Project: Amulet

[GMMichael]

Other Encounters

Mimics

Not all treasure wards are actually treasure wards. Some, when a PC grabs one, are actually monsters that look like treasure. The wards around mimics block shots and monsters just like treasure wards. When a PC tries to grab one, it becomes an individual monster. A mimic has a 25% chance of actually being a treasure.
MIMICS – A chest overflowing with gold suddenly sprouts two arms with ugly claws, and a broad tail used for propulsion.
Health – 10
Melee – d8
Shot – 0
Speed – 2
Tactics – gains a +4 to its speed score on its first attack, for surprise. After that, a mimic uses its base speed score to attack either the PC who tried to collect it, or the next nearest PC. Mimics use tremors, from within the room, to detect PCs.

Generators

Some rooms contain a tall, grotesque shrine, seemingly made up of four doorways connected in a square. Inside this shrine is pure darkness, but looking into a generator, one sees a dim light, which shortly takes a creature’s shape, which then one realizes is actually a monster, moving through a doorway.
A generator has 20 health, and adds monsters to a swarm until that swarm’s size reaches 100%. Every 10 rounds, a generator dispenses another monster, and if this monster is part of a swarm, the swarm’s health increases by the full amount of that monster’s health. This rate can be increased for games using the Scaling option.

Wraiths

Sometimes characters will encounter a darkness in a room. In the corner of one’s eye, it looks almost like a cloaked farmer, reaping with a scythe. But looking directly at a wraith, one sees only wavering darkness, with a terrible, black core.

WRAITHS – a dark presence floats toward you, like death incarnate.
Health – 100*
Melee – d10
Shot – 0
Speed – 3
Tactics – attacks the nearest accessible PC. Like ghosts, wraiths are easy to fool and will turn to pursue threats that are behind murder holes. If wraiths have no targets in a room, they wander slowly until another PC becomes visible. *Magic potions will destroy a wraith if there is not another wraith closer to the potion used.

Locks

All doors and walldoors in a dungeon are locked. Locks typically have a magical nature to them, which seems reasonable once one notices that all keyholes are located directly in the middle of each door that they inhabit. Any lock can be defeated once by any magical key or magic ward, and once defeated, that door opens and ceases to exit.
Sometimes characters find themselves without enough keys to proceed further into the dungeon, or unwilling to use a key. Sometimes, this can be a clue to the party that they’re about to die, and had better collect any remaining treasure wards while they still can.
If the GM is using the full Modos RPG rules, then characters with lockpicks can open locks without using magical keys. Give the lock an amount of health equal to 2 times the dungeon level. One character may spend an action attempting to open the lock, and roll 1d4 to determine the progress, or damage, made toward opening the lock. Once the lock’s damage equals its health, the lock is defeated. Increase the damage die of the lockpicks for each skill point that the lockpicker has in Larceny.

Bosses

Monsters whisper amongst themselves, “do not wander onto this level. There’s a big one there!” While mini-bosses, challenging monsters that tend to be landmarks in a dungeon, are not included on the Encounter table, they can be introduced on special dungeon levels and under certain circumstances.
The easiest way to decide that a mini-boss is present is to drop one into your room when the room has only one other exit, which is a Stair, and the room is large enough for a mini-boss. Or Exits=2, Exit-Type=Stair, and Room Size=5.
The features of a mini-boss are described in Meta-Dungeon, Scaling.

Puzzles

In order to make encounters and dungeons more interesting, sometimes it’s necessary to include a puzzle in an encounter. Puzzles are situations that occur either through the random generation of the dungeon or at the GM’s discretion.

