I hacked the Fight mechanics into a traditional turn-based combat system

[Seraaron (William)]

This needs playtesting, but as the title says, I’ve hacked up the Fight mechanics into a traditional turn-based system for multi-combatant melee’s: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/loke-seraaron/a/melee-article
(It’s hosted on my World Anvil page for my homebrew BW campaign setting, but it should be in a fairly printable format).

I run a lot more dungeon-crawling / combat-focused games. And as much as I love fights for 1-on-1s, they’re a nightmare to run with more that 3-5 combatants. Short of trying to run multiple, simultaneous, fights… Which is… Yeah I’m never doing that, sorry.

So I’m hoping this works as a nice middle ground, where players can still make tactical decisions and have fun. (I find Bloody Vs. too simplified and distilled) (And I love Range and Cover, but not every encounter has the space to properly conduct one).

I’m posting this here to save some hassle in case anyone else has had similar thoughts, and if it gets used or playtested by people then let me know how it goes and if you think anything needs updating or balancing. (I expect that some of the dice bonus values might be the most common complaint). Hopefully, for the people who enjoy using this system, it’ll be just another tool to add to the toolbox / modular design that I love so much about the Rim of the Wheel.

The important part (I think) is that this preserves a slight sense of simultaneous action, in that the actions are only resolved at the end of each round. So everyone always gets a chance to act, and initiative going from lowest to highest means the person at the bottom of the order has the opportunity make the best tactical decision with the most information.

[gyakusetsu (Todd Grotenhuis)]

Interesting. Will try these out. I think I noted a typo in this one:

Intimidate
Tests: Extortion / Falsehood / Intimidation / Ugly Truth
Effect: Obstacle is the target’s Will (or Perception for Ugly Truth): Success moves the target and forces them to make a Steel test, which may cause them to hesitate. Margin of success adds to their Hesitation obstacle.

[Seraaron (William)]

Cheers! There might be a few of those, I’m afraid. I’m dyslexic, and this is still a first draft.

[Seraaron (William)]

So a little update on this. I recently read The Nightmares Underneath and found it to have a few ideas similar in flavour to stuff found in Burning Wheel. Dispositions like DoW, an emphasis on relative weapon lengths, and special combat manoeuvres. So after a little playtesting, I’ve adapted what I’d already written to more closely conform to the NU combat system. I’d say it still recognisably uses all the normal Burning Wheel task and intent rules.

If you really liked the first version of the system though, you can find it here: https://www.worldanvil.com/block/75021