Simple Naval Combat for Cairn

Naval Combat for Cairn

Ship rules for Cairn, partly based on my Space Ship Rules from Meteor. My Space Ship rules are about creating a ship occupied only by the players, where you're going to treat the ship as a sort of extra character and spend a lot of time upgrading bits and pieces and repairing things when they go wrong. For naval combat I wanted something snappier, where its more about the players directing a crew and hitting the notes of cinematic combat where actions are on a grander scale than you as an individual.

These rules assume the players are in control of a ship that has its own Crew beyond the PCs themselves.

If you’re in a ship by yourselves, use the normal Cairn rules to adjudicate the situation.

If you’re engaging with a ship significantly larger or smaller than yours, see Ship Scales.

Ship Attributes

• HP: As HP for a player. A ship’s ability to avoid or compensate for incoming damage.

• Hull: The ship’s durability and structural integrity.

• Sails: The ship’s speed and maneuverability. Includes masts, sails, rowers, rudders.

• Crew: The ship’s crew, and ability to support its crew. Includes food and water stores, as well as crew morale.

Ship Combat

On each round of combat, each Player Character may direct the crew in a single action. These will usually be Maneuver!, Fire!, Board!, or Repair! but could be anything else appropriate.

Actions are limited by the ship’s facilities. For example, if you only have a single set of cannon on board you can only Fire! once per round.

If an action is risky, make a Save as usual. If success depends on the ship’s capabilities use the ship’s attributes, if it depends more on personal skill use the character’s attributes.

Combat is simultaneous with both ships acting at once. If a ship is ambushed or taken by surprise in some other way, make a Crew Save to see if the Crew can prepare fast enough to act in the first round.

Maneuver!

Move the ship! Try to line up the optimal shot for you cannons, “cross the T” of the enemy ship, becalm them by blocking the wind with your own sails.

Fire!

Make an attack with one of the weapons on board the ship.

Attacks are done as usual for Cairn combat :

1. Roll damage die
2. Subtract armor
3. Reduce HP
4. Deal remainder to Attribute
5. If the Attribute is reduce, make a Critical Damage Save

Unlike normal Cairn combat, an attack can be directed at a ship’s Sails, Hull, or Crew depending on the weapon being used. Critical Damage Saves are made with the impacted attribute, and each have differing effects.

Board!

Applicable only when close enough to plausibly do so.

Treat this as normal Detachment combat, with damage being dealt to a ship’s Crew attribute.

Repair!

Restore 1d6 HP or fix a problem.

Attempt to patch a hole, put out fires, calm a panicked crew, or any other such thing.

Depending on context this might require a Save, promises made, bribes, or anything else that might be appropriate.

If a specific problem exists (such as those caused by taking Critical Damage) this fixes it. Otherwise this action will restore 1d6 HP (but not any Attribute loss).

Ship Harm

A ship at zero HP has its crew already stretched to the limit. Any further damage will start causing permanent harm to the ship.

Hull

Critical Damage to Hull means a significant breach. Lose 1 Hull per Round until repaired.

Hull at zero means the ship is taking on water and sinking fast.

Sails

Critical Damage to Sails means the ship is becalmed. Unable to maneuver until repaired.

Zero Sails means the ship is unable to maneuver under its own power, stuck drifting with ocean currents until repairs are made.

Crew

Critical Damage to Crew means the crew is panicked! Unable to command the crew to take actions until calmed.

Crew at zero means the ship’s company has been killed or disabled. There are no longer sufficient crew members to operate the ship.

Ship Scales

 

Under normal circumstances ship weapons are instantly lethal against individual targets, while personal weapons are completely ineffective against ships. If applied cleverly, powerful personal weapons or explosives could bypass this restriction.

The same is true for ships of dramatically different scales. A small ship’s weapons are ineffective or impaired against a massive ship, whereas the massive ship’s armaments are likely to be instantly lethal, or at least enhanced, in return.

Example Ship Weapons

This is where I’d list a bunch of different naval weaponry and example ships but unfortunately I am both not a naval buff and also too lazy to go look things up. I have, at best, a vague recollection of a single Horatio Hornblower book and I don’t think that’s enough to work with.

Instead have a Cannon with a few different kinds of shots.

Cannons

• Standard Cannonballs: d6 damage
• Chainshot: impaired against Hull, enhanced against Sails
• Grapeshot: imparied against Hull, enhanced against Crew
• Heated Shot: enhanced against Hull, risky to use on a wooden ship

Mothership Decisive Combat Hack

Rules

Combat

When you commit violence, roll Combat:

If you under both your Combat stat and the weapon's Hit%, you deal a full Hit of damage.

