Atomic Age – Dice Mechanic
This is the FIRST article in my series on the design aspects of my new RPG in-the-making... Atomic Age!
In thinking about what Atomic Age is going to be, one has to start at the thing that is the basis for the entire system: what dice to use. There are so many different systems out there that it's not as easy a decision as one would think, and it all depends on what you want to get out of the system.
Expectations
So, first of all, let's define what we want to get out of the system:
- Do not overcomplicate the math. I don't want a system that will involve adding eight different numbers before I can determine if the roll was successful or not. So, basically, I want something along the lines of [die roll]+[modifier] >= [target number] to determine success or failure.
- Make it flexible, so that the die rolls can be improved or hindered in a variety of ways.
- Make it easy for people to understand and relate to.
Let's get one thing out of the way: although I appreciate and acknowledge all the many d6-based systems out there, I want Atomic Age to be based on the d20. But there's more to it than that.
I also like to have a mechanism by which, the more of an advantage you have, the more dice you roll. Mainly because it makes the advantage feel more tangible, and players do like rolling dice after all. But I also don't want a system where the players end up dumping a Shadowrun-sized vat full of d6s on the table and then have to calculate up all the dice.
Probability Analysis
For all the probability analysis that will follow, I'm going to use AnyDice to generate charts and probability math.
As for what we will use as a basis for the math, let's assume that you're making an attack with a base +5 attack bonus against an AC of 15.
D&D 5E
The concept of "roll two d20s and pick the better one" is not a new thing... it's been around for some time, and there are several systems that use it. Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition gave the mechanic a name: "advantage" and "disadvantage".
In past editions, figuring out a roll involved adding a lot of numbers. Attribute bonus, proficiency bonus, attack modifiers, target DC modifiers, etc... The notion of "advantage" was reflected by simply adding more modifiers to your roll so that your end result is more likely to be higher than the target DC.
The 5th Edition mechanic of advantage/disadvantage simplified all that. Your modifiers generally don't ever change due to circumstances (there are some exceptions, like adjusting AC due to cover, but still), and if you're in an advantageous position, rather than add more numbers to your roll, you simply roll two dice. It's easy to resolve!
It has one drawback, however: "roll two dice" is the ONLY thing you can do. "Rules As Written" you can't roll three or four if your situation is even more advantageous. For example, consider these possible attack rolls:
- Attacking a target that you are flanking with an ally.
- Attacking a target that is paralyzed.
- Attacking a target that is unconscious.
In all those situations, "advantage" is pretty much all you get, although attacks #2 and #3 should clearly be significantly more advantageous in terms of your ability to hit. Attack #3 has the added benefit of being an automatic crit or "coup de grace", but the chance of hitting is the same; it's an advantage attack roll against the target's AC.
"Rules as Written" there is no mega-advantage mechanic. There is nothing documented where you would roll three d20s. Except for spell modifiers (we'll talk about that later), it's always two and only two d20s.
Probability
So take our probability example... A standard die roll of 1d20+5>=15 has a 55% chance of succeeding.
With advantage, that probability rockets up to almost 80%...
...and with disadvantage it plummets to 30%.
Disadvantage is brutal in 5E; when rolling disadvantage, the probability of success plummets dramatically.
And, as mentioned above, that's it. If you have a superior advantage, it won't be more than 80%. It is what it is, pretty much always.
Shadow of the Demon Lord
Rather than use the "advantage" mechanic of 5E, I looked to another system for inspiration... Shadow of the Demon Lord.
SotDL uses a system where you still roll a d20 and add modifiers, but you can also add a "boon" or a "bane". A "boon" is adding a d6 to the d20 result, while a "bane" is subtracting a d6 from the d20 result, and they cancel each other out. If you have more than one boon or bane, you roll multiple dice and choose the higher result.
Personally, I like this mechanic for a variety of reasons...
- It physically acknowledges a superior advantage. If you have a high advantage, you'll be rolling a fistful of d6s.
