Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
NPC Ability Checks and Stunting or...Ogre Smash
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7004614" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p><strong>RE: what would a 5E non-combat mechanical analogy to combat look like:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p>In some cases, like the cliff-climbing example that's been given several times in this thread, the equivalent of damage/HP is distance climbed/distance to top.</p><p></p><p>In other cases, I've used a reputation mechanic. (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?484570-Reputation-and-social-achievements" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?484570-Reputation-and-social-achievements</a>) Instead of depleting HP, you spend reputation on specific maneuvers/plots. If players want to abstract a given plot instead of plotting it out in detail, I'd just make it a series of opposed checks between them and their social enemy to see who gets egg on their face (lose reputation) and who gets the social victory (lose less reputation, maybe even gain reputation, depending).</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, HP recovery in 5E is so easy that there's not much practical difference between a HP-attrition system and an "N of M successes required" system. Either way, you'll either fail or you will succeed, and shortly afterwards you'll be back at full health and resources. 5E does not, by default, impose success with a long-term cost. If you want long-term resource management you have to invent it anyway, as I did for reputation.</p><p></p><p>None of these are as mechanically complex as the Burning Wheel system you mention, but it sounds like HeroQuest is almost identical. You're just consuming resources in a multi-die-roll contest, and the fact that HeroQuest flips it around and builds points instead of depleting them is mathematically meaningless. If you wanted to simulate an arm-wrestling contest you could just use "inches" as the metric of success, and the winner is whoever first gets 12 inches/causes the other guy to lose 12 inches. (E.g. you have each party make a Str check against DC the-other-guy's-Strength, and they gain a number of inches equal to the margin of success, or nothing on a failure. The sum of movement in both directions is the net movement per time period, which for simplicity you could make the round.)</p><p></p><p><strong>Strong Brutus (Str 16) vs. Shrinky Ned (Str 12), if Ned has Athletics Expertise (prof x2 = +6) and Strong Brutus is an untrained 0th level laborer:</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Round 1:</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs. DC 12: gets a 23, earned 11 inches.</p><p>Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs. DC 16: gets a 17, earned 1 inch.</p><p><em>Shrinky Ned is only two inches from losing.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><strong>Round 2:</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs. DC 12: gets a 4, earns nothing.</p><p>Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs DC 16: gets a 10, earns nothing.</p><p><em>Shrinky Ned is still only two inches from losing, his arm quivering there, almost touching the table.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Round 3:</strong></p><p>Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs DC 12: gets a 23, earns 11 inches</p><p>Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs DC 16: gets a 16, earns nothing.</p><p><em>Strong Brutus earns another 11 inches and decisively slams Ned's arm down on the table!</em></p><p><em></em></p><p>In contrast, two strong creatures (like Brutus vs. an Ogre) would be likely to deadlock for longer before one of them makes progress, forcing the other down inches at a time. I honestly couldn't tell you if that's sound physics/physiology, but it certainly does fit my image of how an army-wrestling contest between two strong guys should play out, so the mechanic was designed to enable that scenario.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7004614, member: 6787650"] [B]RE: what would a 5E non-combat mechanical analogy to combat look like: [/B] In some cases, like the cliff-climbing example that's been given several times in this thread, the equivalent of damage/HP is distance climbed/distance to top. In other cases, I've used a reputation mechanic. ([url]http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?484570-Reputation-and-social-achievements[/url]) Instead of depleting HP, you spend reputation on specific maneuvers/plots. If players want to abstract a given plot instead of plotting it out in detail, I'd just make it a series of opposed checks between them and their social enemy to see who gets egg on their face (lose reputation) and who gets the social victory (lose less reputation, maybe even gain reputation, depending). Furthermore, HP recovery in 5E is so easy that there's not much practical difference between a HP-attrition system and an "N of M successes required" system. Either way, you'll either fail or you will succeed, and shortly afterwards you'll be back at full health and resources. 5E does not, by default, impose success with a long-term cost. If you want long-term resource management you have to invent it anyway, as I did for reputation. None of these are as mechanically complex as the Burning Wheel system you mention, but it sounds like HeroQuest is almost identical. You're just consuming resources in a multi-die-roll contest, and the fact that HeroQuest flips it around and builds points instead of depleting them is mathematically meaningless. If you wanted to simulate an arm-wrestling contest you could just use "inches" as the metric of success, and the winner is whoever first gets 12 inches/causes the other guy to lose 12 inches. (E.g. you have each party make a Str check against DC the-other-guy's-Strength, and they gain a number of inches equal to the margin of success, or nothing on a failure. The sum of movement in both directions is the net movement per time period, which for simplicity you could make the round.) [B]Strong Brutus (Str 16) vs. Shrinky Ned (Str 12), if Ned has Athletics Expertise (prof x2 = +6) and Strong Brutus is an untrained 0th level laborer: [/B] [B]Round 1: [/B]Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs. DC 12: gets a 23, earned 11 inches. Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs. DC 16: gets a 17, earned 1 inch. [I]Shrinky Ned is only two inches from losing. [/I] [B]Round 2: [/B]Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs. DC 12: gets a 4, earns nothing. Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs DC 16: gets a 10, earns nothing. [I]Shrinky Ned is still only two inches from losing, his arm quivering there, almost touching the table.[/I] [B]Round 3:[/B] Strong Brutus rolls d20+3 vs DC 12: gets a 23, earns 11 inches Shrinky Ned rolls d20+8 vs DC 16: gets a 16, earns nothing. [I]Strong Brutus earns another 11 inches and decisively slams Ned's arm down on the table! [/I] In contrast, two strong creatures (like Brutus vs. an Ogre) would be likely to deadlock for longer before one of them makes progress, forcing the other down inches at a time. I honestly couldn't tell you if that's sound physics/physiology, but it certainly does fit my image of how an army-wrestling contest between two strong guys should play out, so the mechanic was designed to enable that scenario. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
NPC Ability Checks and Stunting or...Ogre Smash
Top