Dice Roll-play


Advice


I'm pretty new to pathfinder, but it has quickly become one of my favourite things, which is hella. I haven't played many sessions, but I do at some point want to GM, and also make my own campaigns.

I had an idea today for an extra feature of battles, and I wonder if it's ever been done – and if it hasn't, can it?

My idea is the title of this thread: Dice Roll-Play (as like a play on words look at that dad joke) wherein in battle when an attacking character (party or enemy) rolls a critical fail of the attack, the attacking and defending party enter a round of DICE ROLL-PLAY where myself as the GM and the person playing their character would have to engage in a round of roleplay each time they roll a d20 to attack. This back and forth continues until one of the character's roll beating the others AC (I haven't decided if it'll be touch or otherwise).

Example:
Venxina attacks goblin commando with her masterwork dagger! However she rolls a 1. As she reels back to strike, the knife slips from her hand. Venxina does not notice this, and goes to follow through the attack, noticing at the last second that she is no longer wielding her dagger and gently caresses the commando's chief.

The goblin commando retaliates! However he rolls a 12, and rather than attacking, he instead is confused by Venxina's gentle touch. The goblin commando blushes.

Venxina tries again to attack, Lyrix having passed her the dagger back. However she rolls a 9, which causes her to see the goblin blushing. What does this mean? Is the goblin developing feelings for her? Venxina blushes back.

The goblin commando goes to attack again! Rolling a 18, beating Venxina's AC! It seems that their potential feelings for each other will never be explored. Will the two find love?

End of example.

So yeah, something along the lines of that. But no one took any damage, as Venxina did not hit in the first place, and battle continues as it did before, but the player controlling Venxina may continue with the roleplay if one of sparring party's critically fails again.

Is this something that exists already? Is this something that can be done? If I've not been clear on anything I've described above please let me know :)

All the best.


It sounds to me like just RPing a chain of misses in an amusing way after a critical fail. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact, I'd say it's something that most people should do even on a long chain of regular misses, to keep things engaging.

I encourage roleplaying in combat all the time, but if your group doesn't generally do it, this could be a good way to get them to start.


Critical fumble rules (which this seems to be a rather creative offshoot of) tend to be unpopular in Pathfinder, and not without reason: while not immediately obvious, they unfairly punish characters who make a lot of attack rolls (who also happen to tend to be on the low end of the class tier rankings). As an example, the party's hasted dual-wielding fighter might be making six attacks (and thus subject to six chances to roll a 1) on his turn, while the party wizard probably just casts a spell that forces enemies to make a saving throw... no attack roll required, and if anyone rolls a 1, it's the enemy. Plus, characters gain more attacks as they level, meaning that a more skilled fighter (with more attacks per round) has a higher chance to fumble than a beginner (with only one to two attacks per round).

Futhermore, in your example above, imagine what'd happen if Vexina and the Goblin Commando both had really high AC, to the point where they both need a natural 20 to hit each other. They're probably going to be exploring their feelings for each other for the rest of the session (all during a six-second-ish combat round, mind you). Even in less extreme examples, you're forcing a player into a RP situation that they might not have any interest in and doing it in a way that prevents other players from contributing during the interaction. This can lead to unintentional "spotlight-hogging", as well as substantially lengthening a person's turn in combat, when combat already tends to take large amounts of table time to resolve.

While adding more narrative effects to rolls in combat is certainly a nice goal, and something that is expressly included in the dice mechanics of some systems, this probably isn't the way you want to try to implement it. If anything, you may want to make it something more like a special die that each combatant rolls at the start of their turn (or perhaps during their standard action, however they're spending it). Most of the time, not much happens, but if they roll certain numbers, perhaps they're a little more or less effective than normal, or something a little good or bad happens as a side effect of their actions. Even then, the bad things should usually take the form of something specific to the current battleground.. attracting unwanted attention from others nearby or knocking over a nearby brazier full of lit coals, rather than something as critical to the function of a character as dropping a weapon, falling prone, or other stereotypical "fumble" results. If you're having trouble coming up with something applicable, your players might have a fun idea, especially if they rolled a "small beneficial side-effect".


You could consider the critical fumble deck in this case. It has various side-effects to fumbles. I don't recommend the critical deck though. Me and my other players have had too many minimum crits with non-applicable side effects.


Oh rad :) thank you! I'm glad it is actually a thing, because I can research more into it. Maybe I can find some subsection of it that works better and doesn't interrupt battle play too much.


Perhaps on a critical failure, something bad will happen (like a draw from the fumble deck) - unless the PC wants to buy it off with a roleplayed description of their failure? That might be one way to incentivise roleplaying, albeit only occasionally.

Another thing I've used before with a group who said they wanted to get more roleplay-ey during combat, but didn't really feel comfortable with it (note this is an unashamed boost to players and not "balanced" or anything. Plus it was explicitly requested we try something like this first, I didn't impose it on them out of the blue). is granting a "monologue bonus". Namely, if the player got descriptive before rolling their attack, made some flowery speech or just generally went beyond rolling a dice and saying "I hit" I would grant a damage bonus if the attack actually landed - it wasn't huge, but it helped them get into describing their attacks more when there was a potential +2 damage at the end of it.

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