Saw a Reel about Attacking the Character sheet

The reel is here. The Witches Hex removing a Death Save really resonated with me. I mean you talk to an old crone in town and she gives you the Evil Eye and you're down a Death Save until the next full moon. Thats interesting, a bit chilling, and not something the players can do much about beyond being nicer to old crones. If feels fairy tale ish. Some other ideas that might be fun for short duration annoyance:

• Dropping a PCs Initiative bonus
• Dropping a PCs passive perception
• Reduce or remove a spellslot
• Eliminate one usage from some ability or magic item that only has a certain number of uses a day.

The other ideas don't work as well for me. Having negative inspiration only works if you use inspiration for example, and I don't like Inspiration just as I don't like Luck die. Feels overly gamey to me.

Anyway the idea is fun and has my head thinking about all the possibilities.

Three Round Combat

Questing Beast mentioned 3-round combat in his latest Can this DnD hack actually work? The idea is interesting, short brutal combats. Part of me likes the idea as my group has been fighting Giants lately and the bag of hit points that are giants results in a bit of tedious combat (at least from my point of view, my players seem to love it). So I went to the webpage that came up with the Pretendo the website that came up with the idea to see if they had anything that that filled it out better. Alas I was still unsatisfied. The jist:

Combat lasts 3 rounds at most. It may be initiated, decided, and concluded in a single round, or it may be initiated in round 1, decided by round 2, and concluded by round 3—but however it plays out, the victorious side is known by the end of the second round.

Round 3 is for transition and conclusion. At the start of round 3, the enemy side takes stock. The GM signals to players who’s about to win and what their options are.

• If enemies trail, they forfeit. The details depend on the nature of the enemy. Frightened animals may simply whine and run away when they’ve sustained too many wounds. A gang that’s lost their leader and half their fighters may thumb their noses and throw a dagger on their way out—but they still know when they’re beaten. Soldiers may surrender, repeating name, rank, and service number.  
• If enemies lead, they press their advantage. The GM should be transparent about the circumstances—it’s clear they’re winning, and they’re about to get a huge bonus against you if you stick around. The situation changes while preserving players’ agency about how to proceed. The specifics will di!er against di!erent enemies: surrender may be possible with soldiers; fleeing may be the only option against hungry predators; going down swinging may be more palatable than running away in some cases. 

• If unclear, use best judgment—but something changes. In a relatively even match-up, it’s up to the GM to make a ruling based on the nature of the enemy—or just going with “fleeing,” if that’s easier or more satisfying. For instance: a frenzied beast might attack recklessly for a huge bonus to attacks and damage, guaranteeing its own demise in the process; humans might take a breath and o!er to parley; robots might have repeated a routine multiple times, revealing a predictable behavior players can exploit. Again, though, no matter what, something changes.

Pivotal battles might go longer—but in round 3, there’s a twist.

So after reading that I kind of think it makes a good case for ignoring the normal reasons one might roll morale and instead rolling Morale after 3 rounds of combat. If the PCs are winning have the Foes roll at Disadvantage. If the Foes are winning have them roll at Advantage. If the Foe makes their morale roll perhaps they get an extra desperate attack the 4th round. Not sure about the last part but I like the "bloodied" idea from 4E and think something similar could be implemented here make round 4 more interesting.

Here are some Bloodied Effect ideas from 4E filtered through ChatGPT.

d12 Bloodied Effect

1. Makes an immediate melee attack against the nearest foe.
2. Immediately shifts (moves without provoking opportunity attacks) several squares.
3. Gains a bonus to attack rolls until the end of the encounter.
4. Gains resistance to one or more damage types.
5. Recharges one or more expended powers.
6. Summons reinforcements or calls nearby allies.
7. Enters a berserk rage, dealing extra damage but suffering lower defenses.
8. Begins regenerating hit points each round.
9. Gains an additional action each round (or an immediate bonus action in systems that use them).
10. Drops its shield or armor, sacrificing defense for increased offense.
11. Emits poisonous blood, acid, fire, or necrotic energy whenever struck in melee.
12. Reveals a hidden weapon, mutation, or magical ability unavailable before being bloodied.

