These things have various definitions when it comes to dueling and MMA etcetera but here’s my take.
In D&D 5e you can use the “Reaction” rule to power these moves, in other systems you may allow a certain number or in the most austere cases force the character to forfeit their following action or prepare ahead of time with a readied action. Being a special maneuver, limiting the use to once per round is fine but it may make sense to allow it more depending on the system.
Parry/Deflect A parry is using your weapon(s) in an active motion to strike and deflect an attack.
As a reaction to being attacked in melee if you’re wielding a weapon that could reasonably deflect the attack you may make an ‘opposed’ attack roll, if its higher than the enemies attack roll you block that attack. Riposte: if it is 3 or more than the opposed attack and beats their AC you strike them back with that attack roll. (Optional: require a finesse weapon in 5e.)
Block Positioning your weapon or shield between yourself and the attackers strike to stop it.
As a reaction to being attacked in melee, if you’re wielding something that could reasonably block the attack make a strength roll (+2 with shield), if the roll is higher than the opposed attack you block it. If the roll is 5 or more than the opposed attack you may push the target back 5′.
Dodge Ducking, moving aside, and any other avoidance maneuver to escape attacks.
As a reaction to being attacked, make a Dex check, disadvantage if the attack is ranged, if it is higher than the opposed attack that attack misses, if the roll is 3 or more you may shift (move) up to 5′.
Full Defense(optional) Full defense is using everything in your power to move away from attacks and minimize their impact. Taking no aggressive actions whatsoever.
On you turn you mac declare Full Defense, until your following turn all attacks against you (that are not from behind if playing 5e with flanking or in systems where that is taken into account) are reduced by d6 and increase reflex saves by d6. (You must be able to move, not bound, and you must be armored or holding something you could reasonably block with.) Alternatively you can replace the d6 with the characters hit die.
My current Parry rule In DCC I use a single parry/block/deflect reaction along with a defense as described above. “Parry: in reaction to an attack you may sacrifice one of your action dice for the next turn to add your attack bonus (with a weapon you’re wielding) to your AC vs a total number of attacks equal to your attack bonus until your next turn. (Can be used in reaction.)” Its elegant but no riposte.
A PVP Dungeon Crawl Classics Battle Royale using Magic the Gathering Creatures and Spells!
Titans prepare to face off!
It’s been a while so let’s cut right to the chase. I wanted to do something new for our typical PVP sessions we do when too many players are out. I’ve explored the concept of spatial MTG before and thought I’d give it a try again with a new context, the “players” in MTG are instead the player characters in DCC. So its like being a Planewalker in D&D, with real MTG spells!
I’ll explain the cards I used and how I converted things, you’ll see it’s straightforward and works well. There are some critical differences between this and strict MTG. People had a blast drawing cards and collecting mana and summoning creatures.
The Rules So Far…
Players run around the map collecting any mana they touch from the mana spawn points for that color on the map, just like a video game character. The mana token on the map is exhausted and players draw a land card of that color. Players all draw spell cards from a single infinite of the same 11 cards (in this session). Unlike Magic, mana is spent from the hand and discarded when used.
Scoring: Each Kill, of a PC, performed by your or your summoned creatures is worth 2 points, each time you die is -1; the tiebreaker will be a PC’s proximity to the center of the board. Optionally the board can close in Battle Royale style.
Start of round: Initiative is rolled each round and all players draw 1 card. End of round: clear corpses (in other words graveyards don’t last, so you can’t resurrect a creature at sorcery speed if you’ve already gone that round).
Hand-size limit: Intelligence. Casting limit: The total number of creatures you control converted mana cost cannot exceed personality.
Each round players draw one card, and the monsters and PCs move and act (creatures that tap do so as an action). Monsters can only be controlled if they are within line of sight of your PC. At the end of their turn, the PC may cast any number of cards (then execute any upkeep effects). Also at the end of a PC’s turn, any creatures they control which are outside of their line of sight will move toward and attack the nearest* enemy, unless they have a 0 power, in which case they will attempt to move toward the controlling PC as directly without provoking attacks if possible.
Hands: start the game with 1 card and draw one card per turn. (You can sacrifice a spell card for a colorless mana.)
You must have and expend the required mana to play a card from your hand (it does not last like in MTG). Casting a 0-cost creature requires that you have mana of their color in your hand.
Creatures are summoned adjacent to the caster or up to 1 square (x5′) away per converted mana cost.