- Even with a fistful of d6s, the probability does not increase linearly.
- It allows the boon/bane dice to be modified using external abilities.
Probability
So the base probability remains the same... 55% success.
... but, instead of advantage, we add a "boon" d6. That increases the probability to a little over 72%, which is comparable to the 80% of advantage.
...and let's say you have two boons. It increases slightly, to 77%.
On the other side of the card, one bane isn't as painful as disadvantage; 37% chance instead of disadvantage's sharp drop to 30%.
...and two banes is still at 32%.
I kinda like this... The probabilities work out the same, albeit it might be a little more swingy, and the advantage or disadvantage is both visual and tangible.
How would this work? Well, take D&D spells like Bless for example... it normally adds a d4 to rolls. Using this mechanic, Bless will simply add one boon. You flanking someone? Add a boon. The target paralyzed? Add a boon. Flanking a paralyzed target? That's two boons total... make him pay!
13th Age
One mechanic I liked from 13th Age is the notion of increasing or decreasing a die roll one or more "steps". For example, if the base die of your attack is a d6 and a feat allows you to increase it one step, the base die becomes a d8.
The way I see it, this can be worked in to this system a little easier. For example, there may be a spell or class ability that will allow you to make your first boon die a d8 instead of a d6, or turn your first bane die into a d4 instead of a d6.
Conclusion
So taking all that into consideration, here's my plan for Atomic Age:
Bonus and Penalty Dice
I don't want to call them "boon" or "bane" for obvious reasons, so for now let's call them "bonus" and "penalty" dice. Standard die is a d6, and it may increase or decrease steps depending on abilities.
"Bonus" and "penalty" dice cancel each other out, and if rolling multiple dice you choose the highest result in the pool.
Attack Rolls
[1d20]+[ability score]+[proficiency modifier*] vs target AC
(NOTE: I'm debating keeping the notion of "proficiency"; more on that at another time)
Skill/Ability Checks
Untrained: [1d20]+[ability score] vs Target DC.
Trained: [1d20]+[ability score]+[trained bonus (TBD)] vs Target DC.
Modifiers
Have some sort of advantage (like Bless, for example)? Add one or more "bonus" d6s.
Have some sort of hindrance (like Bane, for example)? Add one or more "penalty" d6s.
Stuff To Be Determined
What I need to figure out still is what defines the modifier. I'd like to avoid the notion of a proficiency bonus or the linear escalation of numbers (which was absurd in 4E). In the best of all possible worlds, I'd like an average DC to always be DC 15 regardless of whether you're level 1 or level 10, although it would be more likely you'll succeed the higher level you are.
A New Beginning
It's been eight months since I post here... better now than never.
Over the past week I've been thinking a lot, specifically about Atomic Age.
In case you don't know, Atomic Age is my post-apocalyptic treatment of the Archmage Engine, which powers 13th Age. It came to be because I wanted Gamma World, and I wasn't allowed to create Gamma World content for fear that WotC would sue me into non-existence (they had threatened to do so already). But, during its development, it became something different... It's still post-apocalyptic, but not as zany and off the wall as Gamma World is known to be. I think of it as somewhat of a cross between Gamma World, Mad Max and what the future would be like in a Terminator film that didn't time travel.
But here's the thing... when you choose a system to develop your campaign setting around, most of the time you're stuck with the nuances of that system. The Archmage Engine is a great system, don't get me wrong, but there are some aspects of it that didn't feel right or I couldn't get to work with what I wanted to do. For example, how would mutations work in a 13th Age system? What about radiation poisoning? And there are some thing that came with it that I didn't want at all... like magic item "quirks", which are good by design in a fantasy game like 13th Age but just don't fit in my campaign setting.
Since I wrote most of Atomic Age, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition made its appearance and the landscape changed. As is the case with the Archmage Engine, I have some issued with 5E in that, although it does some things really well, other things not so much. For example, creating monsters and encounters in 13th Age is stupid easy... in 5E, not so much. And 5E doesn't even come close to the background/icon system that Archmage provides.
