The Bloodied Blade [RP-PvE Rolling System]

This system will play a part in the Northern Horde Rebellion as we march on the Kor'kron, please give it a looker if you're taking part, and make your guildies aware of the thread! We will however introduce the system at each event for those who havn't tried it before.
Saturdays 'Clearing the Way' event is meant as an introduction event to this system!

New Update!
*Recent changes!
Recent changes to the system have been made, which will be implemented fully in the guide later on.
The changes are the following:
Health has been added.
Blocking for others has been added.
Healing others has been added.

Descriptions and examples of the changes have been added at the end of the guide.

Health and damage to player character explained:
At the start of each event a character at full health has 7/7 Health Points. Should the character be wounded due to other roleplay outside the event, the player may decide to give him penalties.
If you roll under the enemy OV value, your character takes 1 point of damage. Should you roll from 2-10, your character will take 2 points of damage. And a natural 1 means 3 points of damage.
It is still up to the player of the character to say how severly his character is wounded, however -Once the character reaches 0 health points, he or she can no longer fight on - Be it that they've been knocked to the ground and winded -Gravely wounded - Or disarmed.
After each battle all characters recover 2 points of health.
To make an example.

Rargnasha, Anthrios and Neothir are fighting a few Kor'kron with the numbers; 40/50/6.
Rargnasha has been suffering from alot of bad rolls. In the first round he rolls an 11, which just barely keeps him from taking 2 points of damage.
In the second roudn he rolls a 5, which makes him recieve 2 points of damage, in the final round he rolls a 1, and recieves 3 points of damage, taking him down to a total 1 health point.
In the following round, Rargnasha rolls 14 - Which makes him recieve the final point of damage to hit the ground. Since I don't plan for Rargnasha to die just yet, I decide to have him knocked out by the Kor'kron.
After the battle, Rargnasha manages to get to his feet, and staggers onwards to the next battle with just 2/7 health left.


Guarding and Healing.
These two mechanics helps the Player characters stay in the figths for longer, and they function along with the same system of dealing damage. If you roll below the enemy OV when attempting to heal or guard - You're interrupted and dealt damage! If you roll between the enemy OV and DV, you're interrupted, but do not sustain any wounds. Should you roll over the enemy DV when you intend to guard or heal, you will sucessfully block or heal the same amount of wounds!
However, you do not have to declare that you guard or heal before you roll. Usually, it is done after you see what everyone have rolled! Let's take the example of our fight earlier!
A rule of thumb is that you can guard people who roll after you, and you can only heal damage that has already been taken. This rule however depends on the game master and can be altered as pleased.

Rargnasha rolls an 11
Anthrios rolls 73
Neothir rolls 82

Rargnasha takes the hit like a man, and while Anthrios punches a Kor'kron in the mouth, Neothir decides to assist the General and heal his wound.

Anthrios rolls 96
Rargnasha rolls a 5
Neothir rolls a 36

This time, it seems like there's some descisions to make, since Anthrios rolled a 96, there's 4 different ways he could use his crit to guard and/or deal damage!
1. Deal 2 points of damage to Kor'kron.
2. Deal 1 point of damage to Kor'kron, block 1 point of damage from either Rargnasha or Neothir.
3. Block 2 points of damage for Rargnasha
4. Block 1 point of damage from Rargnasha and Neothir each.

In the third round,
Anthrios rolls 35
Rargnasha rolls 1
Neothir rolls 100.

Neothir now can like with the previous example of guard, choose to distribute her abilities amongst healing and dealing damage as she'd please, either going full damage on the Kor'kron, a mix of healing and damage, or focus fully on healing her allies!

Nice! Lovely thing, still trying it out and this helps things out.

Lovely. Must have try this out on some of our events. The addition helps, as i like to keep my character as a healer.