If you roll under just one of the two, you deal damage equal to the sum of both dice (if you rolled a 45 you deal 9 damage).

If you roll under neither, you deal damage equal to the lower of the two dice (if you rolled a 93 you deal 3 damage).

Criticals that roll over both are a complete miss, deal no damage.

Criticals that roll under one or both activate the weapon's critical effect, or grant some other appropriate bonus.

Health and Hits

Players start with Health equal to the 10's place of their Strength + the 10's place of their Speed.

Players start with 2 Hits, except the Marine which starts with 3.

Conversions 

Weapons and Attacks

Weapons no longer have a damage value, they instead have a Hit%. To convert existing damage values multiply the number of dice rolled for damage by 10 to obtain the Hit%.

Grenades and other explosives don't have a Hit%. Instead they deal 2 Hits on a successful check, and 1 Hit otherwise.

Weapons with unique damage values (like the laser cutter) should be converted individually as it makes sense.

NPC and Monsters

Convert NPCs and Monsters by dividing their health by 5 (round up) and keeping their number of Hits.

The wide range of Health and Hits on NPCs means this won't always work, so adjust as necessary.

Armor

Armor provides single use Hits. They are removed first, and doing so destroys or damages the item.

Notes

Why?

I consistently enjoy playing Mothership, I love the flavor, the characters, and the modules. However I do not like the combat.

Because of the normal starting values for stats in Mothership, most characters are more likely to miss than hit making many combat rounds result in nothing happening. Even worse, the relative values for Health and damage are such that most attacks functionally don't do anything. 

In short combat feels boring and low risk, which is especially a problem when held against the usual tone of the game.

Nothing kills tension faster when the space crazed scalpel wielding doctor stabs you and deals... about 5% of your Health. It takes a dramatic and tense situation and makes it feel pointless.

I don't disagree with the advice I've seen Sean McCoy and others give, that you don't have to use the combat system to resolve situations. That rolls are only for during high stress, panicky situations. That you should progress the fiction on all rolls, that the situation should always change.

This is all good, but it's working around the combat system. It's mitigating it. I believe it would be much better to create a combat system that intrinsically supports the horror feel and high drama of the game.

Violence in a sci fi horror game should be dramatic, decisive, and scary. I want getting into combat to have real consequences, and I want those consequences to happen quickly.

Inspirations

This system is a combination of Into the Odd's "autohit" combat and Delta Green's "lethality" system, plus quadra's house rules.

Into the Odd has no to-hit rolls, instead damage is dealt directly to HP which is Hit Protection, the ability to avoid harm rather than a measure of physical endurance. It creates a fast, dynamic combat that is quickly decisive. There are no "nothing" rounds, and the situation gets resolved rapidly.

Delta Green's lethality system sidesteps the problem of "HP bloat" by simply letting dangerous weapons instantly kill their targets. This creates a tension, that makes a dangerous situation stay dangerous regardless of stats or equipment.

And from both, low Health totals. 

The Numbers

The above chart shows the expected amount of damage dealt on a hit or miss with varying combat skill (ignoring Hit% of weapons). There's a bit of weirdness at the extreme ends of the skill, but those are unlikely to actually come up in play. Otherwise, Hits usually deal about 50% more damage than a miss.

The average character and roll will usually end up dealing around 5 damage per attack, which means that the average player will lose a Hit in two attacks. I like this amount as it means combat can't drag out too long, and it makes acting first very important which encourages use of clever tactics and fictional positioning.

Final Thoughts

This is currently untested, although I've played and enjoyed similar systems. I don't think this is perfect, or the end all of what I'm trying to achieve, but I do think that the weakest part of Mothership by far is the combat and something has to change. Dramatically reducing Health values, as I believe is the intent for Mothership 1.0, would go some way to fixing my problems but I still believe there's additional changes that can be made.

Living Grimoires - Freeform (but closed ended) Whitehack Magic for Into the Odd

Spell Lists or Freeform Magic?

Although I find spell list style magic fun, running Macchiato Monsters has showed me how much I enjoy the flexibility and open ended-ness that comes with more freeform magic systems. And because I appear to make a habit of taking whatever my most recent RPG obsession and hacking it for Into the Odd (I previously adapted GLOG magic into a cassette tape system for Electric Bastionland), here's my attempt at find a way to take a freeform system like Whitehack's miracles (or Macchiato Monsters spells) and fit it into the largely item based world of Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland. 

