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Saturday, May 4, 2024

I didn't even know I hit 'em - Situational Awarness rule spinoff

Doug posted a very interesting idea over on Gaming Ballistic.

Randomly Aware – Fast Situational Awareness

It occasioned a thought or two.

What if you needed a Per roll - or perhaps a Per-based weapon roll, even better - to know what you did to the target? It would fit. Only experienced or observant fighters would know how well their blow landed.

You could apply the same to allies and enemies, too. You'd need a roll to spot what happened to a foe. "Thor swung at that guy and then the guy fell" might be "Guy critically failed Dodge and was hit but undamaged" or "was knocked flat" or "did Dodge and Drop" or something in between. You don't really know.

This is especially true in ranged combat, where "I totally hit that guy!" and "He did Dodge and Drop and then tried to Play Dead" should often look very much alike.

You could restrict this to allies and enemies. You know what you did. Your enemy does, too. But everyone else? PER roll. Modify it for distraction (like being enagaged yourself, probably a -5) and distance (S&SRT).

It could be clunky in numbers, but I think the general idea - you don't automatically know what you, the player, can see, given the incredible situational awareness you get from a battle map.

3 comments:

  1. I have an untested idea for quick and dirty multiple rolls from one toss of the 3d6, partly based on your previous idea of a “Per die.” Just like with your idea, you first have one of the dice be the odd colour out and make it as the “special” whenever you roll a 3d6 success roll. Then, when you need to ALSO roll Per or whatever at the same time as an attack/success roll, you have the “special” die count as the face opposite what it rolled (while leaving the other two as the same) for the second roll.

    The opposite faces of the die are 1 <-> 6, 2 <-> 5, and 3 <-> 4.

    So if you rolled a 2, 4, and 2 (last die is the special) = 8 for the first roll, change the special die to 5, so the second roll is 2+4+5=11, treat that as the result.
    A roll of 3+3+6 becomes 3+3+1. 1+1+3 becomes 1+1+4. 5+3+2 becomes 5+3+5. And so on.

    Two die rolls for the price of one. What do you think?

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  2. I think as a macro in Foundry it would be super interesting. What I'd want to do - and I don't know if it's possible but I bet it is - is to have the player pick a target, choose their attack options (so that the GM doesn't have to do it), and then send that into a macro/function that would push that data to the GM and prompt a defense roll (choose dodge, block, parry, nothing from the menu of the target) along with mutual perception rolls (for target, for attacker). The results would be something like:

    1) Did the attack hit?
    2) Did the defense work?
    3) If Yes and No, what was the damage result?
    4) Did the attacker catch all this?
    5) or maybe 1a) Did the defender see the incoming attack.

    This is the sort of stuff a VTT could pull off in far less time than it took for me to describe it, but would probably be fairly unworkable with physical dice rolls.

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  3. This has to be automated. Otherwise it’s just way too much rolling for gameplay benefit. The ratio of rolling effort to reward is too skewed.

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