Tag Archives: Combat Options

Game Mechanisms, Rules Articles

Ganging Up

Leveraging force multipliers, or, how to use mobs of mooks to take out those pesky player characters.

OpenD6 uses the Related Skills rules to allow characters to assist each other in skill checks, or to allow complimentary skills to boost each other. The process involves several dice checks and a bit of math, which can add drama in solving a puzzle but which only slows down the action in a combat. Essentially, complimentary skills or additional participants act as a force multiplier by adding half of the result points from an action as a bonus or penalty to the total of the main skill roll.

In the flow of combat, fewer die rolls means faster action. To streamline the process, every friendly combatant participating in the melee adds +2 to the attack skill and +2 to passive defense. The attack and defense may be increased by no more than +10. Removing opponents immediately reduces the bonus to their gang. Ganging up on an opponent provides a powerful but controllable advantage.

For example:

Steve is PC with Brawling: 5D and Passive Defense: 10. Three goons attack him, each with Brawling: 3D and Passive Defense: 10. Because they are ganging up on Steve, they can distract the focus of his attacks and help defend each other from Steve’s attacks. Each goon acts with Brawling: 3D+4 and Passive Defense: 14. In a one-on-one fight, Steve would have had a decisive advantage – the goons would only strike him half the time (mean attack roll = 11) and Steve would strike them 98% of the time! With the gang up bonus, a goon’s attack roll is boosted to a 95% hit chance, and Steve’s is reduced to 85%.

Ganging up only provides a bonus when multiple actors in the same location or acting against the same target provides an advantage in position, leverage, or timing. Each actor must be able to materially enhance the performance of the other actors simply by their presence. Melee combat allows all three advantages to be leveraged by a gang. Ranged combat allows none of these advantages because the gang cannot affect an individual shooter’s skill.

Social interactions may or may not allow actors to gang up on a single target. Aggressive actions such as intimidation attempts are almost certainly suitable to gang bonuses. Subjects of persuasion attempts are less likely to respond favorable to groups ganging up on them in an argument.

Any action that requires another actor to make a skill check in order to provide a bonus is not suitable for a gang up bonus. Technical skills and movement skills may benefit from instruction by using the Related Skills rules, but are not suited to gang bonuses.

Game Mechanisms, Rules Articles, Space Bricks, The Space Bricks Project

Smash and Build

In a world made of bricks and studs, pretty much everything can be smashed, grabbed, and rebuilt. It’s basically the foundational principle of Brick reality! Though written expressly for Brick games, the rules for Smashing and Building are easily applied to any setting.

When a target takes enough Smash damage to break it, it explodes into pieces. Those pieces may then be recombined to form new objects. There are two steps in a proper smash and grab.

A target must be Smashed.

Smashing for bricks and studs is more than just damaging a target until it breaks. Smashing a target breaks it down into its component parts and ensures those parts can still be used to build things. No matter what tool is actually used against the target (blaster, wrench, Jawa…), the Smash skill is rolled in place of the damage die code. The difficulty to Smash a target is equal to the ordinary Damage Resistance total.

Smash damage is tracked separately from ordinary damage. When a target takes enough Smash damage to destroy it, it explodes into a shower of bricks and studs. Depending on the target and on the circumstances, it may provide a set number of bricks, a specialized piece, or a randomly determined number of bricks. Until a target takes enough Smash damage to destroy it, it will continue to function properly – though it may smoke, shoot off sparks and shake alarmingly.

The new device must be Built.

Even Master Builders need bricks with which to build. Building a new device is basically Smashing it in reverse. The Master Builder describes the device he wants to build and the GM sets a difficulty based the on the complexity of the device. The Build skill is then rolled against this difficulty.

Every result point yields 1 pip with which to build the new device and consumes 1 brick/stud from the stock. Pips are assigned to the new device in the regular manner and on a one-for-one basis. One pip may be spent for: 1 pip of a skill or attribute, 1 body point, 1 ability point, etc. When enough bricks have been spent to pay for all of the required attributes (plus body points, etc.), the device is complete and may be used.