So I had a crazy idea... why bind myself to a single system? DMs do it all the time... cherry pick bits and pieces from multiple systems, campaign settings, and other source material and create a virtual Frankenstein's Monster of an RPG system to use in their homebrew campaigns. Only I want to take that Monster and publish it.
So I decided to try and write my own RPG system, picking and choosing the features that I want from multiple systems and melding it all into one amorphous blob that will power Atomic Age.
I'm insane, aren't I? Seriously, I have no idea how this is going to go... mainly because it's a daunting task and I'm not exactly sure I know what I'm doing in this regard.
But I can't do it alone.
So I've done something crazy: I've reworked my Patreon to be aimed specifically towards the creation of this new engine. And I'm going to do something even crazier: try to stick to a regular schedule in which I dicuss what this engine is going to be, which means this blog will hopefully see activity it hasn't seen in ages.
Will this become a reality? Who knows... but I have to try. A lot of work has been done for the Archmage Engine version of Atomic Age, but I don't see that ever being cobbled together in such a way that I will be happy with all aspects of it. Hopefully, this way I will actually be happy with it because it'll be wrapped around something I myself put together for the specific purpose of powering the campaign setting.
I hope you all will join me on this crazy ride. My Patreon is open to your support! If you sign up now, you will get my latest published adventure, Witness Protection, absolutely free!
Ever forward...
The 11th Skeleton
With the release of the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Starter Kit and Player's Handbook, I have decided to convert my long languishing adventure "The Coming Dark" to 5E. But, unlike other publishers who will remain nameless, I am not going to rush it out there, and no one's going to see a thing about it until (1) the licensing options are given, and (2) the Dungeon Master's Guide is released.
That being said, I have started to try and figure out how 5th Edition works in terms of creating adventures. In 4E, creating balanced encounters was rather simple because everything was equally balanced - given an equal level, five monsters were an even match to five PCs - but that's not exactly the case any more. Now it's more like 3.5E and earlier versions, where a monster's difficulty is reflected in an obscure "Challenge Level" which is extremely hard to calculate. I mean, after you stat up a monster how do you know what CR Challenge Level to give it?
That led me to wonder about balance in general, specifically how balance is determined. 5th Edition had an unprecedented amount of playtesters, so they had access to a variety of groups that could test and retest things in the hopes that they could determine what is balanced and what is unbalanced. But there's an inherent problem with that: not every group is the same, and not every player is the same. If an exploit exists, it will take a small handful of "high end" players to find it... so if something is taken advantage of by so few, is it really a balance issue? Can the game be unbalanced by something you're not even aware of?
So I thought about how some things could be experimented with... and the programmer in me realized that this is no different than load testing an application. When you do that, you don't run it a few times and see what happens. You run it a LOT of times and get the average results.
So I decided to create a simulator.
Objective
In the first scene of "The Coming Dark", the players are set upon by a large group of skeletons. But how many is enough? At what point does the encounter go from being a cake walk to a crushing defeat?
So I wrote a program to simulate 50,000 combats between two groups: the five pre-generated characters that are included in the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Starter Kit versus an indeterminate amount of skeletons. How many skeletons does it take before the players are likely to be on the losing end of the battle?
The small little program I wrote takes a few considerations:
- All the attacks are basic attacks. Every class uses its preferred melee attack except the rogue (which uses his shortbow) and the wizard (which uses the cantrip ray of frost).
- The noble fighter and cleric are the "preferred" enemies of the attacking skeletons. These are the front line defenders, and likely the ones that stand between the skeleton and the wizards. Only when they both fall is the rest of the party at risk.
- No high end magic of any kind. Needless to say this would quickly sway the encounter in the player's favor.
- No healing. No action surge, no cleric healing, no potions, etc... again, this is something the players have that the skeleton's don't. This also means that the players will not use any limited resources during the combat.
- No one gets advantage or disadvantage on any roll. For that reason, the rogue never deals additional sneak attack damage.
