Fast Encounters

[reefwood]

There have been at least a couple times in this campaign where encounters were summed up instead of played through. Usually with some sort of consequences. This is a world full of combat, and there are times when I want that to be felt but don't want to take the time to do it. Either because it would be too many combats, or there isn't enough time, or it seems like people need a break from rolling up another battle. I didn't have a very consistent system to handle this before, but now I've come up with some rules that I may try during the next mission.

I think most of my previous attempts had fairly static consequences, even if there was some variable component to it. For example, if you do decent on one day, you start the next day with half three-quarters hit point, but if you do poorly, you start at half hit points.

This new system will be much more a roll of the dice. Quite literally. The basic gist is that PCs roll to determine how many hit points are lost and spells are cast. Losses may be partially or entirely passed onto NPCs, if available. NPCs cannot pass on losses. There are also rules on what happens if you do not have spells to lose.

A fast encounter should never kill a PC, especially since losses can be passed onto NPCs, but an NPC could be killed. If the PCs are in dire straits, enough that even an easy encounter could be deadly, the encounter will be played out.

Finally, I don't know how often this will come up. There may be a few fast encounters in one session, and then none in the next mission. Maybe at some point, I will allow players to decide for themselves whether or not to play out certain encounters. Who knows? Also, I know this probably is not the most balanced system and may need some tweaking, but I think it'll get the job done fair enough and should be applicable to any character. And of course, if it doesn't work, it will be scrapped.

The rules will be in the next post.

[reefwood]

Fast Encounter Rules

I know this looks like a lot of rules, but it should flow pretty quickly. Also, this may not cover every possible scenario that may come up, so if something not covered here does come up, we'll just do what we always do...make it up as we go

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Target: PCs are the only ones who must roll but may pass losses onto NPCs under their care or command. Everyone affected makes two "loss rolls" - one for damage and one for spells cast.


HD: The size of the hit dice rolled will depend on the difficulty of the encounter. Additionally, to start on the safe side, the hit dice total for a single roll will not be more than half the level of the highest level PC. Nor can the rolls total more than 10. Though, all the PCs and NPCs use the same size HD.
Example: Bob the 8th-level Fighter will not have to roll more than 1d4 or 2d2 to determine a single loss, but everyone rolls the same dice, even Sandra the 7th-level Ranger and Toni the 4th-level Warrior. The limit of 10 means that no one can take damage equal to more than 100% of their hit points. This will make more sense after reading all the rules. Also, it would take a very difficult encounter and terrible luck for a PC to take 100% damage, but if at MAX hp going into the encounter, they would still be alive and standing at 0 hp and just need to heal up. But again, I can't imagine this ever happening.


Damage: The first roll made is to determine damage. Multiply the number rolled by ten. This is the percentage of your total hit points that have been taken as damage. Again, this is based on your TOTAL hp, not your current hp. Any amount may be deducted from the roll before damage is applied, but this same amount is added to the roll for spell level loss. This step must be completed before moving onto spell level loss.
Example: A roll of 2 applied entirely to damage is 2 x10 = 20%. The damage you take is equal to 20% of your total hp. If your total hp is 50, you take 10 damage regardless of whether you are at 50 hp or 25 hp or 0 hp. A roll of 2 that deducts 1 results in 10% damage (2 -1 = 1 x10 = 10%) and the 1 deducted will be added to the spell level roll. A roll of 2 that deducts 2 results in 0% damage and the 2 will be added to the spell level roll.