No device may be used until it has been completely Built and paid for with bricks. After that, it may be used normally or Smashed and built into something completely new!

Building as a group check.

Any device may be Built using the regular rules for Related Skills. Each builder makes their skill roll independently, and the Master Builder then applies the result points and spends the bricks/pips. The final device has one stat block and is considered a single device.

When more than one character wants to act as the Master Builder on a device, they each make their Build rolls separately and apply their result points separately. When both characters are finished with their builds, the finished device is considered to consist of two separate but connected parts. Each part operates independently, but if either part is destroyed, the entire device comes apart.

Devices built under the direction of a single Master Builder are sturdier and more cohesive, but slower to complete. A multi-part device can be completed more quickly, but is more fragile and potentially contains duplicate systems.

Game Mechanisms, Rules Articles

Maneuvering for Position

One of the things I find most frustrating about most any RPG is that the action economy is most efficiently used in a series of attack and defense rolls. Most game systems don’t incentivize any other kind of exchange. Movement especially is given little attention and it’s difficult to force a character to move. When you do force a movement to disadvantageous terrain or gain advantageous terrain yourself, a simple move action by the opponent undoes the work.

When I think of how important footwork is in both cinematic and actual combat it seems like something very important is being overlooked. I have three scenes in mind:

Scenario 1) The Princess Bride: Inigo Montoya vs the Dread Pirate Westley. The fight roams up and down the ruins and the two fighters use their attacks to force each other to move and sacrifice position.

Scenario 2) Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne and Henri Ducard are training on the ice, and Bruce seemingly wins the fight. Ducard then tells him he has sacrificed his footing and knocks the ice out from under him.

Scenario 3) Star Trek TNG, S3 Ep11 – Worf and Danar trade a few punches and then toss each other into stacked crates and bins. Danar wins the fight by knocking a stack of crates on top of Worf.

The biggest determinant here is whether the game is being played on a tabletop map or in the virtual theater. In a map game, the position of the pieces makes it easy to determine if they are at risk or have an advantage based on the map features. In a theater game, this must be determined by the GM, either descriptively or with dice rolls.

In both cases, the three scenarios are attempting to achieve specific goals. In S1, the opponents are attempting to either gain a circumstantial modifier or force their opponent to take a multi-action penalty in order to navigate difficult terrain. In S2, Ducard forces Bruce to defend with his movement skill rather than his combat skill, allowing him to act against a lower defensive score. In S3, Danar leverages a weapon against Worf so that he can roll a larger damage pool.

In S1, one opponent is attempting to restrict the other’s movement options. In S2 and S3, one opponent is attempting to force the opponent to move into a specific position. In both cases, the combat skill can be used, but instead of attempting a strike for damage, it is used to attempt a Combat Option.

Combat Option: force/restrict movement.

This action takes the place of the attack and may use a combat skill, a movement skill, or some other skill. The defender’s defense skill is one that would normally be used against the attacking skill. For example: Melee Combat defends against Melee Combat, Dodge defends against Shooting, Acrobatics defends against Acrobatics, Willpower defends against Intimidation.

If the action is successful, the defending character has their movement either forced or restricted. In both cases, the defending character must move during their turn, though it must be as a free action (less than 50% of their Move). If the movement is forced, the direction or specific location of the defender’s movement is chosen by the attacker. If the movement is restricted, the attacker determines the direction or directions in which the defender may not move.

If the defender then chooses to take any other move action on their turn, it counts as a full action, subject to multi-action dice penalties.

It is generally easier to restrict movement than to force movement.

Using movement as a combat option in this way allows an attacker to control their opponent’s dice pool, inflict penalties, and gain bonuses. It also encourages dynamic movement around the skirmish area and creative use of the environment.