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.
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.
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]
Recent Comments