Goodman Games

So, warrior and dwarves get MDoA. Cool, love that. In 3E warriors are boring (except for spikechain masters).

But. Is there really a reason why a warrior or dwarf should not try a MDoA every attack?
My interpretation is "hell no".

The way i see it, if Conan is trying EVERY time he swings his sword to do something fancy, but he only succeeds sometimes because of rules of probability, that's kind of lame.
I mean, i'd like MDoA to feel extra-cool, and when they're used they should be important.

Hence, my (dumb?) idea:
Do not add Attack Die to dmg if attempting MDoA. This represents you're trying to achieve a specific strategic result rather than blunt damage.
If you choose to just swing at the enemy, you do more damage (Attack Die is added to dmg as per rules).

I could see the Dwarf pondering "mmmh.... i could try and toss him down the cliff, but i could also try and fell him in one shot.... What would Thor do?!"

And how much playtesting have you given this idea?

That idea is semi-supported by certain readings of the Beta. It makes sense that there is a downside to trying an MDoA.

I also like this idea as a way to keep players from allways using something that is sopopsed to be special. I hope better clarification comes out in the full rules.

I wanted to be sure there was nothing i had missed before playtesting it. I'm going to present my player who has a Dwarf. I'm sure he's going to feel a little nerfed but i already explained all of them that we're playtesting not just playing.

I had this idea when that player lost imagination after a while and just said "i'm trying to trip him." every attack because i he got a 3 he'd have had a big combat advantage. It wasnt about being cinematic or about the tension of battle.

Having a 5th lvl warrior giving up d7 extra damage to try and disarm an opponent is something worth seeing, and i think that tension would be greater.

I guess I read it as the damage should always be there. I think that was how we did it at the playtest I was at in February, but it's been long enough that I may not remember that 100%. Except when I read the example in the beta, I instantly thought "oh, they forgot to put in the +3 damage," and when someone said on the forum that the damage is supposed to be dropped, I thought, "it is?!", all of which I think was coming from (fresher) memories of the playtest.

I'd rather 'nerf' the repetitious use of the same MDoA. If you're trying to trip someone every time, they might catch on... I'd raise the number needed for each consecutive repetition, until it became essentially impossible to trip the foe. No bonuses for un-imaginative thinking.

Of course, on the GMs part, the combats should be as dynamic as possible, anyway. Meaning there should be opportunities to create inventive MDoAs.

I like it, and I also like the OP's idea.

Hello, i'm back after playtesting. Despite my fears, the Dwarf player didn't feel nerfed at all, he enjoyed "the choice" he had to make when fighting: more damage or specific strategic advantage!?
They were fighting 3 cultists so he decided to try and shove one with his shield so he'd fall on his comrades and succeeded: he dealt only 1d3 damage but he achieved his goal of making his enemies fall.
Then they fought a mephit which proved to be very dangerous. So he dealt with it quickly, dealing 9 damage with his longsword and killing it after the 3 damage dealt by the cleric.

This, and "shield shall be splintered" houserule made the Dwarf super-interesting despite him not having the 19-20 crit, a d12 HD or a Initiative Bonus like the warrior.

I have played this way from the start as this was always my take on things. There are reasons to believe it applies to MDoAs as a bonus to damage as well but regardless, I prefer to have players make the choice rather than try to nerf MDoAs.

Players still opted to use MDoAs (at first they scoffed saying they would never use them) and it worked out great. At high levels the trade off may not be worth it (it's one thing to lose out on d3 damage, another to lose d16) so I'm not sold on this rule yet. I'm just not sure what a better balance is as the thought of MDoA spam is worriesome.

But look at what a 7 does on the MDoA charts just imagine what you can do with an 11 or 12 on those charts.

Player: "I try to knock my opponent back"
{11} DM: "You smack the butt of your weapon down against the dirt causing the ground to shake, knocking over every opponent within 40'. If you are unarmed, you clap your hands together to achieve this effect, but the effect is a cone 120 degree wide and 60' long instead of a circle 40' in radius."
{12} DM: "You smack the butt of your weapon or fist down against the dirt causing a 20' deep fissure to split in the earth between you and your opponent. The opponent falls into the fissure taking 2d6 hp of damage and must make a Reflex save (DC your attack roll) to avoid being trapped between the walls of the fissue."
etc.

I was wondering about how the class die thing was going to work with 10 levels.

Are they just goping to go up one die at each leve?

Are they going to spreadout the d3 to d7 over 10 levels (d3 at 1st and 2nd, d4 at 3rd and 4th, etc.)?

Are they going to caap the class die at d7 at 5th level?

Are they going to redo the MDoA charts?

I am really looking forward to the final rules. I guess I should put my pre-order in.

It makes me sick to think that is where it will go... lol.

