Hacking 2e: Encounter Reactions

Prior to getting behind the wheel of 2nd Edition, my experience with implementing ‘reactions’ centered around the skill check. Diplomacy (and later Persuasion), was the centerpiece of NPC good will or antipathy. Generally, this almost never took the form of a ‘called check’ by the DM based on player actions, but was instead a player-requested check: “Can I roll Diplomacy to make this guy tell us where the MacGuffin is?” This playstyle is the exact thing that the OSR, in all its various iterations, has been scrambling away from for 20 years.

If you’ve played any modern version of D&D, you’ve seen that moment where the face character botches the Persuasion check and the player dutifully acts out the resulting buffoonery. Plenty of laughs have been had here, though it’s always bothered me that charismatic PC would randomly turn into a social moron every once in a while. Even if not taken to that extreme, the player-facing results leave little room for nuance in the roleplay: the failed check is a failed check, and the party is apt to focus on the die result and its repercussions, rather than the NPC in front of them.

Charisma has become king in social interactions; a party’s ability to win friends and influence people isn’t based on their actions or their reputation, but on the high score of whichever player didn’t dump Charisma. Obviously, Charisma should have a place in social matters, as that’s basically all it’s there for, but it shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of whether NPCs have a positive or negative reaction to your collection of murder hobos.

2nd Edition has been a breath of fresh air. First, it keeps the reaction of the NPCs and monsters behind the screen; the players need to assess the social situation on its own terms, based on information communicated by the DM. Second, the face character can’t just spam the Charisma button; players need to determine how they’re going to approach any particular group, and hope that their bonuses from Charisma, their reputation, and their choices will carry the day.

That’s all to say, I like Reaction rolls. It’s good stuff. To figure out how it’ll look in a 2e rework, let’s look at the rules.

 

1. 2e Reactions

The encounter reaction system in AD&D 2nd Edition comprises a fairly straightforward ruleset: roll 2d10, modify it, and compare the results against a look-up table based on the party’s demeanor.

 

Of course, it’s broken. The modifier offered by Charisma increases the results of the roll, meaning that the more charismatic the creature, the more likely you’ll get a hostile reaction. This obviously wasn’t intentional, but is an example of the oversight present in this mechanic. The DMG doesn’t even mention Charisma’s Reaction Adjustment in the Reaction section! It does mention that the result is modified by “modifiers in the creature description,” but almost none of the monsters have any such modifier. Meanwhile, morale’s hijacked “Situational Modifiers” don’t completely slot into the reaction roll, as most relate to the state of a creature/NPC in mid-fight. Some of the other modifiers just seem odd when used for reactions: lawful NPCs are one tick more likely to be a threat and surprised creatures are more likely to be friendly? At least most of the modifiers match the direction of the table, but I question if they should be applied here at all.

Like many fiddly extra modifiers, I also question if anyone ever applied them in play.

The table itself is also busy. There are four different states in which the PCs can exist and six possible reactions from the NPCs, across 19 roll results. That’s 76 entries in this little table. This does the job of ensuring that the ‘good’ reaction result doesn’t become incongruous to the PCs actions – showing up with swords drawn doesn’t result in happy, friendly NPCs – but it’s still bloated.

Reaction descriptions in the 2e PHB

 

An advantage of this table is that the reactions are rather vague; “Flight” can mean many different types of reactions, meaning that the DM still has some say in how the random event plays out. Yet that strength falters between “Threatening” and “Hostile”, which seem a shade too close to each other to be meaningful. Even the descriptions don’t help much: is there much of a difference between blustering and irritable, or between short-tempered and hot-tempered? Perhaps in a novel, but not in gameplay.

 

2. Reactions in Other Editions and the OSR

AD&D 1st Edition uses a percentile roll (because of course it does) modified by Charisma and henchmen loyalty adjustments. The latter comprises a full page of various penalties and bonuses, most of which don’t seem to apply. Visible here is the heritage from which 2e implemented its own use of morale modifiers; much like that system, it does a poor job of pulling double duty.

