3eish: combat

Blogger ate a draft of this post and I'm not pleased about it. I realize I've posted ideas along these lines before, but here are the versions I like the best now.

Artist: Simon Gocal

Action

Surprised figures do not move or act during the first round that they join combat. Otherwise, the adventurers and their enemies move and act in alternate phases:

1. Enemies move
2. Adventurers move & act
3. Enemies act
4. Attacks are resolved
   

A figure's movement ends if they enter the reach of a foe that can act. If they start within its reach, their movement is limited to one inch.

A figure's movement depends on the load they are carrying. A burdened figure may move twice their Size (in inches, scale TBD), one in heavy kit may move three times their Size and one in light kit may move four times their Size. If a burdened figure moves more than their Size, on an unburdened one twice their Size, they may not act.

A figure may drop what they are holding, or drop into a kneel (-1 Size) or to the ground (-2 Size) freely. Instead of movement, a figure may:

• Concentrate on magic
  
• Draw or stow an item
• Open or close a door
  
• Stand from a kneel
• Take aim

Or similar things; otherwise, these are all actions. Standing from the ground allows only one inch of movement and no other actions.

Attacking

An attacker states their aim, for example, draw out, disarm, push back, restrain, seize, throw or wound. Then, they make their roll and add +1 for every 4HP they currently have. Subtract 4 if they are fighting in an awkward or unfamiliar manner. Then apply situational modifiers:

• In hand-to-hand, apply the attacker's Strength modifier. Add +2 if the target was attacked by another this round.
• Fighting at reach, apply the attacker's Dexterity modifier. Add +2 if the target entered the attacker's reach this round.
• Shooting at range, apply the attacker's Intelligence modifier. Add +2 if the target has not moved this round.

Attacks at range are resolved first, followed by attacks at reach in descending order of reach and finally by hand-to-hand attacks.

An attack succeeds if the modified roll is at least equal to the target's defense. This has two components. A figure's dodge is 3 plus their Wisdom modifier. A figure's protection is 3, plus one for every layers of armor, source of cover or increment of the target's Size (in inches) between the attacker and target.

• When taking cover or other defensive action, defense is dodge + three times protection.
• Otherwise, when able to act, defense is dodge + two times protection.
• Otherwise, defense is two times protection.

If the attack is successful, the attacker rolls damage based on their own Size. 

Example	Size	Die Type
cat	0	d2
fairy, monkey	1	d2
dog, elf	2	d4
deer, man	3	d6
horse, thark	4	d8
ogre, rhinoceros	5	d10
elephant, giant	6	d12
dragon	7	d20

The target may choose to either lose that many HP (if they have that many) or accept the aim of the attack.

Odd attack rolls fail against targets that are concealed from their attackers. If the target is totally concealed, the attacker must have some way of discerning their exact position before attempting an attack in the first place.

Wounding

When a figure is wounded, the severity of the wound depends on how much the damage exceeds their current HP. For these purposes, subtract 2 from the damage of bare fists or feet. A wounded figure makes a saving throw, adding their Constitution modifier.

Excess	Wound	DC	Success	Failure
2 or less	Light	12	Fine	Unconscious
3 to 5	Serious	15	Unconscious	Dying
6 or more	Critical	18	Dying	Dead

A dying character will die if their wound is not treated within a few minutes. An unconscious character may make another save within a few minutes to come to, otherwise they remain out for a few hours.

3eish: what's a level

Theoryposting, maybe I'll get to the point of concrete details by the end of this post, maybe I won't.

Artist: Tennis Cramer

So, my goal of 3eish is to make something that feels like 3e to me, while also keeping it light enough to hold the whole thing in mind and play fast and easy. Can't get rid of levels without it starting to feel like something else entirely so it's worth asking: what's a level. In 3e there are a couple clear answers:

• One HD.
• 1, 3/4 or 1/2 a point of BAB
• 8, 6, 4, 2 + Int skill points
• 1/2 or 1/3 a point of each saving throw
• 1/4 of an one-point improvement to an ability score (1/8 of a one-point improvement to its modifier)
• 1/3 of a feat and some class features
• various scaling on spells you cast

There are some rationalizations that suggest themselves, like making attack bonus or saving throws a part of the skill system, but I've been down most of those design roads at this point and most of them wind up reinventing RuneQuest. So instead I'm going to reinvent True20; a level is a feat and one HD and everything else falls out of that.

Let's nail that down somewhat:

• As in the base rules, the benchmark for a boring feat is that it applies +2 on two different kinds of rolls. 
• Boring feats (that only add bonuses to rolls) are now called skills and can be taken multiple times. This replace the skill list and save progressions; if a character does not have any skills that apply to a saving roll, they use 1/3 their level as a bonus.
• Obviously not all feats are boring ones. The ones that grant more interesting abilities can generally only be taken once.
• Each feat specifies an amount of HP (2, 3 or 4) gained when you take it. If you're proficient with it, add +1 to an attack roll for every 4HP you currently have. If you're not proficient, apply a -3 penalty.
• Abilities for combat add 4HP.
• Skills and miscellaneous abilities add 3HP.
• Magic abilities adds 2HP.

