Going to the House of Flying Daggers with DnD

[RangerWickett]

As lead writer of Four-Color to Fantasy, I'd say that you're actually probably better off buying "Elements of Magic - Revised." In it is a flexible magic system that you could use to represent all sorts of special powers without necessarily having to explain them as 'magic spells.' Dozens of hurled daggers could just be an Evoke spell.

Also, in the expansion book, "Lyceian Arcana," there is a class called the Anima that takes the magic-item creation rules in EOM and sticks them into a character class so you can have super-powers. And it's 3.5-compatible. Basically it was my way of updating FCTF, since in hindsight Mutants & Masterminds makes for a better superhero game.

If you want to stick with basic fantasy D&D, though, I'd be willing to send you a copy of Elements of Magic. If you like it and think it will work for you, you can buy it.

 

[Doctor Shaft]

Wow...

Well, Oriental Adventures, the oft ignored campaign, actually has a lot of creative uses for d20 skill checks. It's not quite Wuxia... but it's simple enough for you to take the numbers and simply adjust the DC's to make it more Wuxia like.

I'm gonna try my best to give you some ideas without just brazenly giving away all the OA material.

First: It allows a different use for the Sense Motive check. The idea is that a character can use it to "sense an opponents power or ability". This is very Wuxia style, and very internal. There are four different DC's to beat, the higher one always revealing more information.

Example: DC 15 Sense Motive check you learn a character's level. At DC 25... you can tell what your opponents attack bonuses, etc., with a primary weapon are (i.e. - you can look at them and understand the full-extent of their skills.)

Tumble Checks:
This stuff increases the DC, starting at 20, to resist fall-damage. You remove 20-feet from the falling distance, and increase the DC a desired set for each 20 feet you add on.

It has the standard DC 35 "get up from prone free action), and DC 40 you can do stuff like flip over people's heads, and then do a full-round attack at the same time. Nothing different from the other sources you listed... but still, it's there, and you can make adjustments to the DC and the total effects.

You can also increase the dodge bonus's to AC when fighting defensively or total defense with more ranks in tumble. OA really did take a step foward in adding a little more dynamic fighitng... it's up to you of course to decide how far that goes.

And, finally, the Ninja Spy prestige class offers, as a class ability, +10, and later +20 competency bonuses to balance, jump , and tumble skills. So yeah, there's nothing really wrong with giving level-based jumping abilities. However, you might want to consider giving different kinds of bonuses/level based on classes. It might get annoying if your "wizard" type fighter (or whatever you use) can do everything as well as the next guy, but also has abilities that might be considered superior, better, more diverse, etc.

Just a thought.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

While it's not exactly Wuxia-specific, the system I use is to let players do all kinds of crazy maneuvers by expending an action point. If they succeed, they get two action points to represent their increased heroism, if not downright badassitude. If they fail, they lose the point they spent and get nothing back, and they may face increased danger from an enemy doing a stunt against them.

This encourages crazy and creative stunts, while still imposing a clear success/failure mechanism.

 

[Caspian]

I'd say if you had to do it, use something like Mutants and Masterminds. The Class system can be a bit constrictive if you wanted to write up wuxia heroes.



Jonathan

 

[Anime Kidd]

Wasn't there a Dragon magazine that had an article about this? I believe it was the around the time OA was relased if Im not mistaken, #289?

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

monks with many feats.......

acrobatics/athlete/balance/access to fighter feasts/tumbling/leap of the clouds/duel weapon
the list would go on and on basically if ya had a 20th level Monk with 20 feats you could make him look just like the Martial art movies.........all in all I think its something to do with a guy in his thirties with a 3 foot long gray beard!

Sir Thorn Crest

So,
Saw the House of Flying Daggers and while the movie had its flaws I was fascinated, totally failed my WS, and found myself leaving with this over-arching question:

How can I do that with my D20 game? And I mean from every angle:
-World creation: mad martial artists runing around with both insane PC style heroes and vast hordes of horrifyingly stunt competent mooks. I mean these guys weren't even Ninjas, that movie totally made me reconsider the deadly weight of words like deputies, outlaws, and imperial soldiers. Finally, an oppressive government where you can tottally understand why they're on top.
-Stunts: how do I get my PCs to feel free to make totally character appropriate mad stunts and have my NPCs react similarly?
-Abilities: I want my PCs to have mad listen checks, flying capabilities, spinning daggers that go from every angle, and the choice to draw weapons from their own flesh in order to stab at their opponents one last time.
-Social Madness: I want PCs to feel free to develop mad crazy character specific loyalties and work with it. For me, the coolest thing about WuXia is that social realities are far stronger and more important than physical realities and this was the first Wuxia movie to really take that into the world of outlaws and the lower class. Or at least the first I've seen. How do I put together a dynamic where can't die for emotional reasons even though they should for physical ones and make it stick like a dagger in a heart rather than slide like a train on tracks?

 

[GMSkarka]

Well, if you can wait a few months, Adamant Entertainment is working on a PDF called The Dao of Wuxia which should be right up your alley.

We had originally planned this as a follow-up to SKULL & BONES (back before we sold that to Green Ronin), and had gotten written up in Polyhedron as one of their D20 news items...now it's off the back-burner again.

I'm currently looking for artists who can handle wuxia-style subject matter. If you know of anyone, have them drop us a line.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

As lead writer of Four-Color to Fantasy, I'd say that you're actually probably better off buying "Elements of Magic - Revised." In it is a flexible magic system that you could use to represent all sorts of special powers without necessarily having to explain them as 'magic spells.' Dozens of hurled daggers could just be an Evoke spell.

Also, in the expansion book, "Lyceian Arcana," there is a class called the Anima that takes the magic-item creation rules in EOM and sticks them into a character class so you can have super-powers. And it's 3.5-compatible. Basically it was my way of updating FCTF, since in hindsight Mutants & Masterminds makes for a better superhero game.

If you want to stick with basic fantasy D&D, though, I'd be willing to send you a copy of Elements of Magic. If you like it and think it will work for you, you can buy it.

I'd be willing to try it, but from what you're describing I don't see how it fits my goal of replacing magic items with wuxia techniques.

Mutants and Masterminds is nice, but this was the element of FCTF that I thought really stood out. If EoM captures that and improves upon it than that's what I'll go for.

I look forward to all the wuxia stuff coming down the pipe, but the thing I realized from watching House of Flying Daggers is that we already do things like this with DnD we just need to make it cooler.

I like the idea of bidding action points, it's not quite as mechanical and strategic as Book of Iron Might, but it also would involve a far smaller learning curve and no money. Thanks for the suggestion.