OD&D and all versions of Basic use 2d6, mapped to a single column of results that expand and contract based on the preferences of the author. Of particular note is BECMI, which introduces the idea that the PC needs to be speaking for the Charisma bonus to apply; I’ve noted this previously as a concept worth keeping, so we’ll put a pin in that for later.

BECMI

The above tables are worth a more in-depth review, and thankfully others have done so before me. I’d recommend Simulacrum’s Across the Editions – The Reaction Table.

3e marks a major shift for reactions, in that they stop existing as a mechanic. It’s no longer about reaction; it’s about Attitude, and it is wholly in the hands of the DM.

3.5e PHB

In the place of random reactions is the great and mighty check, allowing the players to adjust the pre-determined attitude of NPCs. 3e makes this a simple skill check, 4e introduces the skill challenge (opening up almost any skill toward adjusting NPC attitudes), and 5e provides the anemic Conversation Reaction table (which if anyone ever actually used, I’ll eat my DMG). Implicit in all of this is that these checks only exist for non-monstrous NPCs; the monsters are there to be beaten and killed.

The OSR mostly reinterprets Basic’s 2d6 table. Sometimes modifiers are available, but almost always related to Charisma; anything beyond this is a vague gesture towards the DM and a recommendation that they use their brain. Some of the tables are simple and vague while others include specific detail.

Cairn (left) and The Black Hack (right)

The outliers to this orthodoxy either use saves to determine positive or negative reactions, or don’t use social encounter rules at all. In all of the surveyed games, their focus is on the quick and simple resolution provided by their B/X roots, avoiding the specifics of circumstance that 2e was attempting to answer with its massive table.

I think we can do quick and simple, while also meeting to 2e’s accommodation of player character demeanor. Let’s see what we can do with what we’ve already got.

 

3. Designing New Reactions

As previously stated, I’ll crib the speaking-rule concerning Charisma modifiers from BECMI, as it makes sense and works thematically. I’ll also keep this a 2d10 roll, which matches the morale roll and continues to theme d10s as the “check the situation” dice.

I’ll retain acknowledgement of the PC’s demeanor – it’s the greatest strength of this particular system – but it will require adjustment. Let’s pull up the probabilities that these columns create.

	PCs are:
Reaction	Friendly	Indifferent	Threatening	Hostile
Flight	0%	0%	0%	10%
Friendly	21%	15%	3%	0%
Indifferent	34%	40%	0%	0%
Cautious	30%	30%	33%	18%
Threatening	12%	18%	49%	36%
Hostile	3%	3%	15%	36%

 

3.1. Dead Ends

My first crack at reworking this was… fine. I merged Friendly and Indifferent into “Peaceful,” since they were so similar in probability. I tossed the Threatening column, but gave its name to the Hostile percentages, with the assumption that actual hostility is just going to be fight or flight and that morale rules could cover such events. The resulting table looks something like this:

	PCs are:
Modified Die Roll	Peaceful	Threatening
3 or less	Hostile	Hostile
4 – 6	Threatening	Hostile
7 – 9	Cautious	Hostile
10	Cautious	Threatening
11 – 13	Indifferent	Threatening
14	Indifferent	Cautious
15 – 16	Friendly	Cautious
17+	Friendly	Flight

 

It’s serviceable (though I’d likely tweak it if I were to keep working on it), and I think it could work well as an alternate, condensed reaction table for 2e. But it drives me nuts. If I go with this, it’ll be the only roll in the game (outside of damage, hit dice, and starting gold) that adds the modifier to the roll. If I’m going to work so hard to make Initiative roll-under, I can certainly do the same with Reactions.

 

3.2. The Reaction Score

So, here’s my idea:

Keep the roll 2d10, but give monsters and NPCs a Reaction Score which needs to be rolled at or under. Each monster has a unique Reaction Score based on its temperament, with a default score of 10 for when we don’t have a score available. Demeanor, situation, and Charisma can all modify the score. If the check passes, the reaction is positive. If failed, it’s negative. The further away the roll result is from the score, the more extreme the reaction.

