Category Archives: Rules

Catastrophe magic

This is a magic system I have been testing. It is general enough that I think it should be easy to use with other traditional fantasy games, if you like, given a small amount of adjustment to the system you are using.

This is a roll to cast system. You need to decide on a set of known or prepared spells for a character. Then, the die outcome will take care of the resource aspect of spells. You also need a resolution system that provides five levels of outcome. You can think about these outcomes as levels of player character success or as augury into the fictional world. The five outcomes are:

Principle intensified
Principle
Principle & corollary
Corollary & decline
Catastrophe & decline

The principle is the basic spell effect, the thing that the sorcerer is generally attempting to bring about. The principle intensified is the critical hit version of this. The corollary is an unintended side effect that generally complicates the magician’s life but may occasionally be useful. Decline represents a decrease in future spell potential or magical energy. The simplest implementation of decline is, following a Vancian approach, forgetting the spell. And finally, catastrophe is a total misfire which may have personally deleterious effects. This set of outcomes means that something magical always happens but the potential corollaries and catastrophes should make players think twice about playing with arcane fire.

To resolve the casting of a spell, I use an ability check, similar to the approach described here, with intelligence for black magic and wisdom for white magic.

For an approach closer to classic d20, consider the following:

Let target = 10 + spell level. Then, roll 1d20 and add spell bonus (something like one-half level, rounded up). Interpret the result as follows:

Natural 20: principle intensified
Target + 4: principle
Target: principle & corollary
Below target: corollary & decline
Natural 1: catastrophe

Further, you need a way to determine what each class of outcome means for a given spell. Writing new spells with extensive corollary and catastrophe tables is wonderful but by no means necessary.

Ideally, catastrophes are specific to individual spells, but lacking specific catastrophes, you can fall back to some general outcomes, such as these:

Wonder & Wickedness: spell catastrophes
Vaginas are Magic: miscast table (inside front cover)
Last Gasp Grimoire: Do not take me for some turner of cheap tricks
Basic Red: Wild sorcerer effects table for 5e

(I am sure there are others available too.)

Hacking a spell to support this system can be easy. For example, here’s a hack for the classic spell magic missile:

Principle intensified: +1 extra missile
Principle: as written
Corollary: an additional missile targets something non-animate (determine randomly)
Catastrophe: determine target of each missile randomly (friends and foes)

For many spells, it is feasible to rule on potential corollaries and catastrophes in real time. I would just clarify with the player what the potential scope of outcomes would be and confirm intention to cast the spell prior to the roll.

Mettle, trauma, and grit

6 Replies

For me, the ideal hit point or vitality system for tabletop roleplaying games involves the constant threat of engaging consequences while also mitigating the disastrous influence of luck. Using OD&D and sticking to the three little brown booklets comes close to this ideal when run in a certain manner, but still perhaps gives luck too much influence at first level and creates too much of a hit point buffer at mid to high level. Put another way, I want a system that encourages players to always care about combat consequences but rarely if ever shanks without warning. And, of course, the system must be fluent, easy to use, plugged in to the core flow of play, and require minimal bookkeeping.

Playing Kingdom Death gave me some ideas regarding ways to build a combat system that better prioritizes these goals, and that influence should be clear in the following sketch. As written, it may be too invasive to just trivially drop into a game using a B/X type engine, especially given that it requires replacing traditional armor class with ablative armor, but I think it would be possible.

Before anyone gets all up in my business about the dynamics of real armor or wounds, I want to emphasize that realism is a relatively low priority apart from maintaining predictable fictional consequences, necessary for allowing creative problem solving. Instead, the point is to create rules that facilitate choices and consequences while reinforcing the overall feel of the kind of survival fantasy that is my preferred mode for tabletop roleplaying games. This system assumes the turn structure of the Hazard System.

Section of the Hexagram character record sheet relevant to armor and mettle

Mettle

Rather than hit points, player characters have mettle, which can be both bound to hit locations (all player characters have this kind of mettle) or floating (for tougher characters, those with high constitution). Instead of taking damage, player characters mark mettle boxes. The hit locations are head, body, abdomen, arms, and legs. Each location has two points of mettle except the head, which has one point. Additionally, player characters have a number of floating mettle points equal to the constitution modifier. These points can absorb damage to any hit location.

Defending

Currently, Hexagram uses active defending—blocking or dodging—sort of like this, rather than resolving monster attack rolls versus player character armor class. The details of the monster attack step are less central to the mettle and trauma system, and any method to decide if an opponent hits a player character in combat should slot in fine here. Even just leveraging the saving throw system seems like it would be a totally functional system for determining whether a character risks taking some damage, bringing armor, mettle, and so forth into play.

Armor

Player characters can equip pieces of armor to any hit location. Armor is ablative, meaning that it reduces incoming damage. The protection offered by a piece of armor maps roughly to the traditional light, medium, heavy (or leather, chain, plate) scale with light armor offering 1 point of protection, medium offering 2 points, and heavy offering 3. Since player characters have five hit location slots, they can mix and match, for example by wearing a heavy visored helmet but a light, boiled leather breastplate. Equipped armor still takes a gear slot, so piling on protection comes at the cost of lower versatility. Additionally, player characters act at a disadvantage when wearing armor with protection higher than the strength bonus.

