This article is yet another lesson in my True Game Mastery series. If you haven’t been following the series, consider starting from the beginning as each lesson builds on the last. Use this link to the handy series index to get started.
The True Game Mastery Series Index
Time to take the kid gloves off. In lessons past — and throughout my writing — I’ve always included reminders, recaps, and reviews whenever I’ve called back to my past writings. The farther back I call, the more detailed the reminder. But it’s to the point now in this series where everything’s a callback. So I can’t do that anymore.
Fortunately, I’m a brilliant guy and a skilled instructor. And I knew this point was coming. Thus I clearly named and labeled my ideas and I’ve repeated myself a lot. Hopefully, I’ve fixed a bunch of concepts in your brain so they’re easy to remember at the table and to recognize when I call back to them.
The point is, you should know what I, personally, mean whenever I say:
- Invite the Principal Character’s Player to Act
- Follow the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle
- Speak Only Facts
- Build an Action Queue
- Describe Intentions and Inceptions
- Leave Action Bits on the Cutting Room Floor
I ain’t recapping, reviewing, or rehashing any of that shit anymore. If there’s something on that list you can’t passably explain, go back and review the appropriate lesson.
How to Manage Combat Like a True Game Master
Welcome back, Acolyte of the Way of the True Game Master!
Today’s a fun lesson. The first of two fun lessons wherein I’m going to teach you how True Game Masters resolve combat. In this first lesson, I’m going to reveal one of the greatest Game Mastery secrets of our age: what Initiative really is and how to use it right.
Some of you ain’t going to like the answer. But I ain’t here to make you happy so suck it up, Buttercup.
As noted in the Long, Rambling Introduction™, this lesson builds on pretty much every lesson that’s come before. If you don’t have this True Game Master shit down cold, you ain’t ready for it. So review what you gotta review. Then come back.
Today, I’m going to show you how to use everything you’ve already learned to properly call for Initiative rolls. And in the next lesson, I’ll show you how to use everything you’ve already learned to pace and narrate combat properly.
Just be ready to break your game system.
Rules for They, Not for You
As I mentioned way, way back when I started, this series is system agnostic. I ain’t trying to teach you to run Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder like a True Game Master. Instead, I’m showing you how True Game Masters run any game they pick up. Any fantasy adventure game, anyway.
Remember that tabletop roleplaying game systems — especially the modern ones — are written so Mere Game Executors can crap out perfectly okay games. As such, most modern systems’ gears tend to grind when a Master’s behind the screen.
Lots of you are going to complain that my way of handling initiative is wrong. That the rules of your system of your choice say differently from what I do. Remember, you’re not here because you want to execute a game system according to preprogrammed rules. You want to run a great game like only a True Game Master can.
If your system’s rules are in the way of following my advice, change them. Don’t wait for me to fix them and don’t ask me how to change them. Just bring the system you’re running in step with the way you want to run the game. That’s what True Game Masters do.
Being a True Game Master ain’t easy. Do the hard thing.
Combat Defined… Sort Of
Before I can tell you how to use the skills I’ve taught you to resolve combat like a True Game Master, I must teach you how to recognize combat when it’s happening. And note that I’m picking my words with care here.
True Game Masters don’t run combat encounters, they resolve combat.
True Game Masters understand that game mechanics are inherently limiting and that the mechanics that fill combat chapters are especially limiting. True Game Masters, for example, know that it’s almost impossible for a rogue to sneak up behind a guard and knock him out or shank him under the rigors of attack-and-damage-roll rules. And True Game Masters know it’s lunacy to use similar rules to resolve the breaking down of doors.
My point is, unless you’re really, truly resolving an actual combat, you don’t want to pull out any of your combat resolution tools without an exceptionally good reason. There are other, better tools.
So I ain’t trying to rigidly define the word combat so much as to provide guidelines you can use to gauge whether it’s time to break out the Combat Resolution Toolbox.
When your players’ characters declare their intention to resolve a conflict by way of violence with an aware and roughly equal opposing force, pop open your toolbox because you’re resolving combat.
Those are the conditions. Let me break them down.
Resolving Conflict
When multiple creatures or groups — hereafter called forces — have opposing goals, conflict arises. For example, when the players’ characters want the monsters to be dead and the monsters want to not be dead, there’s a conflict. Likewise, conflict occurs when the players’ characters want to stop the ritual before its completion and the cultists want the ritual completed.
Players are violent and stupid. And they rarely think through their goals. There’s nothing you can do about that and it ain’t your problem. Your job as Game Master is to know why the nonplayer characters are fighting. Are they fighting for survival, defending a lair, proving honor, earning glory, stealing treasure, acquiring food, or what?