BANE OR BOON – Ale, poison, wards, traps, and mimics have a chance of being something else. A GM can simply describe poison as being “ale,” or traps as being “wards,” but when there is no GM, a PC will know that it’s actually poison or a trap, because that’s what he rolled on the dungeon generation table. To give PCs an incentive to investigate these things anyway, they have a 25% chance of being a boon instead of a bane. To discover this chance, the PC collecting the item rolls 1d4. On a result of 1, the content turns out to be its counterpart.
For example, Questnir is the mapper. He rolls 2d8 on Room Contents and gets 12; there’s a jug of Poison in the room. He’s feeling brave, while his fellow PCs are not. He picks up the jug (touches the ward), and rolls 1d4. If he rolls 1, he gains 5 health instead of losing 5 health, because the Poison is actually an Ale.

CASTLE GENERATORS – when characters peep through a murder hole, they might see a generator. Sometimes this generator has been placed directly against the murder hole, enabling it to generate a swarm both in the room in which it sits and in the room adjacent to the murder hole. More rarely, a generator sits entirely in one room, but sturdy walls stand around it, enabling monsters to leave the generator while providing protection to it.
To simulate the difficulty in damaging such a generator, these generators can only be hit with Shot attacks. Generators located somewhere in the adjacent room are 50% likely to be within range of Shot attacks. Generators placed adjacent to a murder hole are 100% likely to be in range, and act as the generator rolled for both rooms if each room gets a “generator” result during room generation. When the generator spawns a monster, that monster contributes to the swarm in the room occupied by PCs. A PC can stand in front of the murder hole, preventing monsters from spawning in his room, but he cannot use any bonuses on Speed contests while doing so.

EXIT NOW OR LATER – it is possible to roll more than one Stair on a dungeon level. This introduces the question: which Stair should PCs use? The simple answer, especially if using Scaling, is that PCs should continue to explore the current dungeon level if they want to find more treasure before things get more difficult. This choice postpones their 10 health bonus for reaching “fresh” air.
To spice things up, the GM can decide that when there are more than one Stair, one of them leads to a treasure level (see Dungeons – Creation – Special Levels). To determine if the PCs have chosen the lucky Stair, take the total number of Stairs found, add one if it’s an odd number, and then roll a die with that number of sides. On a result of 1, the characters chose the treasure level.

SAVE OR SHARE – characters can find several different resources in the dungeon, some of which are potions, food, and keys. These resources cannot be shared once they have been collected (the amulets store there in a magical space for characters). So the conundrum for characters is oftentimes: should I collect this item, or allow another character to do so? When a character’s inventory is full (i.e. he has 12 potions/keys), he cannot collect any more potions or keys without using some first, so it’s much easier to share. Sometimes a useful item, like a potion, stands amidst a swarm of monsters. Can a Wizard, who makes better use of a potion, reach it safely? Or is the more maneuverable Elf more likely to reach the potion safely?
The GM, or puppet master, has some control over these outcomes by choosing who gets attacked by the monsters or swarm. Make choices that represent the monsters, but also make things interesting for the PCs.

SHOOTING GALLERY – murder holes can frequently give PCs a chance to destroy swarms without the risk of being swarmed by them. A murder hole can be used in this way by one PC, and permits only Shot attacks. This is an either-or decision by the PC: standing at the murder hole allows him to safely attack a swarm, but it prevents him from finding Stairs and Food while he’s doing so.

TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM – some swarms focus their attacks on only one PC, and other swarms have no choice, when a PC stands in a choke point (see Combat – Maneuver). When this happens, the lone PC is likely to take a lot of damage, but it frees the other PCs to explore without the danger of being attacked by the swarm attacking their comrade. Until, of course, the PCs find another swarm.

TELEPORT OR DIE – teleporters allow PCs to quickly enter or leave certain rooms. Since teleporters are usually found somewhere in the middle of a room, a PC can use it to draw a swarm away from an entrance. When a PC teleports amongst a swarm, the swarm ceases to increase its Speed bonus gained against other PCs while it adjusts to the new threat, for a number of actions equal to its current bonus.
For example, a party of PCs enters a room chock-full of barbarians. The barbarians turn their ugly heads and swarm toward the PCs. The PCs stand and fight for three actions. The barbarians have gained +3 to their Speed scores for the three actions spent swarming. However, a teleporter stands amidst the barbarians. A sly PC has gone back to a previous teleporter, and teleports into the room during the fourth round. The barbarians attack the PC group this action, but another PC teleports amongst them, sewing confusion. On the next action, the barbarians do not gain a bonus against the PCs at an entrance, remaining at +3, but they gain +1 against the teleporting PC. The swarm gains +1 Speed against the teleporting PC for two more rounds (unless he teleports away), and on the next round, its bonus against any and all PCs increases to +4.

