When running D&Dish games, I prefer combat to feel swift and decisive, and I appreciate rules that support this. Keeping all combatants’ hit point totals relatively low discourages it from becoming a slog. Streamlining rolls and arithmetic, as in Into the Odd and Cairn, can also speed things up. Testing enemies’ morale to see if they surrender or flee can end the fight early.
All of that said: sometimes I want to play a D&Dish game with to-hit rolls, without remembering to make those extra morale checks. Those games can drag when the dice roll just wrong, and I’m not always comfortable leaving it up to the group to decide when to wrap up a combat encounter early. As an alternative approach for future use, then, I’m going to try to reverse engineer a modular rule inspired by some of the ways I’ve handled this situation in the past.
Combat in my dungeon adventure games is really only supposed to last a round or two. A three-round battle is a big deal, and that third round is when things change. If it drags into four or five, I feel like I did something wrong, and need to come up with contrived ways to end things.
It occurs to me that it might be that I just need a rule to give me permission for combat to last only three rounds. So let’s do that.
Combat lasts 3 rounds at most. It may be initiated, decided, and concluded in a single round, or it may be initiated in round 1, decided by round 2, and concluded by round 3—but however it plays out, the victorious side is known by the end of the second round. 1️⃣
Round 3 is for transition and conclusion. At the start of round 3, the enemy side takes stock. The GM signals to players who’s about to win and what their options are.
- If enemies trail, they forfeit. The details depend on the nature of the enemy. Frightened animals may simply whine and run away when they’ve sustained too many wounds. A gang that’s lost their leader and half their fighters may thumb their noses and throw a dagger on their way out—but they still know when they’re beaten. Soldiers may surrender, repeating name, rank, and service number.
- If enemies lead, they press their advantage. The GM should be transparent about the circumstances—it’s clear they’re winning, and they’re about to get a huge bonus against you if you stick around. 2️⃣ The situation changes while preserving players’ agency about how to proceed. The specifics will differ against different enemies: surrender may possible with soldiers; fleeing may be the only option against hungry predators; going down swinging may be more palatable than running away in some cases.
- If unclear, use best judgment—but something changes. In a relatively even match-up, it’s up to the GM to make a ruling based on the nature of the enemy—or just going with “fleeing,” if that’s easier or more satisfying. For instance: a frenzied beast might attack recklessly for a huge bonus to attacks and damage, guaranteeing its own demise in the process; humans might take a breath and offer to parley; robots might have repeated a routine multiple times, revealing a predictable behavior players can exploit. Again, though, no matter what, something changes.
Pivotal battles might go longer—but in round 3, there’s a twist. Every once in a blue moon, I like to throw in a video-game-style “boss fight,” complete with multiple phases. Typically, you need to unlock later stages by taking certain actions in the game, like dealing sufficient damage to an enemy weak point. It is dead boring, however, to sit around clueless about how to proceed. Definitely trust your group about how to handle such situations, and ignore me if this goes against your instincts about how to play with your friends—but I’m thinking it makes sense to put a turn limit on combat phases, or at least bake a “hint trigger” into round 3 if it’s not obvious how to proceed.
For instance: if the group hasn’t noticed that they need to get behind the giant robot to poke it in the glowing weak spot, be really obvious right at the start of round 3 that there’s bright, glowing light, like a spotlight, shining from the back of the giant robot’s head, projecting against the far wall. (“There must be some kind of light source on the back of its head! I wonder what’s back there?”)
Whatever the specific “twist” is in round 3, once players engage with it, the entire nature of combat should change—the battlefield, the means of attack, or even the stakes. (“Uh oh! Now that you’ve poked the robot in the glowing weak spot, lava is pouring out of its bum! Get to high ground!”) 3️⃣ There should be no concern that they’ll just keep saying, “I attack with my sword,” and, “I roll 3 damage,” over and over.
That’s “the standard approach.” I think you can largely improvise how most denizens of the setting would react based on obvious motivations, as suggested in the examples above. For GMs (like me) who like certain kinds of prep, however, I think it’d be a lot of fun to prep what denizens might be inclined to do—and “bonus maneuvers” they might unlock—as combat escalates. Do the power-armored Templars always radio for heavily-armed backup against any opponent tough enough to last that long? Does the Jersey Devil get frustrated by armor after round 1 and use its claws to pry it off in round 2?
It occurs to me there may be a risk of this approach feeling formulaic and predictable if it happens consistently on round 3 every single time. If you really want to mix it up, you might have it happen after d4 actions are taken, or after a certain number of real-world minutes, which might be easier to track. I’m not especially worried about this myself, though—my goal isn’t to create a “believable” rhythm, but a satisfying, not-terribly-boring rhythm.
I didn’t get a chance to give this a try in my recent Wastoid playtest, though it would’ve made a lot of sense there. I hope to try it in some follow-up Wastoid testing as I refine the rules. If you happen to get it to the table, please do let me know how it goes!
Footnotes
1️⃣ If you prefer RPGs that describe the person running the game as a “referee” rather than a “game moderator,” I could see this rule bugging you. You might want that person acting as an impartial mediator of the rules, not guiding the conversation toward seemingly foreordained results. I’d humbly suggest, however, that this is meant as a pacing procedure, much like turns and hit points. “The players lost last round” is a statement of what already happened; the GM’s/ref’s job is to help the group transition into whatever comes next. ⤴️
2️⃣ I’m leaving the specific numbers of that “bonus” vague for easy adaptability, though the GM should be clear and concrete. It should be punishingly huge enough to make players feel like it would be hopeless to stick around, and worth taking some kind of character upgrade to negate that penalty every now and then. “Plus d12 to everything” or “advantage to everything they do, disadvantage to everything you do” sounds about right to me. ⤴️
3️⃣ I hope I can be forgiven for publicly including this awful example for a noble purpose: to bring joy to a second grader. ⤴️
Pretendo Games 