True Game Masters always know why the opposing force is fighting. Partly because it changes the nonplayer characters’ tactics — holding a line is different from kill-or-be-killed vengeance — and partly because when the nonplayer characters don’t have a reason to fight worth dying for, they ought to stop fighting.
Violence
Combat occurs when the opposing forces are willing to use violent force to get what they want. It need not be deadly force — you can fight to capture, disable, dominate, or terrorize — but it must be force. Moreover, combat occurs when opposing forces are willing to injure or kill and to risk injury or death.
Injury and death are at stake in every fight. Which is why True Game Masters don’t piss and moan about how combats shouldn’t be fought to the death. Sorry Pancakes, if you go into battle, you’re risking death. That’s what a battle is.
The point is, True Game Masters know that every creature in the fight is thinking, “I want goal and I’m willing to injure or kill and to risk injury or death for it.” And True Game Masters must assume each player’s head is harboring the same thought. That might not be the case, but if a player’s character enters a battle and dies, that’s the player’s own stupid fault. When players choose violence, their characters might die. End of story.
Roughly Equal
When it comes to violent conflict resolution, the opposing forces must be on roughly equal footing. They must be of roughly the same scale, scope, and power. If 15th level heroes launch themselves at 1st level goblins, that ain’t a combat, it’s a massacre. A slaughter. And no True Game Master would open their Combat Resolution Toolbox for that shit. Hell, they wouldn’t even call for die rolls.
Likewise, if the heroes are climbing all over some ancient god-being — Shadow of the Colossus style — trying to find a glowing spot into which to stab an ancient relic, that ain’t combat either. It’s something and it definitely demands die rolls and action resolutions, but it ain’t a fight. Neither is the standard Spartans-versus-the-entire-army-in-the-narrow-pass setup. Only a dumbass would use initiative orders and attack-and-damage-roll rules to resolve that shit.
Aware
No One Is Just Waiting for Their Turn
Crappy turn-based roleplaying video games and miniatures on gridded maps have taught Game Masters that combat consists of creatures standing around waiting to take their turns. And that mindset makes it impossible to resolve combat properly.
Consider first that everything really does happen all at once in a fight. Or nearly so. In one round of combat, upwards of eight creatures can each dash the length of a small house — thirty feet — draw a weapon, drive that weapon into a foe, withdraw it, ready it for another strike, and deflect multiple blows with the haft of the same weapon or a shield or a secondary weapon. And all eight flurries of activity happen in less than ten seconds.
Consider second that no one just stands there and takes an impalement to the gut. Everyone’s doing their level best to actively dodge, deflect, turn aside, and roll with every attack. That’s why defensive scores factor in things like agility, shields, and parry bonuses. And that’s also why you don’t generally use attack and damage rolls outside combat. Both assume an active back-and-forth exchange of offense and defense between fighters.
Combat Resolution Tools are only for resolving combat.
These conditions — awareness included — arise from the simple fact that combat is only combat when the combatants are willing and able to fight. Or at least to defend themselves.
If you don’t know something’s about to attack, you can’t fight back. And if you can’t fight back, you ain’t fighting in combat. And if you ain’t fighting in combat, the Combat Resolution Tools don’t apply.
This is why True Game Masters don’t call for initiative rolls until after the ambush is sprung and, likely after some injuries are inflicted. And while some game systems have rules for ambush and surprise vis-a-vis turn order and Combat Resolution Tools, they’re mostly unnecessary and crappily written attempts to shoehorn non-combat situations into the combat chapter.
True Game Masters don’t want anything to do with that crap. They just describe what the characters are aware of and invite the players to respond.
GM: Suddenly, a flight of arrows arcs into your formation, dealing damage. Only then do you see the goblin archers in the brush across the clearing. They’re readying another volley. Ardrick is at the front of the formation, bristling with arrows… what does he do, Adam?
Willing-Minded and Able-Bodied Combatants Only
If the combatants in a battle aren’t willing and able to fight a battle, there’s no battle, and thus the situation can’t be resolved like a battle. It’s that simple. If the players don’t know they’re in a fight until after the characters get jumped, the characters aren’t willing and able. If the monsters are wholly incapable of defending themselves — or simply cowering on the ground whimpering and begging — they aren’t willing and able. And while god-beings can take actions to remove the flea-like heroes crawling on their carapaces, they aren’t battling those things any more than you battle mosquitos.
Rolling Initiative
Initiative is a pain in the ass. Most Mere Game Executors — and many would-be True Game Masters — have some pretty effed-up ideas about Initiative. They think it’s synonymous with combat, for example. Or that Initiative and Turn Order are the same things. Or that Initiative is something you can be in.
