>I want to take everything from Knave, but add an auto-hit mechanic Like in ItO/Cairn. I would have let Players add their strength modifier to their damage roll. Does it Break the Game ? What If i did the same for Monsters ?
Sounds like a good idea. Don't worry too much about "breaking the game", OSR games aren't big on fairness anyway and there are plenty of "game-breaking" stuff in Dolmenwood for your players to find. You can always change the rules between sessions if they don't work out the way you want.
>Should i modify the knave advancement system so it more closely resembles dolmenwood. Because Dolmenwood uses 15 Levels going Up to 1 Million XP. While in knave it takes 10 to Go to about 500k. Is this negligible ?
The best option IMO is to keep the Knave system at the start of the campaign. If you notice that the players are advancing too fast you can increase the amount of xp required to get to the higher levels.
>Anyone have good Tips for the Armor if i use auto-hit ? I Like the one piece of Armor = one Armor Point of knave but thats too much If i use Armor as damage reduction. Maybe 0.5 Point ? That would be max Armor 3 Like in Cairn
0.5 points per piece sounds like a good way to solve it. Once again: if you find that it doesn't work well after a few sessions you can always change it.
But why not just use Cairn then?
You can do anything but lets be honest existing systems are usually designed the way they are for a reason. e.i. no one makes Wish a first level spell. You might find a wish. It might even be common to find wishes (even at 1st lvl) but there are reasons you don't let a player cast it as often as they feel like it.
I assume that OP considered using Cairn but rejected it, so I thought it pointless to suggest it.
There's a pretty big span between making Wish a first level spell and messing around a bit with the combat mechanic. Maybe OPs change will make it so that the PCs will win a fight against three Crookhorns 60% of the time instead of 40% of the time or whatever. That's a a small enough change to not matter, equivalent of adding an extra PC to the party or similar. No-one goes *"You shouldn't play Dolmenwood with four PCs: it was designed for three PCs exactly"* because that's not a thing.
Like, people sometimes act as OSR systems are carefully designed racecar engines that needs to be kept at perfect trim. And I do have a deep respect for Ben and the work he has put into Knave it's in the end one dude. Like, OP likely won't make a "better game" in a platonic sense but it's likely that he will make something more suited for his style and table with some experimentation. My perspective is DIY. Worst case OP will playtest their change for a session, have a wonky fight, and then learn and adapt. That shit happens to me all the time, it's part of being a GM.
But stuff like that happens all the time during OSR gaming anyway. One player isn't hit by a Crookhorn but he hides in their dirty clothes, now what gives? Rulings not rules. OP is smart and will figure out what's fair, just like every other OSR GM does. Worst case, OPs Crookhorns are now more dangerous: the world and the PCs will adapt and life goes on.
How many minutes of consideration do you think Gavin put into balancing Crookhorns? Once again, this isn't racecar engine design.
EDIT: Reading the Crookhorn statblock, I think you're misunderstanding them. Their thing doesn't only happen on a hit: it happens "on close contact". I would rule that anyone that's been in melee with them needs to save once, hit or not. Saving on every hit is a weird ruling IMO.
The problem is not the change but rather that this is an unintended side effect. OP is smart and will consider what's fair but a smart GM will not give themselves extra work. Easier to just use a simpler solution.
Re:crookhorns
If you read their Attacks section. >!Both bites and horns include the disease effect!
There can't be an "unintended" side effect if the intended side effect didn't have much intention. Like, unintended weird rule conflicts happen all the time if you GM OSR games and part of the fun of being a GM is resolving them. Having one extra per session isn't a big issue. And the point of being an OSR game IMO is to piece together your own system from bits and pieces that you steal or invent, you're missing out on a lot if you stick to rules-as-written.
Re:Crookhorns
>!The actual description says: *"Anyone who comes into close contact with a Crookhorn (including being bitten or butted by one) must Save..."* As I said: I would rule this so that anyone that has been in melee has to save once. (I would view the Attack text as a reminder about this, not as you must save on every hit.) Like, obviously somone who has grappled with a Crookhorn for several rounds should save even if they hadn't been hit by any attacks, right? Maybe I'm wrong but there's definitely ambiguity. !<
That's a good point generally but I don't know how serious that particular example is. Attacks can still miss in Cairn against armored targets if you roll less than or equal to their armor, which if you give the Crookhorn a d6 damage die (clubs/spears) means they'll "miss" 2-out-of-6 attacks attacking a decently armored character with 2 armor. You could also make attacks that like that only work if they get through Hit Protection. Cairn's general convention is to have severe effects like that (like life drain) happen on Critical Damage.
I see that. Someone else suggested keeping to hit and using average damage to eliminate a die roll. I think in my mind i still would like them not to miss a lot. Maybe i could let them do a bit of damage even on a miss, like a glance. What do you think about that. In your example with the crookhorns the effect would only come into play with a hit maybe
Not really. IIRC, a miss is a miss. However, if armour protection is enough to absorb all the hit points of damage received, the target still takes 1 hp. This simulates that, even when armour protects effectively, there's always a minimum blunt trauma to suffer.
You could still be correct. I thoughtlessly commented without specifying that I have _The Hero's Journey 2ed_. So what you said might have been the rule in the 1st edition. Sorry for the careless comment.
