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I'm thinking of an idea for a custom scenario and I have two odd ideas for scenario-specific mechanics that I thought I'd run by the rest of you to see what you think. The scenario will be a bandit leader and probably bandit henchmen again. It's becoming generic, I know, but I have a specific source for this one.
The first new mechanic is a "chase down the villain" idea, based on something from a specific RPG adventure. Basically, in order to find the bandits' hideout, you have to follow a bandit back to it. In order to do that, you first have to encounter one of them without killing him. For instance:
The villain must begin at the Bandit Hideout location. No character may begin or move to the Bandit Hideout location until after a henchman has been encountered and not defeated (either undefeated or evaded).
So you know where to find the villain right from the start, but getting there requires some strategy.
The second idea is that the bandits are all a bunch of greedy thieves with no loyalty to each other, so they can be bribed, thus allowing you to defeat them without combat. For instance:
During this scenario, banish one item, weapon, or armor from hand to roll your charisma or diplomacy + 1d4 to defeat any human monster (including the villain and his henchmen!), with a difficulty of their combat difficulty +3. Other characters at the same location can also banish one item, weapon, or armor to add 1d4 to this check. After such a diplomatic victory, take no damage, even if the monster would normally cause damage after an encounter.
I realized that last sentence was needed for the enchanter.
I'm thinking Lem and Seoni will shine at bribing these guys, if they have the cards they're willing to banish to do it.
What do you all think of these custom mechanics for a single scenario?
I like them. I'll be giving them a go one day soon.
Just my opinion, but instead of having undefeated be a desirable outcome in the scenario, don't make it a combat check at all. If I got in a fight, I know I'd be making sure I wasn't being followed, you know. Instead, make the check something like "Dex 12 or Stealth 8".
You could argue that making one of two checks isn't strategy per se, but then again, neither is throwing a fight. Alternatively, make it undefeated/evaded, THEN a stealth/dex check.
Bribery is cool. But then isn't that "encounter[ing] one of them without killing them"?
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Well, the original RPG adventure this is based on started with "We need you to find the bandits' hideout. So go out there and get yourselves attacked, and make sure the bandits get away with this magical homing device, so you can follow them home afterward." That's the concept I'm going for.
In the RPG, it was fun watching the players intentionally try to lose what would have been an easy fight for them to win. And they couldn't talk to or bribe that first group of bandits, even though every single later group of bandits in the adventure, including their leader, could be talked/bribed out of attacking.
Maybe I should just make give up a card as a substitute for the magical homing device, while beating the bandit, resulting in the bandit being transferred to the villain's location. That would open the villain's location for the players to go explore there.
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Well, the original RPG adventure this is based on started with "We need you to find the bandits' hideout. So go out there and get yourselves attacked, and make sure the bandits get away with this magical homing device, so you can follow them home afterward." That's the concept I'm going for.
In the RPG, it was fun watching the players intentionally try to lose what would have been an easy fight for them to win. And they couldn't talk to or bribe that first group of bandits, even though every single later group of bandits in the adventure, including their leader, could be talked/bribed out of attacking.
Maybe I should just make give up a card as a substitute for the magical homing device, while beating the bandit, resulting in the bandit being transferred to the villain's location. That would open the villain's location for the players to go explore there.
So I was thinking about this again, and I think I've figured out how to make this aspect work. This mechanic is partially inspired by the recently posted fan made scenario "The Dark Relic" by Scott Rogganbuck, where he had custom items and stuff that got passed to the party. I'll need to fix the exact wording, and figure out the details for the rest of the scenario, but here's the general idea.
Roughly half of the locations for the scenario will have the words "Bandit Hideout" in the names of the locations. ie "Bandit Hideout Outer Wall", "Bandit Hideout Main Room", "Bandit Hideout Leader's Quarters", etc.
Scenario card text: During setup, put a henchman in each non-Hideout location, then randomly mix the villain and remaining henchmen into the Hideout locations as usual. One character begins with the Fake Scepter of the Arclords displayed. No character may begin or move to a Hideout location until the Fake Scepter of the Arclords is banished.
Fake Scepter of the Arclords ("item" type loot card): Display this item. When any character at your location encounters a bandit henchman, you may banish this item to allow that character to evade the encounter. For the remainder of this scenario, any character may move to Bandit Hideout locations as normal.
What do the rest of you think of this mechanic? Any advice on the wording for the cards?
I'm thinking half of the locations should be Hideouts, but I haven't decided if it should be more or less than half when there's an odd number of locations.
Now here's another idea, unrelated to the rest of this post so far, but related to my original idea of allowing the human enemies in this scenario to be bribed. I'm thinking the reward for the scenario should depend on how you beat the bad guy. If you kill him, you take his stuff (one random item card from the box). If you bribe him, you make a friend (one random ally card from the box).