Direct damage listed is in the form of d6s, so 3 damage in MTG terms is 3d6 in this game.
There is no range limit on “targets” they must only be in line of sight. A creature’s attack and damage bonus is equal to its power and dictates its attack die on the die-chain starting from d3. Explained further below.
A creature’s HD is based on its toughness. its die type on the die chain up from d3 and the number equal to toughness. Its AC is 10+toughness.
A creature’s size is based on average power and toughness. <=2 medium, 2-4 = large, 5-6 = Huge (3×3), 7+ = Massive (4×4) 11+ beyond that figurte it out yourself but for each size increase reduce the AC by 1.
So a 2/3 creature would be as follows. Large; AC 10 ( 8+3 -1 from size); Attack d20+2 d4+2 dmg; 3d6 hp.
A 0/1 Creature would have AC 9; No Attack; 1d3 hp.
Keyword Abilities I have accounted for
Lifelink: temp HP, beyond max!
Vigilance: creatures with vigilance move before all other creatures without. First Strike: creatures with first strike attack before all others without. Double Strike: two attacks. Reach: can attack anything in line-of-sight (just go with it). Death-touch causes max (damage rather than outright killing). Trample: a cleave, roll damage, if you kill a creature you may specify another creature in reach whose AC would be beaten by the initial attack roll, apply remaining damage to them and continue as long as there is damage and legal targets. Islandwalk: the attack roll automatically succeeds against a PC if the controlling player has islands in their hand. Flying: flying creatures ignore attacks-of-op and terrain but are always within reach of a creature that is not prone and could otherwise attack a non-flying creature in the same space.
Graveyards only exist temporarily until the end of the round but keep in mind that targets (corpses) must be within line of sight.
Creatures share the caster’s initiative. Again all casting (except “instants”) is done after all PC and creature movement on your turn.
If you die you must make an intelligence check, if you fail you must unsummon a creature. You can burn luck adjust this.
Mana Respawn. Use DM/Judge’s discretion but here are a couple of ways. Initially, I wrote: each round there’s a chance some mana of each color refreshes, starting with those fonts furthest from PCs. I used Fate dice rolling one for each color (tip: “/r 5df” in Roll20) [blank] = no refresh of that color, [ – ] = refresh mana equal to 1/2 of PC’s in match, [ + ] = refresh equal to number of PCs. This was too fast and let players farm mana so I switched to the following alternative [ + ] = 1 mana of the color (as long as nobody is adjacent), everything else is no refresh. Really mana could be done in many ways and if you don’t like mine you should just make your own. Hell, have players draw it and use it by tapping just like in Magic the Gathering, and give them their own decks even.
Power/Toughness
Damage Die / Hit Die Type / Crit Die
AC Bonus (8+x) / Damage Bonus / HD Number
0
0 (cant attack) / (Dead)
0
1
d3
1
2
d4
2
3
d6
3
4
d8
4
5
d10
5
6
d12
6
7
d14
7
8
d16
8
9 d20 10 d24 11 d30 12-21 + 2nd action die 22-31 + 3rd action die, and so on….
Use the most appropriate crit table (usually Monster).
Hoaf and Lys take refuge from the stronger casters.
Some helpful constraints
Your maximum hand size is equal to your intelligence. You must discard cards at the end of the round if you exceed it.
Optional (if creatures get out of hand) you may only have a number of creatures under your control equal to your personality score. At the end of the round choose and unsummon creatures until you reach this limit.
On your turn you may control a number of creatures each turn equal to your personality in converted mana cost; you may always control at least one of your summoned creatures despite this limitation (for example: if your personality is reduced or the creature has an exceptionally high cost).
(AC Caps out at 22 for now so that creatures with a massive number of buffs are still hittable.)
All DCC spells and Deeds work as they would with/against any normal monsters!
The bottom line is there’s still some work to be done with mana but the spell casting/monster summoning and power levels/conversion worked great and players loved it!
I would almost just replace the Magic system in 5e with this if I go back to running that. Tired of Vancian…
The PC is leading a unit of friendly combatants in a skirmish or larger-scale battle where they are organized into rank and file regiments. These are class-specific feats the PCs can take to expand their powers in this scope, many of which extend to the entire unit the PC is leading.
The overarching Mass Battle ruleset is not fully defined. To use the additional rules for large battles in the DMG as a base structure. Details will need to be worked out to determine how the prescribed feats will interact with the ruleset.
