Samurai house rule: Swift Stroke

[Jandar]

Hello guys.

Only yesterday I was watching a couple of episodes of the old Lone Wolf and Cub (Kozure Okami) TV series.

Lone Wolf and Cub actually doesn't exist as an anime (to the best of my knowledge), but it is a very popular manga and has been turned into live-action motion pictures and TV series several times.

It is one of those jidai-geki samurai series where a lone samurai avenger can easily kill three, four and more opponents with one stroke. This made me think of several things relating to the OVA combat rules:

If somebody builds a character like Itto Ogami from Lone Wolf and Cub, or someone anywhere near that level of skill in swordsmanship, provided that such a character is OK for the setting/game, should it not be possible for this guy to execute a super sword swing at a group of opponents ... and succeed? Succeed fast, I mean? Fight in the same way as they fight in the movies?
Should it not be possible to make genre-appropriate strikes, such as the samurai hero whirling his katana around for one or two seconds, and immediately afterward you see half a dozen bandits fall to the ground in dramatically contorted poses?

I say: Yes, sure. Testing the usual OVA combat rules, I found out that while a character with Combat Skill +5 will usually outdo somebody with Combat Skill +1, for example, with relative ease, it is sometimes still necessary to go through several rounds of combat before knowing who really gained the upper hand. A standard character with 40 Health and 40 Endurance can hardly lose all of his points in one maneuver. He might lose all his 40 Health in one action, but with Endurance still left as a possible substitute, he can continue for another two, three rounds. Not that this is entirely necessary, though. With Combat Skill +1 going against a Combat Skill +5, it is usually clear who'll come out on top very soon, and even if the +1 character scores a lucky dice roll result, he might only be postponing the inevitable.

One thing I have come to resent in most RPG systems is when the flow of a story gets interrupted by a 2-hour long combat sequence, where even with simple maneuvers, combat is broken up into endless exchanges of attacks and parries, then accounting for damage, always going back and forth before one side finally succumbs. With unimportant opponents, it also gets silly to keep rolling and rolling until all their hit points / health / body points etc. are gone. This has led to many odd situations in my games (non-OVA, I mean) where my players knew that an opponent was down to two or three hits or something like that, but was still fighting back. The luck of the dice prevented my players from getting through armor or scoring any kind of criticals. This can be fun sometimes, but in other cases it just prolonged combat where the players had grown tired of it.

I would thus like to suggest the following house rule, at least for jidai-geki or chanbara type games:

The Great Ronin Adventurer (our Itto Ogami character) is surrounded by 5 rugged bandits brandishing swords. The Great Ronin Adventurer has +5 in Combat Skill, +3 from Quick, and just for good measure, he's also throwing in +2 drama dice, for an attack total of 12 dice. His swords is a Weapon with +3 to damage. The bandits each have their starting 2 dice and +1 Combat Skill.
Since the Great Ronin is going to attack all 5 bandits at once, I'll have to subtract one die for each bandit after the first. This reduces my number of dice from 12 to 8 dice. Still a good starting point against the scoundrels.
Since the initiative will be on my side (the hero's side), I can roll my attack dice. Suppose I get 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, and 6. I got an 18.
The bandits roll to defend normally, and get totals of 3, 4, 5, 5, and 8, respectively.
Since the hero's 18 beats all of the five opponents' rolls, I can assume that he's done sword damage to each of them.

Under the regular rules, I could now calculate exactly how many points of Health each of the bandits would lose: e.g. one would lose 60 points (15 x 4), another one 56, a third one 52, and so on.

While this is not officially enough to get instant "kills" in OVA, it's clear enough that the bandits don't stand a chance. In real life they would be dead, maimed, or too much in pain to go on.

If I count the 5 bandits as Flunkies, they'd get even fewer Health and Endurance to begin with.

I call this my "Swift Stroke" house rule. With a result like the one above, as a GM, I would say that the hero has quickly cut all 5 bandits down. No further rolls are necessary. Let's go to the next scene.

Do you like that?

[JuddG]

...should it not be possible for this guy to execute a super sword swing at a group of opponents ... and succeed? Succeed fast, I mean? Fight in the same way as they fight in the movies?

I think this is easily done by making a Power Move sword strike technique with the "Area Effect" perk. By doing so, the samurai becomes a death blossom ("a weapon of last resort...." heh) that is the deadly center of a massive attack with his swordsmanship.

