Sunday, August 4, 2013

Bashing Doors Open and Other Play Notes


I ran a pickup OD&D game last night and generally had a good bit of fun. I ran the dungeon from Dungeon Crawl #1 and the PCs encountered the Mammon trap I wrote for Green Devil Face #2, which is always a fun encounter. A few thoughts stemming from play.

In The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, it says:
Generally, doors will not open by turning the handle or by a push. Doors must be forced open by strength, a roll of 1 or 2 indicating the door opens, although smaller and lighter characters may be required to roll a 1 to open doors. There can be up to three characters attempting to force open a door, but this will disallow them rapid reaction to anything awaiting them on the other side.
Philotomy noted, I think wisely, that this makes the dungeon a bit more of a weird, underworld-ish environment. The problem is, in everything I run lately, players seem to have fantastically bad luck at this roll. Three PCs will sit there for two or three goes each before someone finally gets the door open, having made a ton of racket in so doing. Which makes their lives harder strategically, and I'm fine with that, but the actual act of bashing open doors gets a bit tedious and can slow down play.

I'm thinking of a variant rule where you roll a d6, and the number you rolled gives you the number of tries it takes you to open the door, with a 6 indicating that you are totally unsuccessful and need to make further attempts. A 1 or 2 will not give monsters around a general alert and will still require the monsters to roll surprise, while a 3, 4, or 5 will not allow a surprise roll and should draw an extra wandering monster check. This would keep the original rule's spirit in tact while not letting the game get stuck in a loop where the referee says "come on, roll a 1 or 2 already."

What's funny to me is that the other d6-based rules in OD&D all work fine because they are on my side of the screen (PC or referee's screen, either works). I roll a d6 or two practically every time the players ask me something, and they fail a tremendous number of hearing checks but it's the same if they blow it or nothing's on the other side of the door. So I say "You don't hear anything" an awful lot.

The other thing that's good to remember is that when you start putting random dungeon dressing in the game, it's fun what players will think to do with it. There were some empty rooms in the dungeon, and I rolled contents on the Ready Ref Sheets chart like I often do - and found upholstered chairs. The players were seeking assiduously through, so I rolled again and got a result of a knife, which I decided would effectively be a silver dagger for purposes of stabbing things that require silver weapons to hit.

For Empire of the Petal Throne fans, there was an encounter with several hlyss. Of course, the PCs outnumbered them and had missile weapons, which in OD&D is a fairly lethal combination, especially considering the one PC hit by a stinger made his saving throw.

On a final note, my update to initiative works pretty well. In addition to the d6 roll-off that I traditionally do when running OD&D, I instituted a rule where a weapon 2 classes longer (using Chainmail weapon ranks) gets first strike when closing for melee. It rewarded the one PC who picked a spear, and I liked that. It's a good way to differentiate weapons if you're not using variable damage dice.

For folks who don't have Chainmail, the OD&D and Holmes equipment lists both have weapons in order according to weapon rank: Dagger, Hand Axe, Mace, Sword, Battle Axe, Morning Star, Flail, Spear, Pole-Arm, Halberd, Two-Handed Sword, Lance, Pike.

18 comments:

  1. Very nice!

    I like the weapon size rule, and will use it ;)

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    1. Always a pleasure - particularly when I get to run OD&D. There are lots of great variants but sometimes it's just fun to go with the original.

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  3. Sorry I missed the game, sounds like fun.

    For doors, I use the 1-2 on a d6 to see if it opens easily and is not locked. If they don't make this roll, they do a STR check (roll under their STR) to force/bash down a door.

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  4. I had a similar experience with doors. It's one of those rules that seems completely logical and weird. In play though, it resulted in everyone in the party, including hirelings, having to try to open every door. More comical than anything. I quickly ditched it as counterproductive.

    I would like to have some stuck doors and may need to implement a door chart.

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  5. I've found stuck doors an interesting issue. I didn't/don't mind them in play - and go with the "each failed roll means a wanderer check" - but I tend not to use them that much in my games. When I do it's more a "yes you can smash this door - it'll be noisy" and check for monsters.

    Locked doors I treat similarly, there are some doors though that are unbashable (vault style flooding hatches mostly) but once there's a magsman of note in the party the question is moot.

    Stuck doors are one of the huge number of od&d things that require random monster checks in od&d, making randoms the most dangerous part of exploration.

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    1. @Gus

      Do you remember The Mad God in the Well adventure that I ran? I used the dungeon from Dungeon Crawl #1 for that.

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  6. I had a similar issue with doors - rolling repeatedly to achieve what is inevitable seemed like a waste of time and didn't serve to build tension at all. So my method is: the party can attempt to "breach" the door, using the traditional roll, which gives them a chance to win surprise against any monsters on the other side.

    If the party fails the roll or doesn't care to try, they are assumed to force the door open after a few attempts, but make enough noise and take enough time that they don't get to roll for surprise.

    As for the actual rolls, the party designates up to three members to contribute to the effort. Each character with Strength 9-12 contributes one die, each with 13+ contributes two dice. All the dice are rolled and if any succeed, the breach is successful. The characters involved in the breach don't get an action in the first round of combat, so the party has to balance the pros and cons of putting their strongest people on the door when they don't know what kind of monsters might be waiting.

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    1. Follow-up: I've found that this method encourages the party to equip weaker characters with ranged weapons so they can attempt a breach + volley combination. Occasionally, when the party fails to breach, they will immediately retreat and either ambush monsters that come to investigate, or explore another path until they can be confident of having another shot at surprise. There are also times they'll give up the chance at surprise in order to have the strongest fighters ready for action.

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  7. All neat stuff. I roll a "stuckness" number for the door in secret with 2d6 minimum and that's the number of of people, with extra strength counting extra, needed to open the door. If too many people push, the door flies open and they pile into the room losing surprise and initiative.

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  8. I've used strength checks for this too, though I have some regard for the character-agnosticism of the flat 2 in 6 from the 3 LBBs, paired with random encounter checks, like Gus.

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  9. Alternative idea: give doors a strength and dexterity score. Opposed strength checks are used for bashing, opposed dexterity checks for lock-picking.

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  10. That was indeed a fun game. As for stuck doors, I usually take advantage of such situations. Of course, bashing a door down is noisy (especially for those in chain or plate mail) and will undoubtedly attract attention if more than one or two tries are made.

    Secondly, rolling a 6 on a stuck door attempt can require a saving throw, with the result of a failed save possibly dislocating a shoulder or some minor injury/armor damage.

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    1. I like the minor injury idea, though I'd only have it on two successive rolls of 6.

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  11. Maybe I'm too simple but, if each character can open on a 1 or 2 and up to 3 characters can attempt to open the door. Wouldn't their chances just be additive on the d6? 1 character 2/6, 2 characters 4/6 and 3 characters have a 6/6 chance. Seems like that would be the reason for the reaction time penalty for 3 characters trying the door, as an offset to the automatic success to open normally stuck doors.

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    1. @Fred

      You could rule that way, but that's not the way that 3 chances at 2 in 6 actually works probabilistically.

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  12. Re: the Chainmail rules you are using. If you are advantaging the reach weapons in closing, do you follow the rest of chainmail and advantage the smaller weapons after the initial round?

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    1. I haven't been, specifically because after the initial clash it's much more fiddly to determine everything. I would do it in one-on-one or if a character with a dagger squared off against one with a spear, but as a general rule not really.

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