weapons for guys
I learned to use Perchance and it's gonna be everyone's problem from now on. I've used it to make a combined solution to two problems in my fortnightly co-DMed Keep upon the Borderlands campaign with Roz. The links are all above but feel free to read my explanation below.
p.s. this is all for The Vanilla Game
Context to problem 1
Roz and I have decided to start using the unique weapon abilities from WuTC. When i've done stuff like this before, the players quickly forget to use their weapon abilities. I think the solution is if the NPCs are using weapon abilities too. That way, when an NPC's Flail ignores a player's shield, they'll go "hey what the fuck!!!! next town im walking into, i'm buying one of those."
But it means I can't jsut give all of the orcs a sword and a bow. It's boring.
problem 1: I need to give each of these twenty guys a different weapon
It's fine to pick a different weapon for each combatant if theyre's five of them. But fifteen? it's tedious. And remembering the different weapons can be a pain too (although repetition would obviously solve this.
This dovetails into problem 2, which has to do with the KotB module itself
context to problem 2
In TVG, monsters have HD. it's a really nice unified system where you can derive all of a monster's stats solely from HD: its attack value, its saving throw, and its HP.
But it implies you should be rolling individual monster HP. Some people don't do this -- including me in the past -- but I think they're missing out. Rolling monster HP makes combat more unpredictable. As a referee I love being surprised. It's the reason I play.
Rolling monster HP also lends character to the monsters. Sorting a group of monsters into the strong and the weak allows you to describe some as big and some as small. It invites the referee to decide which monsters are leaders or followers, cowardly or brave.
problem 2: rolling HP for twenty guys sucks
as with problem 1, it gets tedious at scale. Gary LOVED filling rooms with ALOT of guys. Players will go in a room and there's like, twenty guys in there. It's nuts, but it'as also hype and I don't think the solution is to average out HP. Last session, the players recruited some kobolds for a portage mission, and when it turned into a foray into the Orc caves, they left the 1hp kobolds to keep portaging and the 6hps came with them into the Orc cave. That would not have happened if the kobolds all had 3hp.
solution: weapons for guys
So I learned to automate. It was kinda hard but after a few tutorials and 'aha' moments, I have a generator that takes number of guys and their HD, and generates
- individualised Flesh and Grit,
- a weapon (with a cut-down description of the weapon ability),
- and their AV and ST scores.
It's sick. I can roll like 5,000 guys without any latency. My mind spins with the possibilities. ok see you later.