Damage

When a player character takes damage, determine hit location randomly, subtract armor protection from damage taken (minimum zero), and then mark off one mettle slot for each point of damage remaining. I assume that the magnitude of damage is generally around 1d6 (following OD&D flat damage). If at any point a player character takes damage and has no remaining relevant mettle, then the character is in danger and must roll for peril. This is the step that can potentially lead to serious consequences, including character death.

Hit location (1d6): 1 head, 2 legs, 3 arms, 4 abdomen, 5-6 body

Peril (1d6): 1 messy death, 2-3 bleeding, 4-5 fracture, 6 sprain

Fractures disable the affected hit location. For example, a character with a fractured arm can no longer effectively wield a weapon using that arm. Healing fractures requires magic or taking a haven turn to recover (which would require retreating from a dungeon to town). Sprains work similarly but player characters can recover from a sprain by resting for a single dungeon turn (so, in effect, sprains only influence the current combat).

Other than being messy, gaining the first bleeding condition has no direct result. However, getting the bleeding result again, even to another hit location, means the character bleeds out and dies.

Trauma

Injuries are tricky to handle well in tabletop RPGs. On the one hand, they can make characters much less fun to play even for players on board with working out the implications of player character hardship. On the other hand, a fictional consequence is almost always more engaging than simple HP attrition through both adding narrative color—fan of blood—and changing the context as appropriate—a tiled floor slippery with blood. Further, while permanently changing settings and characters through play is satisfying, ruining characters is generally not. You can’t lose an arm in Dark Souls, and if you did I imagine the common response would be to restart the game. That would be a hardcore lose condition. For this reason, the peril table includes immediate fictional consequences beyond something like HP loss, such as heavy bleeding or broken bones, but defers the possibility of permanent disfigurement, the control of which falls to players through the grit system, described below.

Grit

Bleeding and fractures count as trauma, and surviving trauma strengthens tough characters. Player characters that survive a trauma can mark a grit box during recovery in a haven. Characters have a number of grit boxes equal to the constitution modifier. When a player marks a grit box, they should note how the trauma has permanently marked the character. This could be a scar or something else, and is entirely up to the player, but should be fictionally appropriate to the particular trauma (this would be a good place to insert fantasy prosthetics if such are setting-appropriate, such as necromantic grafts or enchanted wooden limbs). In effect, grit slots are like unlockable extra mettle slots.

False Machine has some creative ideas for scars here.

Implications

This system feels mechanically quite perilous. A mettle slot is roughly equivalent to one hit point, meaning that on average marking 1d6 mettle slots (expected value: 3.5) results in peril for all hit locations lacking armor. However, five-sixths (83%) of peril results are non-fatal initially. Strictly speaking, a one-shot kill is still possible, but is statistically much less common than the OD&D case of 1d6 damage versus 1d6 HP, and could easily be entirely eliminated if desired (such as by changing the messy death result to unconscious and dying, with final death occurring at the end of combat lacking miraculous intervention). Also, the odds improve dramatically with some armor while still maintaining the threat of real consequences.

In terms of complexity creep, this system requires an extra roll to determine hit location if an opponent hit is successful. So, there is a small increase in complexity, but the overhead seems minimal, which I have confirmed in preliminary play testing. The peril step replaces what I would otherwise run as a saving throw versus death, and that is an uncommon occurrence. Tracking the mettle and hit location slots does require a little help from the character sheet, but that seems manageable (see the character record sheet excerpt above).

Halfway houses

14 Replies

Most traditional resolution procedures are binary. For example:

Attack roll: either hit (inflict damage) or miss (often boring)
Saving throw: either success (maintain status quo) or failure (disaster)

This approach is simple and works well enough most of the time, especially at low levels where the damage from a single hit can make a big difference and missing can build tension, but can sometimes lead to boring slogs when results are chains of misses and the influence of any single action is low.

An alternative approach is to add an intermediate degree of success incorporating unintended consequences and complications into intermediate results. The Apocalypse World 2d6 +stat roll is one method like this that is easy to use:

10+ = success
7-9 = mixed
1-6 = it gets worse

This works well but does have a few potential downsides. Using 2d6 means limited scope for adjustment, as +1 makes a big difference and each additional bonus makes an even bigger marginal difference. Consider (probabilities are approximate, taken from Anydice):

10+ = success (17%)
7-9 = mixed (41%)
1-6 = it gets worse (42%)

Bonuses translated into effective probabilities are:

2d6+1 yields 28% it gets worse, 44% mixed, 28% success.
2d6+2 yields 17% it gets worse, 41% mixed, 42% success.
2d6+3 yields 8% it gets worse, 34% mixed, 58% success.

While this might seem okay if you like to keep numerical inflation to a minimum anyways, it does, somewhat counterintuitively, make the marginal bonus (the next potential +1) always more influential, in terms of mechanical effectiveness, than the last +1.

2d6 is also incompatible directly with d20 systems.

It is easy enough to create a similar method using 1d20 though, and such yields a uniform distribution, meaning that each marginal +1 has the same impact on resulting probability (+5%).

Here is one approach which has some attractive properties:

19-20 success (10%)
10-18 mixed (45%)
1-9 it gets worse (45%)

Single digits = bad is easy to remember; 19 or higher = extra good is also easy to remember. The outcome ranges could easily interoperate with standard ability or attack bonuses. Bonus increments correspond to 5% probability adjustments, which are easy to reason about.

This differs slightly from the approach taken by the traditional attack roll and similar resolution systems, where the roll, modified by properties of a character such as attack bonus, must attain a threshold determined by some external factor, such as armor class. In contrast, the Apocalypse Word target numbers (and these adapted d20 target numbers) are fixed. If the only modifiers to the roll are character properties such as ability score bonuses or attack bonuses, then this resolution mechanism is essentially solipsistic; the result is unaffected by things external to the character.

This could be an issue if you want success versus a dragon to be less likely than success versus a goblin. Using situational penalties could address this problem, but that way lies the hassle of adding and subtracting a host of potential bonuses or penalties. Used sparingly this works well enough, though it is less than ideal, and anyone that has played Pathfinder or even something like traditional AD&D should be familiar with modifier creep (1d20 + strength bonus + attack bonus + magical weapon bonus – odious magical aura penalty … and so forth). It works mathematically of course, but can be a mess.

Here is another approach, using tiers based on academic letter grades for shorthand:

19-20 = A
16-18 = B
10-15 = C
2-9 = D
1 = F

This adds some complexity at first glance, but also supports slightly more granular outcomes that are also relatively easy to remember, especially 1 = F. The only threshold without an easy to remember association is the transition between C and B results, occurring at 16. Further, now it becomes easy to see how the tiers of this solipsistic resolution system could correspond to properties of a fictional world, if desired, without needing to worry about setting difficulty classes by challenge. For example, results of C hit unarmored opponents, results of B hit lightly armored opponents, and results of A hit heavily armored opponents. More generally, C = easy, B = moderate, and A = hard, assuming easy tasks still represent an uncertain outcome that is potentially consequential either way (otherwise why bother rolling at all?). Or: C = success with setbacks, B = success, and A = extraordinary success.

Ultimately, a graduated outcome like Apocalypse World is probably more interesting than succeed/fail systems (heresy?), so I am tempted to interpreting the roll as follows:

19-20 A = extraordinary success/critical hit/overkill
16-18 B = success
10-15 C = success with complications
2-9 D = it gets worse
1 F = it gets much worse/catastrophe

What about the dragon > goblin issue described above? One could also model this difference through hit point totals and the severity of complications.

This set of outcomes is less sensitive to bonus inflation than 2d6 +stat but would still break with Pathfinder-scale bonuses of +15, so some consideration of bounded accuracy would still be required. Basically, just keep bonuses from growing too large. +10 means that a character would always be at least in the success with complications tier apart from the 5% chance of rolling a natural 1, assuming conventional interpretation of natural 1 results.

1-10-16-19 seems easy enough to remember and has the potential to be universal, applicable to anything that one might normally resolve by rolling a d20. I think I may give this a shot the next time I run something.

Hazard System v0.3

16 Replies

The Hazard System is a gameplay engine for traditional roleplaying games designed to facilitate fictional consequences of player decision-making while minimizing bookkeeping.

Find a full HTML version of v0.3 in this post below the divider.

There is also a PDF version (see Downloads).

Significant changes between v0.2 and v0.3:

Hazard die results now follow higher = better principle
Generalized hazard die:
1 setback, 2 fatigue, 3 expiration, 4 locality, 5 percept, 6 advantage
Introduces free moves, full moves, and conditions terminology
Formatted PDF as two letter-sized pages for ease printing two-sided on one sheet
Included brief chronological further reading section for context
Included simple default subtables for several kinds of outcomes, such as haven shortages and disasters

The text below the divider is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Attribution: Necropraxis Productions Hazard System v0.3 (2017)
http://www.necropraxis.com/hazard-system/

Hazard System (v0.3)

The six-sided hazard die deploys threats, manages resources such as light, and keeps time. It is the engine that drives gameplay forward, ensuring that choices have consequences while minimizing bookkeeping. To take a turn, have a player roll the hazard die and have the referee interpret the results relative to the current turn type. During a turn, each player may take one full action. The general form of the hazard die is:

1	2	3	4	5	6
Setback	Fatigue	Expiration	Locality	Percept	Advantage

Hazard Die Interpretations

Haven Turn Interpretation

d6	Result	Interpretation
1	Setback	Encounter (use regional table) or disaster (see below)
2	Fatigue	Shortage (1 medicine, 2-3 drought, 4-5 famine, 6 trust)
3	Expiration	Clear one or more haven conditions
4	Locality	Advance season (or other local change)
5	Percept	Foreshadow looming disaster
6	Advantage	Full recovery

Wilderness Turn Interpretation

d6	Result	Interpretation
1	Setback	Encounter (use regional table) or road/bridge out
2	Fatigue	Rest and consume rations (1/person) or suffer minor harm (1 HP)
3	Expiration	Expire transient wilderness condition
4	Locality	Shift weather (or other local change)
5	Percept	Spoor or clue regarding next encounter
6	Advantage	Free wilderness turn

Dungeon Turn Interpretation

d6	Result	Interpretation
1	Setback	Encounter (use zone table)
2	Fatigue	Rest and consume rations (1/party) or suffer minor harm (1 HP)
3	Expiration	Expire transient dungeon conditions (light, spell, etc)
4	Locality	Shift dungeon state (or other local change)
5	Percept	Spoor or clue regarding next encounter
6	Advantage	Free dungeon turn

Combat Turn Interpretation

d6	Result	Interpretation
1	Setback	Opponents act first or additional encounter (use zone table)
2	Fatigue	Suffer minor harm (1 HP) if engaged in melee
3	Expiration	Expire transient combat conditions (light, burning, etc)
4	Locality	Shift battlefield (or other local change)
5	Percept	Spoor or clue regarding next encounter
6	Advantage	Free combat turn

Some disasters (1d6):
1 invasion, 2 insurrection, 3 fire, 4 earthquake, 5 flood, 6 falling star
Some dungeon localities (1d6):
1 obstruction, 2-3 seal/open door, 4-5 divert water, 6 expose secret
Use common sense: ignore results that do not make fictional sense, but only the first time
Keep time abstract: quantifying the details precisely is rarely worth the hassle

Moves and Conditions

Moves represent actions relevant to the current fictional context, such as exploring a trackless stretch of swamp. Conditions represent persistence of a transient state, such as adventurer exhaustion. Conditions can apply to areas, parties, or individuals. Strictness tracking conditions is a matter of style. Tokens can help. The lists of moves and conditions below below are suggestive rather than complete. Improvise others as appropriate, according to referee ruling.

Haven turns represent several days or weeks of rest and recovery.

Free haven moves: advance/level up, prepare spells, recover, recruit, resupply
Full haven moves: craft gear, scribe scroll, conduct research
Haven conditions: curse, famine, pestilence, shortage, siege, winter

Wilderness turns represent travel and making camp, approximately one day and night. Making a wilderness move requires consuming a ration or taking the exhausted condition in addition to rolling the hazard die. If already exhausted, at the start of a wilderness turn suffer minor harm (1 HP). Determine randomly whether setbacks occur during day or night.

Free wilderness moves: access known landmark in current area, survey adjacent areas
Full wilderness moves: travel to adjacent area, search, explore, hunt, track
Wilderness conditions: exhausted, lost

Lost: Travel is no longer an option. Use search to locate a landmark, removing the lost condition on success.

Dungeon turns represent exploration at architectural scale, approximately tens of minutes or a few hours, assuming careful advance into hostile places.

Free dungeon moves: look under a rug, open unstuck door, pull lever
Full dungeon moves: climb, force a door, move to adjacent area, pick a lock, search
Dungeon conditions: candlelight, torchlight, overburdened

Combat turns represent tactical actions occuring over seconds or minutes.

Free combat moves: shout command, drop held item,
Full combat moves: shoot, spell, strike, throw, withdraw
Combat conditions: burning, defended, grappled, prone

Notes and Further Reading

Consider using a simple slot-based encumbrance system, such as one item per point of strength.
Locality results work best if you design areas with countdowns or aspects that can shift between states.
I replace traditional initiative with the combat hazard die.

2012-09-16	http://www.necropraxis.com/2012/09/16/abstracting-missiles/
2013-04-10	http://www.necropraxis.com/2013/04/10/solipsistic-hexes/
2014-02-03	http://www.necropraxis.com/2014/02/03/overloading-the-encounter-die/
2014-05-22	http://www.necropraxis.com/2014/05/22/proceduralism/
2014-12-23	http://www.necropraxis.com/2014/12/23/hazard-system-v0-2/
2015-02-09	http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2015/02/luceat-lux-vestra-making-light.html
2016-07-22	http://www.necropraxis.com/2016/07/22/tactical-hazard-die/
2016-09-19	http://www.necropraxis.com/2016/09/19/let-it-ride-or-push-your-luck/
2017-06-11	http://www.paperspencils.com/2017/06/11/the-haven-turn/

Released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Typeset using Pandoc and LaTeX.

Attribution: Necropraxis Productions Hazard System v0.3 (2017)
<http://www.necropraxis.com/hazard-system/>

Fight off, dodge, or block

2 Replies

Some Dark Souls dude

The combat system for my Stonehell Dark Souls game has drifted steadily away from traditional monster attack rolls toward monological combat (in short, players always roll, similar to Apocalypse World and Numenera).

Brief recap. In the initial December formulation, players chose between blocking or dodging (resolved using ability checks but also risking running out of stamina) or having the ref make a traditional monster attack roll versus character armor class. The trade-off was between relying entirely on ability scores or pitting character armor class against a monster’s potentially high attack bonus.

Making rules stick. In the past, I have sometimes had trouble getting combat house rules to stick because it is so easy to fall back on a familiar procedure, even when new rules result in more engaging outcomes and are advantageous to players. However, from the start of experimenting with the Dark Souls inspired active defense options, and across several groups of players with varying levels of tabletop roleplaying game experience, the active defenses seemed to remain top of mind. During the most recent session, players only ever defended actively, never letting the monsters make attack rolls, even with the risk of running out of stamina, which is punishing. I draw several lessons from this experience.

Choice prompts. First, the explicit choice prompt is an effective and low-maintenance way of communicating formal rules without needing non-referee players to read any rules (“zero homework” requirement). This is huge. Making such prompts habitual . This does place some constraints on potential rules, since the procedure must be fluent enough to survive being deployed all the time. That opposes complexity bloat which is positive more often than not.

Active options. Second, active options, assuming equal player effort requirements, have an advantage over passive options (such as submitting to a monster attack roll). Risking overgeneralization, I suspect this is universally true because players prefer a sense of control keeping all other factors constant.

Proposal. What follows is the procedure I am now considering, with parts that have not been play-tested in bold. Previously, armor class was a traditional passive defense score, but the approach below requires damage-reducing armor.

Resolve Monster Actions

Determine actions for each monster.
Match groups of monsters with defenders.
Resolve defenses.

Defenses

When monsters attack, to the defending player ask:

“Do you fight off the attack, dodge, block with a shield, or react in some other way?”

Resolve as specified below or by using the most relevant ability check.

Fight off. To defend using a melee weapon, roll the weapon’s damage and add the result to armor rating this turn, then suffer monster damage. In effect, this defends by comparing damage potential between player character and monster.

Shield block. To defend using a shield, make STR check (success → suffer no damage, failure → suffer ½ damage) and CON check (failure → out of stamina).

Dodge. To avoid monster attacks, make DEX check (success → suffer no damage, failure → suffer monster damage) and CON check (failure → out of stamina).

Suffer Damage

Add the damage from all monsters threatening a player character together, subtract armor rating from the total, and then suffer this amount of damage.

Notes

The fighting off procedure uses one roll per adventurer no matter the number of monsters. This means that the fight off option is more easily overwhelmed by multiple monsters, since the player character damage roll opposes multiple monster damage rolls added together.
Not needing to make tons of attack rolls for a host of enemies is a nice added bonus.
To simplify presentation for this post, I left out one small step, where player characters can intercede to block for an ally assuming the positioning makes sense fictionally. This can happen during the matching of monsters with defenders (step 2).

Playtest results

Scavenge Dungeon Move

Scavenging and Moves

To gather Monster Parts as resources for later use, Adventurers can use the Scavenge Dungeon Move if there are monster remains available (such as following successful combat). In the Hazard System, Adventurers take Dungeon Turns to make Dungeon Moves. Some example defined moves are Climb, Explore, and Search. This is similar to the various traditional D&D X in 6 checks, though more formalized. In practice, players often need not declare Moves explicitly (though they can), but, for example, the referee will naturally interpret moving from one dungeon area to another as the Explore Move and call for a Hazard Die throw. Making Scavenge a Move means that players expend dungeon time in exchange for weapon improvement resources.

Monster Parts as Incentives

Such resources also provide an incentive to engage monsters, though not necessarily directly. Since one can scavenge the corpse of a trapped monster killed from afar just as easily as one slain in a fair fight, and with less risk, players are rewarded for clever stratagems. Hunting monsters for parts also requires taking care to not damage the goods in the process. Unlike in traditional D&D, in my games Adventurers do not get any XP for blasting an enemy to smithereens with a fireball. This incentivizes player creativity much like rewarding experience points for treasure spent, though the best strategies may differ. (I am also rewarding XP for treasure spent.)

Monster Parts and Improving Weapons

Monster Parts can lend additional properties to weapons, such as fire enchantment from fire monsters. Improvise Monster Parts properties using common sense. There is no need to preemptively design a complicated taxonomy. For example, assuming traditional monsters, Monster Parts Scavenged from giant centipedes might be Poison Monster Parts. To increase the difficulty of improving weapons, have only uncommon or rare monster corpses supply useful Monster Parts. I think allowing brutal weapons or creepy upgraded weapons to be built out of common orc or skeleton parts could be fun though. I generally prefer to make just about all possibilities open to low-level characters so I plan to follow the second route (making all monsters provide Monster Parts).

For simplicity, do not differentiate between monsters with regard to quantity of Monster Parts available. One Adventurer Scavenges Monster Parts from one monster with one Dungeon Move and that exhausts the monster carcass. Specific or unique monsters may be exceptions to this rule. Six parts per Gear Slot seems like a reasonable default for encumbrance, though this is also something that can easily be adjusted by situational ruling. Maybe dragon Monster Parts take up a full slot per part.