Something I specifically wanted to avoid in crafting this sytem was making it so flexible as to nullify other methods of approach. A lot of the fun of rules light games is finding new and interesting ways to apply the resources you have, so I didn't want to create a system that replaced that gameplay with more rules.

Another factor in finding a way to limit the freeform casting is that although I enjoy working with players to create unique spells and effects, doing so every single time a spell is cast can be somewhat laborious (which is why I wrote this flowchart for Macchiato Monsters). Additionally, some of the fun of magic comes from finding new ways to apply niche existing spells in clever ways, so I wanted a system where players would have a set spells they could keep going back to.

The Whitehack does this to some degree by requiring spell effects thematically match the overall name of the "miracle", and narrow miracle wordings are encouraged with a discount on casting cost. I took it a step further, by setting a limit for how many different spells can fit within a single Grimoire. In some sense, this is a "write your own spell list" system, and if a player wants more spells they'd better find a way to get more Grimoires (probably by way of murdering some wizards).

With ITO rules, depending on HP levels and spell cost, many spells will be essentially “free” to cast outside of combat or other perilous situations. That’s as intended, and if an effect seems like it would cause problems if it were able to be cast over and over just apply some unique restriction or requirement to it.

One benefit of this "system" is that it doesn't have to be added to a game wholesale. It's entirely contained within an item, so letting players find a single Grimoire means you can add a dash of magic to the game without fully committing to a whole system.

All that being said, it’s entirely unplaytested so who knows.

Living Grimoires

Grimoires tomes of stored knowledge and magic. They're alive and want to be used, but only in a way pleasing to their nature.

MTG has a lot of good magic book artwork.

Each Grimoire has a title indicating its contents and personality, and can hold 6 spells; those containing 4 or more spells are Bulky (due to the weight of unearthly knowledge). Some Grimoires may come with prewritten spells, but most will just have blank space ready for new spells to be inked. Each Grimoire has a specific way in which spells may be added related to its title.

When stolen or recovered from a former owner, roll a Luck die to see which (if any) spells remain intact.

If you are playing a more traditional game, instead of having players write their own spells a Grimoire might come pre-written.  Access to each spell would only be granted when the current owner has performed certain tasks or paid appropriate respect to the tome.

Casting Spells

To cast a spell, hold the Grimoire in both hands and speak the incantation aloud.

Casting the spell deals damage to you (ignoring armor) equal to its cost (from a d4 to a d12).

Excess damage is dealt to WIS/CHA, and a failed WIS/CHA save results in unconsciousness (or rolling on your favorite spell misfire table).

Spellcrafting

To write a spell, declare what you wish for the spell to do. The effects must be within the scope of the Grimoire's title.

To set the cost, start at a d4 to get one of:

• A fleeting moderate effect
• d6 damage
• A lasting minor effect
  

Step up die for:

• Improved effect (more powerful, more useful, more specific, etc)
• More damage
• Additional Targets
• Longer duration
  

Step it up again for lots of one of those things. For example step up once for second target, and twice for Blast/Area.

Step down die for:

• Narrow effects
• Significant drawbacks
• Negative side effects
• Complicated or lengthy casting
• Specific requirements

If you need a higher die size than d12 it's either not within the scope of the spellbook, or will require additional drawbacks, requirements, or steps.

Spells that seem like a poor fit for the Grimoire's title are either impossible, or require a significant drawback or limitation that makes them more suitable.

Make a note of the spell’s name, effects, and cost. Remember each Grimoire can only store a certain number of spells.

Make the spells interesting! Spells with very direct, useful effects will be expensive, and boring spells will piss off the Grimoire. If you have to jump through a few hoops to make it work, that’ll lower the cost to manageable levels. 

Honestly you could do worse than just stealing Grimoire names from MTG.

Scrolls

Individual spells might be found (or created) as scrolls. Depending on the limitations of your world, scrolls might be single use. Or they might be reusable, but have the option to be destroyed during casting in order to negate the cost.

Examples

The Path of Flame -  New spells must be burned into the Grimoire using a heated piece of metal.