- A natural 20 deals double the normal damage. I know this isn't precise, but it's easier to code.
- All the damage is rolled; no averages are used.
- The skeletons have an AC of 12 and 6 hit points each. They have a shortsword as a weapon, which gives them a +3 to the attack roll and deals 1d6+1 damage on a hit.
- The PCs are the five defined in the starter kit: Noble Fighter (greatsword), Folk Hero Fighter (bow), Cleric (morningstar), Rogue (shortbow), and Wizard (ray of frost).
- Since he deals bludgeoning damage and the skeletons are vulnerable to it, the cleric deals an additional die of damage on a hit. Again, not precise... but easier to code.
Results
I ran 50,000 iterations of each combat, adjusting the number of skeletons from 6 to 12. The simulations yielded the following.
| # of Skeletons | PC Wins | PC Losses |
| 6 | 49258 | 742 |
| 7 | 47238 | 2762 |
| 8 | 42606 | 7394 |
| 9 | 35178 | 14822 |
| 10 | 26024 | 23976 |
| 11 | 17060 | 32940 |
| 12 | 9388 | 40612 |
So, in a nutshell, the 11th skeleton is quite the badass. Players could more or less handle ten of them, but when that 11th one steps in things go to crap pretty quickly.
So what did we learn from this exercise?
- It's very possible for PCs to trash a modest amount of low end minions without having to fire their big guns.
- The above doesn't use healing at all, which means that even if the PCs get dinged about a bit they are still able to recover. PCs can win an encounter with 8 skeletons over 80% of the time and immediately go into the next encounter.
- Dailies, spells, healing potions and other consumables - things that the monsters generally don't have - tip the scales considerably in favor of the PCs.
- If you walk into a room with 6 skeletons in it, you can probably dispatch them fairly easily. As glorious as it might be, you don't have to nuke the whole room.
Until more concrete guidelines for monster creation and encounter balancing come about, I'll keep using this simulator and try to get a feel for how things should be. Over time, I might improve the simulator more and more so that it's more representative of each PCs actions in an encounter. Who knows? Maybe this will end up being a full on AI framework?
I can't help but wonder if WotC does this sort of analysis. Like I said above, sure they have tens of thousands of playtesters but it's such a diverse group with so many different situations that it may be hard to quantify. Not to mention that, if you present a specific combat situation to two separate groups, 99% of the time you'll get two different approaches and two different outcomes.
Can't wait to try this out on goblins and kobolds...
*EDIT*
If you're curious, you can view the C# source code for the simulator HERE.
A Developer’s Hell
Gosh, it's been a while... To say my life has been hectic, or difficult, is somewhat of an understatement. So much so that I have had to effectively cancel my trip to GenCon this year because I see no way whatsoever that it can be logistically or financially possible. So, to those of you that are going, I will have no choice but to experience it vicariously through you.
Meanwhile, my little pet project - the Atomic Age RPG - has been languishing in something I can only describe as "development hell". Or maybe "launch a Kickstarter hell", if such a thing exists.
Here are my concerns with the project:
1) I have no art
Right now, at this very moment, I can probably launch a Kickstarter, distribute or sell the product... but I can't bring myself to do that. You see, right now at it stands it's nothing more than a text dump, an almost identical copy of the Archmage Engine SRD with some words and numbers changed. That does not make for a successful RPG by any means, and I feel that if I were to do that the product wouldn't last a day before disappearing into obscurity.
If I'm going to do this I'm going to do this right, which means that I need some sort of art. And there are many levels that need to be covered by art...
- I don't even have a LOGO yet
- The Kickstarter listing alone needs some sort of art
- The core book needs art. A LOT of art, quite frankly
- Everything else (stretch goals, backer rewards, etc...) needs art
Now I know a handful of artists I want to approach with this project, and I have even had business-like discussions with them, but with all of them there is a cost to get this off the ground. Maybe some will do it free, I don't know... I didn't ask and I don't want to ask. Like I said, I want to do this right: I do not want contributions or charity. I'm going to treat this like a business, which means I will pay my artists what the market bears.
