[HR] Combat Stunts in TOR

[Woodclaw]

In my eyes one of the element I found most counterintuitive of the whole game are Called Shots, while I can see the logic behind the rule (a gamble), I think that it's kind of bummer that a player need to wait to reliably apply any of those effects. So I started thinkering with the rules to allow a much more widespread use of those mechanics and I gave a look to another of my favorites fantasy RPGs: Dragon Age.
In Dragon Age every time a player scores a double he can add some special effects to his action, this seemed to tie-in quite well with the mechanics for great and extraordinary success, so I decided to gave it a shot. and this is what I came up with.

Combat Stunts in The One Ring

(this rule replaces both Called Shot and the extra damage from great or extraordinary success)

When a character rolls a great or extraordinary success on an attack he can choose to add an effect from the following table. It's possible to trade one extraordinary effect for two great effects, but each effect can be choosen only once, unless otherwise specified.
When a hero rolls an "Eye" or an Adversary rolls a "Gandalf" this provides their opponent one free level of success on the Stunt table.
Specific creatures or weapon might be able to perform other stunts depending on thier abilities and weapons (e.g. Orcs' poison arrows).

Great success Stunts

• Cleave: you can hit two opponents with a single attack, if your original roll is high enough, you cna decide how to split damage between them (exception: you can apply other effects -- likepiercing blow or break shield -- only on one target)
• Higher ground: you gain one Die of Combat Advantage immediately
• Into the fray you can perform a combat task immediately, but this task can't benefit from great or extraordinary success (exception: you can't perform Skirmish after performing this task)
• Mighty Blow (can be chosen twice): add your Damage rating to the total damage
• Skirmish: you can immediately move one stance forward or backward and this sets your TN until the next round (exception: you can't move Rearward unless the usual conditions are met)

Extraordinary success Stunts

• Break shield: you break your opponent shield or knock it out of his graps (special: axes and mattock can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Disarm: you knock your opponent weapon out of his graps (special: swords can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Knockback: you knock your opponent out of balance, denying him the possibility to execute his next attack (special: spears can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Pierce Armor: you inflict a piercing blow even if you didn't score an edge, but your Injury rating is -2 (special: bows can perform this as a Great success stunt)

Example:

On his way to the Carrock Aric "the Red" is ambushed by two Snagga trackers, after the opening volleys the Beorning grasps his great spear and attacks.
Being outnumbered Aric stays in defensive stance and rolls his spear attack, unfortunatly his skill isn't good enough to allow him to land a hit.
The Snagas counterattack with their knives, both miss, but one rolls a "Gandalf", giving Aric an opening and a single success to use on the Stunt table the next round.
Feeling a bit emboldened Aric switches to open stance and rolls, this time he scores a great success, which gives him two great successes to spend on Stunt. He chooses to cleave through both of his opponents and knock one of them back (usually an extraordinary stunt, but Aric uses a spear). He splits the 9 damage between the two as evenly as possible and deny the one of the Snagas the chance to counterattack.


Overall I think this table makes the combat potentially more cinematic and unpredictable, I'm not sure this will fit with the overall tone of the game, but I think it's worth the shot. What do you think?

[Michebugio]

This is such an interesting home rule, Woodclaw! I'm amazed to say the least!

I think it still needs a little balancing, though. My comments:

Great Success Stunts:

Higher ground: nice and simple, I love this option since it's a mean for "recharging" Combat Advantage dices.

Mighty blow: I assume this simply reflects the "RAW effect" of a Great Success, right?

Into the fray: a bit powerful, it's a kind of Royalty Revealed depowered. I would move this among the Extraordinary Success Stunts, maybe removing the success cap.

Skirmish: this one seems too good. It means, in practice, a constant +3 to Parry: say you attack in Open (benefitting from a lower TN), then you just need 1 Tengwar to shift in Defensive. Your opponent then attacks you with a higher TN, then at the start of your next round you go Open, attack, score a Tengwar, shift to Defensive and so on.
If you specify that if you use Skirmish, you cannot change stance at the start of your next round (essentially, it just allows you to shift stance earlier, before enemy's attack), I think it would be ok.

Cleave: not bad, though the "split the damage how you want" thing is a bit munchkin. I would say just split the Damage in 2 (rounding up) for each opponent. Or instead: what if you simply gain another attack against another opponent, but instead of using your weapon skill, you roll 1 dice for each level of success (and you can't Cleave with this attack)?


Extraordinary Success Stunts:

A problem for some of these arises when considering a Bearded Axe (how does the benefit interact with these rules? the marginal utility of it would become much lower) and a King's Blade (same as above).

