MORTAL COMBAT

Keep it fast, keep it dangerous.

Combat is a weird thing in tabletop RPG’s. It’s exciting and gets the blood pumping when your character’s life is on the line. 

This is the main combat page, there will be more pages on advanced combat after this one but i’m still adjusting them.

If you’ve played a multiple hour long session of DnD with no combat or random encounters you will know how much you can miss it. But it can also drag like nobody's business in the wrong situation, especially if you are part of a large party of players playing against some tough enemies. 

Seeing as Black Powder and Brimstone is a combat heavy swashbuckling adventure game I wanted combat to be fast, thrilling, inventive and a little scary.

I took a lot of advice from this fantastic video here. 

Now Mörk Borg and Cy-Borg are super well known for their fast and brutal combat. You roll to get better than a 12 to hit, and then roll your hit dice. Easy peasy. 

Same for being hit by an enemy, you just roll your agility and hope to get above a 12. This elegantly simple system is some of the most minimal mathematics possible, you play one session and you will know what’s going on from then on.

Another aspect of the Mörk Borg fighting system I love is that armor only makes you easier, but soaks the damage of a successful hit. The advantages of this system are two fold. Firstly it never felt right that armor stopped you getting hit. Like you have a high enough armor class and blows just never hit you. Armor soaking damage makes way more sense in a tactile way. The second advantage to the players having to beat a 12 on athletics to not get hit means you never have to hear the GM ask “what’s your AC again?” An unfortunate side effect of D&D’s overburdened rules. 

Now there is the argument that having the same number to beat each time is not as varied as enemies with different armor classes, an aspect of an enemy in the game  supposed to tell your players. But I would argue that as long as each creature behaves differently, and you don't just shove them in front of your players like a conveyor belt of enemies, and have a bit of theater it's all good and shouldn’t get stale. 

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Another combat aspect of combat from other RPG’s I didn’t want to properly include was being stunned, grappled, or knocked out for multiple rounds. 

Now being stunned and grappled can be used as a narrative device. Your players get snagged by shadowy figures and wake up in a dungeon or prison before they get shoved into the fighting pit for example. It’s a simple and dramatic way to move the story quickly from one scene or location to the next. If you want to see it over done then watch Steven Spielberg’s Tintin film where the titular hero gets bonked on the head and wakes up somewhere else so many times I was seriously worried he was going to end the film in a concussion ward. 

But being stunned or grappled for multiple rounds just kind of sucks. The player gets put in the corner, has one roll to not be stunned or grappled, and if they fail then it's another round of combat until they roll again, and god help you if you fail that roll. If you’re part of a large group that for whatever reason can’t help your character then you are stuck doing nothing potentially for hours. 

But enough winging! How do we get around this? Well for a start you can't be stunned for more than d4 rounds max. But for the grappled condition I decided to get a bit brutal. 

So your character gets grappled by a creature and you want to get out, you can roll strength and hope that's enough, or you can escape on your turn and take d4 damage. Seeing as you can potentially have a starting HP of 1 this is a big decision for any character. The thinking behind this is similar to a reckless attack, where you take a risk for your reward. Thematically the character is pushing their body to the limit and actually hurting themselves to get free like a wolf with its leg in a snare. 

This way the player has a choice of two options, both come with a risk and both exact a toll. But the flow of combat doesn’t stop, the tempo just changes. 

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Now the maths of the combat are as simple as I could make it, but to keep things interesting, as each weapon has its own special rule on a successful hit. Not a simple +2 on top of its damage die, but an actual effect that can change the flow of a battle. 

For example I want the normal straight sword to be a kind of dueling weapon where you can defend yourself as well as attack without using a shield. So 

There are also limitations that provide flavor and context to certain fights. For example zweihander weapons are extremely powerful, but take a -2 penalty to be used in tight cramped spaces such as a corridor. Now you started off swinging your mighty sword outside the mutant’s cave, chopping off heads and hewing bodies in two. But now you are in the cave tunnels, and like the film The 13th warrior, you have to fight brutal close combat in a suffocating environment that is a lot more concerning than when you were up above ground. 

This isn’t just an issue of balance, my idea is that it's an invitation for the players to think creatively. If the players think outside the box and use their weapons and tools in an interesting way they should be rewarded for their creative thinking. 

As for things like having a +1 weapon for example, I kind of find that a little video gamey. There are however special weapons made of Star Iron that you can learn about in the book. But to really get involved with how players can do big damage we will have to talk about the “Benny” token rule, in this game called “The Devil’s Luck”.  But I think I’m going to save that for later. 

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Now I’m sure some of you are thinking “what about the black powder weapons?” Well they are exceptionally dangerous, both for the target and potentially for the wielder.

So the martial use of black powder was a huge change in the world of warfare in our world, and the same can be said for the game. The setting is kind of late renaissance, but the actual weapons are a little more advanced, like early 1600ds almost Neoplatonic war levels of weapons technology. This means you can equip yourself with a rifle or a pistol as well as the weapon with just the best name The Blunderbuss!

So to make these devastating weapons that ignore all armor in a successful hit more impactful and chaotic every time you fire one you roll a misfire dice (d6) on a 2 the gun does nothing, the powder fails to spark. But on a 1 the gun backfires dealing the weirder d4 damage. That is of course if you are not playing a character archetype that specializes in firearms. If you are playing as one of these specialists you don't have to roll a misfire dice, however anyone can use a black powder weapon, just at their own risk…

One of the crunchiest rule wise aspects of combat in the game is mounted combat. I wont go into it here but it offers huge bonuses in terms of attacking, but is very difficult to get right, unless you pick the cavalry fighter feat when leveling up. That feat gives you a bonus to mounted combat that negates some of the more punishing rules. My thought with this is to represent how deadly cavalry combat is, but also how difficult and dangerous it is to master. 

As for the fights themselves I’m including some ideas and advice in the game masters section of the book, including things like avoiding empty room battles with aspects like verticality, elements of danger like fire or other environmental hazards, how you can use the shape of a room to your advantage ect. 

let me know in the comments your favorite and least favorite parts of tabletop combat. who knows I may even include suggestions in the game.

for the project itself, i’m alsmost done with production and art, once that is done I’m going to have it triple checked for spelling and then its time to start the hype for the kickstarter. If you’ve stuck with me so far I’m hoing i can count on your passion and support in making this project a reality.