 

[GMMichael]

Combat Rules, rough draft!

Just dug this one up - let's dust it off a bit. The big idea here is that attacks are free, but a maneuver contest is required to see if you can avoid enemy clutches for the round...


Combat

The focus of a game of Amulet is frantic racing through a dungeon, destroying lots of monsters as characters go. This section discusses the fundamental combat rules you’ll need to get through the dungeon. Many of these rules represent slight variations of Modos RPG rules, while some are unique to Amulet. This section starts with the fundamental rules you’ll need to get fights going, then discusses the general shape of combat rounds. This is followed by a section on tactics – ways to make combat more interesting. Next are some ideas for running the game outside of combat, and the last section contains guidance for the GM and players taking GM roles.

Fundamentals

These are the actual game mechanics required to run combat in Amulet, used to form the larger concepts of combat rounds and tactics.

SCORES – Each character, including monsters and swarms, has some scores that represent or influence what he can do in the game.
Health – this is a measurement of a character’s distance from death. Swarms that lose health slowly see their constituent monsters drop. Monsters that run out of health disappear shortly after dying. Fallen heroes, however, can soon stand up, shake off their wounds, and keep fighting – if they have a guardian angel (extra token). Health is equivalent to Max Damage minus Physical Damage, from the core rules.
Armor – this is always stated as a take-half result of one’s armor protection. When a PC takes damage, he subtracts this amount from each die of damage, or multiplies armor by the number of attacks he takes, and subtracts the result from total damage. Monsters do not have armor because their toughness is represented by Health alone.
Magic – a composite score representing magic skill, metaphysical ability, and magic-related perks. Characters use the Magic score to create magical bursts of power upon quaffing a magic potion. When they do so, they roll the Magic die six times to find the total damage inflicted on monsters and swarms.
Melee – characters use this score when in direct contact with enemies. It represents the fight (melee) skill and the weapon’s damage die.
Shot – this is the damage done by the character’s weapon when he flings it from his hand. As soon as one shot lands, the character’s weapon is ready to be flung again. It represents the fight (missile) skill and the weapon’s damage die.
Speed – this score primarily represents a character’s ability to move effectively through a melee. In core rules terms, speed includes a character’s physical bonus, movement skill, and movement-related perks. The number given is the bonus that a character uses on movement contests.

CONTESTS – characters roll a contest whenever the outcome of an event is in doubt. Each side (the GM rolls for all non-players, even if a monster isn’t opposing the PC) rolls 1d20, adds its bonus, and the higher result finds more success. Amulet uses contests to determine when PCs come into contact with monsters (or get swarmed), to determine which PCs find secret doors, for escaping traps, and to see if PCs can outrun monsters, but many more uses are possible. Remember that a contest isn’t necessary if an action would be easy for a PC.

TAKE HALF – to save time, the GM should skip rolling a die and just use half of the highest result on the die whenever it makes sense. This goes for contests, damage, and any non-dungeon-generation rolls. Players are welcome to take half as well, but if the GM’s contest bonus is close (within one or two points) to a PC’s contest bonus, the GM should roll when a player takes half.

DAMAGE – this is an abstract concept, because it doesn’t directly measure the marks made on a surface; it serves mostly to reduce health. Damage is caused by melee attacks, shots, potions, the countdown, and other physical sources of damage included by the GM.

MOVEMENT – also called maneuver, this is not measured in feet or relative position. Movement is measured in units – the same way that room size is measured. Each successful movement action taken by a character moves him one unit, represented by the sides of grid boxes or their diagonals from corner to corner.