None of that’s my problem though. I ain’t here to unteach you the wrong shit, I’m here to tell you how it is. So forget whatever you know about Initiative and whatever you’ve read about it in some dumbass rulebook.
This is how it be.
Initiative and Turn Order
From here on out, when I say Initiative, I’m talking about whatever mechanical system exists in whatever ruleset you’re running for determining who acts first. Particularly in combat.
I’m not, however, talking about Turn Order. In many roleplaying games, Initiative establishes the Turn Order for either an entire battle or for an upcoming round. But they ain’t the same thing.
And neither Initiative nor Turn Order are things you’re in.
The Initiative Tool
Initiative is a game mechanical tool. It helps you — the Game Master — decide which action to resolve first whenever there’s uncertainty about the order of actions.
And that’s all it is. If you ascribe anything more to Initiative, you’re bad and wrong and you should feel bad.
Initiative’s just the tool you use when multiple creatures are all trying to act first. Or act as quickly as possible. That’s why Initiative’s the first tool you pull out after combat starts.
That’s right: you don’t roll Initiative and then start a combat. Combat starts and then you roll Initiative to resolve the first uncertainty that arises in almost every battle. Let me ‘splain…
When a Fight Breaks Out
Why You Can’t Ready Actions Outside of Combat
I’m often asked, “Why can’t my character Ready an action outside of combat to trigger when combat starts.” And the answer is in seeing Initiative as Reaction Time.
No matter how prepared you are for something to happen and how ready you are to respond, your brain still needs a finite amount of time to perceive the trigger and signal your body to act. And your body needs time to move. Yes, we’re talking fractions of a second — on average a quarter to a third of a second for very small actions like pushing a button you’re poised to push when a light lights up — but split seconds are everything when everyone’s racing to act first in the same few seconds.
No matter how prepared you are, when something happens, there’s a limit on how fast you can move and there’s always a faster fish out there somewhere.
There are no Combat Encounters. Rather, Encounters occasionally usually turn to combat.
Imagine the party’s delving into some dank dungeon when suddenly they encounter a pack of wandering goblins pillaging the same dungeon. An Encounter plays out. Suddenly, someone — maybe a goblin, maybe the idiot rogue — does something that makes it clear to everyone they’re willing and able to injure and kill and they’re acting on it.
The specific details don’t matter. Maybe the fight breaks out immediately when Ardrick yells, “Goblins?! CHARGE!” Maybe it comes after a tense back-and-forth as the goblins and the party measure their chances against each other and the goblin leader decides they can win. Maybe it comes after Cabe utters an unspeakable insult because he can’t speak Gobbledygook for crap. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that everyone sees that initial call to arms and suddenly everyone’s pulling weapons or lunging or digging out spell components or repositioning for a clear shot or setting their stance to take an attack. Whatever.
Everyone truly is doing everything all at once. Or rather, everyone is trying to do everything before everyone else. And anyone who isn’t is in for a world of hurt.
That’s when you call for Initiative rolls. You know everyone’s chosen to join the fight, but you don’t know how long it takes anyone’s brain to unstick from “oh shit, we’re doing this…” and you don’t know how long it takes their entire brain to receive that message and you don’t know how long it takes the brain to push the message down all the nerve pathways and into the muscles and you don’t know how fast those muscles can move.
Kids, this is called Reaction Time. It’s a real thing. And that’s what Initiative models. How long it takes a character to get from, “crap, we’re fighting now” to withdrawing a blood-soaked blade from a goblin’s corpse.
Starting Fights Right
Ceding Control to the Dice
You learned last week how to control your world’s clock and your game’s pace by Building an Action Queue and then using your best judgment to decide what to resolve when. When you rely on Initiative and Turn Order rules, you’re giving over that control to dice and pre-programmed systems. That ain’t something to do lightly.
There are good reasons to rely on Initiative Rolls to settle uncertainties about who does what and when. And there are good game design reasons to impose strict Turn Orders in combat too. I don’t recommend rejecting either and, over the years, I’ve developed a mistrust of systems that lack either Initiative or Turn Order or both. Sorry Dungeon World.
That said, I have no problem not using either tool when I’ve got a good reason not to. Initiative and Turn Order aren’t special. They’re just game mechanical tools. But Game Masters should understand exactly what’s at stake before screwing with them. And most don’t.
Given my above explanation and last week’s lesson, you’re armed to start fights right. Hell, I even gave you an example last week of how, precisely, to handle this Initiative crap. Once someone — player’s character or nonplayer character — initiates an action that communicates a willing ability to injure or kill, you freeze time, Describe the Inception of the Action, and Build an Action Queue.
