Realms of Adventure Digital Events Combat System
In the interest of allowing for more diverse and interactive combat, we’ve updated our combat system for this digital event! The new system consists of a collaborative narration between you and the cast member running the mod alongside digital dice rolling to ensure a level of risk and excitement. It will also reward creative thinking in the form of making overcoming challenges easier and allowing for greater use of the abilities on your character sheet.
There are three states a player may be in:
- Healthy – This is the status an individual is in when they’re completely ready to go and have not taken damage. Generally, all players are assumed to begin here unless a mod calls for otherwise such as the result of traps or other effects earlier within the mod.. Anyone in Healthy or Injured status may participate in combat.
- Injured – This is the status an individual is in after a single roll has been failed in combat. They may still participate in combat, but if they fail again, they’ll become Incapacitated.
- Incapacitated – This is the status an individual falls into after failing combat rolls twice. They may not act in any way without assistance from other players. This is generally represented by unconsciousness.
Combat consists of up to 3 rounds, and may NOT extend further under any circumstances.
When your group is approached with a situation in-game that might require combat, and you inform the cast member running the mod that you’re intending on fighting, the cast member will inform you what the general assumed difficulty of the fight will be, especially whether or not it is winnable or a guaranteed loss. A Target Number must be rolled on a d100 during fighting rounds, and that number will generally be kept a secret. However in some cases it may be shared openly. It is safe to assume that the more difficult the encounter, the higher the Target number and vice versa. Most encounters will include a flat number to overcome, but this number can be modified in favor of the players by the application of creative use of skills and tactics. Combats are won by achieving a hidden number of Successful Rolls.
ANY player may take any of the following Four Actions available to them in combat encounters. Fight, Support, Tend Injuries, or Flee.
- Fight – This represents direct conflict with NPCs in the form of fighting with weapons or offensive spells. Players may describe their action in detail, and the target number may be lowered if the cast member running the module deems it appropriate. (Actions such as using powerful skills or specific spells may lower the difficulty, or using spells or skills a target may have a known weakness to).
- Support – This represents the casting of beneficial spells and abilities on allies or casting detrimental non-damaging spells on enemies. This automatically improves the chances of other allies to reach the target number. Up to two allies may benefit from this. If there are only two players left in the round, the same player may benefit from Support twice. This may be used in conjunction with Tend Injuries or Flee but if you choose to do so, you may only Support a single ally. The bonus gained from the Support action does NOT carry between rounds.
- Tend Injuries – This represents assisting allies in returning to consciousness via any variety of small negligible consumables or healing spells. This raises the status of up to 2 players from Injured to Healthy or from Incapacitated to Injured. This may be used on yourself if you are Injured. This may be used in conjunction with Support or Flee, but if you choose to do so, you may only Tend Injuries on a single ally. An individual who is brought back to Injured from Incapaciated may use their actions as normal within the current round.
- Flee – This represents attempting to remove oneself entirely from combat and removing oneself from the threats within. This is NOT an action that will always be available. This removes an individual from the encounter entirely (but not from the mod necessarily). This may be used in conjunction with Tend Injuries or Support, but it restricts the targets of those abilities to a single person.
Actions will always be resolved in order of Tend Injuries –> Support –> Flee –> Fight, but all are considered to be happening “at the same time” in regards to the world.
Round 1: Players who are either Injured or Healthy describe their next actions, either to Fight, Tend Injuries, Support, or Flee.
All players using the Fight action roll against the target number. Any players that Fight and did not reach their target numbers become Injured, and those that met the target number remain Healthy. Anyone using the Support or Tend Injuries action remains in the same state as long as at least one player is Fighting. Otherwise, they become Injured if Healthy or Incapacitated if Injured. The total amount of successes will be noted by the individual running the combat. If that target number is met in the first round, the combat ends in victory for the players.
Round 2: This runs similar to round 1, where players who are Injured or Healthy declare their actions and describe in particular what their characters are doing. The actions resolve as noted above, and if at any point the total number of successes is reached by the group in Fighting, the encounter is resolved. As long as there are individuals in the Healthy or Injured state at the end of this combat, it continues to round 3.
Round 3: This is the final round of combat, and runs as all of the others with a few exceptions:
If Flee has been chosen either by itself or as part of Support or Tend Injuries, and Flee is allowed in the encounter (Players will be informed if it is not), that individual survives. What that means will be determined by the module and individual running the encounter.
If the needed number of Successes are NOT rolled by those who have chosen to Fight, all left within the combat will be considered to be Incapacitated (bleeding out) regardless of state at the start of the round. At this point a player must inform the individual running the encounter whether or not they have any special abilities such as Hard to Kill that might let them survive such a state. Abilities that allow an individual to survive this state are not only limited to Hard to Kill, but ARE limited to only being used once over the course of the weekend. (One effect that allows one to survive this state per character for the entire weekend, regardless of source or amount available to the character.) Individuals that die during the course of these encounters will visit Negoro as normal. Any survivors will be told what their fates and options are on a case-by-case basis by the individual running the encounter.
Things to remember:
- The Target number that must be rolled for is generally kept secret (on some occasions, an encounter runner may deem it appropriate to share this number), as is the number of Successes required in an encounter to emerge victorious. However, it is safe to assume that generally, the number of successes starts at or around the amount of players within the combat itself and can be adjusted accordingly. Remember, all rolls are made on d100s.
- Combat may NEVER go longer than 3 rounds, for balance purposes, so strategic use of abilities and actions is strongly encouraged. Creativity wins battles. Turtling will almost guarantee a loss all around.
- The third round is the most dangerous. While even a single individual may begin a chain of tending that might allow most of the party to escape, or perform a daring last stand, remember, everyone still present at the end of the round if it has not been won has a very good chance of dying.
- Target numbers for Fighting attempts and amounts of Successes can be raised or lowered depending on circumstances. If you stepped on a trap earlier in the dungeon, it might mean you’re Injured walking into the next encounter, or that the enemy you’re fighting has an advantage over you, and its Target number is higher because of it. Alternatively, a trap you set for the enemy might put them on their heels, giving you an edge in combat and lowering the Target or Successes needed.
- PvP is still not allowed within the current system, and any disputes during mods arising from disagreements on how to proceed will be handled by majority vote within the group, for ease of simplifying.
- Tend Injuries may be used even if you do not have access to healing Spells or healing consumables normally. This system assumes your character would have easy access to those things to use in an encounter you might find yourself in.
- Support may be used even if you do not specifically have buffing or debuffing abilities, as it represents an individual devoting their efforts to ensuring their allies success in combat, and can be something as simple as distracting an enemy so an ally can strike easier.
- The individual running the encounter has the final say in all modifiers and outcomes of the encounter. Since individual outcomes may vary, and all situations are different, skills and abilities may not have a universal value that they apply during things like Support or Fight actions across mods being run by different individuals, or even the same individuals.