ry's Drama Rules

These house rules go well with or without E6, and I recommend them.

I use these rules in my game to reduce lethality, make sure that the PCs are the stars of the show, and provide a stunt mechanic without slowing down play with new odds or modifiers. These rules assume that Players Roll All the Dice, which I recommend for all campaigns, Epic 6th level or not.

Conviction
Player Characters have a pool of Conviction, which functions like Action points. All PCs get 6 Conviction. Conviction is replenished whenever the party has a night of complete rest.

Conviction can be used in the following ways:


The Death Flag
The death flag is definitely designed for campaigns where characters can't come back from the dead. This lets those campaigns get rid of random lethality without eliminating death altogether as a possibility. This is done with a change in the "social contract" between players and GM. Whereas in standard D&D the player is at the mercy of the DM and the rules, with the death flag the player decides when the stakes of a conflict are life and death.

As an Immediate action, a player character can choose to raise his Death Flag and gain 6 Conviction instantly (even if this brings their total Conviction pool above 6).

When the death flag is raised, the normal rules for death apply. If the death flag has not been raised, then the character, if killed, is treated as reducing the player character to 1 hit point above death. The Death Flag can be lowered by spending 6 Conviction.


Raising the Stakes
At any time, a player can choose to make a 'raise' before rolling their d20s. The terms of the raise are up to the player, but the GM can either accept ("Call") or decide "no bet."

For example: "I attack the goblin, raise you a decapitation frightening his buddies against me falling prone." "Call."

"I attack the goblin, raise you 2d6 damage against 2d6 damage" "Call."

Modifiers will be left to the standard underlying rules, and raises based on odds that are too strong will simply be declined. So if the fighter has a 95% chance of hitting the goblin, the raise of "I do an extra 5d6 or take an extra 5d6 damage." would be declined. Instead, a raise could be : "OK, if I hit, I decapitate the goblin and his friends are frightened. If I miss, I'm on the ground grappled by 5 goblins and I take 2d6 damage."

This can be used also to bypass other less fun mechanics "OK, I walk up to the sorcerer and hit him with my dagger. I raise grappling him against getting knocked back 10 feet and taking 2d6 damage from cracking my head on the pillar."

Reading the Players
When a player spends Conviction, they're saying "Hey, this is important to me. I want my character to have been the one that pulled this off - or at least, put everything into trying."

When a player raises the Death flag, they're saying "This is worth staking my character's life on."

When a player Raises they're saying "Hey, I have an idea to make this more exciting. What do you think?"

Playtesting
I have used Conviction in many, many sessions, the Death Flag was only used in one-shots so far, and I have not had a chance to playtest Raises yet. I will be using all 3 in my new campaign.

I really like the conviction module ... but I have a question:

Does it tend to favor classes like the rogue where if you happen to be flanking an opponent and qualify for SA you will simply burn all 6 points for 3 consecutive SAs? IT sounds like a way that your villains can fall really fast if you aren't careful. Or do you simply use waves of undead and other un-Sneakable foe to counter this?

IME it tends to favor PCs in general and it does a nice job of balancing between PCs. The rogue that uses it all up to get those sneak attacks must REALLY want to kill that guy, because he'll proceed to watch his allies making saves they'd otherwise fail, or hitting targets they'd otherwise miss, or casting spells they'd otherwise not get a chance at. Actions and re-rolls (even if it's a cheap "in advance" re-roll) are precious commodities, and when you have Players Roll All The Dice, wizards can use them to beat saves and front-line men can use them to avoid getting hit.

If I sound too confident about Conviction it's only because I've had so much success with it

Cool beans, Rycanada.

I like your E6 model, too.

RC

I assume then that most of your campaigns have multiple encounters per-day as to make your PCs more ... judicious in their spending of conviction points?

Ry,

I'm having a block here...can you explain in a bit more detail how the Death Flag works?

Raven Crowking said:

Cool beans, Rycanada.

Click to expand...

Thanks RC! Oh, and do you have a separate feats chapter for lakelands? I was going to cook up a character to look at the rules from a build perspective. Also, if you wrote any of your own feats I'd love to see 'em for E6.

AnonymousOne said:

I assume then that most of your campaigns have multiple encounters per-day as to make your PCs more ... judicious in their spending of conviction points?

Click to expand...

Or I throw more monsters into those encounters. Or I add more situational problems (the monsters are uphill, your back is to a cliff, whatever).

rom90125 said:

Ry,

I'm having a block here...can you explain in a bit more detail how the Death Flag works?

Click to expand...

The death flag is definitely designed for campaigns where characters can't come back from the dead. I should have been clear about that.

Sort of like this:

Say I'm a player character. I get Conviction (awesome!) and I can kick ass six ways from Sunday. My death flag is, by default, down. This means I'm not going to get killed randomly. You reduce me to death and I somehow manage to hang on. Maybe I rolled off the cliff into the water, maybe I'm taken prisoner, whatever. But random stuff isn't going to kill me; I'm an action hero.

But sometimes something is very important; I'm up against the Lich that killed my father. I have to put my all into this. I'm putting EVERYTHING on the line. Damnit, I'm going to do this even if it kills me (at the game table, my player raises the death flag). I'm still an action hero, and I get 6 more Conviction points to spend. But now I'm an action hero on his death run. Somehow, be it the camera work or the lighting, you can tell that the stakes are higher now. Right now, anything that can kill me, kills me.

This is a big change in the "social contract" between players and GM. The player decides what's worth risking the character on, compared to standard lethal games where the player is always at the mercy of the GM.

I like these a lot, though I'm not certain I'd use them with D&D -- I think that they'd be a great addition to C&C or BFRPG though, as combat in both of those games can quickly devolve into a rather stale series of pass/fail checks. These rules, I think, would really 'beef up' combat in both systems.