Something I've Never Seen in an RPG System

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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In 4e, anyone can join their hacker (combines rigger and decker) buds in such activities due to Augmented Reality. And Matrix rules that don't make your head hurt *quite* so much. Plus, it has the side effect that the hackers tend to actually get up and run with the party rather than staying at home and messing with things from afar.
</offtopic>

Hey, isn't that against the edition war ban? No Shadowrun 3E vs 4E quarrels! (For the record: I haven't seen this part in practice yet, but the entire SR 4E changes seem promising from a playability point of view. )

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Unless my reading comprehension is completely shot, the d20 Lone Wolf already had something pretty close to #2.

Some effects/spells require Endurance to be spent. If a character is quick enough, they can try and counterspell. It requires them to expend the same amount of Endurance.

Endurance is what gets damaged in combat (i.e. it's Hit Points), as well as being the source of power for various special abilities and spells. With a bit of a twist, you could have some sort of contest of wills that taps into Endurance as well.

I've seen this sort of thing (and variations) a number of times over the years, so it doesn't actually seem that exceptional to me.

 

[GreatLemur]

There are two situations that come up in fantasy books, or in shows, but I've never seen them play out in RPGs.

1) The Contest of Power and Wills. This happens more in superhero shows, but you can find it enough when two wizards battle.

Enemy A and enemy B shoot some sort of force at one another. The two collide, and the two characters continue to shoot. A "Tug of War" commences, where enemy B pushes harder, making Enemy A lose ground, the joining of the beams get closer to him. Then Enemy A pushes back hard, shoving the beams back towards Enemy B.

This sounds like it'd be reasonably simple to hack into a d20-descended game. I'd run it something like a D&D 4e skill challenge, only with opposed rolls, and the ability to sacrifice some kind of resources (such as hit points) for bonuses to rolls. The point of contact between the two beams could even be marked on the map, moving closer to whichever combatant loses a round of the contest. You could throw other stuff in there--like stun effects, hit point damage, or what have you--for losing a round of the conflict by a particularly wide margin. (Staged effects, Mutants & Masterminds-style! We don't see enough of that kind of mechanic, in my opinion.)

Dang, I'm really liking how this sounds, actually. It's making me want to start messing around with my all-wizard campaign idea, again, and I do not have time for that.

 

[GSHamster]

I think 2nd Ed Psionics had something like this. IIRC, it was a bit of a pain, because you had the two characters involved doing something special, while the rest of the party either sat around, or took out the psionist physically.

 

[Najo]

The movie Big Trouble in Little China had a good cinematic battle of wills, FWIIW.

 

[arnon]

The Conan RPG (Mongose) has a Mind Battle mechanic. Ture20 also has a mentale grapple (or something like that), which is in essence mind battle.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

This sounds mechanically like a melee fight between two opponents in D&D that only those two can participate in. Think about it. Most D&D fights involve multiple combatants attacking an enemy. Pare it down to two. One PC, one opponent. Replace the flavor of weapons with the effort of wills. You attack, you do damage. Easy to represent mechanically with hit points or some variation thereupon. (Psionics anyone?) Maybe you erode each others will temporarily until the fight is over?

The issue is that you don't want to focus on this too often. Once in a while, it's a cool thing. If you let the PCs get stats for this sort of thing, they'll want to use them all the time.

On the Countering Existing Magic topic, I love stuff like that. I ran an adventure once where an NPC was immune to all varieties of magic. She had a series of magic mirrors behind her, each one giving off a colored beam of light. The party figured out that each mirror they broke removed an immunity to one type of magic (like transformation). That's one way to handle it.

Another variation is to give the parties a means (perhaps by putting a clue in an old text or something) of wearing down the magical barrier repeatedly. As noted, many RPGs do include variations on this. It's a cool thing. Making an evil artifact stop working by some means that makes the PCs squirm is always cool. I prefer to see it stop short of self-sacrifice a la the Taran Wanderer books, but incenting the PCs to shed their own blood is a good one.

I think that a couple of the leading RPGs don't focus on these two options for some good reasons, many of which are outlined in this thread already. Even in Champions, dealing STUN was a lot more effective than doing a Drain on an enemy, really.

 

[Umbran]

1) The Contest of Power and Wills. This happens more in superhero shows, but you can find it enough when two wizards battle.

Easy as pie in the FASERIP version of Marvel Super Heroes. Not a fantasy game, of course. Otherwise known as "who can spend more karma points on this check..."

 

[The Red Priest]

This happens all the time in Basic Roleplaying (aka Runequest*, Stormbringer/Elric, Call of Cthulhu). It's called a resistance roll. It's often how you attack and defend magically.

*non-Mongoose, of course.

 

[DarkKestral]

One suggestion would be to use a system that lets the players choose how determined they are by declaring what penalties they're willing to take. Essentially, the more penalties they're willing to take for success, the higher the result they're likely to get. I belive Dogs in the Vineyard has such a system.

How I'd run it is something like this:

To determine attack success and failure, roll 3dX where dX is a standard die type from d4 to d12. Whoever has a higher total on their dice wins the roll. Attacker wins, they do damage equal to one half of their roll to their opponent, rounded down. Defender wins, no damage is dealt beyond penalty damage. Ties go to the defender. The base roll uses d4, and you can increase your roll by one step by taking automatic damage where the first two steps require 1 damage per step, and the next two 2 damage per step. Attacker and defender both choose their dice type simultaneously.

So an example of play:

A attacks with a 3d4. He rolls a total of 9 points.
B defends against A, and decides to counter with 3d6. He takes 1 damage, but rolls a 10, so he takes no further damage this round.

B attacks, and decides to use 3d10, so he takes a total of 4 damage automatically. He rolls a total of 15.
A defends, and uses 3d6, so he takes 1 automatic damage, and rolls 10. He has lost, so he takes a total of 8 damage this round.

After this round, A has taken a total of 8 damage this round, and B has taken a total of 5 damage.

Next round:

A attacks with 3d4, taking no damage, and rolls 11.
B defends with 3d4 and rolls 11, and also takes no damage, as defenders win ties.

B attacks with 3d12, taking 6 damage, and rolls 5.
A defends with 3d8, taking 2 damage, and rolls 14, so he does not take any additional damage.

After this round, A has taken 10 damage total, and B has taken a total of 11.




The idea being that this way, you can get closer to ensuring you win against a weaker opponent, but you take more and more self-damage as a result, even though on average, you will only gain a few points of average and maximum damage assuming a weaker or equal opponent, thereby limiting the effect that the larger dice types have over the smaller, less risky types due to the effects of high dice rolls on single dice.

I haven't done the exact probability math to determine the exact amount each die size increase should cost, but I suspect it'd probably be relatively easy to work out and fairly similar. (I don't know how to work around the problem of the d12 though, other than to take it out.)