Fathach's Foundation and 1 roll combat

The foundation of Fathach's design is explorative, social decision making. I want the mechanics to encourage exploration, to interact with the environment and the fiction. I want the to encourage characters to talk and engage with NPCs of Fathach, Lastly I want the moment to moment gameplay to be filled with trade offs and choices with no solved answer. A good example of what I am going for is the combat. I don't like combat but OSR games that I like feature it often. Also when anyone hears of a roleplaying game, combat is never too far away. [1] 

 

From Arcane Library (This combat is already too long)

The aspect of combat I find the most interesting and unexplored isn't the round to round gameplay but instead the before and after of a combat. What do you have ready in case a fight breaks out? Do we surprise attack these goblins or do we check if we can talk to them? What did that fight cost? Is it worth it to go further now that everyone has less health and some broken weapons? Should we go further to find better combat gear so that we can escape? These are the questions I like to answer. I decided to go for a one roll combat so that I cut directly to the part that matters (to me at least). Here's how combat works. 

 

From dicepool.com (not even joking)

When the party wants to deal with a creature violently, roll your Approach Dice. Body if you are using strength and weapons, Brain if you are using reason and magic or Bag if you are using reflexes and items. (This is a d6 dicepool system. Mechanical bones come from Alexander Rask on this Substack post. All you need to know is 5-6 are successes and players start with 2 dice) Count all dice that get 5 or 6 results. Then you start spending. Every monster needs one success to kill. Now with 4 players with 2 dice each at level one, most combats will be a breeze. Except there's the consequences. There are a list of statements that will come to pass unless a success is spent on them. Once successes are spent and consequences resolved, go back to crawling. 

 

Here's what a goblin encounter looks like right now. I am unsure how many consequences a fight should have but around 6 feels about right.  

 

Goblin 1

1 The light went out

1 We triggered a trap that the goblin set

2 We got hurt and now Scared (Scared basically means that you can't fight again and if you are forced to fight you have to leave the dungeon in fear)

1 The fight took a long time 

1 The fight was loud  

 

I am still workshopping the list. Monsters differentiate themselves not by their health but what consequences you need to deal with. A rust monster might add "1 our metal weapons broke". or a gelatinous cube might set "4 The ceiling collapsed". Players can also mitigate these measures outside of combat like by removing the trap before the goblins arrive or having multiple light sources to reduce the successes required. There might be a scenario where it's better to keep the creature alive so that a success can be used to deal with a consequence. Items can also give free successes towards different actions like a fireproof cloak adds 2 free successes towards fire related consequences. 

 

This combat system is exploration focused as fights should ideally be avoided and the environment can help work towards or ignore consequences entirely. It's social as more dice is better so if your side is bigger, you can solve more problems. It's decision making as you have to decide what consequences are you willing to deal with. It also makes it easy to make monsters as I find it easy to come up with consequences to actions.

By Gila RPG. A design inspiration

Some people may look at the numbers and say that combat is too hard. That is intentional. Combat is not the focus. The reaction roll I am working on should be biased against hostile, violent creatures. This was inspired by Gila RPG's THORN, Explorer's Design's 1 HP dragon and Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn. I hope this is a good example of what I am going for. 

Clickables

[1] I know combat less RPGs exist but in my experience I have never seen an OSR without combat.  

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