This system assumes players are using a system for mass combat such as the one published by wizards here: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/mass-combat. However the rules are flexible and should fit into most homebrew systems without much adjustment.
Members of a unit must be within 5′ of another member.
Units are formed of relatively similar folk.
Each unit can have passive and/or triggered abilities.
BARBARIAN
Any Barbarian hero can lead a unit of frenetic warriors, and even intelligent beasts at the discretion of the GM. They have the most limited options when forming a unit, but barbarian units can be completely devastating to any foe who dares to stand in their way. In a mass battle, barbarian units gain the following:
A barbarian’s unit may use Reckless Attack if the barbarian has it (PHB p48).
Armor of Ire
Deafened by fury, a legion of pure rage at your back, you move like the wind and cut down foes like the swift scythe of The Reaper, himself.
While this unit is lead by a barbarian it may use a Bonus Action to trigger Armor of Ire. When Armor of Ire is active the unit can only be struck by critical hits. This lasts for a number of rounds equal to the barbarian leader’s level. After which enemies have advantage when making attack roles against this unit. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until you complete a short or a long rest.
You may lead any number of willing creatures with a total number of hit dice less than or equal to your Barbarian level x 10. All creatures in this unit must have at least 1d8 hit die or greater, e.g., 1d8, 2d8, 1d10, etc.
CLERIC
The Cleric’s core abilities scale to the battlefield when their god calls them to war. In mass battle, all clerics have the following benefits:
Healing targets and affects entire units.
Turn Undead targets and affects entire units.
The Invoker
“It’s by mercy alone that I cannot recount – the memories fade and I tire – a glimpse of all things vile and cruel, haunting my dreams when I doze. The memories come more and more; are they my own or the calling chaos? I will always recall the sounds of the gods as they rose. The old ones awaken again… I am the invoker.” – Seraph
Clouds swirl above as your god speaks from the heavens with a thunderous boom, calling down a torrent of wind on the mighty Cleric and his guard, as dust a debris are driven outward an enemy is compelled to face them in a duel.
You may trigger The Invoker as a action. An enemy you can see must make a will save vs. your spell save DC or be compelled to fight you (they move intelligently and attempt to reach you; Undead have disadvantage). A powerful burst of wind spreads from your unit (60′ radius; difficult terrain). Creatures of 3 Hit Dice or less may not enter this area. At the start of their turn, units within the area must make a Strength Save vs your spell save DC. Failure means they cannot move, failure by 5 or more means they are pushed outside of this area. The wind does not affect the target of this ability. Likewise our unit is not affected and may act as normal. The effect lasts as long as you are in combat with the enemy or a number or rounds equal to your level. The challenger may bring their mount or rider (or pets).
DRUID
A unit lead by a druid in mass combat has the following benefits. A druid can control the most varied group of creatures in a skirmishing formation. Animals and humans fighting side by side, quite a frightening prospect to the enemy.
Creatures in the druids formation do not need to be rank and file. Merely within 20 feet of 2 other members, if possible.
Pro-tip: if you’re leading a regiment of Brown Bears.. be sure you have good-berries at the ready… you have now idea how much these things can eat and what they will do if hungry!
Nature is Neutral
Like dust motes, small spores carried slowly in the wind around Lichen and his people. Their foes met them with a charge stopped short, and then a melancholic gaze. Trapped in memories of childhood on a warm spring day, perhaps from a past life, they felt no more compelled to attack these people than trees.
At the start of their turn the druid may create an invisible cloud of pacifying spores around a unit he leads. This cloud lasts a number of rounds equal to the druid level. The spores automatically pacify Living creatures of Hit Dice less than the Druid level, within 20 feet. Creatures see them as neutral and will not attack unless the unit threatens them directly. A druid may do this a number a times per day equal to half their druid level.
The druid may lead a varied and thematic group of creatures of Hit Dice equal to 5 x their druid level.
WARLOCK
Treacherous Trap
As an action, the warlock may cast Armor of Agaths on the unit he leads, as a ritual (taking 10 minutes) even if they do not know this spell.
A warlock may lead a unit with total hit dice of 5 x the caster warlock level or less.
Jaerun’s dark magic gives his people the ability to take back what is theirs, and make their enemies flee in pain
FIGHTER
Fighters are champions and knights, natural leaders on the battlefield. All fighter-lead units have the following benefits during mass battles:
The fighters unit has advantage on morale checks.
Units may test with the fighter’s morale bonus (Charisma bonus) during a morale check if the shortest path between the leader and that unit does not intersect an enemy.