That being said, although the cost of prettying up the core book and supplementals will be covered by the Kickstarter itself, the logo and Kickstart art will not and has to be paid first. The financial turmoils I've already mentioned make that rather difficult to do, and I can't bring myself to take the next steps without knowing - without a doubt - that I can afford my artists.
2) It hasn't been officially announced
I've mentioned the project in passing, and have even posted images of some of the content I've been working on, but it hasn't really been officially announced. There's a website, and a Facebook page, and a Twitter account... but few people know about it.
Why not? I don't have a logo, and for personal pride reasons I feel I can't start officially directing people to the social media venues without having a product identity.
So, until I can do that, they stay clouded in obscurity and amidst the whispers of a select few.
3) It hasn't been playtested
Because it hasn't been launched, few people know about it. Even fewer have actually seen it. Actually, I can only think of two people that have, and even those two have probably only glanced over it, figuring I wasn't quite serious about this whole thing because I haven't done everything I mention above.
For that reason, I have no idea if what I'm doing is "right" or "broken". I don't know if I properly grasp the concepts and game style people expect or look forward to, or if I've created any single element that needs radical changing before it gets abused all to hell.
Granted, the playtesting could theoretically happen during or after the Kickstarter, but as a long time game designer it's a serious concern for me. I've had issues before with games that weren't properly tested... Sure, this isn't a video game, but I feel it needs an equal level of analysis and testing before getting anywhere near production.
4) It hasn't been edited
I'll be honest: I'm a lousy writer. And if you're a writer reading this, I bet you can admit (to yourself, at least) that in the early stages of your writing career you were a lousy writer too. Heck, there are probably several dozen grammatical errors and misspellings in this post alone (yes, I know they're there... No, don't point them out).
If I want to do this right, the game has to be the best that it can be, and for that an editor is absolutely necessary. Yes, I know that the editor can do his job pretty much at any time before the product reaches the final stages, but that would mean that the early "alpha" or playtest releases might end up looking like they were written by a child who can't speak English. Once again, personal pride steps in... You can be the creator of the best RPG the world has ever seen, but if you give it to the world using text that looks like it was written by a monkey with a typewriter it doesn't matter how good the game is.
5) It's not done
In the video game industry, there was a time when if you asked pretty much any video game developer when they were going to release their product they would answer without hesitation "when it's done" (I guess we can thank 3D Realms for that one). But the thing is, if it were entirely up to me and my creative flow, what exactly defines "done"? Honestly, I could keep writing content until the core manual is 3,000 pages. Who decides "OK, you can stop now and publish this"?
Furthermore, as many authors will probably attest to, it's hard to be satisfied with what you've written. When you think you're done, you look at it and think "you know, I didn't like [X]... let me fix that"... And six months and 400 pages of rewrites later you keep thinking the same thing. It's very hard for a writer to stop themselves because, in their eyes, it's never done... it's never perfect... and there's always room to do something better.
Let's look at the classic example of someone taking forever to write something: George R. R. Martin. Do you honestly think he sits down and starts writing page one, then as soon as he writes the last word of page 1,200 sends it off to the publisher and never thinks about it again? Heck no. Let's be realistic here, there probably is at least one version of The Winds of Winter that is already written cover to cover... He's knows it's terrible, he's probably been writing and rewriting and rewording and fixing it for the last four years, and will probably keep doing that for another four years because that's the way he works. If he had someone that made him publish the books when they were ready, we'd have fifteen books in the series by now. They may not be as awesome as the five books we've seen (they'd probably suck, to be honest), but they'd be out there.
So unless you're George R. R. Freakin' Martin, eventually you have to put your foot down and say "OK, I might have spent five years rewriting this thing eighteen times, and I know it's probably the worst thing I've ever written, but I can't keep doing this until the end of time", send it to your publisher and hope that you're the only one that thinks it sucks.