And once it’s clear from the Action Queue that a fight’s really happening, you call for Initiative rolls, Drop All the Action Bits from the queue after the initial frozen moment, and then start the fight.
GM: At Cabe’s words, the lead goblin’s face goes from red to mauve. “How dare you…” he sputters. “Kill them,” he screams, pointing with his vicious curved knife. The goblins start forward…
GM: Ardrick is front and center. The goblin commanded his fellows to attack and they clearly mean to. Adam, how does Ardrick respond?
Adam: Ardrick’s sword is already in hand. He’ll stand fast to receive the goblins.
GM: Ardrick readies himself for the fight. Cabe is standing beside him. Chris?
Chris: What did I say wrong… oh screw it. I’ll palm the daggers in my sleeve and start flinging steel.
GM: Sputtering at the misunderstanding, Cabe palms a pair of daggers. Beth, Beryllia is behind her companions. What is she doing?
Beth: Uh… I guess I’ll cast protective ward on Cabe since he’s on the front line and the goblins seem really pissed at him especially.
GM: Beth grips her staff tightly, calling a spell to mind… let’s roll Initiative, everyone.
GM: The goblin’s sudden onslaught has caught you all off guard. Ardrick barely has time to set his shield and Cabe can’t even pick a target before the leaping, snarling goblins are upon them. Daggers lick out, Ardrick turning them aside, but Cabe takes a nasty slash for 5 slashing damage. As the pair hold off the onslaught, Beryllia… does what, Beth?
Interrupting the Action
It might occur to you that all this rigamarole’s just a drawn-out way of getting the players to commit to a fight before you call for Initiative rolls. And, in essence, it is. But it’s worth it.
First, this method builds Investment the same way Building an Action Queue does. It leads to a better-flowing, better-feeling game. And that’s better than a faster game.
But second, this method gives the players one last chance to cleverly stop a combat before it starts. For instance, the characters might just nope the hell out of the fight. They might run. And you don’t want them penned in by strict timing-and-turn-order rules in that case.
Characters can forestall combat in other ways too. They can throw food at hungry monsters. They can yell, “Wait, don’t hurt us! We’ll give you treasure!” You don’t want the dice running the pacing show when players interrupt the action with a clever plan that just might work.
And when a player declares a clever forestalling action, you’ve got to use your Game Mastering brain to decide what’s possible. Can Cabe dig some jerky from his stowed backpack before the bear charges the party? Or before Ardrick charges the bear? If the bear’s twenty feet distant, probably not, but if it’s across a sixty-foot clearing, that’s fair game.
Of course, trying to forestall a fight can be risky as hell…
The Unaware, Unwilling, and Unable
What Idiot Wants to Fight?
Very few living creatures with brains in their heads actually want to fight when they don’t have to. Predators don’t want to fight. They want easy kills. Guards don’t want to fight. They’d much rather scare interlopers away. Soldiers would be much happier if enemies would surrender or rout.
Players are the bizarre-ass exception. Mainly because modern tabletop roleplaying games overload them with resources and make recovering from anything trivially easy.
You have to accept that your players are kill-or-be-killed idiots. But you absolutely should not run your nonplayer creatures that way. Every second in combat increases the risk of crippling injury or death even for the combatants on the winning side. And the world is a violent place. No creature can afford to walk away from a fight with a crippling injury.
Tabletop roleplaying games used to have Reaction Rolls and Morale Checks and other crap like that to ensure that, given half a chance to stop fighting, most creatures will make it easy for their foes to give them an out.
Combats are fought between aware, willing, and able combatants. And Initiative determines which combatant stabs first. So, what do you do when you’ve got creatures itching to fight the unaware, the unwilling, or the unable?
Creatures that don’t know they’re in a fight can’t fight. They’re vulnerable. And man do I ever miss the Flat-Footed rules for just that reason. If a whole force is caught off guard, you ain’t resolving combat. Just resolve whatever actions happen until the force becomes aware and go from there.
GM: Suddenly, a flight of arrows arcs into your formation, dealing damage. Only then do you see the goblin archers in the brush across the clearing. They’re readying another volley. Ardrick is at the front of the formation, bristling with arrows… what does he do, Adam?
Really, that’s just an Encounter that announces its presence with an opening salvo. The first frozen moment of awareness is when the arrows start hitting.
But what if you’ve got a mix of oblivious pacifists and ready, willing, and able fighters on one or all sides of a brewing battle?
It’s like this: all the aware and able combatants are racing to act as quickly as possible. Anyone not in that race to act isn’t going to win it. Nor is anyone whose chosen an action that forfeits a place in the race. In such a case, you assume all the combat actions — for at least the next round — come all at once in the Action Queue and resolve the other actions around them. Which means the non-combatants don’t need Initiative. You know they ain’t beating anyone to any punches.