Charge of the Champions
I am the hammer, you are glowing iron.
As a Fighter, when you lead a unit on a charge (moving into combat) all of the units attacks automatically hit (unless a hit would be impossible), 1/10th are critical hits. A fighter may perform this action in battle a number of times per day equal to their fighter level.
You may lead a unit of Hit Dice up to your Fighter level x 7.
These are only some of the classes, which would you like to see next? Tell me what you think and make up some of your own.
Have you seen this topic covered in other source material? Let me know.
Often in our favorite shows, movies, video games, and books our heroes are challenged by a wide variety of seemingly unequal forces, but its always an exciting challenge. How can this be, and how can we capture that in RPGs? In a lot of fiction challenge is built around creating tension and excitement as characters gauge the situation and build up to the level of response which is appropriate to overcome the odds. It’s a strong trope in episodic TV like Star Trek where different writers adjust the characters capabilities to their liking to achieve the desired narrative. Sometimes this can destroy our suspension of disbelief, other times it makes sense not set phasers to kill right off the bat. It can be done in a way that lends credulity. I believe its more thematic to have a response of force which matches the challenge. We can do this in our RPG even when most systems do not account for it out of the box.
In systems like D&D you can have this situation where the wizard just fireballs everything in their path, big or small, in every encounter, especially when they are about to hit the sack. If that seems cool to you, then you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you’ve pondered ways of making your game play out differently, maybe more like the the books and shows you enjoy, read on.
Adjusting level on the fly is something seen in plenty of video games, but it would be hard to crunch those numbers on the fly when you’re playing a “pen and paper” game. While leveling a character up and down between each encounter would be tedious we have other options. There are ways we can achieve the same effect with much less work. D&D and many other systems, can be tweaked, and of course there’s always the prospect of building a system with this in mind from the start. I have to mention that some RPG systems do reenforce this this out of the box, I’ll mention one later.
This is a thinking exercise, something for us to use as inspiration to create scenes that feel more like the media we consume. Gandalf doesn’t drop his best spells at every opportunity, how can we be more like Gandalf? Let me share my thinking process, this is my flow for GMing, creating systems, and arbitrating rules. Just get started and refine along the way. You can follow along at home and come up with something of entirely your own creation. Lets Riff.
Off the cuff, I start thinking lets take D&D, and easiest thing to tweak from the start: spell level. If the encounter is Challenge Rating (CR) 3 then perhaps cap the Wizard at level 3 spells. Now of course if things start to go south we can always make exceptions. Say if a character or two goes down this should perhaps remove or adjust the constraint. What about other classes?
“Ultimately the point is we are changing the optimal go to with each encounter and thereby creating more interesting choices.”
Similarly, you could cap character abilities at the level of the encounter, (without adjusting HP because thats tedious). You could also keep other level based increases to spells and abilities of a level lower than the encounter, just to avoid the tedium. Does your cantrip do 5d8 because you’re level 15 but you’re in a CR 3 encounter? Thats fine, just use it without fussing over what it would be if you were only level 3. I find it much more believable for a wizard to throw a leveled up cantrip at a small monster than a high level spell. Even if they are equally “overkill”. The cantrip is reusable and low effort in that fantasy setting. Ultimately the point is we are changing the optimal go to choice with each challenge, and thereby creating more interesting choices.
Now of course wizards don’t get level three spells till level six so if you want to limit them exclusively based on level progression like other characters, as mentioned, you’d need to keep the chart handy or remember, wizards know spells of 1/2 their level rounded up (to a max of 9). A little annoying. Spell level not being tied to character level is, to many people, akin THAC0, but it sticks around in 5e.
There are alternative solutions to achieve the desired effect as well, say for example adjusting recovery. For D&D 5th edition you could require a short rest to be: a full nights sleep in comfort and safety, and a long rest to be: 10 or more days in a comfortable settlement without much stress. I like this quite a bit, it creates a grittier campaign. You can do this with any system but its build into most OSRs in some fashion or another. This is why I prefer to play those systems these days.
Within one of my favorites OSR systems, Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), using magic should be carefully considered. Clerics can lose spells for long lengths of time and must perform duties to regain them, wizards recover spells overnight typically, however, thats not the only consideration. Casting spells has inherit risks, toying with magic can cause irreversible changes to the character and should not be used lightly. This helps curtail the casual use of magic in that system.