I know a lot of things in my product are deficient, or "broken", or nothing more than a "// TODO" tag. It's personal pride again, preventing me from having anyone besides myself see how bad or lacking this product is. Every day I write something, even if it's a sentence or a paragraph or changing monster #135's Mental Defense stat... But I know that at some point I'm going to have to force myself to stop and let other people look at this mess.
Anyway, besides the personal issues I will not elaborate on here, I have a lot of things to do and a lot of battles with my own pride to overcome. This product will get done, sooner than later, and I just have to get my crap together to do it.
Until the Kickstarter launches, "ever forward..."
On The Road (Part 3)
Hopefully this will be the last of my series talking about the theory behind vehicle mechanics. If you're not up to speed, here is part one and part two.
Hardpoints
In the post-apocalyptic age, sometimes just having an average car isn't enough. You need to... how should we say... accessorize it.
Depending on the vehicle size, it will have one or more hardpoints, which are positions in the vehicle's frame where you can install something more. This may be as simple as an extra fuel tank or something more entertaining like an anti-tank cannon.
In the example we've been using, the Mad Max Interceptor Pursuit Special, Max had installed supplemental gas tanks that take up most of the rear of the vehicle. He instead could have installed some additional weaponry like a gun or RPG. These weapons do not necessarily take up the same space on the vehicle as the gas tanks do; the hardpoints not only reflect physical space but also reflect physical weight added to the vehicle. You try to drop a howitzer on to the back of the average car and you'd be lucky to drive it away from the shop.
With that in mind, we look at our three size categories:
- Small (motorcycle, moped, etc.): No hardpoints
- Medium (average car): One hardpoint
- Large (18-wheeler): One hardpoint on the cab, three hardpoints on the trailer.
Now what can we install?
- Extended Fuel Tank (1 hardpoint): We'll talk about fuel in a little bit
- Armor Plating (1 to 2 hardpoints, depending on vehicle size): Increases Physical Defense dramatically
- Booster (1 hardpoint): Anything from an advanced nitrous injection system to a full on rocket engine sticking out of the back. Something to make the car go faster.
- Basic Weapon (1 hardpoint): Machine gun, RPG, etc...
- Anti-Aircraft Gun (2 hardpoints): Designed specifically to aim upwards at aircraft
- Heavy Weapon (2 hardpoints): An anti-tank gun, railgun, missile battery, etc...
- Power Generator (1 hardpoint): Something that provides power to the vehicle, replacing the vehicles need for fossil fuels, such as a Mr. Fusion sticking out of the car's back.
- Wedge (1 or more hardpoints): Something to get other things out of your way or ram other cars with
So on and so forth.
Abstract the Rest
Besides weapon damages (which are separate from the core vehicle and mechanics needed to drive it), there isn't much else that needs to be explained in vivid detail. Everything else, as far as I can tell, is up to GM and player interpretation
Fuel
In a post-apocalyptic world, fuel is somewhat scarce. Although some of the oil fields and refineries that dotted the midwest are still in operation, they are all under control of either The Warlord or The Desert Prince (both icons).
The question arises of how to keep track of fuel. I don't feel it appropriate to nitpick this, detailing a vehicle's MPG and exactly how long it has until it runs empty. I much rather prefer that GMs realize that a vehicle needs some sort of fuel and what the average expected range of a full gas tank will be, but I don't want them to be tracking it down to the gallon like some people use to track encumbrance.
That being said, the only thing that i may mention in a vehicle entry is what type of fuel it uses. Some vehicles may use good ol' gasoline, while others might have a Mr. Fusion installed on a hard point. Managing when a vehicle could, or should, run out of gas is up to the GM.
Another option is to simply have fuel become an issue when the plot demands it. In other words, the only time you'll run out of fuel is when it's a good time in the story to do so. If you're in a close race, battling dozens of marauders as they try to run you off the road, running out of fuel now is a death sentence and may bring the story to an end right quick. Instead, simply wait until the immediate danger is other and the party got away before making the car gradually glide to a stop and sputter out.
