November 16, 2010. Since there’s nothing else going on today, nothing note worthy at all in any way shape or form, I figured I’d at least give the community something to talk about.
And I think I’ll talk about the evils of rolling dice.
Now, don’t get me wrong, nothing beats a handful of polyheardals going clitter clatter against one another in your hand, everyone at the table standing up because if you don’t hit and do better than average damage, someone beating a pencil against the table in a nervous anticipation, beads of sweat dripping from brows because everything. Depends. On. This. Roll. That a gamer’s dream, right. Or at least this gamer. There’s so much that goes into that scene, but it’s the sound of the dice as they’re being randomized in one’s cupped palm that perfectly sets the scene.
I DM two different groups via Maptools. In one we use a framework that does all the dice rolling for us, but the other is different. I DM in one room, all the players in a city 500 miles away gather at someone else’s house, hook up the laptop to the big screen, turn the video cameras on, and fire up Skype. The virtual table top is there just to move tokens around, nothing more. One of the main reasons for this set up is a very primal: we just like rolling dice.
But that group is made up of software engineers; they’re all at least familiar with math, some more so then others. With my 500 mile DM screen, they can still figure out a monster’s average damage after an attack or two, able to peg the median and then infer the type of dice and the modifier close enough that some of the mystery is removed. One of them DMed this group before me, so he actually knows some of the damage values.
Compendium access, peaking in the monster’s manual, there are plenty of ways for players to get this knowledge. It’s no longer a secret passed amongst the secret order of DMs everywhere. Not that this is a problem all the time, but even the strongest role player can have a bad day when they don’t see the horrific beast with fangs or the crawling abomination’s tentacle, but rather a set of damage dice and an AC number.
So sometimes, to mix things up, I borrow a power from what The Spoony Experiment dubs OMG TEH SATAN!! (Link NSFW for language. And OMG TEH SATAN!!) The bit that relates to this discussion starts about 4 minutes 30 seconds in. Those not versed in Final Fantasy lore, the big winged horror there is Diablos, one of the summonable creatures in Final Fantasy 8. The video demonstrates a tricky and often forgotten bit of magic used throughout the Final Fantasy game, gravity magic. Rather than do a fixed amount of damage based on magic power and the target’s defense, gravity magic simply does a faction of the user’s existing hit points. Generally, the three levels of gravity spells do 1/4 of your current hit points, 1/2 of your current hit points, and 3/4 of your current hit points, though there are plenty of exceptions to this. And for the observant amongst you, you’re starting to see where I’m going with that first fraction.
Let’s enter into some theory craft. In your 4e game, the wizard has 62 hit points, the fighter has 108. A 2d6+8 attack will average 15. That’s not going to phase the fighter much, but that’s a healing surge for the wizard. Now, if a grav attack hits both, say the entry level 1/4 type, the wizard loses 15, the fighter 27. Or a healing surge of each.
This is a great way to keep players honest and on their toes, and it saves you time from having to roll a bunch of damage dice, provided you know how to divide by 4. (And let’s be honest, that’s one of the easier things to divide by. 7, not so much…) The ideal way this is used on your players is the following:
- Area attack targets wizard and fighter, hits the wizard but misses the fighter. Wizard takes 15, and is now at 47.
- Fighter things he can take the evil hooded emperor even though he just shot black lightning from his fingers.
- Area attack targets wizard and fighter again. Wizard takes 11, and the fighter now takes 27. Wizard at 36, fighter at 91.
- The party does that “What the” look with their eyebrows. You know the one.
Another, slightly more lethal way of using the 1/2 and 3/4 versions of this spell fulfills another goal of mine. BBEG drops a chaos orb (He doesn’t tear it up into small pieces before doing so…) into the middle of the group, summons his lacky army, and runs away. The orb does 1/2 of your remaining hit points as damage, but will not kill you.