If I were to come up with a Fantasy system I’d likely build something in to promote force appropriate response. It would may be as simple as allowing characters to only use abilities of a level which do not exceed the “threat level” of the scene / encounter. Then of course, most likely, allowing the rule to be broken at some cost.
A related idea for homebrew systems or hacks: ramp up the abilities over the course of combat. Characters facing new challenges (typically combat in RPGs) often must test their opposition and try new things exhausting more and more effort along the way. So lets say in round one of combat you can use level one abilities, and level two in round two, and so on. Building on that maybe you’re the thinking type, the wizard who observes the fighter and rogue and you hold back on round one. Round two come around, the rogue and fighter confront the challenge with level one or two abilities, keeping track of which perhaps, to save the remaining unspent allotment. You the wizard having reserved you action on round one could maybe add that to your round two allotment and now you can do something at level 3? No wasted turns. Whether you get to save the remaining allotment on a turn where you act but use a lesser ability is up to the designer or GM. Enemies should probably be subject to the same restrictions… but not always! (I think this is literally how Dragon Ball Z must work.)
However, its important to be realistic, a character who has faced the same challenge before will know the appropriate level of response and should be allowed to it. Likewise a flaming Balrog should telegraph a serious challenge which could open up a strong response straight away, on the other hand they take those early turns to save up their power, defensively positioning, till they can unleash it!
There’s no shortage of ideas to discover around this concept. What I know is I am going to attempt to guide my groups into more thematic scenes with ideas here and in other new and interesting ways. I think we will all enjoy our games a little bit more, if not, we keep refining.
This is a hack that evolved organically from a hobby project to convert the Dungeons and Dragons Curse of Strahd board game into a prototype for a random dungeon deck using a standard deck of playing cards. I used 5e but it could easily be system agnostic.
The idea is simple, each card represents an encounter or encounter modifier of some sort. You can play theater of the mind or setup each encounter on a mat or with tiles, however you might typically do things. However, the cards allow a interesting middle ground, you can actually lay them out in the shape of the dungeon regardless of how you execute combat, as sort of a strategic layer map. Almost like you’d see in a video game. This removes the need to sketch out the entire dungeon and you can just use your mat, tiles or board to map a single room at a time.
I use the suits as a thematic reference, face cards to generate more significant events. Black suits are bad, red are good. The Ace or King of Spades will typically be a boss and mini-boss encounter. Hearts control the short and long rest opportunities. You can shuffle those into the lower portion of the deck from the start or discard rest cards to shuffle any encounter back in. Face cards for other encounters might be treasure hoards or good NPC encounters. You can use the jokers as party level ups for milestone leveling or just remove them and count XP.
To generate the dungeon spatially with the cards you simply connect the cards long edge to short edge as you draw them. Each card-room has d4 doors, 1 meaning the door you came through. 2 meaning 1 additional door attached to any side you choose however it must not connect back to another room if you can help it. If you roll 4 each side of the card has a door. To represent each door secretly place a card face down to represent the new rooms and their hidden contents.
To Scale encounters I like to use a character count modifier represented by “C”. For example: Skeletons Cd6. This means roll a d6 for each character in the dungeon (even if the party is split).
Here’s an quick example deck Its roughly set for a group of 4 characters around level 5, it scales a some for character count but is not fair for a single character, “its dangerous to go alone”. C is short for Character count, it helps to scale for the number of characters.