Also, I would keep the symmetry with called shots, so both Bows and Spears can achieve Pierce Armor as a Great Success, while Knockback is achievable only on an Extraordinary Success (or as a Great Success introducing bludgeoning weapons like hammers and maces, another home rule).

[Woodclaw]

Thanks for the feedback Michebugio.

Mighty blow: I assume this simply reflects the "RAW effect" of a Great Success, right?

That's correct.

Into the fray: a bit powerful, it's a kind of Royalty Revealed depowered. I would move this among the Extraordinary Success Stunts, maybe removing the success cap.

I put to success cap because I wanted this to be a Great Success, in general I think that the tasks are the most interesting part of the TOR combat system, so I wanted them to be relatively common, but I'll think about your idea.

Skirmish: this one seems too good. It means, in practice, a constant +3 to Parry: say you attack in Open (benefitting from a lower TN), then you just need 1 Tengwar to shift in Defensive. Your opponent then attacks you with a higher TN, then at the start of your next round you go Open, attack, score a Tengwar, shift to Defensive and so on.
If you specify that if you use Skirmish, you cannot change stance at the start of your next round (essentially, it just allows you to shift stance earlier, before enemy's attack), I think it would be ok.

Your scenario is exactly what I was thinking when I wrote Skirmish down, I'll have to run a few test to see how much effect it is. An alternative version I toyed with was to allow the character to add a d6 roll to his TN until the start of the next round, which might be even more powerful, but adds an element of uncertainty.

Cleave: not bad, though the "split the damage how you want" thing is a bit munchkin. I would say just split the Damage in 2 (rounding up) for each opponent. Or instead: what if you simply gain another attack against another opponent, but instead of using your weapon skill, you roll 1 dice for each level of success (and you can't Cleave with this attack)?

Well, the first version of cleave was more on the lines of: if you kill your opponent you can transfer any residual damage to another target, which really didn't work that well. I didn't want to add extra rolls either, so I opted for a rather streamlined solution, but your idea has its merits.

A problem for some of these arises when considering a Bearded Axe (how does the benefit interact with these rules? the marginal utility of it would become much lower) and a King's Blade (same as above).

I haven't considered the interaction with reward and virtues so far, I want to have a solid base before venturing in any specific case.

Also, I would keep the symmetry with called shots, so both Bows and Spears can achieve Pierce Armor as a Great Success, while Knockback is achievable only on an Extraordinary Success (or as a Great Success introducing bludgeoning weapons like hammers and maces, another home rule).

I never liked the fact that spears can achieve Piercing as their called shot since it looked like an afterthough. In my mind knockback for the spears represent the fact that the fighter takes full advantage of the length of the weapon to keep the opponent at bay, forcing him to outmanuver the spear tips instead of attacking. In general I don't use optional rules for blunt weapons, but I'll keep the idea under scrutiny.

[Woodclaw]

Okay after a bit of work and some early testing I changed a few stunts around.

Into the Fray (Great of Exceptional Stunt): you can perform a combat task as part of your attack, you're limited to combat tasks avaible in your stance and you can only roll a number of skill dice based on the level of Success (2 for Great, 3 for Exceptional) (exception: you can't perform Skirmish after performing this task)

Skirmish v1 (Great Stunt): you can immediately move one stance forward or backward and this changes your TN accordingly, but you can't change stance the next round (exception: you can't move Rearward unless the usual conditions are met).

Skirmish v2 (Great or Exceptional Stunt): you can immediately roll a die and add half the result (rounded down; minimum 1) to you TN until the beginning of the next round. If you perform this as a great stunt roll two dice and use the best result.

Cleave is unfortunatly still the ugly duckling of the bunch, since I can't find a way to make it worth the effort.

On the subject of how this rule interacts with the King's Blade and the Bearded Axe, I'm currently tinkering with it, but so far the Kind's Blade doesn't seem to require much modification. The Bearded Axe is a slightly different story, my current set-up works under the assumption that it allow the user to perform Break Shield and Disarm at the cost of a Great success each, pretty much combining the bonus of an axe and a sword. This potentially allows a user to do both with a single attack, which is pretty damn powerful.

[Corvo]

Hi Michebugio!

I think it's a nice work.
There is a side effect though to that rules: it makes low body fighters more effective (great or extr. successes don't usually give much benefit to heroes with body 2 or 3).
I don't know if that's a feature or a problem, just pointing it out, since many players already feel like body is the weakest stat.

[Woodclaw]

Hi Michebugio!

I think it's a nice work.
There is a side effect though to that rules: it makes low body fighters more effective (great or extr. successes don't usually give much benefit to heroes with body 2 or 3).
I don't know if that's a feature or a problem, just pointing it out, since many players already feel like body is the weakest stat.