Spells Cast: The second roll is made to determine spells cast and is based on spell levels where a 1st-level spell counts as 1 level, a 2nd-level spell counts as 2 levels, and so on. The number rolled, plus the amount deducted from the first roll, add up to give you the total amount of spell levels spent. A roll of 3 is equal to 3 spell levels, which can be spent as three 1st-level spells (3 x1st = 3), or one 1st-level spell and one 2nd-level spell (1 + 2 = 3), or one 3rd-level spell (1 x3rd = 3). Any amount may be deducted from this total, but the same amount of NPCs become affected and must make their own sets of rolls. Any amount of spell levels that cannot be cast or passed onto NPCs is deducted instead as an additional damage.
Example: Betty the Bard deducted 2 from her damage roll and rolls 3 for spells cast, so this is a total of 5 spell levels which must be spent. She only has one 2nd-level spell left and one NPC grunt under her command. 2 spells levels are spent through the 2nd-level spell, 1 spell level is passed onto the NPC grunt who will now need to make his own set of "loss rolls," and this leaves 2 spell levels leftover which results in damage equal to 20% of Betty's total hit points. In this example, Betty did no better than if she hadn't deducted 2 from her damage roll, but if she only rolled a 1 for spells cast, that would have totaled 3 spell levels to spend, so the 2nd-level spell and 1 NPC would have covered that, and there would have been no additional damage.

Alternatively, if a PC does not cast spells, the size of the die roll is halved (i.e. 1d4 = 1d2, 1d6 = 1d3, etc), and the loss is spent through single-use magic items (potion, scroll, wand). A roll of 3 is equal to one 1st-level potion and one 2nd-level scroll (1 + 2 = 3), or one 3rd-level potion (1 x3rd = 3), or three 1st-level wand charges (3 x1st), etc. Any amount that cannot be applied is deducted as an additional damage. Also, if a roll is needed to activate the item, such as Use Magic Device, the activation roll must be made, and if the roll fails, the spell levels for that item are converted to damage, in addition to any normal consequences for failure.
Example: Betty's NPC is a Fighter who cannot cast spells, instead of rolling 1d4 for spells cast like Betty did, he only rolls 1d2 and gets a 2. He needs to spend 2 spell levels but only has one 1st-level potion, so that gets used up, and he takes additional damage equal to 10% of his total hit points.

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The fast and easy way to say all this is... you roll damage, decide if you want to pass any damage onto spells cast, apply damage, you roll spells cast, add anything passed on from damage, decide if you want to pass any spell levels onto NPCs, mark off spells, and repeat these 2 rolls for any NPCs affected, but the NPCs cannot pass on spell levels and absorb any spell levels leftover as damage.

[reefwood]

Fast Encounter - Examples

It's been a while since we've had a fast encounter, so this seems like a good time for an in-depth reminder with current characters. I will use Master Sergeant Shaw and his current grunts (PFC Hunter and PFC Vargas) to present a few examples. Different ways that the same fast encounter rolls can be divided.

The fast encounter rolls for this set of examples are 1d4 damage, 1d3 spells.

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Example #1

Brion rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 3. He decides to take the entire roll of 3 as damage. Multiply this number by 10 to determine the percentage of total hit points lost, so 30%. Brion has a total of 86 hp, and 30% of 86 equals 25.9, which rounds down to 25, so Brion takes 25 points of damage in this fast encounter, and this is regardless of his current hit point total.

Next, Brion rolls 1d3 for spell levels and gets a 2. This means he has 2 spell levels cast in this fast encounter. These can be cast as one 2nd-level spell OR two 1st-level spells.

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Example #2

Brion rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 3. He decides to deduct 1 from the roll of 3, which changes the damage roll to 2, so he only takes 20% damage (17 pts) in this fast encounter.

Next, Brion rolls 1d3 for spell levels and gets a 2. He adds the deduction from damage to this roll, so 2 spell levels +1 from damage = 3 spell levels cast. This means he has cast 3 spell levels in this fast encounter. These can be cast as one 3rd-level spell, OR one 2nd-level spell and one 1st-level spell, OR three 1st-level spells.

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Example #3

Brion rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 3. He decides to deduct 1 from the roll of 3, which changes the damage roll to 2, so he only takes 20% damage (17 pts) in this fast encounter.