I like that. Let’s work on demeanor modifiers.

First, Hostile is still an outlier; the DMG suggests it can be anywhere from Irritable to Violent, which seems to be a pretty massive spread. I feel actual violence on the part of the party should just result in morale checks to determine fight or flight. Threatening can cover everything from being bellicose to showing steel, so we’ll keep Hostile off the list.

Next, I’ll need to determine the positive and negative probabilities; we can do that by considering all Threatening or Hostile monster reactions to be a fail. Based on the current 2e table, that’s as follows:

Reaction	Friendly	Indifferent	Threatening
Pass	85%	79%	36%
Fail	15%	21%	64%

 

This still leaves Friendly and Indifferent too close, so let’s keep these two as a single demeanor with the “Peaceful” moniker. They’re also extremely likely to result in friendly monsters; I think I can safely lower these percentages. If I lower the pass rate of Threatening as well, that creates some clean (and memorable) modifiers.

PCs are	Reaction Score Modifier
Peaceful	+3
Cautious	—
Threatening	–3

 

Hey look, the PCs can be Cautious now, too.

This results in the following probabilities against a base Reaction Score of 10:

Reaction	Peaceful	Cautious	Threatening
Pass	72%	45%	21%
Fail	28%	55%	79%

 

Now, if PCs are being nice, the monsters and NPCs have a 70% chance not to stab them, which I think is more than enough. Remaining guarded gets you nearly an even chance, slightly weighted toward a bad end. Finally, aggressive results in a near 80% chance of starting a fight. I think these numbers work.

I’ll also need situational modifiers. The morale modifiers have some situations that I can steal, but I want these modifiers to be bespoke for reactions. Here’s some ideas:

PCs:	Modifier to Reaction Score
Worked in their favor	+3
Share cause	+3
Earned respect	+2
Share alignment	+2
Outnumber them 3 to 1	+1
Offered bribe	+1
Trespassed	–1
Are outnumbered 3 to 1	–1
Have different alignment	–2
Disrespected them	–2
Are hated enemy	–3
Worked against them	–3

 

Frankly, with this system the DM can easily choose their own modifiers based on the scene before them, but suggestions are always useful.

Finally, I’ll need a short explanation in the rules concerning how the spread of reactions are covered by the die result’s distance from the Reaction Score. Results close to the score should be slight, while those more distant should be significant, and those very far from the Score should be extreme. High Reaction Scores mean negative results can range from blustering to intimidating, but positive results can go from mildly conciliatory to enthusiastic kinship. Meanwhile, low Reaction Scores mean positive results range from mildly conciliatory to neutral, and negative results can range from blustering to violent rage.

 

4. Conclusion

This new system has wandered a far distance from the massive table found above.

Though it (sorta) retains the unique demeanors of 2e, this system uses those PC attitudes similar to how BECMI allowed for modifiers based on character actions. Like that system, it offers a range of modifiers that DMs can use to adjust the roll (increased here to +3/–3 to accommodate the larger die).

BECMI

This system also adds a new stat to monsters: The Reaction Score. This idea has potential, as more aggressive or more peaceful monsters can have specific scores which match their general attitudes.

I’ve completely scrapped the named reactions from the table in favor of a positive or negative result. Yet, by basing the strength of the reaction on how distant the die result is from the score, I think it maintains the vagueness that gave the 2e reaction table its usefulness.

It’s a very different system, but I think it works as a solution to the goal of crafting a simpler yet demeanor-relevant reaction tool. It reduces table dependency, cuts down the number of modifiers, and provides a framework for implementing those modifiers on the fly. This was also the last major mechanic that was awaiting conversion to a roll-under system, so I’m chuffed about that.

Next time, I’ll look at something outside of these encounter-based rolls: Encumbrance.