Roll20 Tricks: Campaign Backup

So I GM's a campaign for a year in Roll20 and things started to bog down. The system got slower with the accumulation of maps and tokens. So I created a new campaign and brought the players over to that. That was a bit of a hassle. Roll20 lets Pro Users transfer elements from one campaign to another so it wasn't too bad, but still I had to send out new links and more than one player logged onto the old link out of habit. So its not really ideal. Then that campaign started slowing down, NPC character sheets weren't opening and it was just a headache and I considered starting the new campaign migration again. Then I had that moment of clarity where I decided why move the players when I can move the maps and shit. That is the idea of a Campaign Backup.

So you have the campaign you run, and a second campaign where you transfer maps and tokens and things you aren't using very often. So they are backed up so to speak and you can delete them from your main campaign lightening the load. Since you aren't playing in the Campaign Backup it doesn't matter how slow it gets and you can transfer maps or tokens or whatever back to the original campaign with ease. Players don't even need to be aware of that sort of thing. You could even use a single backup for multiple campaigns assuming they used the same RPG. 

Nothing world breaking but it solves some problems nicely.

More Healing Potions

 A continuation from my previous post on Healing Potions.

I like the idea that if you heal HP that would take you beyond your Max HP you might suffer a mutation that lasts as long as it would take to heal that much HP. That would need a table but I'm sure there is one floating around the web. HP beyond the Max HP could be treated as Temp HP the way a Warlock gets Temp HP with Dark Ones Blessing. Going into battle you can really tank up, but it'll cost you in gold, addiction, and possibly mutation.

I like the idea that the cheaper Healing Potions might cause more problems and if you want the good stuff it's gonna cost you. This becomes a nice way to soak up PC cash. 

 So anyway the more I think about the mutation aspect the more it reminds me of the Slaine comics where mutation was part of his berserker fury.  

New Banner

I love Groo but I've used a fairly dodgy screenshot for a couple of years now and figured it was time to update. So I found an old painting "Bayard Defends the Bridge on the Garigliano" by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux (painted in 1840). I like the painting a lot but wanted to make it a bit more 'me' so I ran it through the Google Flow until I was happy with the results and next thing you know I have a new banner. Hopefully the details aren't too small. 

The "Bayard" in the painting is Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, one of the most celebrated knights in French history.  The painting shows the Battle of Garigliano (1503) in which seigneur de Bayard held a narrow bridge against pursuing Spanish forces and did so long enough for the French army to escape. 

Ironically, Pierre Terrail Seigneur de Bayard did not die at the battle  on the Garigliano. He was mortally wounded in 1524 during the Battle of the Sesia while covering a different French retreat.

 

 

Healing Potions

I read a couple of blog posts about healing potions and thought I'd spew a few thoughts out on the subject. 5E with its short and long rests really made healing potions somewhat unnecessary, that's the nut of the problem. Then if you do swig one you get only a little healing and could roll a 1.

Dojo Darelir, the School of Xenograg the Sorcerer suggests you get one-quarter of a character's Max HP which matches 4E Healing surges.

Nerdwerds thinks a Healing potion should bring you back up to Max HP (but cost a lot).

I like Nerdwerd's solution but I have a different solution. Keep the price the same but if you suck up to many healing potions you develop some kind of immunity to the stuff. Imagine if Healing Potions had a Usage Die that started at Ud20. You roll the die, add your CON modifier and that's how much you heal. You still might get super-low numbers but not every potion is gonna be freshly brewed and sometimes the alchemist might have used a shortcut of putting in Toadstool instead of Mandrake and what are you gonna do. 

So at low level you have a good chance of healing big and that's when your trying just to stay alive. But the more you drink the more likely you roll a 1-2 and when that happens the usage die drops so that your next healing potion only cures Ud12, then Ud10. By the time your high enough level you probably don't need healing potions anyway.

Roll20 Tricks: Session folders

I got tired of searching through folders in Roll20 to find the map I'd prepared. I decided to make a Session folder and every map I felt they might visit was dumped into that folder. I'll drag them out and add new ones as we go. Pretty simple idea really but it made things so much smoother at the table.

Update on the rollable tables. The one player that notices things wasn't there during the last session and the others didn't seem to notice, or at least nobody said anything. I had all sorts of fun sayings from one noble house bashing the players and nobody noticed. Bummer. I'm sure when they do notice they'll love it (as they loved the way I named NPCs when they finally noticed). Jeez, can't be subtle sometimes I guess.