ORACLE

1/08/2011

[Sword & Sanity RPG] Combat Overview

I am going to try to ramp up the posts about some of the design decisions I have made while working on Swords Against the Outer Dark: Sword & Sanity Roleplaying, beginning this new year with an overview of combat. For me, the way I have approached combat in general is to not try to tinker with it too much, and keep it as straightforward as possible. As most know, this project began as a supplement for Labyrinth Lord, but is now going to be released as a standalone game. Much of what I began with came straight from the LL Open Game Content, but I have tweaked a few things and built upon it where I felt it needed to expand a bit to help flesh out a stronger sword & sorcery feel. All in all, this combat system should be just as simple and flexible, with a few minor twists and turns. Quickly, here is a brief overview:
  • Armor Class will be descending, beginning with 9 and going down from there.
  • Initiative is rolled on a d6, to this roll the players add their Armor Class value and the highest roll at the table attacks first. This helps simulate how cumbersome armor can be during combat. The lighter the armor the better, as the higher AC value adds more to the Initiative roll. In most sword & sorcery literature the combatants tend to wear lighter armor or none at all, and handling Initiative in this manner helps simulate this pretty well I think. (Edit: In most cases, the Armor Class value added to an Initiative roll is not adjusted due to any magical properties the armor might have. This, of course, is something each Game Master will need to decide for their own game, and also may vary from one magic set of armor to the next.)
  • Characters will receive bonuses to attack and damage, which varies with Class and increase as levels are gained. Warriors (fighters) receive the highest Base Attack Bonus (BAB) and Base Damage Bonus (BDB) of all the Classes.
  • I wanted to get away from having to use charts during combat, so this is the formula used when rolling for Attack: 1D20 + STR Adj + BAB + Foe’s AC ≥ 20 “Hits”
  • A natural 1 always misses (Critical Miss), and a natural 20 always hits (Critical Hit). Critical Hits do not affect the damage that is dealt out, but the fact that this roll penetrates through all defenses no matter what is enough of a "critical" effect in itself. An optional chart to address Critical Misses will be included in the book, but that will be covered in another post.
  • As stated above, Critical Hits do not affect damage in the game, but there is Critical Damage nonetheless. When damage is rolled and the dice yields maximum damage (i.e., 6 on a D6) as the result, another roll of the dice is made and added to the first result. The second roll (and all additional damage rolls made in this fashion) is adjusted by -1, so this roll may in fact result in zero extra damage. If the second roll also yields a maximum damage result, damage is rolled again and the result is added to the total. The player can keep rolling the dice for additional damage as long as the dice keep yielding maximum damage results. Only the initial damage roll is adjusted by Strength. Example: a combatant (with a STR: 15, which gives a +1 bonus to damage) is attacking with a short sword (1D6 damage), and rolls a six. Adding in +1 from the Strength bonus, the initial damage dealt out is 7. Since maximum damage was rolled, another 1D6 damage is rolled and added to the first. The second damage roll results in a 6 as well, which translates to 5 points of damage, and another roll of the dice can be made. The third roll yields a 3, which gives us 2 additional points of damage. Since the third roll did not result in maximum damage, no additional damage rolls are made. The total damage dealt out from these three dice rolls is 14 ([6+1]+[6-1]+[3-1]=14).
  • When damage is inflicted a character may suffer Grievous Wounds, which occur when the total damage dealt out in a single combat round exceeds a character's Constitution score. When this happens a save vs. Death roll is required. If this roll fails, the character is reduced to zero Hit Points and rendered Moribund (incapacitated and dying). If the saving throw is successful, the character remains conscience, but is affected in such a way that they are forced to take a -4 penalty on their next Initiative roll. Unless defended, a Moribund combatant can be killed by coup de grâce the following round. If the damage dealt out is non-lethal, a failed save results in the character being rendered Unconscious.
  • Weapon damage varies depending on which class is wielding which weapon. Here again, Warriors receive the highest potential damage over all other classes. Example: a Warrior and a Mystic (cleric... kind of) are both wielding spears. The base damage for the Warrior is 1D8, while the Mystic has a base damage of 1D6.
  • Formula used for potential damage: roll dice for weapon damage + STR Adj + BDB = total damage
  • Characters are not restricted in their weapon choice due to Class.
That is the short of it. These rules have been playtested and in my opinion work well in achieving a sword & sorcery flavor, while at the same time keeping combat fast and fluid. If anyone has questions, by all means let me hear them. Feedback is always appreciated.

18 comments:

Robert Saint John said...

Excellent approach to Initiative!

Il Male™ said...

Love the approach to initiative, dubious about the critical wounds (although I do understand where they come from).

Jim said...

With the initiative system -- doesn't that make magical armor the most cumbersome of all types?

BlUsKrEEm said...

My jaw seriously just dropped after reading the initiative system. It's so obvious and effective I can not believe that it never occurred to me. Simply brilliant!

