Samurai house rule: Swift Stroke
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 6:57 pm
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?
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?