Goemon from the Lupin Gang would also be an example of this. Also, the samurai from "7 Samurai" (the movies and the anime) would be good candidates for such a technique. A few extra perks spent in damage boosting or some-such would give them nuances as well, to let them be crushing mook-killers.

Just my two. I agree that long combats drag a game down, provided there is no drama (and mook fights are usually a bit low on drama because they tend to be ways of showing how great the hero/villain is at fighting).

[TheBouncyPherret]

The Great Ronin Adventurer (our Itto Ogami character) is surrounded by 5 rugged bandits brandishing swords. The Great Ronin Adventurer has +5 in Combat Skill, +3 from Quick, and just for good measure, he's also throwing in +2 drama dice, for an attack total of 12 dice. His swords is a Weapon with +3 to damage. The bandits each have their starting 2 dice and +1 Combat Skill.
Since the Great Ronin is going to attack all 5 bandits at once, I'll have to subtract one die for each bandit after the first. This reduces my number of dice from 12 to 8 dice. Still a good starting point against the scoundrels.
Since the initiative will be on my side (the hero's side), I can roll my attack dice. Suppose I get 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, and 6. I got an 18.

Not quite...you subtract 1 for EVERY action you do, so 5 attacks would be -5, not -4.

The bandits roll to defend normally, and get totals of 3, 4, 5, 5, and 8, respectively.
Since the hero's 18 beats all of the five opponents' rolls, I can assume that he's done sword damage to each of them.

Under the regular rules, I could now calculate exactly how many points of Health each of the bandits would lose: e.g. one would lose 60 points (15 x 4), another one 56, a third one 52, and so on.

While this is not officially enough to get instant "kills" in OVA, it's clear enough that the bandits don't stand a chance. In real life they would be dead, maimed, or too much in pain to go on.

Take a look at page 100, "Creating NPCs." The bandits you mention above would be extras, with a default of 10 Health and 10 Endo. Therefore, any attack that does more than 20 damage to the bandits would drop them like a bad habit.

If I count the 5 bandits as Flunkies, they'd get even fewer Health and Endurance to begin with.

Yes, the no-names (AKA red-shirts) have less Health and Endo than those villians with names.

I call this my "Swift Stroke" house rule. With a result like the one above, as a GM, I would say that the hero has quickly cut all 5 bandits down. No further rolls are necessary. Let's go to the next scene.

Do you like that?

Otherwise, I think you're on the right track. Keep up the OVA fun!!

TBP

[Jandar]

To JuddG: Quite so. Thanks!

I wasn't going to use a Power Move in the particular example above. I wanted to save that for a little later. But, I know now that it would have been quite appropriate to go with a Power Move. It's even cost-effective: I had said that the samurai hero was using 2 drama dice as a boost, and those 2 drama dice would cost 10 Endurance. That is exactly the same price in Endurance as a Power Move. Very clever rule ...

Since I am still new to OVA, I haven't written down many Power Moves, yet, but I am sure these will serve as a staple of the game (much like Feats are in D&D these days).

[Clay]

What Bouncy Pherret is referring to is "Multiple Actions" on page 82. While you're technically trying to perform "one slice", the game effect is the same. I would recommend using the multiple actions rule and simply describe it as one attack.

Also, if you're finding combats taking too long, or if you're using TONS of grunt NPCs, I really recommend using DNs for enemy defense rolls instead of taking time to roll defense dice. A DN of 4 is good enough for a 2 dice grunt roll. (I think the average result for two dice is actually 5, but hey, they're grunts. Let's just use the DN chart "Moderate" for simplicity. ;D)

Using a flat DN also helps because each enemy has the same Defense and, thus, each receive the same damage. No need for multiple calculations!

[Jandar]

Thanks for the comments, Clay.

In fact, using DNs for groups of mooks exactly corresponds to the "Goon Rules" in another RPG that I know very well, Cartoon Action Hour. There too a hero can just roll an easy dice check against an abstract number, and that number might represent 5, 10, 20 or even more grunt characters if need be. It's all part of the genre.

This mechanic is actually undergoing some revision (along with a lot of other things) to make it more interesting, but I am under an oath of non-disclosure as far as the second edition of CAH is concerned. (I am participating in its playtesting, so ...)