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.

Hacking 2e: Roll-Under Mechanics – Part 2

Last time, I looked at converting Saving Throws, Surprise, and Attack Rolls to a roll-under system. Let’s do the rest. Please note: this is mostly the “make a new ruleset for initiative" post and will constitute most of the text.

 

4. Damage

Unless we’re altering the hit point system (which I’m not looking to do today), this mechanic needs to give us a value to subtract from those hit points. With that requirement, converting damage into a roll-under check is a weird and torturous exercise. I think it could be done by giving every weapon two static damage values, then giving the higher damage value on successful rolls. However, this is sweaty and lame, and it provides zero advantage over a flat roll.

Rolling the value directly on the die is the cleanest way, as is adding modifiers to the die roll. Since this doesn’t align the goal of making everything a low roll and only adding modifiers to scores, I’ll need to add in a caveat for this type of roll.

Whenever you roll dice to obtain a result, rather than beat a score, you’ll want to roll high and add any modifiers to the roll itself.

Damage won’t be alone in this; Hit Dice and calculating starting gold also meet this criteria.