Aye, that was one of my major irks with the proto-type Bloodied Blades system - Healing others or defending them had no real effect other than, 'game mechanic'-wise, you'd put healing to a target that couldn't die anyway.
With the addition of a health system, healers and taking care of each other suddenly became very important. The Sin Belore really struck gold when they made that addition.

Also, once I got my time on my hands, I will write a small guide on how I usually create events and how I generate numbers for my 'monsters'.
It'll probaly be a little while before I write those, as Im kept rather busy with ingame lately!

One thing I wonder, is how do you handle people standing at ranged? Sometimes it doesn't exactely make sense to have the healer/caster/ranged that stand 30 yards away from the monster to get hit. Ofcourse you could get "interupted" to take damage, but I feel like it would often need a silly explanation "branch falls down in head...", "fails at correctly shaping the fireball, making it explode..." and so on. Ofcourse -some- of them could make sense, but the fact that mages/casters often refine themselves to never fail with simple spells, and that's what usually happen in combat, quick and simple spells, it wouldn't make much sense. And ranged even less. (Bow snaps...?)

I find it hard to roleplay casters in general in combat... Might just be me, and that's why I think like this.

Exigua wrote:One thing I wonder, is how do you handle people standing at ranged? Sometimes it doesn't exactely make sense to have the healer/caster/ranged that stand 30 yards away from the monster to get hit. Ofcourse you could get "interupted" to take damage, but I feel like it would often need a silly explanation "branch falls down in head...", "fails at correctly shaping the fireball, making it explode..." and so on. Ofcourse -some- of them could make sense, but the fact that mages/casters often refine themselves to never fail with simple spells, and that's what usually happen in combat, quick and simple spells, it wouldn't make much sense. And ranged even less. (Bow snaps...?)

I find it hard to roleplay casters in general in combat... Might just be me, and that's why I think like this.

It gets even harder when the situation given involves enemy ranged mobs focused on something while the melee mobs just stand their ground.

Atleast I got the belf beaten out of me earlier so I could make a spell explode :3

Exigua wrote:One thing I wonder, is how do you handle people standing at ranged? Sometimes it doesn't exactely make sense to have the healer/caster/ranged that stand 30 yards away from the monster to get hit.

There are many possibilities really, not just getting hit by a falling branch or tripping on your own shoelaces. Either the mob at hand has:
- the ability to cast spells
- shoots arrows/spears/throwing knives/dead moles...
- reflects magic back at you
- OR if the monster is fully melee type, you can have it run/charge at you. This requires some help from the DM though, as they need to move the target flag on top of you, instead of letting it stand where it is. (Might be best if you whisper and ask the DM to move the flag on top of you, as they might be too busy keeping track of healths etc. to notice that you got charged by one of the mobs).

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:It gets even harder when the situation given involves enemy ranged mobs focused on something while the melee mobs just stand their ground.

Atleast I got the belf beaten out of me earlier so I could make a spell explode :3

That sounds... Painful

Nessra Sunwhisper wrote:There are many possibilities really, not just getting hit by a falling branch or tripping on your own shoelaces. Either the mob at hand has:
- the ability to cast spells
- shoots arrows/spears/throwing knives/dead moles...
- reflects magic back at you
- OR if the monster is fully melee type, you can have it run/charge at you. This requires some help from the DM though, as they need to move the target flag on top of you, instead of letting it stand where it is. (Might be best if you whisper and ask the DM to move the flag on top of you, as they might be too busy keeping track of healths etc. to notice that you got charged by one of the mobs).

Ofcourse there are many options, and sometimes you can make it make sense. I was just trying to point out the problem with my silly examples. And even if they do have the abilities to cast spells/ranged - they are likely engaged in melee combat with a few others already. To not only notice you (perhaps even hiding/standing behind) but also use whatever ranged abilities while being beat on, or charge -past- the melee on them to reach you.