Castle of the Damned
2♠ Zombies! Cx2 3♠ Bat Swarms xC – Disadvantage to surprise them. 4♠ Giant Rats Cd4 – On Death 35% chance to reveals as a Wererat at full HP same initiative – Disadvantage to surprise them. 5♠ Fade to Gray – Wraiths xC + Specters D6 6♠ Skeleton Cavalry – A Large Room with 2C Skeletons Mounted on Skeletal horses. If a Mounted Skeleton moves 20′ in a straight line before attack they have advantage and automatically critically hit. 7♠ Ghouls 2C + Giant Bats xC – Disadvantage to Surprise them. 8♠ Toxic Zombie Hoard -Cd6 Zombies, if they pass Undead Fortitude all adjacent creatures take d6 poison damage. 9♠ Court of the Damned – D4+C Vampire Spawn – Spawn roll D20+6 vs Characters passive perception to surprise the party. 10♠ Skeleton Defenders Cd3 Skeletons with heavy armor, shields (+4 AC) and spears. J♠ The General – Wight Lord (125hp [physical dmg resistance], AC 16 Wight with Lance) mounted on Hydra with C heads, and C Zombies Q♠ Banshee – The doors magically lock behind you until the Banshee is defeated. Knock or other powerful magic is the only other out. K♠ Devourer + Zombies xC A♠ Vampire Lord – If you have the A♢ or destroyed the Vampire’s resting place (J♣) the vampire cannot use its Misty Escape
2♣ Pit Trap – First 2 characters in marching order may make perception check DC 20 to spot the trap, dwarves have advantage. If they fail, in marching order each character makes a DC20 Dex save to avoid each following character gets a +2 (its easier if you were at the back). Falling is 2d6 bludgeoning + d12 piercing on a failed save. If all characters fall the party gets a DC 15 Group Athletics check or they die in the pit. 3♣ Hypnotic Mirror – DC13 Wisdom Save or turn against the party till unconscious (players who turn against the party are on the same team). 4♣ Dead Bodies – Wisdom save DC10 or disadvantage on next initiative 5♣ Necrotic Ward – A character proficient in Arcana or through the use of a spell may read the magic runes and know them for what they are, otherwise all characters immediately make a DC14 Dexterity save or take 8d6 Necrotic damage, half as much on a successful save. 6♣ Haunted Chapel. 3 ghosts emerge as the party enters. May be be dismissed with DC20 Religion check (1 Chance) 7♣ A Kenku Assassin fires a poison bolt at the character at the back of the marching order unless a character has a passive perception of 30+. A Neutral or Evil character may attempt a DC13 Persuasion check to gain it as a follower. 8♣ What is Lost – A room collapses, DC10 Dex save to retreat or take 2d12 damage. Draw cards until you draw a red card, discard it. Place the rest on top in random order. 9♣ Flooded Grave – A snake filled pool of water stretching 60 feet leads to any exits this room has. Characters wearing medium or heavy armor must make disadvantaged athletics checks for each turn in the water or they cannot move further that turn, additionally those in heavy armor suffer d12 damage unless they have water breathing. Each character that ends its turn in the water is pursued by 2 snakes and each makes a +0 attacks each causing d12 poison damage. A character may attack snakes with disadvantage any damage slays, and you will not be further pursued unless you re-enter the water. You may help adjacent allies attack their snakes. 10♣ A Portcullis Slams down behind you. 50 Cumulative Strength to Break or discard a Rest Card to disable. You cannot back track until you defeat this challenge and you are trapped if no further rooms are generated. J♣ Vampires Resting Place – If you have drawn the A♠ at any point in this game you may destroy the Vampires resting place after facing a Helmed Horror, otherwise a character must pass a DC18 Intelligence Check to do so, if you do no destroy the resting place shuffle it back into the deck. The Helmed Horror has a 60% chance to be immune to specific spells cast on it of level 2 or higher, max 3. Q♣ Entropy – Draw a card, if its red make a DC 15 Group Intelligence Save to play it, otherwise discard it. K♣ Impending Doom – Draw cards until you have 2 black, stack them, you must face each of them in order before proceeding. Place any red cards drawn on the bottom of the deck. A♣ Cohort of Evil – Combine next two Encounters (Stack 2 cards as one room) draw cards till you get 2♣s. Place the rest on top of the deck in random order.