I intend to take a similar approach with guns... In a future installment, we'll talk about what I like to call "dynamic ammo".
Speed, Movement and Position
Just like movement is abstracted in a normal encounter, movement in a car should be allowed to be as equally abstract. We all know how fast cars can go and how quickly they can get up to speed; I don't see the need to overburden the rules with acceleration rates and maximum speeds.
Unless you're dealing with faster cars that have supercharged engines or dealing with slower cars that have taken damage, every car should be expected to be moving at about the same rate. As far as firing arcs, it should not get more complex than "behind", "in front", "left" and "right".
Combat and Damage
Like anything else in the world, cars can be damaged. How that is interpreted is up to the GM.
The thing about cars is that it's very easy to disable them; a single shot to a tire can cripple even the best of cars, but that's not exactly a thrilling conclusion and worthy of our heroes.So if a vehicle is taken down to 0 hit points you have to make a judgment call as to what exactly that means... if you think it's OK that the car stalls out go for it, and if you think that it's best that the car instantly explode in a glorious movie-like explosion don't let me stop you. But the former is the sort of situation that happens to our heroes, while the latter is something that happens to the bad guys constantly.
Vehicular Mooks
To put this all in to perspective let's go back to our shining example: Max is driving hard in his Interceptor and being chased by two dozen marauders. Now, if you gave each one of those marauders and their vehicles the same statistics that Max and his Interceptor had, Max would surely get creamed. So let's treat each one of these marauding vehicles as either a mook or as a monster with really low hit points.
Thinking about it, vehicles as mooks works fantastically. It allows you to have that dramatic situation where dozens of inexperienced drivers in weak cars band together and chase down our beloved heroes. I mean, you can just imagine these foolish mooks bouncing off the side of our hero's transport, slamming into a ditch, exploding in to flames upon the slightest bullet hit, etc... Let's say that Max points his gun out the window and fires at a nearby marauder, getting a critical hit and causing more than enough damage to take out two or three of them. Story wise, that's as simple as describing how the target lost control of the vehicle and skid into the path of another marauder, taking them both out. Whenever any marauder gets taken out, they should go out in a glorious display of carnage and vehicular mayhem, just because they can!
Now let's say that Max isn't exactly lucky in the die rolling department and the marauders end up causing enough damage to drop his Interceptor to 0 hit points. Even though the Interceptor is 50% gas tank, how anti-climactic would it be to have the car burst into a column of flame and kill Max instantly? If every marauder hit the Interceptor with a critical hit, would you still allow Max to die in such an anti-heroic fashion? Heroes don't go out that way, at least not usually, so Max will continue to fight until the only thing left of his trusty Interceptor are the floor mats.
In a nutshell, our heroes should always be able to walk away from an accident one way or another, even if the mechanics and the die rolls don't exactly reflect that. If a PC takes physical damage that would cause them to go unconscious or die, sure, but if their vehicle takes more beating than it could handle it shouldn't outright kill a PC unless the plot allows it.
Enemies, however, are not so lucky. When their car hits 0 hit points, it will take them out in the most gloriously dramatic way possible.
Conclusion
So the section on vehicles looks like it'll be shaping up like this:
- A very basic section on the required aspects of a vehicle, as discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series.
- Options for installing things in vehicle hardpoints.
- A brief section on maintenance and repair of vehicles, which will cover both the Wheelman profession and engineers with vehicular proficiency (that's an optional class talent).
- A great deal of descriptive text trying to explain how to manage the mechanics of a high speed chase without detailing every single thing in terms of a fixed ruleset. Some things may require concise rules, but I'll try to avoid that.
- An example combat sequence: basicaly, describing a sequence similar to Mad Max fleeing from The Humungus and his crew.
Should be fun...
Anyway, that's it for vehicles for now. Soon I'll be talking about something else that will hopefully be just as entertaining.
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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