GM: The goblins attack. What do you do?
Adam: Ardrick fights.
Beth: Beryllia yells, “Stop, we have treasure!”
Chris: Cabe runs the hell away.
The Action Queue has Beryllia trying to forestall the fight, Cabe fleeing, and Ardrick and the goblins all trying to kill each other all at once. So, the resolution looks something like this:
GM: As Cabe dashes past her toward the edge of the clearing, Beryllia shouts at the goblins. In their rage, they ignore her words and charge. Ardrick is ready to meet them. Adam, roll initiative for Ardrick while I roll for the goblins.
The point is to avoid locking anyone down with Initiative Rolls and Turn Order unless they’re actually in a fight. And to treat the fight as one mishmash of simultaneous action relative to everyone who ain’t in the fight. And when someone wants to join a fight already in progress — say Beryllia jumps in after the first round’s resolved — they can roll Initiative to see where they come into the chaos.
And when someone leaves the fight, you can resolve that crap however you have to. When Cabe flees into the brush, for instance, you can cut to his panicked flight through the wilderness after the fight’s done. And if a goblin splits off to chase him, the two can have a merry little pursuit-and-evasion thing unfettered by strict timing-and-turn-order rules that make such things impossible.
I know this sounds like a giant-ass mess, but it’s not. It’s just an extra dimension to the Action Queue. Some actions — combat actions — compete for the same spot in the queue. Other actions happen around them.
And yes, this is a good argument for rolling Initiative at the start of each round. Thank you for noticing.
Really, complex situations with fighters fighting while other actions happen around them are rare. But managing Initiative as a timing tie-breaker for combat actions competing for the same spot in the queue is really powerful. It opens up a lot of possibilities that most game’s dumb-ass timing-and-turn-order rules cut out. It lets characters cover their allies’ retreats. It lets characters flee before a fight starts. Or try to. And it lets characters make desperate attempts to stop a fight from breaking out. Though that’s not without risks.
Moreover, it lets you use Initiative outside combat whenever you have actions stacked up in the same place in the Action Queue and need to know what happens first. Like when two characters dive for the same gun or when Ardrick wants to punch the king and Danae wants to hold him back.
Thus, the real secret is that Initiative isn’t a combat rule at all. It’s just a way of determining which simultaneous action happens first.
What Did You Learn In School Today?
Let’s recap what you learned today.
First, you learned to only use the rules in the combat chapter when resolving violent conflicts between roughly equal forces of willing combatants. Consequently, while you can never be sure what’s going through your idiot players’ heads, you must always know what the nonplayer combatants want and be sure they’re ready to injure, kill, risk injury, or risk death for it.
Second, you learned Initiative’s all about figuring out which actions to resolve first when everyone’s racing to act at the same time. Because combat actions are so close to simultaneous that split-second reactions spell the difference between kill and kilt.
Third, you learned to freeze time at the moment someone does something in an Encounter to convey their willingness to kill or be killed and then invite the players to declare responses that affirm or decline their participation in the inevitable fracas.
Fourth, you learned Initiative only resolves the action order for aware, willing, and able participants in a fight. All other actions get shoved outside the combat round on the Action Queue or shoved off-camera to deal with later.
And all of that crap’s just the natural consequences of everything I taught you last week. Technically, I didn’t teach you anything new today. I just interpreted shit and drew conclusions.
And the next lesson’s just more interpretation and conclusion as I explain how I already taught you to pace and narrate combat. See you then.
Can anyone direct me to the article where Angry talks about “leave action bits on the cutting room floor”? I don’t remember this one, and cannot seem to find it in the True Game Mastery series archives.
Nevermind, couldn’t find it in the archives because “Everyone Doing Everything All At Once” isn’t there yet.
Well, it’s there now, and I’ve just read it and STILL don’t know what this means!
https://theangrygm.com/early-access/everything-all-at-once/
I really like the tone of this article. Edgy but not overly aggressive. Flow is perfect. Sidebars are perfect. I expect to use the tactics asap. Thanks for such a good read.
When do you break out the minis?
When I need ‘em. Or when I want ‘em. Minis are cool.
I’m a huge mini nut. I love to paint them. Heck I bought a 3D printer to be able to get more of them… but I have moved towards not really using them anymore in my games.
To put it into perspective, in our early 5E games, when I was just a player, we would use them almost like board pieces, moving around a map drawn on the grid map. Even online we used the cool dynamic lighting and token systems in Roll20 etc. It’s really cool, but also very distracting. I’ve found it takes too much time to set up most encounters using minis and tokens, for how little it adds to the game.