1. Flame Friend - d4 - Summon a orb of flame that will follow the caster for a day and provide illumination.
2. Salamander's Lockpick - d6 - Superheat a small piece of metal to weaken or melt it.
3. Purifying Flame - d6 - With a touch purge a poison, disease, or enchantment from a target. Deals 1d4 damage directly to STR and leaves a hand print burn.
4. Oathkeeper's Light - d8 -  Ignite a small white flame as an oath is sworn. The flame will internally ignite any who breaks the oath, dealing them d6 damage directly to STR every sunrise.
   
5. Circle of Protecting Flame - d10 - Trace a closed loop with a flammable material. As long as you stay within the enclosed space, anything attempting to cross will cause the loop to erupt into flame dealing 1d12 damage.
6. The Classic - d12 - Shoot a spark of flame that explodes to deal 1d10 Blast damage.

The Catalog of Lesser Spirits - New spells may be added by requesting them from the spirit of the Grimoire itself, along with a suitable gift (it likes fresh flowers to press within its pages).

1. Loyal Lock - d4 - Animate a lock and command it to open or close. It will do so and remain in that state until someone with a higher CHA countermands the order.
2. The Devil’s in the Dust-Trails - d6 - Blow dust at a mark on a surface (scratch, scuff, footprint, etc). The dust will briefly animate to show you what caused the mark.
3. If These Walls Could Talk - d6 - Draw a mouth on a wall with saliva. Using that mouth the wall will answer one question to the best of its ability (walls know about things that occurred near them, as well as things that support them or that they support).
4.  Bleeding Edge - d4 - Awaken bloodthirst in a bladed weapon. Its next strike deals max damage, but if that hit does not cause Critical Damage it will deal 1d4 STR damage to its wielder.
5. Threshold Sentinel - d8 - Take 10 minutes to awaken the spirit of a doorway (or similar space) and choose a pass code. The spirit will prevent anyone from passing through the doorway unless they know the pass code (dealing 1d12 damage to anyone that forces their way through). Lasts a day, but if cast every day for a week becomes permanent.
6. Spectral Courier - d4 - Press a minor spirit into service to deliver a message to a named person. Most spirits travel only as fast as a walk, although they do so in a straight line.
   

Atlas of Flesh & Bone - New spells must be inked in blood, using a pen carved from bone.

1. Indefinite Loan - d6 - Restore 1d4 STR or DEX by transference between two creatures you touch.
2. Maximize Minimize - d4 - Touch a creature to set one of STR or DEX to 18 for 10 minutes. That stat is then set to 3 for another 10 minutes.
3. Bonus Limbs - d6 - Grant a creature d4 extra limbs (of your choice). After 10 minutes they dry out and fall off.
4. Bone Sense - d4 - You know the exact location of every bone within a 50 foot radius for 10 minutes.
5. No Mask? No Mask! - d8 - Reshape a person's face as though it were putty (a reference will likely be needed to aid the artist if the goal is disguise). Lasts until sunrise.
   
6. Monstrous Melding - d12 - Transplant a monster's organ or limb into a willing subject, they gain some aspect of the power or abilities of the donor. Will last for a week, but if this spell is cast again within that duration the effect becomes permanent (some side effects may occur).
   

Hit Dice Dungeons!

While running Macchiato Monsters the other night, one of my players joked about how we should be tracking hit points with a Risk Die, since everything else in the game uses those.

But then we stopped, thought about it, and realized that it actually sounded like a good idea.

So here's a combat system using only a usage/risk die for tracking harm. It's designed to slot into something like ITO, but I included some potential ways to expand this into a full system at the bottom (or just go use Jason Tocci’s 2400 which is better than whatever I'll come up with).

Hit Dice Combat

Combat occurs simultaneously. Everyone involved declares their intent for the turn (usually moving a short distance + attacking, taking an action). The GM declares NPC actions first, but everything is resolved simultaneously.

Attackers do not roll dice to resolve attacks, instead every attacked creature rolls their Hit Die to avoid harm for each attack.

If the Hit Die rolls a 1-3 (the Threat Range) the Hit Die steps down in size. If the die cannot step down (i.e. it's a d4) the creature is incapacitated. They're bleeding out and will die in an hour if left unattended.

Armor and Weapons

Deadly attacks expand the Threat Range (e.g. if attacked with a +1 Sword take harm when rolling 1-4). This is written as +X, where X is the amount the Threat Range is expanded.

Armor shrinks the Threat Range, written as -X where X is the amount by which the Threat Range is reduced (e.g. wearing Scale Mail (Armor -1) means you take harm only when rolling a 1-2).