My point is that while it can make sense, the whole aspect of ranged easily get things messy. Some "aiming" characteristics is easier, you either can't risk fire to hit your teammates (or perhaps you -do- fire but hit a low-rolling ally? ), but it's sometimes not trivial figuring out a reasonable outcome. If it is spells that you don't aim/are built on faith, it's even harder to figure reasonable things out. But this is the problematics I've always come to when thinking about some rolling system.

Since starting to do my Monster Hunting events, I've been using this system. The health system came into the last run and with a group of only 6, it was pretty swift to use. This has made DMing a breeze!

Just managed to host a rolling event with 40-50+ people
Was fairly sucessful! Go go the Bloodied Blade! \o\

Was pretty epic if I may say so myself.

40 people split into four groups, fighting various foes/squads in an attempt to achieve different goals.

Worked a treat.

Sadly I couldn't attend said event D:

I hate to be a contrarian, but having spent six hours at rolling events in the past two nights using this system (along with a few ORB events going back months), it's still got a couple of problems.

1- Complexity: In a perfect world where everyone understands every single rule, this system works fine on paper. But in encounters with multiple mob-types, plus bosses (sometimes more than one at once), plus added situational mechanics, along with health meters, player healers, passive bonuses and way-point mechanics, it's just far too much to digest and understand.

I'm not the smartest guy, I'll admit, but I think a drastic streamlining of the system with simpler, fewer mechanics would go a long way to helping the newbie-friendliness of the system - I've seen a couple of beginners simply step aside from the event because they can't understand what's going on even after an explanation has been given.

2- Length: As I've said, the last two nights' rolling events totalled nearly six hours together. Different strokes for different folks, but spending that much time on an event rolling is an easy ticket to fatigue (and possibly even boredom). Reducing complexity would also help shorten these events, but I feel like imposing a time-limit closer to ninety-minutes total or so would be beneficial.

I don't want to sound overly critical, because I think this is a pretty good system and I've used a derivative of the system in events of my own in the past. I just feel like fewer, simpler mechanics and shorter encounters would make the whole thing smoother and less confusing for all concerned.

I think I'll have to agree with Sadok here. I haven't used the "expanded" rules of health and healing etc.
Yet, I couldn't manage to READ them. Since it just became too much. The original page is smooth, one roll. That roll every "turn" desides initative/order, if you hit or get hit or miss, damage.
That roll does everything.

With everythig else it seem's... cluttery and clogging.

Healing wouldn't be that cloging i think since you just use it instead of a attack and most people usually do that anyhow, more than blocking i guess.

I wonder if the way the emotes are done might need some finetuning.
Maybe that after a roll you give an overview what you intend to emote: "1 damage to enemy, own health [7/7]" or "+1 health for Ally, own health [7/7]" and then do the emotes. Might make it easier for the event leader and could speed up the emoting since you know what will happen more or less, who is healed, wich enemy is already done when it's your turn, who is shielded, etc.

And I noticed the time issue aswell.

Had my first event today with the system, and after the first tries we got the hang of it and it went quite quickly and smooth. Most seemed to prepare their emotes as soon as they saw their rolls and just waited for their turns. It was very fun and enjoyable, and playing a melee character I don't have to worry much about how getting hit at ranged makes sense for me, although against the enemies we encountered that seemed to handle well too.

I finally got around to joining an event! Rejoyce!

It worked pretty smoothly once everyone in the group gets the hang of it, I must say. Players have a nice amount of freedom.

Next time though, please try and start the event earlier. I have to go offline at 11:30, and by the time the event wasn't over yet, which is a shame. I'd have loved to partake in the ending.

And today, we had an event with both the Alliance and the Horde fighting the Kor'kron, when will the madness end?

Not today that's for sure

I had my first experience with this system yesterday and I must say once I got the hang of it I really enjoyed it. It makes PvE combat a little bit more...videogamey than your average dreary 'emotebattles', which I like. I'll definately consider using this system Alliance-side if I ever have the need to DM any combat!

Due to the Northern Rebellion Campaign being long over and such - I've unstickied this thread! Feel free to still use it or write about it if such catches your fancy!