill/experience) to the target's level or HD.
Against foes of HIGHER HD: the Fighter may only attempt a Staggering Maneuver. However, if the foe is already Staggered, the Fighter may attempt to Maim; if the foe is already Maimed, the Fighter may hazard a Killing blow.
Against foes of EQUAL HD (defined as within 1 level): the Fighter may attempt a Staggering OR Maiming blow. If a foe is already Staggered or Maimed, the Fighter may attempt a Killing blow.
Against foes of FEWER HD: the Fighter may attempt a Killing blow outright.
Against foes of HALF HD OR LESS: cut through them like wheat before the scythe! The Fighter may attempt a Killing blow that, if successful, affects a number of eligible targets up to the Fighter's level (that is, a Level 3 Fighter may Kill up to 3 1-HD targets, a level 6 Fighter may slaughter up to 6 level 3- targets, etc.).
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| Justin Sweet What it looks like when a level 6 Fighter pulls a Deadly Maneuver on a bunch of low-HD goons. |
Well, that all sounds great! Why wouldn't a Fighter do this constantly?
Yeah, because...
TO EXECUTE A DEADLY MANEUVER, declare your intention, and then roll TWO attacks.
With TWO SUCCESSES: you accomplish the intended maneuver - the foe suffers your stated consequences!
With ONE SUCCESS: things got complicated. EITHER inflict one level of severity LOWER than what you intended, or carry out your intended maneuver, but the foe inflicts a maneuver of the same severity against you (wait, this will make sense below).
With 0 SUCCESSES: Ugh. Disaster. The Foe inflicts the same maneuver, or one of equal severity, that you tried to pull on it.
Now, you can just run this on top of extant D&D/OSR combat rules, using two normal attack rolls vs. target AC. I am tempted, however, to fiddle with an HD/level comparing TN system, but that, too, is a side-issue.
So it's very risky to run these dramatic, decisive maneuvers. What makes them even vaguely worth attempting is that Fighters can mitigate bad results with an extended version of that ol' "shields shall be splintered" rule.
HAUBERKS, HELMS, and SHIELDs may each be used to block 1 level of Severity that a Fighter would incur. This doesn't "break" the item, but it's used narratively to absorb the blow, and then can't be used that way again until after a solid night's rest. Also, a Fighter may buy-off Severity, 1-for-1, by paying the GM Doom Points.
Normally, only PC Fighters can launch these decisive Deadly Maneuvers. But the GM may pay 1 Doom Point to allow a monster to initiate a possibly lethal Deadly Maneuver against a PC.
Just to be clear, of course, Deadly Maneuvers always require fictional coherence to pull off. "I launch the sling-stone deep into the Gelatinous Cube, killing it DEAD!" Um, no. "I rake my mundane dagger across the Iron Golem's face, shattering its head into myriad fragments!" That's amazing, except for the bit where it won't happen. The proposed actions require vetting by the GM to ensure that they make sense and are allowable.
BUT WHYYYYYYYYY, GUNDOBAD?
Sorry, I haven't even playtested these yet (I'm in professor-grading-papers season, and things are a bit bonkers). I'd like to imagine, though, that these ideas, or something similar, could really distinguish martial characters, giving them a powerful and unique (but simple) set of mechanical options for doing amazing things in the fiction with solid mechanical consequence. This would help Fighters better "match" the coolness, complexity, and creativity of magic-users - especially because this system scales over levels; you're always going to be scared to fight bigger monsters, but it might be worth trying to behead the dragon if you're desperate ... and if you've got good mates who can help you whittle it down to Bloodied/Staggered status before you try. There, too, this lets all the normal combat actions and attacks matter - your non-Fighters are still doing things, and they'll still sometimes strike the final blows that reduce foes to 0 hp. But Fighters are now the pinch-hitters, the big guns, the ones who can step up to the plate when everything is going sideways, and do something that no other class could do to save the day with a single throw of the dice. You know, since it's not like the Magic-user would have been able to cast Sleep or anything...
1 of 2... I really like the direction you're going with this. Killing the 'orrible, nigh-invulnerable monster with a single desperate-but-decisive gambit is a staple of the source material, and something classic D&D doesn't really enable. The boldness of 'roll some dice to just kill the monster outright' is very appealing. Likewise the idea of strategically targeted blows that weaken the monster or set it up for the killing blow is a classic trope that is hard to reproduce with the vanilla rules (unless you're a Magic User with an appropriate spell selection...)