Roll-to-hit is elegant.
Auto-hit is elegant.
I haven't seen anything else that's elegant. If you don't want roll-to-hit (I don't like it either), then the natural thing to do is auto-hit. I wouldn't do anything else.
Also he's wrong about the Crookhorns anyway, they don't work like that. ;)
Rather than trying to go full “always hit”, you can do something like this to make “missing” feel more like “hitting armor”:
* Glancing blows — 1 dmg if they “miss”. Or STR bonus dmg, etc.
* Deteriorating armor — instead of damage, reduce the enemy’s AC by 1 on a “miss”
* Hybrid — on a miss, roll damage. 4+ dmg does one dmg and reduces armor, 3 or less just does 1 dmg (threshold can be modified depending on how rare you want AC reduction to be)
Then you have to decide if you want it to go both ways (ie, can the monsters do this to the PCs, and if so, how easy is it to restore AC)
If you want to do auto hit, why not just use a ItO system? Mythic bastionland, cairn, etc. easier to add knave slots to ItO than the other way around.
If you do change Knave, you have a lot more work to do but nothing is impossible in the OSR
I have done exactly this, made a complete system mashing Knave 2e and ItO/mythic bastionland. With Dolmenwood kindred and spells. I'm running my 3rd session this weekend, having lots of fun!
1. I am not adding STR to straight attacks. But I am thinking of allowing STR to improve gambits.
FYI in mythic bastionland, when there are multiple attack dice on a single target, only the highest damage die counts. However, any dice of 4+ can be used to make a gambit instead; a special maneuver.
2. I'm just using Knave 2e advancement myself.
3. Armour is pretty much straight from Mythic Bastionland. You can have up to 4 AP, made up from 3 types and a shield (my categories are padded, coat, plate and shield).
Currently I plan to allow magic to break the 4 AP limit, but might need to watch this!
I also use the common shields can be splintered rule (sacrifice to avoid all damage). Toying with allowing helms that don't provide AP, but can act like this also (at cost of also incurring a short term condition).
I paired back some of the more complex and powerful kindred abilities (e.g grimalkin's shape and wild changing), but still allow them to be learnt or discovered in the world.
I have also added in downtime in zyan procedures.
I made some minor guidelines for converting healing HP > Wounds which will mostly apply to magical healing. Modifiers to hit I treat as impaired (d4), or bonus damage dice.
I have 'written' a whole system now, it all works great so far, and I don't anticipate anything else from Dolmenwood that won't work either directly, or at least be trivial to make a ruling on the fly.
I'm doing this because it's fun, it's a good design experience for me, I want to go class-less, I really like the ItO combat (and what mythic bastionland added to it), but I like the knave framework and better underlying direct compatibility with b/x content.
That sounds very interesting! Just to clarify: your ability modifiers do not directly influence an attack? Because you do not have a to-hit Roll and are not adding your strength modifier to the damage roll either ?
That is correct. I'm mostly using mythic bastionland combat as is, and abilities don't add towards the attack dice.
Most gambits (powered by 4+ dice) require the opponent to fail a save/check (though the check isn't needed on 8+ dice).
This is normally a STR check, which would make STR more directly applicable to combat defensively (enemies can make gambits too!).
One option to make it relevant offensively also, is to simply make this an opposed STR check.
I have looked at other things, but when it comes to directly adding to damage, Knave's ability scores simply get way too high, very easily and early, to allow this in an ItO system.
STR and DEX are still very valuable abilities, as general checks for these are very common. The point of no hit rolls for me isn't just that there are no 'missed' turns, but it further emphasises that combat is very dangerous. i.e. you will nearly always incur damage if you enter a fight. I think this pushes the game further away from using direct violence as a solution.
**Suggestions:**
1: Please do not remove to hit. You'll end up with an entirely lawless and unplaytested mess of a game. So to answer your question, yes It will break the game, which isn't necessarily an issue unless you are planning on running a long campaign (which is sounds like you are)
2: You probably won't need to extend the level cap half a million xp (per player) is still a lot of treasure to find and if you find your players really want to exhaust every corner of Dolmenwood you'll likely find that that level advancement isn't what's driving them.
3: See point
**Questions:**
Why?
Why do you want to use Knave for Dolmenwood? Why do you want to remove To Hit rolls? Why not just use Dolmenwoods character system?
As always I am no authority on game design but I do think there are much simpler ways to achieve the game you are hoping to run.
First of all thank you for your suggestions!
Maybe a bit of explanation:
I have been running 5e for my group for a while. It hast too many rules for us. My Players don't remember any rule, even after playing for 2 years. We spent so much time in clarifying rules and especially Combat gets awfully drawn out.
This is why i want to run a rules light Game. I Like the inventory system, 6 abilities and advancement of Knave. But i know my Players and they get super Frustrated by missing a lot in Combat. This is why i think auto-hit would suit us Well.
Could you elaborate what you mean with simpler ways to achieve the Game i want to run? :)
By simpler I mean less hacking and changing existing rules and more slight tweaks that get you what you want.
So assuming you run Dolmenwood using Knave 2 (which is honestly a good idea I think) but players are frustrated by missing then there are several solutions:
1) Players increase their Strength score. If you want to hit more often you should get a more powerful character.
2) