This Week’s post is considers just how much weight we could load onto the simple “roll initiative” part of combat.
What if initiative was the only roll in a combat system?
Less a question of "can I murder this horrible horse?" and more "can I murder it before it murders me?"
Let's imagine we start with Into the Odd. Replace the damage of each weapon by its average, rounding up. If it's something fancy like "roll a d4 and a d8 and keep the highest" then take the average of the high die and add 1 for each additional die being rolled. Yeah this isn't the same as the average but it's much easier to do on the fly.
If you want to use the Electric/Mythic Bastionland style ganging up rule then the first attack to resolve against a target does normal damage and additional attacks just do 1.
Pretty straightforward.
Now we're not rolling STR Saves to avoid Critical Damage. Instead, you take Critical Damage when you lose half or more of your STR in one attack.
So your STR 18 monster goes down if they lose 9 STR, kind of unlikely, but if you chip them down to STR 12 first then you only need to hit them for 6 to deal Critical Damage. Do you have a weapon big enough?
But what's the point in all this? Let's get onto Initiative.
First the GM declares what the enemy are doing this turn in narrative terms. "The otyugh is going to spray toxic filth in the area around it and the goblins are aiming their bows at your pack mule." I probably wouldn't describe the exact mechanical impact but I'd at least want the players to get a sense of what to expect. If you're ambushing the enemy then they won't be doing anything this turn.
Then have the players discuss and declare what they're each doing specifically.
Then we all roll initiative.
A d6 for each combatant. We work down from highest roll to lowest, with ties resolving simultaneously. You're locked into your action, so you can't change your mind based on what's already been resolved.
Now you can add in some trickery where players can manipulate the initiative roll in certain ways, or their gear impacts their roll, but that's the core of it right there. In the ambush example maybe you just manage to get your guard up when your turn resolves, so you won't be fighting but there's a chance you won't be completely exposed.
If you've got enough armour and weapons that you can just stomp the enemy even if they get their hits in first then congrats, at least this will be done quickly.
If it's more of an even fight then sure you can just hope you get your hits in first, or bank on being able to take a bit of recovery time afterwards, but is this fight really worth it? Wouldn't you rather slip away and ambush them later?
If the enemy outclasses you then you really have to decide if it's worth it. Maybe you know that any given attack from this purple worm will kill one of your characters, and you don't have enough power to take it out in a single round. Somebody's going to die if you fight this thing, how can it not be one of your characters?
Sure there's a bit of bookkeeping involved with big combats, perhaps requiring you to jot down what each combatant is doing so that things don't get muddled, but I think this could be a fun experiment to play out.
By the time your sword bounces off its iron hide it's already too late.
The links in the teaser don’t work - they are to the Edit page for the miniatures posts, which redirects to the viewer’s Blogger list of draft blogposts if they have a logged-in account, or a login challenge for Google if they aren’t logged in.
2mm scale looks like madness! But you'd be able to get a full battle on a table at least.
The links in the teaser don’t work - they are to the Edit page for the miniatures posts, which redirects to the viewer’s Blogger list of draft blogposts if they have a logged-in account, or a login challenge for Google if they aren’t logged in.