I think if you analyze your games where you use tokens you’ll find that in most cases they hardly matter. The melee guys move into melee, the ranged people sit back and shoot, and then it’s combat over.
On the other hand, if I have a big “session long” massive combat, I think it can be cool. Especially when placement and distances matter.
Ironically the place I use the tokens or minis the most these days is to set up a general walking order for the party. Just so we remember when things happen.
Here’s a crazy-ass suggestion along this vein that helps a surprising amount…
Players don’t touch the tokens or move the minis. They must declare their action. The Game Master moves the mini or token in response to the description. You get the fun of the minis — setup is still a little chore sometimes — but you click the players out of “move your piece on the board game board” idea.
Between this article and its recent predecessors on the Declare-Determine-Describe cycle my game has taken a turn for the better!
Normally my group gets through no more than 3 encounters in a session, but this last session we got through 5 encounters, one of which was a fight with the BBEG of the adventure (and his minions), and another was a conversation heavy chat between my player’s PCs and an Erinyes devil!
I saw a massive improvement to the flow of the game and to the engagement of my players! And if I’m being honest, I didn’t do it perfectly. I’ve still got room to get better at using the Action Queue and only using Initiative at the appropriate times. I’m looking forward to the next articles in this series to take my game to new heights!
Tried the advice from this article last session. Definitely a step up from my previous “uh, okay, I suppose we roll initiative now?”. I don’t think I ever considered leaving non-participants out of the turn order structure before, but last session it came up and yep, this way is much smoother!
So did you resolve the non-participants actions after combat ended?
Thanks for the article, Angry. I appreciate your articulation of initiative as more than just a “start combat” button. Also, I appreciate the way building an action queue around the start of combat allows for a much more varied response to one force escalating the conflict. I can recall a lot of times as both a player and GM when the call for initiative was made to communicate one side’s intent. But it left no room for response.
The thing that sharpened this up for me was in the Q&A: HP and AC are for combatants engaged in combat. They aren’t relevant for other things. That’s why when Angry says a million times “only an idiot would roll an attack or damage to slice the sleeping guard’s throat” but never tells what a not-idiot would do, because HP and AC aren’t for that situation, neither is a die roll if the outcome is certain. An attack roll is just an ability check vs a DC, same as any other situation when the outcome is uncertain and the GM is determining an outcome. The DC (in this case AC) is only relevant if the target is willing, aware, etc. so the attack roll is only relevant then too.
Was the Q&A a patron thing? Cause as I read this I did find myself thinking about how to figure out how much damage certain things deal outside of combat. AC for sure is only for combat, but characters have HP at other times. Sometimes it’s obvious that if you slit someone’s throat while they’re asleep, you don’t roll attack or damage, they’re just dead. BUT what about just shooting someone who’s unaware with an arrow? You might even say no attack roll, but you’re probably not guaranteed a kill. Or you could ask for some sort of ability check to hit since there’s still a chance to miss, but they deal max damage or maybe auto kill on a hit. The last one I thought of was spells, since their damage is less tied to people actively avoiding them like you would a sword swing. You might say no Dex saves for unaware victims of spells, but Con and other saves are more passive. I’d love to head Angry’s thoughts on damage outside of combat!
Yeah subscribe on Patreon or Subscribestar for a few audio feeds. I find the Q&A after each article the most interesting.
Based on everything recent – including your comment, thanks – it’s really just about not seeing combat as any different to anything else. Ability check dependent on the situation to do a thing, narrate the outcome. No breeze, 30 ft, trying to hit the sleeping guard in the neck with an arrow? That’s a small target, it’s high pressure, but it’s not moving and relatively close. Maybe DC 20 to hit, add proficiency and dex. Then just play it out logically. If it hits the neck, that guy will for sure be dead in a minute without magic or an operating theatre. For sure. Can’t call out a warning because arrow in neck. A smart guard could probably bash something metal on something metal as an alarm if it’s available and already in their hands and nobody else intervenes.
Why are HP not relevant for other things? There’s the usual huge discussion about what HP measure, but if you perceive HP as actual literal measure of actual literal physical condition (and I am again biased by systems without HP inflation where this actually makes more sense than in The System), you can use it to measure injuries received out of combat – and hence damage from. Especially when healing is not readily and cheaply available.
There’s a more sophisticated version of the argument that damage is a combat-only stat: (at least some) weapons have the damage stats they have because these are for combat situation where how exactly your hit lands is highly variable, while directed hits without the combat haste will have better and less variable damage. _IF_ you believe that, though, there are adjustments that can be made without throwing out the damage stat overall.