You may notice there's no real purpose left for classes. That's probably for the best, let's lose them. Carve out their interesting bits into feats and leave the rest.

One-feat character creation is probably too bare to be fun. Instead we'll have two-feat character creation (truly, I have a dizzying intellect). There's a special set of feats called backgrounds, and you pick two of them to start. Your starting HP is 4 if both of them have experience with violence, 3 if one does and 2 otherwise.

The 3e PHB had 7 races and 11 classes, so for parity with its 77 combinations a pool of backgrounds would need...a pool of 14 backgrounds (14 choose 2 is 91, fourteen more combinations for a pool with three fewer elements). Now that's of course not the full range of customization of a 1st level 3e character but it's close enough for my purposes.

towards a medieval "brown stone" game

Note: this is not an earnest attempt to recreate any game that was played in the Twin Cities in 1971. It is just something that I threw together based on one explanation I have seen of the (poor quality and contradictory) evidence of how combat in that game worked.

These are incomplete, I basically just wrote and edited until I ran out of steam but I think it'd be enough to start playing. 

I didn't include any Referee's guidance for timekeeping or reactions or things like that, just do your best I guess.

Rules Brief for Players

The game is about a companies of adventurers going on expeditions into strange mazes and uncanny places to find their secrets and treasures. These expeditions are dangerous; adventurers may well die. If they survive, however, their fame and power will grow...

Advice:

• If you don't know what to do, ask questions.
• Tell the others what you want to do.
• The Referee won't lie to you, but they may not tell you everything.
• There aren't rules for everything. If you make a good play, you won't need to roll any dice.
• If you fight, someone will get hurt. It could very well be you.

Adventurers usually go on expedition in large companies, to have the advantage of numbers. Each player can have a few different characters in the company.

3eish: bones

Alright, without further ado here is the mechanical skeleton of my 3eish rules. This does not include any character options or combat-specific rules, other than a brief description of how attacks work. It also doesn't include rules for equipment, adventuring hazards or any kind of magic or special abilities. It is literally just the resolution and injury/endurance parts of the system.

if our lives be short - the gloghack

Being an excerpt of the beating mechanical heart of Hulk Rats, themselves being a light revision of Maze Rats.

HP as adrenaline (also initiative, I guess)

rule

In the general course of events, characters have Stamina which is depleted by strenous activity or injury. Every time they become injured, roll (an appropriate type of roll) under your stamina or take Critical Damage. However, when a crisis that needs to be resolved moment-to-moment breaks out, they can rely on a Rush of strength and agility to protect them instead.

Once a character becomes aware of danger, the player may spend points of their stamina up to your level (if your game has variable hit dice per class, two-thirds level for clerics/thieves and one-third level for mages [rounded up]) and roll that many dice. The total is your Rush, which is used for several things:

• Each round, action proceeds from highest Rush to lowest Rush and then from highest Stamina to lowest Stamina for characters that do not have the benefit of a Rush.
• When a character takes damage, they may spend points of Rush to reduce the damage by that amount (to a minimum of zero).
• If you have a Rush, taking any careful or deliberate action while being menaced by a danger (for example, within reach of a foe) costs 1 point of Rush.

A player may only roll for a Rush when their character becomes aware of a new source of danger. An encumbered character can't roll up a Rush.

If they have a chance to rest after a crisis is resolved, characters may exchange Rush for Stamina at a rate of three to one. If there is no opportunity to rest, or if there are excess points of Rush after exchanging the rest for Stamina, they are lost.

why?

Joke: everyone can backstab.

Woke: everyone can rage.

Listen, there are a lot of different interpretations of HP. This is another one, clearly. Probably someone's thought of it before. A lot of different ideas are coming together to form this: hit dice as a resource to replenish hit point pools (sort of reversed), hit dice being rolled at the start of an encounter, Into the Odd-style critical damage rolls, and (weirdly enough) an example consequence for failing a 4e-style Skill Challenge being the loss of a healing surge (out of combat) or damage (in combat).

Oh, and the rule about spending Rush to take actions while you're being menaced is taken from the Pressure mechanic from OLOG, an extremely cool replacement for Attacks of Opportunity which is (as far as I know) only described in the parenthetical note to the Arsenal ability of the Marine class in this post.

One thing I like about this is that the consequences of surprise/backstabbing sort of comes for free. I also think the Electric Bastionland rule about burdened characters having zero HP fits in very naturally. Not sure what else to say, I just kind of like it.