Two things that I encountered this week that I liked/gave me food for thought.
Survivor Levelling.
On Twitter, Claytonian (of the Kill It With Fire! blog) shared the latest version of their A Carcosan Hack this week, and I was taken with this little house-rule gem from the advancement subsystem:
'To be honest, we just adopted a system where if a PC dies the other PCs level up'
I really like this idea, either as addition/ alternative to XP counting and/or milestone advancement. It makes a narrative sense I find pleasing, as well as encouraging both risky and cautious play.
Claytonian says that the obvious PvP exploit hasn't been a problem in play.
Has anyone else used something similar, or are there published games that took this route?
HD vs. Damage.
Doing a little searching for whale and whaling related gaming material brought me to this post from 2016 (the blog has not been updated since 2018).
To quote the author:
for those new to Dungeons and Dragons terminology, “Hit Dice” – often abbreviated HD – are an abstract representation of toughness and fighting skill. when a Player or Monster is injured in Dungeons and Dragons, the attacker rolls an appropriate number of dice for damage – tougher fighters and graver injuries call for more dice or dice of larger size (a 12 sided dice, instead of a 6 sided dice, for example). The defender then rolls their Hit Dice, one at a time, until either they have totaled enough to survive the attack, or they have exhausted their pool of Hit Dice and are unable to fight on. [sic & my emphasis]
This is not a method I have encountered before, though I have been thinking about something not unlike it, on and off - see 'Logical Progression from Abstract hp?' (at the end of the post).
It's one of those things that I could have missed completely during rpg hiatus: was this ever a thing in core D&D (any edition)? Is it a house-rule or a mis-interpretation? Does it come from the assumptions of a different gateway system that D&D?
I like that levelling up method very much!
ReplyDelete(In the D&D board games that came out around 4th edition, you would level up if you rolled a natural 20 in combat. Quite fun, but completely unsustainable in an rpg.)
I don't recognise the hit dice/damage thing, but I remember reading an unarmed combat system somewhere in which opponents would roll their hit dice and whoever gets the highest total wins. I want to say it's in AD&D1, but I could be lying.
The unarmed combat system of which you speak is Old Gygaxian - it forms part of the mechanical basis for something I wrote earlier in the month: link
DeleteI read that post, and should have remembered it!
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