J Milestone Level Up (Optional)
2♡ Short Rest 3♡ Short Rest 4♡ Short Rest +Inspiration 5♡ Short Rest DC12 Con Check to Save 6♡ Short Rest DC12 Int Check to Save 7♡ Short Rest DC12 Nature Check to Save 8♡ Short Rest Save 9♡ Short Rest Save 10♡ Short Rest Save J♡ Long Rest Q♡ Long Rest +Inspiration K♡ Long Rest DC 15 Survival Check to Save A♡ Long Rest Save
2♢ Treasure Chest d100 gold per character + Inspiration 3♢ A Strange Invitation – +1 Weapon of Random Type d20 1 dagger, 2 Longbow, 3 Javelin, 4 Light Hammer, 5, Mace, 6 Staff, 7 Sickle, 8 Spear, 9 Lt Crossbow, 10 Whip, 11 Flail, 12 Glaive, 13 Greatsword, 14 Halberd, 15 Maul, 16 Morningstar, 17 Pike, 18 Trident, 19 War Pick, 20 Warhammer 4♢Greater Healing Potions d4+1. 5♢ Runic Scrolls – Characters who identify these items, either by standard means or with a short rest may identify them as protection runes which may be permanently to armor. The first grants resistance to Necrotic Damage. They other a random damage type as follows: d12, 1=Slashing, 2=Piercing, 3=Bludgeoning, 4=Cold, 5=Acid, 6=Psychic, 7=Fire, 8=Necrotic, 9=Radiant, 10=Force, 11=Thunder, 12=Lightening. 6♢ Alchemists Lab – d6+1 rolls on Magic Item Table B (-11, min 1) 7♢ Wizards Room – d6 spell Rolls on Magic Item Table C (-11, min 1) +1 level 4 scroll. 8♢ Bag of Fangs – Contains 1D4+C carved wooden Dire Wolf canines. When buried, a fang quickly sprouts a wolf-like tree golem with d4 x user-level HP, AC 14, and uses the users proficiency bonus for attack and damage bonuses, a successful strike does 2d4. They are vulnerable to fire damage and immune to poison. 9♢ Wondrous Stash –2Rolls on Treasure Table D (-5, min 1). +Inspiration 10♢ Cowering Tentacles – Make a group Arcane check DC10 (half must pass). On success a Flumph approaches the party. Good aligned characters may make a DC12 Persuasion roll to gain the Flumph as a companion (highest roll has preference). J♢ Lost Expedition – A figure stands over 3 dead bodies, they are startled when you enter but relieved to see you once they realize you might be their salvation. Any character wishing to take on a companion make a charisma check, the highest roll takes them. Roll a d4, this person is a: 1 Gnome Scout, 2 Human Priest, 3 Dwarf Veteran, 4 Elf Knight (all in the MM appendix); the other 3 are lying dead on the floor. Q♢ Brand of Flames – A club wrapped in spiked chains (1D6 Bludgeoning + 1D10 fire dmg). If identified a wield may attune to it, then the character can infuse a their attack with Fire Bolt (dmg based on their lvl: 1st level (1d10), when you reach 5th Level (2d10), 11th level (3d10), and 17th level (4d10)) 5 times a day. The wielder also takes 1d4 fire dmg backlash when they use its power. When you attune make a DC 15 Wisdom save or suffer 2d6 Fire damage. Once attuned you may transfer the chains to a different weapon which removes the enchantment from the club (once per day). K♢ Treasure Hoard – 1 roll on Magic Item Table H, 2 on G, 3 on F. d10x1000gp of items per player. +Inspiration A♢Hero’s Calling – One Item from treasure table I. Players have right of refusal in descending Charisma score order. +Inspiration
J Milestone Level Up (Optional)
What’s left? To complete this deck I’d like to add room descriptions for more of the encounters, and obviously lots of playtesting along with tightening up the rules.
Extra Rules
All characters may start with inspiration.
Unless otherwise stated NPCs make or fail saves the as their leader outside of combat.
Options
Secret Doors If a room must connect to another room this means the door you just found is a secret entrance. If you can enter an unexplored room through a secret entrance you gain advantage on the surprise check. You may mark these with a token such as a penny.
Treasure Face cards which are combat encounters generate treasure hoards when they are completed. Number cards generate regular treasure.
Alert Level If you flee from combat with intelligent creatures 4+ there’s a 50% chance the entire dungeon will go on alert. This grand disadvantage to all surprise checks.
Companion Limit A character may have companions of the same alignment equal to 1+Charisma Bonus.
Exit When you draw the last card of the deck if it is a room with more than 1 door it is a dungeon exit.
Fleeing to flee from a combat encounter discard a red card then shuffle the current encounter back into the deck. Keep in the mind the secondary consequences of shuffling.
Difficulty Setting to reduce the difficulty especially if you choose to not shuffle harder encounters to the bottom of the deck you may start with a number of rest tokens which function just like the cards.
Intro: GM-less means running a game where everyone is a player and there is no master in control. There has been much written on this topic and many approaches, I will outline the approach I have created for my group, its objectives, and the unexpected magic that sprung from it! If you have not already guessed it, yes, I am a GM, and fairly prolific at this point! I run two games a week for large groups and have been running at least a game a week for roughly… 6 years. And I love doing it! Bla, bla, more in bio (coming soon).
Note: Okay, but first, this is the sites first post so I want to just say something about writing style. I favor brevity in writing, so I’ll keep my posts short and to the point. Well then you might ask, “is blogging really something you want to do”? To that I’d say it’s less about writing fluffy articles and more about getting out actionable information with limited page space in this virtual zine. Our other authors will have a differing approach. Who knows… I can already feel myself getting long winded.