(Of course, none of this means that they are applicable to the “slice the sleeping guard’s throat” type of event – this is specifically the situation where the damage can be immediately assumed mortal, knife will probably land real well. GURPS Basic Set somehow even calls out that exact situation 🙂 )
Good points. I think it hinges on what you think HP measures. I liked the idea behind the flesh golem angry article about having fighting spirit which is reduced before HP (depending on what is reducing it), which is all about having players act as though they’re closer to death when their character is closer to death. I also like the general idea from goblin punch that HP should go above about 20, so 1d6 is always scary. So that’s my bias. If you have 70 HP and HP measures physical injury, then normalhealing works in a crazy way. If it’s about fighting spirit, then yeah, am hour of chilling can get your head back in the game. In my world, it shouldn’t undo ten swords worth of physical damage and take you from the brink of death (if you roll lots of hit dice).
I agree with your while second paragraph, including that there are other things you can do depending on the situation. For me it’s “is the outcome uncertain”, if so roll dice as appropriate.
Wait, not flesh golem, just fighting spirit, I always confused the titles.
This article has blown my mind. I’ve known to try to keep initiative out of stuff as much as I can manage but reading the examples helped a lot. Things I’d just not even considered as an option.
I’m totally on board that AC is a special DC for when combat is happening. If someone is trying to hit something or someone with a weapon outside of combat, then we still might need a roll, because failure might be possible and interesting, so the question is what roll. “Roll to hit” is a good instruction to the player, since that would be the ability check + proficiency that would apply. The DC should be adjudicated based on context (like for any other non-combat check!), because there are so many ways for “hitting, but not combat” to happen that a rule of thumb is a fool’s errand. The armor type might be very relevant (plate against surprise volley of arrows) or largely irrelevant (leather+Dex against surprise backstab), and it’s entirely up to the True GM to set the DC.
This makes me think further: do HP make sense outside of combat? Would a simple exhaustion track (like the OneD&D version) be a better way to track consequences of “damage” when combat is not imminent? Might help move away from the video gamey feel of a “health meter”.
I’d say outside of combat AC has only one role: To help the GM determine how hard it would be to actually hit an unprotected spot on someone actually wearing armor when they are unaware of you. Basically a “DC to wound” for someone like the rogue trying to gank a sole guard in full plate from behind. Anyone not wearing armor and unaware is not a problem unless the character is far away, or impaired to the point that there is a real chance to miss, in which case it becomes “DC to actually hit at all”.
Otherwise, why roll at all if the hit is certain? Just have them succeed, resolve the action and narrate/describe the result.
Hey y’all! Just wanted to ask about some 5e specific things to see if they’re reasons I shouldn’t be playing 5e or if they’re common and valid concerns.
Let’s take an armored and hardened veteran, asleep, who is snuck upon by a PC. The PC fires an arrow to strike their neck, like someone mentioned above. Above, it was also mentioned that this could be a dex skill check with proficiency bonus, but some 5e things make this seem weird to me.
1) Archery fighting style. If someone gets a bonus to firing their bow, should that be added? Maybe this bonus is only in times of stress (aka combat).
2) Assassin rogue. If I let people kill or permanently wound others with an attack, am I taking away from what another person wanted their character doing, since they’re expecting extra damage on a surprise attack? Maybe the assassin rogue getting bonus damage to surprised monstrous entities is a wide enough case where permanent injury of only humanoids isn’t as important.
3) DC setting. Am I being too soft by wanting this cool thing to happen? I know for a fact that setting a DC of 20 would mean large chances of failure. How can I be more confident in setting high DCs?
If the PC successfully sneaks through the camp to find the one person they want to kill, sneak past their guards, into their tent, without waking the target or anyone else who might overhear, then they’ve already made all the rolls they need to. The sleeping veteran isn’t resisting. An arrow in your trachea greatly limits you combat efficacy. Maybe he is so stone cold badass that he can take a swipe at the PC with a knife under his pillow, or trigger a nearby magic alarm. Maybe he struggles loud enough while dying to alert his guards. But what isn’t in question is that guy is D E D dead.
1) make it a Dex check, if PC has archery style give them a +2 bonus
2) the only issue I see with allowing that, is that you give your players an almost autowin button. Do you want them to have that button? If yes no problemo, if not then problems might arise. Now you can always rule that a specialised char is better at this than others (higher bonuses/lower penalties) and preserve the uniqueness of the rogue. However, after seeing the disappointment of a battle master in a game where optional flanking rules were used, I can tell you that distributing other people toys around is, more often than not, bad.
3) high DCs (or low) is not the problem, the problem is to let the dice decide in favour of an outcome you don’t want (or decide against and outcome you do want). In this case you should rule success or failure without the dice (no DC no problem)
What does one use to resolve the standard Spartans-versus-the-entire-army-in-the-narrow-pass setup?
