Swashbuckling Cards

Hardhead

Explorer
Merak Spielman mentioned some Swashbuckling Cards that he uses in his campaign in another thread. I read them, and while I think some of them are too powerful, the concept is really cool (especially the ones that don't directly provide combat bonuses). You get cards at the begining of the adventure, and they're taken back if unused at the end. Here's some examples:

Soliloquy
Play: Anytime
Effect: All combat comes to a standstill, while you make a heroic speech. Take as long as you like.

Touche!
Play: Your turn
Effect: Deliver a stunning insult to your opponent. If the other players laugh the target is flatfooted for the duration of the following round.

If we only had a wheelbarrow...
Play: Anytime
Effect: One piece of needed mundane equipment just happens to be nearby.

Love, Love, Love...
Play: After an enemy has died or become disabled
Effect: Instead of dying the enemy repents and becomes an ally.

The entire list can be found here.

As I was reading, I had a couple ideas for new ones. I figured Merak might be interested in them, and that others might join in the fun of constructing special actions based off of movie quotes.

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Play: Any time.
Effect: You happen to know some obscure and trivial (yet relevant) fact.

If she weighs the same as a duck...
Play: Any time.
Effect: Using horribly contorted logic, you come to a illogical conclusion... that happens to be right.

Hair Pin
Play: Whenever you need to get through a locked door
Effect: By using improvised tools that by all rights shouldn't work, you jigger the door unlocked in one round.

Life is like a box of chocolates
Play: Whenever the group is trying to figure something elaborate out.
Effect: When trying to unravel the BBEG's master plan, a fiendishly complicated puzzel, or any other great mystery, a character or NPC with a low intelligence has a profound insight.

Vulcan Neck Pinch
Play: Outside of combat
Effect: You automatically knock out up to two NPCs who either don't see you, or don't expect immediate violence from you, and who the DM has not come up with names for.

Imbed Sword
Play: In combat
Effect: You imbed your weapon in your opponent. You are automatically disarmed, but your attack deals triple damage.

Evil always wins because good is dumb
Play: Whenever you're in combat with an important NPC, and you are loosing.
Effect: The BBEG stops in the middle of combat to mock and berate you. You may spend the round recouping (drinking potions, ect). If you attack the NPC, he acts next in the initiative order, as if he had delayed.

What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?
Play: Whenever you die.
Effect: You make a deal with Death/an agent of your diety/ect. In exchange for some service, you come back to life, at 1/4th yor total hit points.

Run for it!
Play: In combat
Effect: The rest of the group may flee, without anyone important chasing them, so long as you remain in combat. The bad guys attempt to capture you instead of killing you.

Piercethrough
Play: In combat.
Effect: If you hit the opponent you are attacking this round, you may also make an attack roll in the square beyond him.

Monstrous Regiment
Play: Outside of combat
Effect: Your are able to disguise yourself as a member of the opposite sex, no matter how unlikely such a trick would be. You gain a +20 to disguise and bluff checks to maintain this illusion. Against all odds, at least one NPC will find you to be extremely attractive.

So, that's the ones I came up with. Anyone else got some ideas? :)
 
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Wow! Publicity! I wish I could claim I invented the things to begin with, but originally they were downloaded from another poster, over a year ago. If anybody wants to check them out, I posted them as an attachment in one of my story hour posts (see link in sig).

I like your suggestions Hardhead, but there are already 160 cards in the deck! I'm not sure how many more I can add before it implodes and forms a mini-black hole.
 

I like your suggestions Hardhead, but there are already 160 cards in the deck! I'm not sure how many more I can add before it implodes and forms a mini-black hole.

Yeah, I was actually impressed by the number with so few duplications (and almost all of them represent some kind of cinematic staple). Still, if you were using them for a year or two, you'd start to see a lot of duplicatons, so I figured the more the merrier. :)

Have you had a lot of trouble with that, BTW? (And how long have you been using them?).
 

Hardhead said:
So, that's the ones I came up with. Anyone else got some ideas? :)

There's a large dog loose in the woods! When facing a group of enemies who are either camped, entrenched or besieging a position, you can find and lure a wandering monster of twice their CR and it will attack them.

Gasp... Gurgle.... When fighting a BBEG, you may attempt a bull rush to either knock him against a wall or over a convineintly placed cliff or battlement. If you suceed, he happens to run into or fall on a pointy object which runs him through and kills him. You only gain half XP because clearly he was so evil the universe itself took a hand in killing him.

Kahuna Burger
 

Hardhead said:
Have you had a lot of trouble with that, BTW? (And how long have you been using them?).
There haven't been any duplicates so far... That I know of. Keep in mind, though, that cards aren't necessarily played that often, since so many of them require a pretty specific situation to be of use. After the game, unplayed cards are handed back and re-shuffled. If somebody else got one that had already been dealt out, nobody would be the wiser.

I started the campaign several months ago. Unfortunately, not only have we been plagued with scheduling problems, but we're rotating between 3 (previously 4) different campaigns with 3 (previously 4) different DMs. If everything goes perfectly, we'll only play once every 3 weeks, and everything hasn't been going perfectly. We just finished Session 5 weekend before last (I need to update my story hour!).
 

Kahuna Burger said:
There's a large dog loose in the woods! When facing a group of enemies who are either camped, entrenched or besieging a position, you can find and lure a wandering monster of twice their CR and it will attack them.
There's always a bigger fish. Play when the party is being pursued by a monster of Large or Huge size. A monster of one size category larger than the pursuing monster charges out of nowhere and eats it, leaving the party unharmed.
 

How many do you hand out? I assume every player gets them? Is there any reason _not_ to use them? I really like the idea and would enjoy hearing more about it.
 

I hand out one per player per session. The most mind-bogglingly useful ones are very unlikely to have the specific situation to which they are applicable come up in play.

There is no penalty for using the cards. What the card says happens, for better or worse. For example, the Handy Rope card lets you move your character to any position on the battlefield as a free action. If being in that position causes them to be in the radius of a Cloudkill spell, well, it wasn't the card's fault.

I like them because they make me think on my feet. The campaign gets an element of uncertainty, and even I can't predict exactly what's going to happen next. The party recently hired a guide to take them to a remote location. He was a normal, innocuous NPC. Then somebody played the Your Feelings Betray You card and the NPC let slip an important piece of information - which, in order for him to have known, probably suggests he was more than just a normal, innocuous guide in the first place.

One of the other major effects of the cards is to add a lightheared element to an otherwise very grim campaign. Surface destroyed. Evil, Underdark PCs. Twisted conspiracies. You need something to lighten the mood.
 

Part of me wants to add requirements to these. Like Cha 13+ for "sparkly teeth" or knowledge 1+ for "obscure knowledge" or knowledge 0 and int 11- for "if she weighs the same as a duck...".
 

Goodbye, 007
Play: Whenever the bad guy is about to deliver the killing blow/spell/coup-de-grace.
Effect: Instead of real damage, subdual damage is dealt instead. The player will wake up, bound, in an elaborate death trap with no guards. There is a way to escape, involving the use of skills. All skills used to escape gain a +20 circumstance bonus.
 

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