Combat Stunts

The Lone Delver wrote this post about his combat house rules. There's lots of good stuff so check it out if you are a T&T player.

I especially like his description of "Combat Stunts". Attempting an action to affect the tide of battle really adds a lot of narrative juice to combat. I think this is what makes T&T combat really sing. Often faced with monsters or hordes with much higher MR's you'll be forced to think outside the box and attempt something else other than trying to clobber with your sword. Plus the combat requires a narrative description which IMO always makes for more fun play.

Here's some ideas I've been thinking about in regards to attempting Combat Stunts and establishing some kind of risk involved.

-Whenever attempting any kind of action (stealing the goblins spear, tripping the ogre, throwing sand in the cyclops eye) use 1 separate colored die (maybe the same as the colored arena bonus die referred to here) and roll it as one of your 2 die on the SR attempt. Whatever the result is, invert it, and count it against your adds on the next combat roll whether the SR roll is successful or not (this counts as the effort to attempt the action). On a failure subtract the difference from your adds on your next combat roll. For example a result of 22 with a result of 2 on your colored die on a SR difficulty level of 30 is -8 plus -5 (a result of 2 which is inverted. A roll of 1 = -6, 2 = -5 etc) for a grand total of -13 penalty on your next combat roll. If you were successful in the SR attempt then the penalty of course would only be -5 for the effort it took to attempt the action.

-Another idea I had to take this even further. This is inspired from failure on a character move in Dungeon World (Check out the free rules here).

On a penalty and failure of a SR combat stunt roll follow these guidelines.

If the total penality is 1-9 - take combat penalties from your adds as described above.

If the total penalty is 10 -20 suffer one of these conditions:

1. Your weapon is destroyed
2. You become partially immobilized and cannot move from the legs downwards (suffer an additional -10 penalty to combat adds, and of course in addition to being completely vulnerable to attacks you don't have the option of escaping)
3. You make a major mistake. Roll 2d6 +1 per level damage.

If the penalty total is 20 -30:

Suffer TWO conditions.

30 or greater:

You are completely immobilized so no combat role period in the next round. Maybe a SR attempt to free yourself from immobilization next round otherwise you continue to be immobilized?

All of the above options are of course justified through the narrative for example:

Attempting to grab the spear from a goblin and throw it into the gorge. SR difficulty is 30 for a STR roll. I roll 5 from my 2d6(a 3 on my colored die roll - inverted for a - 4) plus my STR of 14 for a result of 19 which results in a -14 (+1 for my level in strength based on 7.5 rules).

So I try to grab the goblins spear and after a brief struggle the goblin spins me around fast enough for me to lose my grip on the spear. I stumble on a rock and plunge down the rock slope of the gorge behind me! 2d6 +1 (I'm level 1) damage = 10. I land in a crumpled heap thirty feet down the gorge.

Either you could pick the condition randomly on a d6 result: 1-2 weapon destroyed, 3-4 partially immobilized, 5-6 major mistake or (similar to Dungeon World rules) the player could choose what happens as a negative condition maybe even negotiating if playing with a GM.

I need to test this so I'm sure there are some balance issues but I just wanted to share the general gist of my thoughts. I'll try to update this once I've messed around with it more.