Hailing back to OG Angry, first you ask the dramatic question, “Can the spartan defeat the entire army?” If the answer is definitely yes, then he wins. No rolls, just a description of his epic victory. If the answer is definitely not, then he dies. Again, no rolls. Only when the answer is uncertain do you start rolling dice.
Same any any other roll, set a dc and ask for a roll to determine success or failure.
You COULD make it more complicated than that if you want to, but it’s important to understand why this situation (and really any situation) could be resolved with a single die roll. And that come down to what the intentions of the involved parties are.
The Spartans in the narrow pass is not a Fair fight, heck its barely even a fight at all. The win conditions for either party are barely related to fighting each other. For the army’s side they have a destination Beyond the pass that they need to get to, usually within a certain time frame. And the Spartan wants to delay the army for long enough for that separate, more important task to be carried out. And determining that, does the army get past the Spartan fast enough, is a the exact kind of yes-or-no question that only really needs a single die roll to answer.
All of the other details (like how might the army have gotten past the Spartan, did the Spartan survive, ect.) are separate questions that you need to resolve separately using context and your GMing brain to answer (and might involve separate dice rolls).
Thanks to both of you.
So do you have the players declare actions for their characters after every round of combat (and the non combat Action Queue actions) has been resolved? That seems like it solves the problem of players not knowing what they are doing with their turns in combat. If a player doesn’t know what they are doing this round, you skip him like you would any other time you build the Action Queue. Of course doing nothing when life or death consequences are flying around is probably not going to go well.
Although maybe there are no turns, just an order of resolution.
A previous article suggests that when a player fails to declare an action in combat, the character goes on full defense.
When it comes tools for Initiative or Turn Order, does the relative usefulness scale run from Dungeon World zero to Best D&D perfection.? Where does Scion 1E’s and Exalted 2E’s Battle Wheel/Ticks system fit, besides pretentious because it’s White Wolf, for usefulness as tool or a teaching aid?
I am a little late to the party, but I was curious what Angry’s opinion is on simultaneous combat resolution systems, such as: https://spellsandsteel.blogspot.com/2018/10/phased-real-time-combat-solution-you.html Since they almost completely buck the turn order system that most sequential combat uses.
I am curious about the sidebar on not being able to prepare actions outside of combat. The discussion doesn’t seem to address the question. Clearly someone can prepare an action for a certain trigger and improve their reaction (at least it seems clear to me, and to you given your reference to pushing buttons when a light comes on). And equally clearly, that action would occur more quickly than if they hadn’t prepared it. The fact that someone else might react faster doesn’t seem related to the original person’s ability to prepare an action and, thus, execute it more quickly when the trigger occurs. And yet the sidebar title, “Why You Can’t Ready Actions Outside of Combat”, clearly asserts that this can’t be done.
Are you referring specifically (or exclusively) to the 5e “Ready Action” mechanic, and using it as a “Reaction” to interrupt another actor’s action?
Seemed pretty clear to me that Angry was referring specifically to the Ready Action mechanic (and even more specifically to using that to try to bypass an initiative roll). My immediate thought there was: readying an action outside of combat is called ‘a surprise round’. (Does 5e still have those?)
If the situation allows one side to totally get the drop on the other side, then they all get one free round of actions before the ‘frozen moment’ that triggers initiative. (This is Angry’s ‘combat starts when the flight of arrows lands’ scenario)
If the situation doesn’t justify that, then you can plan an action and TRY to execute to execute it faster than the opponent, but they’re probably also doing the same to you. Resolving that contest is called ‘rolling initiative’.
Basically, being prepared for combat doesn’t get you a bonus on your initiative roll, it’s the requirement to make the roll at all.
Oh boy, this is great. And I’m proud to say: I saw it coming! The last article on the action query lead to this sure as hell. As you mention several times in the article. Great work. It even inspired me to write my first comment!
And I have a question!
In an older article, you wrote about speed factor initiative. Do you still use it or a variation thereof?
I’m currently GMing a 5e group and I’m thinking of reworking the initiative system. Based on Greyhawk and speed factor initiative but much simplified.
I love all this.
One issue I regularly have is ‘fairly’ (accurately?) handling situations where the archer steps out from behind the tree, bow drawn, clearly surprising the party. Conversation ensues, threats, combat starts. How to adjudicate the archers initiative advantage? He’s clearly got the drop on them. Does he just go first in a ‘surprise’ round? Does he get a massive initiative bonus?
How does this play out in situations where there are special, extra damage rules for going before other characters? Ignore them in this case as bad rules?
Why are the rules for Mexican standoffs so universally bad in game systems?