Background: The very idea of a GM-less game seems to be ever present in the thought-palace of RPG gamers. We want to have the rich experience of an adventure amid a well crafted campaign without the work and, well… or do we? There’s a lot of pieces to an RPG which one could automate, and it likely depends on the group as to which they’d choose.
The random dungeonconcept is nothing new, there are likely hundreds of systems out there for this. Its related to the GM-less concept but can also exist wholly outside of it. There’s a system included at the back of the D&D 5e Dungeon Masters Guide, there are rollable tables online, donjon has an excellent system, there are decks of cards, the list goes on. Some of these systems tie the environment (usually a room) to it’s contents, others may have a loose theme with thematic encounters which can occur in a variety of thematic locations. I wanted to go a step further and ensure nearly anything could happen.
How do I conceptualize this? How do you tie together a seemingly absurd mix of random encounters? Its all in the narrative! Its about the story we tell ourselves, depending on your preference these things do not have occur in fixed time and space, that notion itself can be as random as the encounters, if you can take that leap. I picture my GM-less random system as though its being read from ancient manuscripts and historical accounts pieced together loosely to make a saga. Its up to us to connect the threads or leave it a mystery. I’m getting ahead of myself.
THE SYSTEM Here’s how you do it, step by step.
Given you have a platform, in person or online, a group of players and all the normal things you need to play your RPG typically (you know like characters and dice) then you’re good to go, with just one additional piece of the social contract.
You’ll need some number of players willing to rotate responsibility for administrative tasks (moving monsters etc) and executing the steps below, ideally more than one player, as many as possible really but you may want to leave out the new person if they are still learning how to play.
On your turn you’ll do the following.
Generate Encounter: There are many ways to do this. I use rpg tools this site gives a CR appropriate encounter with an optional description of motivations, its a great place to start if you’re testing out my system. You can generate a few and pick one, or however your group agrees to do it.
Set the Scene: Whether you’re playing theater of the mind, on a wet erase mat, or using an online tool, you’ll want to roughly sketch the area and drop in features as you see fit (always add a bookcase which can be knocked over). You don’t have to use the prompt from step one, practice thinking on the fly, improv baby!
Motivations: Characters and Monsters need goals. Give player characters a reason to be here and an objective. In the simplest terms it could just be: you need to defeat these enemies, but you’ll get more creative as time goes on. As for monsters, do the same.
AI Tactics / Monster Behavior: we are fortunate as a community to have this resource The Monsters Know What they are Doing but its not the only option. D&D 4th edition Monster Manuals provide monster roles and tactics, they are very informative!
You can do ANYTHING: initially this may sound like a boring combat generator. Hey, I love combat, doesn’t every role player? Seriously though. I’ve literally taken a page from the Mythic: Game Master Emulator to account for anything the players can imagine from the game scenario. “Don’t dream it, be it.” Its quite simply really. Typically you’ll just set chaos to 5 on the chart below, decide on the odds then roll it! Are there burning sconces here? Seconds later you have your answer. I suggest having the entire group decide or vote on odds, you can always take the average. Full Mythic Emulator PDF
6. Generate Treasure: You can use the DMG or one of the many online treasure generators. Again donjon is great for this. Play around with generating treasure hoards, its so fun!
7. Between Encounters: I use a playing card system to generate chances for short or long rest. It’s not a science yet but basically pull from a deck of standard playing cards. Diamonds are short rests, face cards you can save to use later, number cards are immediate. Hearts are long rests, same concept. Jokers can be use for leveling if you want to do milestone. You can do all sorts of stuff, I’ll write an article on this later. You can make cards dictate the challenge of the next encounter or even dictate the type of encounter: NPC, City, Shop, Treasure, etc. This in part will help for the timeline and narrative that stitches these encounters together. Here’s the full random Card Deck Dungeon I’ve been prototyping, it inspired the method.
8. Get Inspired (optional): If the story so far inspires you to come up with an encounter to insert into the mix, then just do it! Also, feel free to insert pre-made encounters from any source into the mix in any fashion the group is okay with!
Experiments: To help reinforce that this is a group effort I plan to experiment with having a player other than the one currently running the encounter actually execute the enemy actions.
So, my group “tested” this system and the results, were good, but more surprisingly something really great grew from it almost immediately. I’ll explain that in a following post, stay tuned! [Future Article Link]
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