The Threat Range cannot be smaller than 1.

Example Items

Poison, apply to a weapon for +2 to the next attack.
Great Axe, two handed, +1.
Firebomb, blast, +1
Crossbow, slow, +2

Chain Mail (Armor -1)

Helmet (Armor -1)

Plate Armor, bulky, clumsy, (Armor -2)

Shield, sunder to prevent stepping down Hit Die when hit.

 (This doesn't read wonderfully. Positive numbers always increase the Threat Range, while negative numbers always decrease it. However it's sorta messy that +1 on weapons is good, but +1 on armor would mean it's easier to hit you.)

Healing

If you took harm during a combat, a few minutes and a drink of water lets you roll the Hit Die. A result of 4+ will restore one Hit Die level (e.g. d6->d8). This only works once per combat, and only if you were damaged during that combat.

Resting overnight with food and drink automatically restores one Hit Die level, then you may roll to restore a second level (as above).

Your Hit Die cannot exceed its original size through healing.

Example Enemies

Goblin Guard, d4, Dull Stick -1
Lizard Bugcatcher, d6, Spear, Net Throw +1 (On hit tangles rather than reducing Hit Die size)
Fungal Warrior, d6, Spore Cloud +1
Giant Toad, d8, Thick Skin (Armor -1), Tongue +2 (On hit the target is grabbed and swallowed).
Crystal Mimic, d4, Fragile (Armor +1), Shard Stab (+2 if attacking from hiding)
Iron Golem, d10, Iron Construction (Armor +2), 2 x Pneumatic Fists +2
Werewolf, d8, Bite+2, 2 x Claws +1, silver weapons force Hit Rolls at disadvantage.

Ideas for Expansion

Death and Dying

Look at the final Hit Die roll to see what happens when someone goes down:

1: Dead
2: Bleeding out with minutes to live.
3: Bleeding out with an hour to live.
4: Knocked out.

Morale

Roll an NPC’s hit die for morale, on a 1-3 they flee or surrender. Enemies roll Morale whenever their Hit Die steps down (in addition to the usual times). This is basically just how Macchiato Monsters morale works.

Everything’s a Hit Die!

Treat any risky thing as an “attack”. Expand the Threat Range (as with weapons) if it’s particularly dangerous or difficult. Equipment acts like Armor does and reduces the threat range. Rolling inside the Threat Range means failure or harm, rolling above it means success or avoiding the harm.

This has the benefit of folding the entire game into a single mechanic, and means characters are just one die and some equipment.

A downside to this is that reducing the Hit Die doesn’t always make sense for every risk. This could be solved by making failure consequences more diverse when out of combat (or even when in combat!). Reduce the Hit Die when the thing at risk is bodily harm, but other risks could be lost or broken equipment, being separated, being put into a bad position, or really anything that makes fictional sense.

Another downside is that this will tend to make characters death spiral, because they’re entirely represented by one dwindling die. Every failure makes future failures more likely.

More Hit Dice?

Characters have the Hit Die as described above, which represents combat prowess and physical durability. They also have a Skill Die (representing training, talents and dexterity) and a Will Die (representing mental fortitude and magical aptitude).

Use these dice as described in the previous section, but now there’s more flexibility and characters are less likely to death spiral since harm can be spread out.

This also gives a little bit of room for mechanically distinguishing characters.

Advantage and Disadvantage?

It’d be very easy to add Advantage and Disadvantage to this. A clever attack from a good position means the enemy must roll their die at disadvantage.

However, that’s an extra mechanic and this is already something you could handle by giving situational bonuses and penalties to Threat Ranges.

Parting Thoughts

This is entirely unplaytested, just a neat idea I wanted to poke at for a bit. I’d welcome anyone’s thoughts on it, or if anyone has seen it show up in another system.

DUEL AT HIGH NOON - Simple Duel Procedure for Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland.

Stare down the opposition in a dusty street under a burning sun, then...

DRAW!

Both duelists make a DEX save to draw their weapons.

AIM!

If one duelist succeeded and the other failed, the duelist who succeeded is the WINNER.

If both duelists succeeded, whoever rolled the higher number is the WINNER.

If neither duelist succeeded, there is no WINNER. 

FIRE!

Anyone who succeeded has their attack ENHANCED (+1d12 Bonus).

If there is a WINNER they shoot FIRST. 

The other duelist can then take their shot if they’re still standing.

If there is no WINNER, both duelists shoot simultaneously.