The Gaming Den

I have been thinking about how battles play out in fiction recently, depending on the genres and stakes. How this battle and this battle, ie a gritty, low power battle and a high power battle of epic heroics.

In the first example you feel like the fighters enter the battle with all their strength, there is no secret reserve that they can draw on so when one of them lands a lucky hit, the other fighter is most likely dead.The second feels as though the battle had a 3 act structure with a progressive escalation of abilities used by the two fighters.

The conclusion I've come up with is that the difference seems to be that heroic battles escalate as they drag on. There are already systems in place for this but none of them are particularly satisfying in what they do... meaning that they do not actually interact well with the world when you move out of combat.


The System

So here is a rough draft for how I imagine an escalation system would look like. Instead of being tied to combat rounds I would tie it to specific trigger that have a direct impact on the resource system in the game.

1st - Ready. This is the everyday stance where a hero can't really be told apart from a mook of the same level. The advantage to this stance is that our player can use his resources without them being expanded. After each battle where you do not change your stance you are instantly ready for another round.

2nd - At Stake. This is where hero will stand apart from others, at this stance the hero can access some of his more destructive abilities and in general becomes a lot more badass. The downside is that the resources you expand while in this stance are not recovered at the end of a battle and you suffer a penalty to the strength of your Ready stance. You can enter this stance only three times before you need to rest.

3rd - Desperation. This unlocks every ability, enhances all actions and restores all spent resources. The absolute limit of what a hero or villain is capable of when pushed to desperate measures. The cost that this stance carries is steep for once you leave it ALL of your resources are expanded (even if you did not use them during battle) and you receive heavy penalties to your Ready stance. You can enter this stance only once before you need to rest.

Stance Transition

Each time you transition to a higher stance you are brought up to full hitpoints and you can remove any negative condition inflicted upon you during the battle. Each stance other than Ready has only a limited duration. You are able to transition a stance under a few conditions and you always have the choice to forfeit the transition:
* Your hitpoints were reduced to 0 or lower.
* You are taken out of the fight via some negative condition.
* You are allowed to focus for one minute.
* You need to be in At Stake before you can enter Desperation.

Interaction with the World

Unlike other systems this one is meant to interact freely with the world outside of combat. There is really no reason why it should not, a warrior can enter At Stake to win an arm wrestling contest with Thor or a wizard can do the same when he attempts a world changing ritual. This would make them more vulnerable until they rest but can be use to complete challenges other than combat.

As far as using this for an ambush, that too is allowed. However, it is impossible to truly ambush someone who can change their stance. If they are in the Ready stance when the ambush happens and are downed in a single round they can just shift to At Stake and continue to fight.

Note: I've been using hit points only as an example. Ideally it should be something more abstract.

Seems viable. You'd definitely want to make HP fairly small since you're going to burn through them three times in a sufficiently important battle. AFAICT, it definitely fits the "you don't want to go up a stage immediately" test - between evenly matched foes, the one who advances a stage first is more likely to lose.

I like this idea. One thing I've seen that other systems don't handle too well is the mid-battle pause for talking - "look, we can stop now and call it a draw, or we can keep going, and if we keep going it's going to be bad for all these innocent bystanders." These would correspond pretty solidly to the divisions between stages.

I know. I've seen the other thread.

Problem with this is that the transition between stances is tied to the characters rather than to the flow of the battle itself. Still you could have abilities that trigger off stage transitions ie. when you enter Desperation you are allowed to make an intimidate check against all foes of lower level than you or when you enter At Stake you are allowed to taunt a single foe to try and go after you.

In any case, there should also probably be the possibility for team transitions. IE if one member of the group goes up a stage then you can all choose to go up a stage.

As for as HP goes I like to think that HP pools will be large enough so that 3 characters focusing fire on a boss would down him in one round somewhat reliably.