Combined Encounter Checks & Tables Using d%
So, this one is going to be short. I pinkie promise! I was exploring a framework for a Pokemon campaign and thought it would be fun to make use of percentile dice (i.e. d% or d100) for most everything. So, how about percentile dice exploration checks? My first thought was to keep it simple and say there's a 20% chance of an encounter per turn, since that's a nice round number. It's slightly more frequent than the typical 1-in-6 chance, by about 25%, but that's not the worst. The nice thing was, I realized, you can combine the roll to check if an encounter is about to happen with the roll to see which encounter takes place. Imagine before that you made your encounter roll at a 20% chance per turn, and then you roll d20 on an encounter table to see what it is. Instead, you can roll at your 20% chance, but then you can use the same roll on that same d20 table. This means when you make your roll, you also know immediately what encounter it is. Isn't that handy! So, I w
Recursive reaction rolls are a great concept I'll try out, but I think the real gem here is your take on applying them to the overworld with haggling and other negotiations, as well as to the Underworld and attempting to recruit monsters.
ReplyDeleteOne feature of reactions in encounters that none of the old tables takes into account is the appearance and disposition of the PCs, the biggest variable of all. A sneaky group of three lightly-armored adventurers will elicit one reaction from a party of ten orcs; a heavily armed, noisy, light-bearing motley band of fighters, wizards, clerics, thieves, and hirelings intruding into a small space will be greeted with another reaction. Then there is other context: Are the monsters cornered? Protecting kin or food supply? Serving a greater power that pays them or punishes them? In need of help against another faction? Monster motivations and PC actions and context seem variable enough in complexity to let GM role-playing be the source of uncertainty in reactions, just as player's choices in role-playing are the main source of uncertainty for the whole game. There are rules with extremely well-developed reaction systems (thinking of GURPS, where reaction +/- are applied contextually), but even these don't cover context. What do you think?
ReplyDeletetotally agree that those factors are too often unconsidered! but i think rather than systematizing every single possible outcome, which would be overwhelming, those are the sorts of things that should be handled (mechanically) by a +/- 1 modifier or by taking the highest or lowest of three dice, like advantage or disadvantage in 5e -- if indeed random chance should remain a factor when, like you said, there's an extent to which a referee could rule justifiably that an NPC's reaction is totally certain! too often, system runs contrary to things being intuitive or making sense.
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