Determining Degree of Scavenge Success

I am planning initially to make Scavenge success depend on a Wisdom Check. Make the check, gain 2 Monster Parts. Fail, gain 1 Monster Part. Critically succeed, gain 3 Monster Parts. Critically fail, spoil the remains. A critical success is the best result from the d20 or success by four or more.This follows my general approach for d20 partial success, based on the OD&D purple worm swallow mechanic. In shorthand, gain degree of success +1 Monster Parts.

Alternatively, substitute some system other than a Wisdom Check to determine Scavenging effectiveness, or just grant a unit of Monster Parts for spending a turn and enduring the roll of the Hazard Die. A simple d6 roll would work, avoiding the influence of ability scores, as would an Apocalypse Engine 2d6 roll with success thresholds at 7+ and 10+. Time passing and resource attrition are the important trade-offs.

Since enchanted weapons are powered by the Adventurer’s soul, improving weapons early in the game need not flood the fictional world with glowing +1 swords.

How many Monster Parts are required to upgrade a weapon and how much does it cost? That seems like a topic for another post and will probably require some experimentation and adjustment during play testing. This post has gone long enough. To end, have a formal rule in the Hazard System style.

Dungeon Move: Scavenge

To Scavenge the corpse of a defeated monster, make a Wisdom Check, scavenging Monster Parts equal to the degree of success + 1. Note any special Monster Parts properties, such as poison, slime, or fire.

Stonehell: Prepare to Die blocking and dodging

Reaction: Shield Block

To block an enemy’s attack, make a strength check. On success, suffer no damage. On failure, suffer half damage (round up).

Also make a constitution check to avoid running out of stamina.

Playbook cue:
Make STR check (failure → ½ damage) and CON check (failure → out of stamina).

Reaction: Dodge

To avoid an enemy’s attack, make a dexterity check. One dodge can avoid multiple enemy attacks if fictionally reasonable.

Also make a constitution check to avoid running out of stamina.

An adventurer may not move after dodging on a turn during which the adventurer dodged.

Playbook cue:
Make DEX check and CON check (failure → out of stamina). Avoids multiple attacks.

Action: Recover Stamina

To recover stamina, spend a combat action.

Playbook cue:
Spend combat action.

(2016-12-08 Edit: recovering stamina used to require a successful CON check but I think that may be too harsh.)

Condition: Out of Stamina

Make all physical rolls with disadvantage.

Blocking and dodging are impossible.

Stamina recovers automatically following combat.

Summoner and Pyromancer Playbooks

3 Replies

Here are Summoner and Pyromancer playbooks—see downloads page for PDFs. The playbooks include instructions for creating an adventurer along with core rule cues. Below are slightly more precise spell rules.

This summoner is a tightened up version of the OD&D summoning rules I posted a while back.

As a reminder, intelligence checks control how many times an adventurer can cast a spell. After casting and resolving a spell, the adventurer makes an INT check. Failure means the adventurer looses the spell. Spells refresh during downtime.

Image source

Summoner Spells

To cast summoning spells or use magic, adventurers must have a catalyst in a hand slot.

Charm

Bind a neutral or friendly creature as a minion.

Hostile creatures and creatures of higher level than the summoner get a saving throw.

Minions resist commands that are suicidal or anathema.

Compel resisting minions with a CHA check. Failure breaks the charm.

Previously charmed creatures become hostile when liberated.

Summon

In a puff of smoke, a monster appears. Determine monster randomly.

Choose: careful, reckless, or named.

Careful results in a monster with level not exceeding the summoner’s.

Reckless could summon anything, even a duke of hell.

Named summons a creature by true name, which must be known.

Optional: choose a minion specialty. Summoners with a specialty may opt to summon minions of the chosen type during any particular summoning occasion. When summoning in this manner, determine specifics of summoned creature randomly within desired type. Once chosen, the specialty may not be changed though summoners may acquire additional specialties through play.

Ward

Draw a boundary, either circle or line, on the ground with a catalyst.

Summoned or extra-dimensional creatures may not transgress this boundary.

Image source

Pyromancy Spells

To cast pyromancy spells, adventurers must summon a pyromancy flame.

Adventurers knowing pyromancy spells may summon or dismiss pyromancy flames as an action.

A pyromancy flame occupies a hand slot.

Pyromancy flames are fist-sized, hovering, smoking spheres of dim pulsing fire that smell acridly of sulfur and seared tar. They shed about as much light as a dying ember. The odor makes concealment difficult.

Fireball

Deal 1d6 + (1d6 × Level) damage (save for ½) to all in an area.

Flaming Weapon

Ignite a weapon. Weapon deals +1d6 damage and damage is magical.

The enchantment persists as an expiring resource during exploration.

Stonehell: Prepare to Die weapons

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Big sword from Dark Souls 1 (personal photo)

Combat house rules are hard to remember in the heat of the moment, so these are designed to augment traditional B/X procedures. If players do not learn the options or forget to use them, the game will not be much harmed. Applying these procedures should help create the feel of Dark Souls tactics to the degree permitted by traditional tabletop RPG rules. The final playbooks will also include reminder cues to help players. I tried to keep new rules to the absolute minimum required to support basic Dark Souls actions.