Good point on the increasingly better results for higher numbers though. Of course that just leads to excessive MDoAs again if you are too generous.

Back before the Beta when speculating about MDoAs, I just assumed they would be tiered differently: 3+, 5+, 7+, 9+, etc. By having such powerful effect at the 7 result in the beta I don't know where MDoAs will go for levels 6-10.

(Besides, I like the imagery of The Hulk or The Thing smacking their hands together to create a shock wave. It may be a bit superhero-y but there is plenty of Fantasy stuff where the sound of a weapon being rung does something special. Is it really that different. Besides when you can create a fissure with the pommel of a sword, the wizard can transmute flesh to stone and other absurd things.)

I could handle this in a mythical super hero type game where the players are legendary, possible children of the gods. Playing a character like Hercules and Achilles might be a lot of fun actually and a class die system would be great for that. Afterall they tend to do one or two things exceptionally well and everything else is basically human-level. Applying the class die to just those things and you have the start of a system.

However I simply can't imagine this in a Swords and Sorcery campaign. Conan would never be able to do something so over-the-top. Now arm him with gauntlets of giant strength and I can get back in to this idea again. Heck having a table with such entries might make for an interesting way to do some magic items. Maybe Gauntlets of Ogre Strength uses a d8, Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength d10 and so on.

The same thing you did with a 7.

At least, that's how it's reading to me.

Maybe some kinds of enemies should have a different effect on receiving MDoA!?
For example a warrior could impose a penalty equal to : warrior level -1, so that a 2nd level warrior fighting a 2nd level warrior would actually need to roll a 4 on his d4 to have the result of 3. If you're against someone stronger than you, i'm sorry you can't trick the old bastard

Maybe monsters with d8 HD should count as a warrior 2/3 of their total HDs, so that a 3d8 HP ghoul would count as a 2nd level warrior. Monsters with d6 HD should count as a warrior 1/2 of their total HDs, and so on.

It would make sense to me and would make up for the escalating power of MDoA: you can't get more than a 7 effect, but maybe if you are level 10 you can get such effects against stronger foes, whereas a 5th level warrior couldn't.

So you want to add an MDoA defense score to everything? It's a great idea but I don't think it will gain traction. You need to internalize the die roll to the fighter.

Or, we just find out the class die is d3=1st level, d4=3rd level, d5=5th level, etc. It's too bad we won't really know until the Book exists in November.

well i don't think that it'd be that difficult for designers to have these numbers in mind:

monster HD-------ratio
d12,d10 ---------- 1:1
d8 --------------- 2:3
d6 --------------- 1:2
d4 --------------- 1:4

then simply add to each monster entry "MDoAD -X"*

*(Mighty Deeds of Arms Defence)

Besides, 3E rogues do something similar with Improved Uncanny Dodge, don't they?

PS: i would leave this out of the monster entry, it's easy enough for dms to remember if they want to do so, easy to forget if they don't want to use it.

Too cumbersome for little reward imo.

But wouldn't that dragon look dumb if a 5th level warrior kept tripping it with just a 3?! I'd like that warrior to trip and disarm goblins like they were plastic figurines, but doing that with a boss i would like him to need at least a 7!

Definitely. I don't need a defense rating though to tell me that a warrior is going to need more than the regular 3 to pull this feat off though. In fact I'd probably ask him how he was intending to do this and then let him roll... only to have him fail regardless of the roll. The result of his MDoA would probably just tell me how well he recovered from this foolish tactic, not the results. If he rolls a 1 he is laying under the dragon prone (-4 ac), if he rolls a 2 he's (-2 AC), a 3+ he realizes he doesn't have the strength or size to pull it off and is able to return to a strong defense position, and maybe if I'm feeling generous a 5+ means the dragons foot is lifted off the ground and it throws it off balance for the round (-2 to hit) but it is not tripped and the warrior retreats from his blunder.

Afterall unless he has some magical means or the dragon is teetering by a pit or something I see no way a warrior could do this.

Yes, DCC is firmly in the territory where for many, many situations numbers don't tell you what happens -- your brain tells you what happens.

i'm sorry, i tend to like written rules over "just improvise" and i forget this is DCC not D&D, a different beast altogether. I think i will personally use that table as a guideline anyway, especially when it is debatable whether you can or not pull off an MDoA. Probably kinda useless to post it here.

Fair enough and I have no problem with this as a suggested variant. I just want a barebone rules system because it's always easier to add rules for those that want them, than it is to try and take them away.

If I said "improvisation" is based on rules, would it blow anyone's mind?

It's just that the "rules" are what fits for your campaign. Want things to be "street-level"? Well, there's no tripping dragons then. What to run a game about demi-gods discovering that they are demi-gods? Tripping dragons might be appropriate at some point...

The game you play is largely in your hands.