How ever, there are 20 minions arriving in various waves. Their 4 points of damage may eventually do you in. As a bonus, their 1 hit point renders them immune to the orb’s effects.
There are a few downsides to this, namely that if and when your party survives, they’re going to burn a lot of healing surges. On that end, the gravity spells are an odd bookend to my last post. If the group is going to take an extended rest all the time, why not at least make them earn it by burning through their surge reserve. Depending on the level of the magic, you could easily have them just loose 1, 2, or 3 surges instead of the actual hit points if you so warranted.
So on this day when Wizards of the Coast is not releasing a new product that is causing much ire and discussion in the community, give your damage dice a rest. Using OMG TEH SATAN!! and its proportional method of damage dealing can force a player out of his metagaming or give a dangerous element of your campaign the right threat level.
Mike Hasko .-._. PsychoPez
So what diceless ways of dealing damage have you used or been used in your campaigns? Does losing surges present an acceptable sense of threat?
That would definitely throw off my group, especially the previous DM who always looks at me with a “I know this monster doesn’t have that power in its stat block.” I’m not sure about it though. You’re putting all of the PCs on a level playing field in terms of ability to take hits, but not everything else.
Basically, in your example, you’ve made the defender much less effective but allowed the Wizard to basically remain the same at their respective roles.
It’s an interesting concept, but it might need a bit of tweaking. It’s a good thing there won’t be anything else to talk about today, especially in the early to mid afternoon, since Wizards isn’t releasing any sort of product today.
Re: Alio – but for some threats, shouldn’t there be a level playing field? The fighter maybe be trained to roll when a dragon slashes at it, know how to stand when standing up to a charging orc, know how to guard their mind against common psionic attacks. They’ve been there, seen it all.
But when Lavos/Kefka/Sephorioph/Dark Force/Sovereign/$INSERT_BIG_BAD_GUY_OF_YOUR_CAMPAIGN attacks them for the first time, it’s nothing they’ve ever seen before.
They are as other mortals, nothing more and nothing less.
I’m not saying this should be used that often, maybe once per tier at most. It’s just something to use when you need to make that statement, need to say, “It just hit the fan, and it’s real.” (Or, when you need to screw with the PCs and keep them in line.)
This is an interesting concept, though one I wouldn’t use very often.
My only reservation is this thought: Since it does less damage the more injured the PC happens to be, will it turn into a grind? Or am I just thinking of the implementation of this incorrectly?
Re: DM Sam – yes, powers using the “gravity” mechanic would do less and less damage as the PCs get more injured. However, the 2 brutes who deal normal damage, or the 10 minions that deal normal damage, or the BBEG’s aura that does 5/10/15 damage based on tier, or the traps that attack at the beginning of each PC’s turn and deal d8 damage on a hit, you get the picture.
The threat is not the thing that can remove 25%/50%/75% of your hit points, it’s just the thing that can remove your last one.
Cool stuff. It reminds me an ability from a video game. The ability is called Reaper’s Scythe, and would work well for an Elite or Solo monster because of the inherent increasing tension. Basically, it deals damage based on how many hit points you’re missing. The closer you are to death, the more powerful this necromancy spell gets. To convert this into a D&D power, you’d get something like:
Attack: +4 vs Fortitude
Hit: 1d4 necrotic damage and the target loses 1 hit point for every 2 hit points it was missing before the attack.
Very good post. Loved it, especially the timeliness of it all… ;)
I can’t believe you made a Chaos Confetti joke, you are a sick man.
The aside here is that it’s a brilliant way to absolutely terrify your players, when they are at full health they take damage rapidly and you are the only one who knows about the diminishing returns on that attack and that the players are in no danger whatsoever of dieing. There’s even the bonus epicness that the players all get to feel, if it goes on long they will find themselves taking out the baddie with only a tiny sliver of life left in their characters, high fives will be passed around and spilled soda will flow.
I had completely forgotten about the spoony experiment, now i’ll be stuck on that site for the next year….