For now, shields just grant the standard traditional +1 AC. A Dark Souls emulator deserves better than that, but I also do not want it to slow down combat or make adventurers too tough. I do not like rules that allow adventurers to sacrifice a shield to avoid a hit.

Starting Weapons

All playbooks provide an initial melee weapon proportional to starting strength. Some provide a missile weapon as well, proportional to initial dexterity. The instructions section of each playbook includes available initial weapon choices. See below for a compiled list of starting weapons.

Two-Handed Weapons

Adventurers with an ability score high enough to use a weapon may wield it one-handed. Some weapons may be used two-handed to deal extra damage. When using a melee weapon two-handed, roll two damage dice and take the larger result (that is, roll damage with advantage).

Dual-Wielding

Adventurers may wield a weapon in each hand, allowing two attacks per combat turn. However, dual-wielded weapons are limited by the lowest of both strength and dexterity. For example, an adventurer with strength 14 and dexterity 10 wielding two weapons may only use weapons that deal 1d6 damage or less. Further, dual-wielding prevents using a shield or any other off-hand item. When dual-wielding, both attacks must be rolled at once. Combatants may not save one attack for a potential parry (see below).

Critical Hits

When a critical hit occurs, players can choose to inflict either double or full damage. For double damage, roll the weapon die twice and then apply any other modifiers. For full damage, do not roll damage but rather use the highest potential result of the weapon die. For example, a critical hit with a longsword (a 1d10 weapon) will inflict either 2d10 or 10 base damage, according to the player’s choice. Natural 20s inflict critical hits, as do strong attacks, parrying counterattacks, and sneak attacks (see below).

Strong Attacks

Successful strong attacks are critical hits. However, strong attacks leave the attacker open to counterattack, reducing the attacker’s AC to 10 (unarmored) temporarily unless the strong attack reduces an enemy to zero hit points, in which case AC is unaffected. Because of this, strong attacks are best used finish off enemies. Reduced AC from a strong attack persists until the adventurer that made the strong attack acts again.

Parrying Counterattacks

Rather than attack, a combatant may try to parry and counterattack. This requires waiting for an opponent to attack. Resolve a parry with opposed attack rolls rather than static armor class. If the parry is successful, the combatant parrying inflicts a critical hit for taking advantage of an opponent’s opening. Parrying is only possible against opponents wielding weapons.

Sneak Attacks

Concealed adventurers may make sneak attacks with melee weapons. Sneak attacks are made with advantage and inflict critical hits. Melee weapons used for a sneak attack are limited by both strength and dexterity. For example, an adventurer with strength 14 and dexterity 12 may use weapons dealing 1d8 damage for a sneak attack. Following a sneak attack, successful or otherwise, make a dexterity check (with disadvantage if base AC is higher than 12) to determine if the adventurer remains concealed. Concealed combatants may not be targeted directly.

Blunt Weapons

Blunt weapons (for example, caestus, club, and mace) are more effective against some enemies but are also more clumsy than other weapons. Exactly what clumsy means must be ruled situationally by the referee but may include occurrences such as striking after an opponent with a more agile weapon.

Enchanting

(This upgrade system replaces the attack bonus rule described in the previous post.)

Upgrade weapons during downtime by bringing special resources, along with personal essence freely given, to a blacksmith or enchanter. Weapons may be improved up to +5 and can be infused with other magical powers. Enchantment bonuses apply only to attack rolls, not damage rolls. Elemental enchantments modify the type of damage inflicted and can sometimes augment amount of damage.

Special resources may be explicit external treasure but can also be harvested abstractly from defeated enemies according to the magical principle of similarity. For example, the essence of a monster that breathes fire would be useful for a fire enchantment. Record abstract essences in HD or level terms. Such monster essences do not occupy item slots.

The process of improving a weapon links it to the wielder’s soul. Because of this, the original wielder suffers any damage the current wielder takes, making it unwise to lend your enchanted weapon to another. (Yes, this means that stealing an enemy’s linked weapon and cutting yourself is a strategy. Good luck with that.) The improvement process uses the personal essence to create the link between living soul and item. Such personal essence can take many forms. For example, blood, hair, or valued secrets. The details of the essence affects the weapon’s physical manifestation.

Since enchanted items draw their power from living souls, such items rarely persist beyond the death of their original wielder. Rarely, a wielder’s power and personality are so strong that an enchantment is permanently burned into the item. Such legendary items are unique and sought after.

Bleeding

A bleeding combatant suffers one damage per combat turn. Bleeding is easily staunched after combat. Some weapons, such as katanas, cause bleeding.

Poison

Poison of the common variety inflicts one damage per dungeon turn and can only be cured by consuming an antidote. Uncommon and rare poisons may have other effects. Most poisons allow an initial constitution saving throw to completely resist the effect.

In game design terms, bleeding and poison are fast and slow hit point attrition effects.