ReplyDeleteI couple of thoughts on the specifics of what you've written:
1) Are PCs subject to the 'staggered when at less than 1/2 hp' rule? I suspect this would be giving to the fighter with one hand (cool killing blows) but taking away with another (btw, your effective hp for tanking melee damage is reduced by 25% because you'll count as staggered once you've lost the first half). I.e. it hurts selectively weakens martial types as compared with non-martials.
1a) Related to (1) hostile NPCs with the ability to insta-kill PCs is something to think about. Do NPC fighters get this ability? And if so, under what conditions is the GM licensed/expected to invoke it?
2) Have you given thought to mechanical definition of the variety of things Maims can cause? Your inciting experience was of a game that didn't provide that, but you've only established a placeholder 'maims go here' in this sketch. It would be nice to draw some boundaries around it, I guess.
3) How do you deal with the optimal move problem? If chopping the stinger of one giant scorpion is worth the risk, then whenever you meet a giant scorpion, that's what you do... and if it's not worth the risk the first time, then it's never worth the risk? Or, you know to wait until they're staggered, when suddenly it IS worth the risk? I know that changing context can alter this kind of equation somewhat, but often those reduce to edge cases (how often do you really, really HAVE to kill the monster this round?)
Thanks very much for such detailed and useful feedback! I'll jot down some initial responses, and will plan to follow up on your second set of comments a bit later this morning.
Delete1) I had imagined that PCs also would be staggered (grant advantage when attacked) when at 50% hp, but I'm not wedded to it - and you make a good argument for not doing so. I'll mull this over. [Aside: I like the elegance of Into the Odd-style healing, where you get all HP back with a 10-minute rest after combat. That is tightly connected to ItO's auto-hit system, but I wonder whether liberal hit point return would also help in my proposed combat system - you really don't want to lose half your HP, but it'll only happen if a single fight goes wrong, rather than due to slow attrition all day in the dungeon].
2) Yes, Maiming could lead to diverse outcomes! I primarily imagine this as subject to GM arbitration, but the core intent is that it reflects permanent (at least for the duratio of the fight, but maybe actually permanent) alteration of the target's body and bodily capabilities, to an extent fairly modelled by suffering disadvantage/granting advantage in combat and losing a specific combat ability - but not more than that (they still can attack, etc., if the fictional consequence should allow it).
3) optimal moves - that is a good point. However, I'm trying to counter a mechanical status quo where the optimal move is almost always "I whack it again with my halberd." :-) Personally, I think the optimal-move problem is mitigated by at least two factors. First: monsters with special abilities/threats are often diverse and somewhat unique - you're unlikely to face eighteen encounters against giant scorpions in one dungeon (I hope!). You can always use this need to spur more creative variations if you DO want a scorpion-infested necropolis, for example. So I think players are more likely to encounter a variety of different abilities to try to counter. Second, I imagine the risk factor changes the optimization question substantially. If a Fighter's risk when attempting a combat gambit changes based on how healthy the Fighter is and how many of their maneuver resources they've already spent that day (whether hp, abstract points, or armor designations), then the optimal choice is always going to be situational, not universal. Is it safe to attempt THIS attack THIS time under THESE circumstances? When I faced that other scorpion in the upper hall, I hadn't already used my shield....
And finally, if cheekily, I'll suggest that if I ever had to fight a colossal scorpion in real life, I think that trying to chop off its venemous stinger would ALWAYS be one of my tactical goals! The mechanic is meant to have a certain "truthiness" to it - risky gambits being worthwhile because of genuine tactical need...or not, otherwise.
More later for your second comment. Thanks again.
Forgot to address the sub-question about NPC Fighters. My thought is that they normally do NOT have the one-shot capability against PC characters - unless the GM has been handed one of the "doom token" thingies that a Fighter may use to buy off the consequence of a failed gambit. Such a buy-off is trading future risk to the party in exchange for getting out of jail now. :-)
Delete2of2...