SWARMED – few fates in Amulet are worse than getting swarmed (surrounded). Most monster swarms move ceaselessly to surround the PCs. When a character is swarmed, he cannot maneuver – he must reduce the swarm’s health until it can no longer swarm him, or hope that his friends can do so. Swarmed characters cannot use Shot attacks; they must use melee only.

Combat Rounds

A round in Amulet gives each character a chance to act. The following are the features of combat rounds, and their variations from the core rules.

ACTIONS – a combat round includes one to three actions per character. If several different types of actions are taking place, one action per round allows the GM to carefully adjudicate all outcomes. But sometimes characters are just trying to damage a swarm, and the swarm is attacking back. For these types of rounds, the GM can combine three actions by each character, and allow three actions – three shots or melee attacks – at a time. PCs can roll all their dice at the same time, and the GM simply goes around the table, collecting everyone’s results.

INITIATIVE – Amulet allows all characters to act at the same time, and focuses attention on the actions of the heroes, so rolling initiative is not necessary. PCs determine the success of monster efforts by making movement contests against them. Think of monster presence in a room as a static feature, and the actions of the PCs determine their success.

ATTACKING – If aggressive monsters are in a room, a PC can attack them simply by rolling his melee die. This costs one action, and the die roll determines the damage that the monster takes. If he wants to use shots, he’ll need to succeed on a movement contest (adding his Speed bonus, but not requiring an action) against the monster’s movement contest for each round spent shooting. Defensive monsters, however, try to avoid melee. Shot attacks on them require only a Shot die roll to determine damage. To use Melee, a movement contest is required once per round. Using a potion takes one action, and does not require a contest.

DEFENDING – As in core rules, armor protection automatically applies against damage (see Armor). Sometimes characters want to avoid specific monsters, like Wraiths or Mini-Bosses, so a movement contest is required each round to stay out of that creature’s reach, if it chooses to attack a particular PC. A movement contest is also required to avoid monster shots. Success indicates that all shots were avoided, and failure indicates that all shot attacks targeting a particular PC succeeded.

MANEUVER – crossing rooms generally takes one action per unit crossed. If that room has monsters or a swarm in it, a character must make contests to determine whether each movement action succeeds. A successful character can choose to shoot (Shot) or attack (Melee) as he goes, but a character failing his movement contest faces certain consequences. If the opposing contest succeeds by 4 or more, the character has run directly into a monster or swarm, and must take one melee attack from a monster, or two melee attacks from a swarm. If the opposing contest succeeds by 8 or more, the PC has been swarmed, and must use his melee score or potions to fight his way out.

 

[GMMichael]

Forum help!

The combat effect I'm going for here is like this:

• GM or Mapper rolls up the room and its contents.
• All PCs announce their intent, and everyone rolls for one round.
• Damage gets dealt, and non-attack actions get resolved.
• All characters suffer Countdown damage every 10 actions.
• Next round begins.

To speed up combat, I want PCs to be able to make several attacks at one time, which means taking several actions at one time (and several rolls). But some actions need to be resolved with contests (d20 vs. d20 or a static score) - like PCs maneuvering through a swarm without getting swarmed (surrounded), or enemy wizards trying to avoid combat. If these sorts of things happen in the middle of a clump of actions, they can affect the outcomes of the remaining actions.

For example, a PC wants to race across a room to get to a teleporter. Depending on the size of the room, he'll need to make some maneuver contests against a swarm of ghosts to do it. If he fails his second maneuver contest miserably, he'll be swarmed, and unable to spend his third action maneuvering. If another PC rolled three attack dice, intending just to shoot for the round, then when his comrade gets stuck on action 2, he might wish that his third action (which he's already rolled) had been to use a potion instead.

How do I include the thrill (?) of a dice pool (multi-action) damage throw with an action-by-action resolution needed for maneuvering and/or tactical positioning?

TMI: Swarms of monsters are also currently slated to get a cumulative maneuver bonus on each action to simulate the condensation of the swarm.