I guess every Pathfinder GM and player at some point runs into this: combat becoming repetitive and tedious.
When the party storms the cave system where the tribe of skum have taken the town elder, there is just no way to make every single encounter unique. Of course you have to fight through a couple of waves of "skum warriors" maybe accompanied by a "skum lieutenant" with slightly different stats.
I know that you have to have low-level goons because otherwise every lair would just be empty except for the main villains. But what it often comes down to is a series of fights that do not really threaten the party (at least not at level 4+) but, from a mechanics perspective, are only there to drain the party's resources.
Taking into account that combat in Pathfinder takes quite a long time, these fights eat up a disproportionate amount of the total time it takes to clear a dungeon/lair/enemy headquarter/haunted house. But they are just not a whole lot of fun!
"Easy," you might say, "Just write better encounters where the terrain and environment makes a difference!" But what if I don't want to write encounters? What if I just want to run pre-written modules or adventure paths?
And that's where my idea comes in: Develop a simplified system for "easy" combat encounters that still causes some attrition but that does not take longer than it takes to do a skill-based encounter.
The basic question is: what is the game effect of a string of easy combat encounters?
The answer is attrition and getting to know the enemy.
In my opinion both of these things can be achieved in a more condensed way (although I am still somewhat shaky on the details, see below).
When should the narrative combat system be applied and what is an "easy" encounter?
Every encounter of less than or equal to APL-1 is considered an easy encounter and should be resolved using narrative combat.
How does narrative combat work?
- The GM starts by setting the scene and giving some basic information on the enemies tactics, thus helping the party getting to know their enemies.
- You then go around the table letting every player describe their actions, giving some creative license since they know the party will prevail.
- The GM rolls 1d20+CR. The party collectively rolls 1d20 for each point of the CR below the AP and takes the best result.
- The party adds a cumulative bonus for every expendable ressource any PC has used in their narration of their actions. Fighters and rogues always add a bonus of 1d6.
- If the adjusted party roll beats the GM's roll, no damage is taken. If the adjusted party roll fails to beat the GM's roll, the party takes damage (see list below) for each point they missed. The party decides how to allocate the damage dice to the PCs but they cannot break down a die roll.
Here is the bonus each kind of expendable ressource yields:
Spell or spell effect: Bonus equal to spell's level.
Alchemical item: +2.
Class feature counted in rounds (bardic performance, rage): half number of rounds used (rounded down). Every round that is not needed to beat the GM's roll is not expended.
The damage dice used depend on the CR. In addition, add the CR to every roll!
CR 1: 1 point
CR 2: 1d2
CR 3: 1d3
CR 4: 1d4
CR 5: 1d4+1
CR 6: 1d6
CR 7: 1d6+1
CR 8: 1d8
CR 9: 1d8+1
CR 10: 2d6
CR 11: 2d6+2
CR 12: 2d8
CR 13: 2d8+2
CR 14: 4d6
CR 15: 4d6+4
CR 16: 4d8
CR 17: 4d8+4
CR 18: 6d6
CR 19: 6d6+6
CR 20: 6d8
The party is of APL 8.
GM: "Another group of 4 skum come storming out of the tunnels, trying to stab you with their tridents."
Barbara the barbarian: "I charge to meet them head-on! I valiantly fends off their tridents and answers every stab with a brutal swing of my axe! I will spend up to 5 rounds in rage."
Eric the cleric: "I mostly help by providing a flank and use my divine magic to aid my allies. I expend a 1st level bless spell!"
Bart the bard: "I sing songs of glory to inspire courage for up to 6 rounds!"
Margaret the magus: "I mow the skum down with blade and spell! I expend a 2nd level sonic scream.
GM: "Alright, the CR is 6 and you are APL 8. Roll 2d20!"
*Party rolls 2d20*
Barbara the barbarian: "Shucks, a 5. But the other roll is a 14. Plus 1 from Eric's first level spell, plus 2 from Margarets 2nd level spell and up to +5 from my rage and Bart's bardic performance. So that is a minimum of 17 and can go up to 22, if necessary."
*GM rolls 1d20*
GM: "Alright, 18. Adding the CR of 6, that is a total of 24. That is two higher than your maximum check. So..."
*GM rolls 2 times 1d6*
GM: That is a 2 and a 5, each one plus the CR of 6. So one of you takes 8 damage and one takes 11.
Eric the cleric: "I got this, folks, I'll take both hits for the team."
GM: "How brave of you! Alright, moving on."
*Fun continues to be had after but a few minutes of combat*
What do you guys think? My main worries are the damage levels for each APL (I kind of pulled them out of thin air, I did not try to match them against average max HP per level or anything) and how to help fighters and rogues and other classes with few expendable ressources feel like doing their part.
I also have not given this idea any testing yet! I am very curious to hear what you have to say about it, though.
Good question. I'd say a +2 bonus per use expended.
2. Shouldn't the damage taken be relative to the CR, not APL? In this case, higher-level characters who fail the check take more damage from the same enemies than lower-level characters.
Good point. I changed it!
3. How about re-rolling upon every failure, until success is had (roll an additional dice per failure).
Example: As above with Barbra, Eric, Bart, and Margaret; after failing their first roll, they get to roll three dice instead of two. They retain the same bonuses, of course.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
Not exactly. They are not punished for the number of rolls they fail if they manage to succeed one of them. They only take damage if none of their rolls beats the GM's roll.
But your way is also very interesting. Maybe if my method turns out to be too forgiving on the PCs I'll try out yours.
HP damage is typically not what matters in these fights, as a couple of blips from the healing stick will clear it. It's the poison, petrification, extra noise that alerts the guards, the one that escapes, the expended arrows (even mundane) and so on that are likely to be important. I expect this can be managed but it'll take a lot of GM fiat and player agreement.
Besides which, your example doesn't show how long the fight went on or how many rounds of rage and bardic performance were used. If an 8th level party can't dispatch 4 CR2 skum inside 3 rounds they're doing something very wrong (to be honest, the bless and performance were wasted actions).
HP damage is typically not what matters in these fights, as a couple of blips from the healing stick will clear it. It's the poison, petrification, extra noise that alerts the guards, the one that escapes, the expended arrows (even mundane) and so on that are likely to be important.
[...]
Besides which, your example doesn't show how long the fight went on or how many rounds of rage and bardic performance were used. If an 8th level party can't dispatch 4 CR2 skum inside 3 rounds they're doing something very wrong (to be honest, the bless and performance were wasted actions).
You are right, it does take a lot of trust and ad-hoc judgement calls by the GM.
I was discussing the system with my regular group and they also pointed out that ability damage/drain is not reflected by it, only HP. I would hold against that that all ability damage/drain ultimately does, is use up more resources (in the form of restoration spells).
Still, the system does very much abstract the easy combats but that is also the design goal. The more options you add and the more variable outcome you allow, the closer you get to actually playing through the encounter and render the whole point of using the narrative combat moot.
We actually gave the system a try in my Curse of the Crimson Throne game last night. The party is level 14 and pretty far advanced into Castle Scarwall. We ran two encounters using the narrative combat and both of them were over quickly. However, my players felt like they lacked agency in it. So it seems that the tightrope to walk is to give players all the options they have in regular combat while at the same time streamline the encounter so they don't take as long.
We agreed to try a different approach next time, which is inspired by 4E's minion rules:
- It only applies to CR < APL-1 encounters with groups of enemies.
- The encounter begins as usual.
- When the tide of battle turns towards the PCs (e.g., more than half of the enemies are slain or routed), the encounter is ended by a short narration by the GM.
This should significantly reduce the time it takes to mop up the mob.