Shane Mangus said...

@Robert - thanks!

@Il Male - if enough people voice this opinion about Grievous Wounds I will include these rules, but make them optional.

@Jim - magic is not approached as it is in Labyrinth Lord (or as a lot of other fantasy roleplaying games for that matter). Depending on the way a campaign is designed, magical weapons and armor may never be found. While in campaigns with a heavy saturation of enchanted items it will depend. In the book I am suggesting each magic item be approached on a case by case basis. Allowing a magical piece of armor to have a lower encumbrance value can be implemented in the item's description as a "quality" for that particular piece. But by default, armor with bonus defensive qualities does not automatically make it lighter, and does not alter the Initiative roll. Does that make sense? I should have elaborated on this in my post. I have in the rules. Sorry for the confusion.

Shane Mangus said...

@BlUsKrEEm - thanks! This was a houserule I used back in the days of 1st edition D&D (1985-ish). When I got away from 3rd/3.5/d20 system, and returned to systems using descending AC, I quickly implemented the houserule again. It has always seemed to make sense to me.

Anonymous said...

I just stole that initiative idea for my own game. Awesome stuff!

Jim said...

Thanks for the clarification!

Gavin Norman said...

As others have said - the armour adding to initiative rules sounds great!

One thing I wonder about though is the 'exploding damage', and why subsequent rolls have their value reduced by 1. It seems like this would just be fiddly to calculate in the heat of combat.

Shane Mangus said...

@Jim - not a problem at all.

@Gavin - if a 1D8 is rolled for damage and an 8 is the result, an additional dice is rolled. If the -1 was not in place for these additional dice rolls you would never see a 1d8 weapon actually do only 8 points of damage. At least that is the reasoning behind implementing a -1 on additional damage rolls. So the potential damage for a 1d8 weapon would run 1-7 then jump to 9+ for Grievous Wounds. In the end, you may be right and the extra math might be too "fiddly." I will have to think more on this one. I am open to more discussion on this if anyone else wants to chime in here.

R.R. Hunsinger said...

I really enjoyed the initiative system Shane.... Might look at implementing this in my own (secretly) upcoming campaign. I see some Conan influences in here as well. Which for S&S that has always been on the money for me.
I too had wondered at the -1 modifier for crits, it seems like too much against the balance of crunch and speed. Looking forward to more posts!

Sean Robson said...

I'd like to add my praise of your initiative system to everyone else's. It reinforces Sword & Sorcery conventions nicely. Conan was usually unarmoured, but was always armoured-up when going into battle, and your initiative system explains this nicely: when you're just fighting one person winning initiative is paramount, since he who strikes first is likely to win. When fighting a mob you're going to have a lot of attacks heading in your direction so initiative becomes less important than putting some steel between those attacks and your skin. I'd steal this, but I remain strongly committed to group initiative rather than individual :(

I also like your idea of variable damage by class instead of weapon type. Great ideas!

migellito said...

I have to +1 the comments about the initiative system. Simply gobsmacked. So obvious, so sensible, yet it's the first time I've seen it.

As far as exploding damage, I like to do that when both dice max out, i.e. a nat. 20 to hit and max damage. This obviates the need to modify the damage die.

John Matthew Stater said...

I'll agree on initiative - good stuff. On exploding damage, you might want to consider having all weapons roll 1d6 for damage, with maybe bonuses for heavier weapons. The problem with exploding damage and variable dice is that the small weapons (1d4) damage have a higher likelihood of exploding than the heavier weapons (i.e. 1 in 4 chance vs. 1 in 10 chance). The old WFRP rules had all damage rolled with a d6, but then had penalties and bonuses to the weapons depending on their size, so daggers were like 1d6-1 and two-handed swords were something like 1d6+3 (I don't remember the actual values).

Anonymous said...

On the initiative rule, wouldn't that mean a low Dex character will outmaneuver a high Dex character?

Shane Mangus said...

@Anonymous - I guess the way I have it worded it would seem that is the case, but in fact I used the wrong terminology. The formula for calculating Initiative should read: 1d6 + DEX Adj + Armor Value (instead of "Armor Class value" as I misstated in the post). Thanks for pointing that out.

Eric R. Wirsing said...

The initiative system rocks. I've seen the same initiative system somewhere else, but it's still cool.

The exploding dice also reminds me of Warhammer FRP, but that's not a bad thing. Their solution was to require a second successful "to hit" roll to active the first explosion. Subsequent rolls of "6" would automatically explode, leading to a halfling with a dagger completely eviscerating an ogre in our campaign, but I digress. I'm just not sure how to even it out with variable weapon damage.

Anonymous said...

Yeh, I saw that intitiative idea in the Searchers of the Unknown RPG, but it is a good idea and ought to be more widely adopted. It fits the genre and the rules are doing double duty - nice and efficient.

I was also wondering about the exploding damage when variable damage dice are used...