I didn't consider that aspect while working on the rules. Usually I tend to prefer playing well rounded characters, using the 6-5-3 or the 6-4-4 combination.

[Bocephas]

Combat Stunts in The One Ring

(this rule replaces both Called Shot and the extra damage from great or extraordinary success)

When a character rolls a great or extraordinary success on an attack he can choose to add an effect from the following table. It's possible to trade one extraordinary effect for two great effects, but each effect can be choosen only once, unless otherwise specified.
When a hero rolls an "Eye" or an Adversary rolls a "Gandalf" this provides their opponent one free level of success on the Stunt table.
Specific creatures or weapon might be able to perform other stunts depending on thier abilities and weapons (e.g. Orcs' poison arrows).

Great success Stunts

• Cleave: you can hit two opponents with a single attack, if your original roll is high enough, you cna decide how to split damage between them (exception: you can apply other effects -- likepiercing blow or break shield -- only on one target)
• Higher ground: you gain one Die of Combat Advantage immediately
• Into the fray you can perform a combat task immediately, but this task can't benefit from great or extraordinary success (exception: you can't perform Skirmish after performing this task)
• Mighty Blow (can be chosen twice): add your Damage rating to the total damage
• Skirmish: you can immediately move one stance forward or backward and this sets your TN until the next round (exception: you can't move Rearward unless the usual conditions are met)

Extraordinary success Stunts

• Break shield: you break your opponent shield or knock it out of his graps (special: axes and mattock can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Disarm: you knock your opponent weapon out of his graps (special: swords can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Knockback: you knock your opponent out of balance, denying him the possibility to execute his next attack (special: spears can perform this as a Great success stunt)
• Pierce Armor: you inflict a piercing blow even if you didn't score an edge, but your Injury rating is -2 (special: bows can perform this as a Great success stunt)

I like the idea of getting rid of called shots. I don't care for the way weapons are tied to specific called shot effects in the RAW. I also don't like called shot piercing blows being limited to spears and arrows.

I like the ideas you proposed. I might simplify things a little. Something like this:

Upon a great success, choose one of the following effects:
1. Apply damage bonus (per RAW)
2. Add +1 to injury
3. Add +1 to edge
4. Split damage equally between two opponents (can only be chosen once)

Upon extraordinary success, choose two effects from above, or one of the following:
1. Disarm + free combat advantage die
2. Disable shield + free combat advantage die
3. Knock back + free combat advantage die
4. Perform special combat task in addition to effects of attack

You can get to a piercing blow by taking the edge bonus if your feat die roll was close enough to your weapon's edge. I like that better than giving an automatic piercing blow with extraordinary success (which totally takes the weapon's edge out of the equation).

I wouldn't worry about this house rule helping the low Body fighters. I think the high Body fighters will tend toward taking damage bonuses, while the low Body fighters will tend toward taking extra injury and edge. I think wounding blows can be just as much about precise hits (from low Body fighters) as it can be from brute force hits (from high Body fighters). So I think this house rule works nicely.

[Woodclaw]

I like the idea of getting rid of called shots. I don't care for the way weapons are tied to specific called shot effects in the RAW. I also don't like called shot piercing blows being limited to spears and arrows.

I like the ideas you proposed. I might simplify things a little. Something like this:

Upon a great success, choose one of the following effects:
1. Apply damage bonus (per RAW)
2. Add +1 to injury
3. Add +1 to edge
4. Split damage equally between two opponents (can only be chosen once)

Upon extraordinary success, choose two effects from above, or one of the following:
1. Disarm + free combat advantage die
2. Disable shield + free combat advantage die
3. Knock back + free combat advantage die
4. Perform special combat task in addition to effects of attack

You can get to a piercing blow by taking the edge bonus if your feat die roll was close enough to your weapon's edge. I like that better than giving an automatic piercing blow with extraordinary success (which totally takes the weapon's edge out of the equation).

I wouldn't worry about this house rule helping the low Body fighters. I think the high Body fighters will tend toward taking damage bonuses, while the low Body fighters will tend toward taking extra injury and edge. I think wounding blows can be just as much about precise hits (from low Body fighters) as it can be from brute force hits (from high Body fighters). So I think this house rule works nicely.

I took note of your ideas and, while I usually like simplifying I think that you pushed it a tad too far. Linking each type of weapon to a specific kind of effect makes sense to a point, so I prefer to maintain that element, aside from that providing a combat bonus and a Combat Dice together is a bit too much for my taste, so I think that I would drop that part.
Adding Edge honestly seem a tad cheap to me, while adding Injury make a certain amount of sense.