ReplyDelete4) In (at least older versions of) D&D, these moves will tend to be more attractive to high level fighters than low level ones. Generally speaking fighter to hit bonuses (including strength adders and magic weapons) grow faster with level than does level-appropriate-monster AC. So the chance of the 'Double miss' occurring is typically much smaller for a high level fighter than it is for a low level fighter. The 'quadratic kill' rule for <1/2 HD monsters is extremely attractive for high level fighters (9 gargoyles you say?), but useless for a first level fighter.
4a) At least in my experience, most of the game is played at low levels, where these options will have the least impact on the fighter-player's experience.
5) I'd use a different method for absorbing risk. Tying your 'saves' to gear items favours particular character concepts/ builds (knight/ sword and board armoured fighter) over others (half-naked barbarian). How about something like 'you can avoid 3 consequences per day, provided you narrate each time a different event that saved you, based on your gear, environment, stats, abilities or character concept.'
If it were me, I would make the fighter risk hit points rather than adding a new abstract currency. And I'd make the hit point cost proportional to the monster's HD. I think something like 2 hp (1d3?) per HD for a 'Killing Blow' might be about right. If you think that nerfs the ability too much, just give the fighter some extra hit points-per-level to play with.
At a more general level, this looks like it can give you the the epic moves you want, which is a win. It probably strengthens high level fighters relative to high level magic users (arguably needed for B/X, which I largely play), which is probably also a win. Whether it really gives you interesting choices as a fighter (which was part of the original remit), I'm less sure. I guess 'risk instant death' or 'risk a maim the GM invents on the spot' is hard to weigh against 'kill the monster instantly' or 'do X hp damage to the monster'. So maybe that makes for interesting choices, too.
A very stimulating post!
To take up your 2nd comment (thanks!):
DeleteTrading HP as the cost instead of Armor or abstract points is a very interesting idea. I'll chew on it more. The point about armor negation favoring certain thematic class "builds" is noteworthy. One could harness instead of rejecting that, however: imagine if Fighters can do these gambits but negate them with Armor, whereas barbarians can do these gambits but negate them with hit points, or something like that...
On to the big issue, which is the relative impact of this hack across character levels. I didn't go into detail about this in my post, because I wanted to try out the core idea without too many extra layers, but in my mind I am addressing this, tentatively, with an alternative core mechanic as well (this is a pattern I recognize: when I come up with an interesting rules tweak, I have a tendency also to imagine an entire heartbreaker system around it to use it to best effect!). ;-)
In this case, I thought about changing the core to-hit target numbers in a way that I think accounts for your question about different levels. "Normal" systems give Fighters an ascending combat bonus as they level up, with the expectation that they'll be attacking monsters with higher armor class and hit dice (and thus Target Number) as they advance through their adventuring careers.
Instead, I thought, what if the Fighter's numbers are simple AND don't change, but what the Fighter can accomplish with those numbers changes over time as they level up? In other words, the way I structure the maneuvers/gambits relative to foes' HD is ALSO how I imagined structuring the basic combat roll:
To attack a foe with...
Higher HD: TN 17
Equal HD: TN 13
Lower HD: TN 9
Those numbers are not set in stone. They assume that PCs' combat modifiers can range between -1 and +5, with +3 being average, and that - importantly - those modifiers stay level or almost level across your career. I also assume that you would bump the TN up or down by one tier if a foe has very high or very low AC. I imagine this would all take about 5 seconds to convert on the fly per creature (level 7 Fighter attacking a 4 HD Fighter would roll vs TN 9, but if that foe is in full plate, the TN bumps back up to 13).
This would mean that a low-level fighter has exactly the same chance of hitting a peer-level enemy that a high-level fighter does, and thus the low-level fighter is just as likely to succeed at a combat maneuver against a peer foe as a high-level fighter would be. However, as the Fighter levels up, they find that they are able to do more against an increasingly broad range of enemies - that ogre that once was a terrible menace is now something you can hit quite easily or even maim with relatively low risk. That dragon/balrog, though? Oh boy...
Sorry the the hyperdetailed response. Like I said, I imagined this as a system all fitting together with my proposed rule tweak, but I wanted to check whether the rule-tweak on its own merits might interest the community more broadly.
Just a quick note to comment that my recent review of Brimstone helped point me in this direction - Brimstone uses a similar, three-tiered TN system for its core combat mechanic.
DeleteWe've also got some discussion going over on Reddit, including some thoughtful critiques of my idea:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/1c60an6/comment/l0042hs/?context=3