Melee Weapons

1d4	caestus	dagger	broken straight sword

1d6	club	hand axe	short sword

1d8	broadsword	mace	scimitar

1d10	battle axe	longsword	spear

1d12	bastard sword	greataxe	halberd

Missile Weapons

1d6	shortbow	light crossbow

1d8	longbow	heavy crossbow

Crossbows can be used with a single hand but take an action to reload.

Bows must be wielded with both hands.

Weapon images are from Dark Souls 3.

Stonehell: Prepare to Die playbook overview

Playbook	HP Pool	Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
Bandit	1d10	16	12	12	9	9	9
Deprived	1d4	9	9	9	9	9	9
Knight	1d12	14	10	14	9	10	11
Pyromancer	1d6	10	10	10	12	10	9
Summoner	1d6	9	12	10	13	10	12

Weapons

Strength and dexterity determine which melee and missile weapons (respectively) an adventurer my use without penalty, categorized by damage die, as shown in the table below. For example, an adventurer with strength at least 10 may use melee weapons that deal 1d4 or 1d6 damage. Adventurers may use weapons with greater die sizes, but make attack rolls with disadvantage when doing so and do not add ability bonuses.

Score	Die
8	1d4
10	1d6
12	1d8
14	1d10
16	1d12

Armor

Constitution, in addition to adding HP to the HP Pool and functioning as an endurance or fortitude saving throw, limits the adventurer’s max AC. For example, an adventurer with constitution of 14 may wear armor that grants up to AC 14. Adventurers wearing armor granting AC higher than the constitution score make all physical tests (ability checks and attack rolls) with disadvantage. Unarmored AC is 10 (including for the Deprived, even though the Deprived begins with constitution of 9).

Attack Bonus

Edit: the weapon upgrade rules replace the attack bonus.

Adventurers have an attack bonus (determined by level). Add the attack bonus to attack rolls made when using a weapon that does not exceed ability score damage die limits. For example, an adventurer with strength 10 that attacks with a 1d10 weapon does not add the attack bonus (and in fact makes the attack roll with disadvantage, as described above). The attack bonus is calculated as level divided by two, rounded up, plus one (or consult the following table).

Level	Attack Bonus
1	+2
3	+3
5	+4
7	+5
9	+6

HP Pool

Potential adventurer HP is recorded as a dice expression plus the constitution bonus. At first level, this will include one die (and possibly a bonus, depending on playbook). For example, the knight begins with an HP Pool of 1d12 + 1. An example of a higher-level HP pool is:

1d12 + 1d6 + 1d6 + 1

Adventurers recover by re-rolling their HP Pool when resting in safety.

Carrying Capacity

Adventurers may equip several location-specific items (head, torso, left hand, right hand) and have an additional set of item slots equal to the strength score. Some items may be bundled, such as throwing knives. Such items require only a single item slot up to the bundle limit. Bundle limits are determined by specific items. For example, the bundle limit of throwing knives is 6.

Magic

Intelligence determines number of spells an adventurer can know (intelligence – 10, min 0). For example, an adventurer with intelligence 13 can know up to 3 spells. After casting a spell, an adventurer must make an intelligence check. If the adventurer fails this check, that spell may not be used again until the adventurer rests in safety. This makes the number of spell uses uncertain, but never less than 1.

Minions

Charisma determines number of minions an adventurer can control (charisma – 10, min 0). For example, an adventurer with charisma 12 can control up to 2 minions. Commanding minions requires charisma checks in some circumstances. The charisma bonus applies to minion attack and damage rolls.

Advancement

To gain a level, spend coins equal to level multiplied by 1000. For example, to advance from second to third level, spend 2000 coins worth of treasure. Merchants are only interested in coins, gems, and precious artifacts. The focus of these rules is not on scavenging curtains and furniture from dungeons (not that there is anything wrong with that). Adventurers may advance in level wherever they can spend treasure, including deep within a dungeon, assuming the can find a merchant to deal with.

When gaining a level, adventurers add 1d6 to the HP Pool, choose one ability score to increase by one point, and increase the attack bonus (for odd levels). The maximum adventurer level is 10. Ability scores may not be raised above 18.

For moderate niche protection, I set playbook starting ability scores so that non-magical classes must dedicate one level of advancement to increasing intelligence before they can start learning spells. That is, advancing intelligence from 9 to 10 requires a level but does not grant any spell slots (since 10 – 10 = 0). The adventurer must then spend another level (increasing intelligence to 11) to gain the first spell slot. Advancing from 9 to 10 is not totally without mechanical benefit, even though it does not grant a spell slot, since saving throws versus magic use intelligence checks.

Ability Bonuses

The strength bonus adds to melee attacks and damage. The dexterity bonus adds to missile attacks and damage (but not AC). The constitution bonus adds to the HP Pool. The wisdom bonus adds to miracle effects (to be discussed in a future post). The intelligence bonus adds to spell effects (such as damage). The charisma bonus adds to minion attack and damage rolls. All other resolution systems use simple ability checks. For example, reaction rolls are handled as charisma checks. Ability score bonuses follow the traditional B/X schedule of tiers made up of 13-15, 16-17, and 18.

Score	Bonus
13	+1
16	+2
18	+3