Heroic and Cinematic action...in D20?

[King_Stannis]

I have a D&D campaign that has been going strong for many a year. One of my friends likes to spice things up, which I welcome. He wants to do things like run up a wall, flip in the air, and land in front of some shmuck - basically shocking and aweing the guy.

I love that stuff, because it removes the drudgery and dullness that occasionally seeps into games ("you hit...you miss...you hit...you hit again"). But I am worried about it maybe getting out of hand, and would like a mechanic to be able to implement it.

One idea I had was to borrow a page from Ken Hood's martial arts system and create a new skill called "Technique". Then my player would have to study and practice a move or maneuver, make an intelligence roll to finally learn it, and then have a set DC to pull it off each time. It would also cost some experience points to learn each maneuver - possibly 300xp per move - higher for some.

What do you think? Anyone have any alternatives? Does this come up in your game at all?

 

[Pielorinho]

We rat-bastards have been talking about just this topic over in our public forum: Check the thread out.

There's a fair amount of chatter in the thread, but a couple of the posts, IMO, have some great ideas for handling this sort of thing.

Daniel

 

[King_Stannis]

Thanks Daniel! I'm on my way to checking that thread out.

 

[Dismas]

To keep things simple I would just use tumble checks (DC based on what action he wants to perform)

 

[The_Gneech]

See also "Power Fantasy" in Dragon #306 for rules about this very topic.

-The Gneech

 

[UniversalMonster]

I find that you can do pretty much everything you need with tumbling and good description technique.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Path of the Sword has some acrobatic combat maneuvers, and I'll be writing a section on cinematic, swashbuckling action for Sherwood d20. I've also heard that the Ultimate Game Designer's Handbook has some rules and advice for this sort of thing, but I haven't seen it.

 

[Morgenstern]

Heh... Adding a cinematic feel is one of the things action dice are for in Spycraft . Running up walls for that little bit of shock and suprise is a use of the Climb skill specifically spelled out in our Hong-Kong action supliment, The Pan-Asian Collective (along with about 80 feats covering various martial arts and melee weapon tricks). Things like skill uses tend to port pretty cleanly between D20 products...

 

[mrswing]

This ties in with something I've been thinking about a lot lately, namely : is it possible to change combat in such a way that it is maneuver-based rather than abstract? I'm thinking of the way separate maneuvers are handled in, say, HERO, but also of the combat systems of Flashing Blades (FGU) and the original Top Secret - which was very flawed (they forgot to include a to-hit roll for HTH) but very visual (characters picked an attack and a defense on a table which was then cross-referenced to see how the selected actions interacted, and the attacks themselves very clearly defined : head punch, uppercut, lunge, high kick etc.).
I was wondering whether it is possible to develop a workable d20 combat variant which makes fights less abstract and more detailed without getting bogged down under an avalanche of extra rules.
I suppose it would also mean changing a lot of feats into maneuvers. Since some feats are indeed nothing but maneuvers, whereas others are specific knacks, perks or even extra powers, this might make some design sense. It could perhaps also work to remove one of the criticisms I've read about in an online discussion (I think at Dragonsfoot.org) where one poster became livid describing how turning some actions into feats would make it impossible for characters who don't take the feat to even attempt them - and in a number of cases, I think he has a point.
Are there any published resources out there which already tackle this topic (Masters at Arms, maybe)? And any suggestions on how to achieve these goals?

 

[Pielorinho]

Some of the suggestions here are things that in the rat-bastard forum we were trying to get away from. Specifically, tumble shouldn't be the Uberskill before which all other skills bow down in homage; and combat tricks shouldn't be resolved with feats.

Tumble: yeah, it's a great skill, and you can resolve a lot of stuff with it. But it's already one of the most-often used skills in our game, and anyone who has it as a class skill tends to max it out anyway. Why not give some benefits to people who take other physical skills -- climb, jump, and balance, for example? Read the other thread for some specific ideas on this.

Feats: I really don't like the idea that you need a feat to do a special maneuver. First, that's not in keeping with the maneuvers already in the PhB, maneuvers anyone can try. Second, a player who has to spend a feat to gain a maneuver is likely to do the same thing all the time in combat, making it almost as boring as not having the maneuver at all. ("I'll use my backflip feat to jump over the orc and attack him from behind, which gives me a flanking bonus against him." "Gee, what a surprise -- that's exactly what you've done to the last fifty enemies you've fought.") Third, we want to encourage even people who don't get lots of feats to describe their combat actions cinematically.

The general rule of thumb we came up with there was that people who described a cinematic combat action would make an appropriate skill check; if they succeeded on their check, they'd gain a +2 circumstance bonus to hit. That's enough of a bonus to encourage folks to be creative and cinematic, but not so much of a bonus that it overpowers other factors in combat.

Daniel