Next, Brion rolls 1d3 for spell levels and gets a 2. He adds the deduction from damage to this roll, so 2 spell levels +1 from damage = 3 spell levels cast. Brion doesn't want to use that many spell levels, so he decides to deduct 2 from the spell level roll of 3, which changes the spell level roll to 1. This can be cast as one 1st-level spell.

The amount deducted from the "spell level" roll affects the same number of NPCs under Brion's control. Brion deducted 2, so both of his NPCs are affected and must make their own set of fast encounter rolls.

PFC Hunter rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 4. He decides to deduct 2 from the roll of 4 and takes the remaining 2 as 20% damage. Next, he rolls 1d3 for spell levels and gets a 1. He adds the deduction from damage to this roll, so 1 spell level +2 from damage = 3 spell levels cast. PFC Hunter decides to cast one 2nd-level spell and one 1st-level spell.

PFC Vargas rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 1. He decides to take the entire roll as damage, so that is 10% damage. Next, he would roll 1d3 for spells cast, but he cannot cast spells, so the die roll is halved to 1d1 and applies to single-use magic items instead. Therefore, PFC Vargas rolls 1d1 and gets a 1, and he uses this as one 1st-level potion.

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Example #4

Brion rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 3. He decides to deduct 1 from the roll of 3, which changes the damage roll to 2, so he only takes 20% damage (17 pts) in this fast encounter.

Next, Brion rolls 1d3 for spell levels cast and gets a 2. He adds the deduction from damage to this roll, so 2 spell levels +1 from damage = 3 spell levels cast. However, Brion doesn't have any spells left, so this roll must be passed onto NPCs or reabsorbed as damage. Brion only has 2 NPCs, so he deducts 2 from the spell roll of 3 and has to reabsorb the remaining 1 spell level as an additional 10% damage.

The amount deducted from the "spells cast" roll affects the same number of NPCs under Brion's control. Brion deducted 2, so both of his NPCs are affected and must make their own set of fast encounter rolls.

PFC Hunter rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 4. He decides to deduct 2 from the roll of 4 and takes the remaining 2 as 20% damage. Next, he rolls 1d3 for spells cast and gets a 3. He adds the amount deducted from damage, so 3 spell levels +2 from damage = 5 spell levels cast. However, PFC Hunter only has one 2nd-level spell and one 1st-level spell left, so 3 spell levels are used up by these spells, but the remaining 2 spell levels must be reabsorbed as an additional 20% damage.

PFC Vargas rolls 1d4 for damage and gets a 3. He decides to deduct 1 from the damage roll, so he takes the remaining 2 as 20% damage. Next, he would roll 1d3 for spells cast, but he cannot cast spells, so the die roll is halved to 1d1 and applies to single-use magic items instead. Therefore, PFC Vargas rolls 1d1 and gets a 1. He adds the deduction from damage to this roll, so 1 spell level +1 damage = 2 spell levels. These must be used with single-use magic items, so PFC Vargas uses two 1st-level potions.

[reefwood]

Fast Encounters - Mission Points

A fast encounter is worth points equal to the maximum value of its Hit Dice (HD). This is because I like to imagine a fast encounter as being similar to a Challenge Rating (CR) of the same value.

For example, a fast encounter for 1d3 hit points and 1d3 spell levels has a maximum value of 3 for hit points and 3 for spell levels, so it is always worth 6 points. This is regardless of the number of PCs or what they actually roll. Sometimes a party defeats a challenge with ease, and other times they get beat up, or some PCs do well but others don't. Hence the individual rolls to see how each one does.

Fast encounters will likely replace any normal encounters for which there will not be time at the table.

For example, if the second encounter of the night runs much longer than expected, the third encounter may be turned into a fast encounter (with a maximum value equal to its CR) to help speeds things along and get through the entire chapter. If this third encounter is a CR 11, the fast encounter could be 2d3 hit points and 1d4+1 spell levels.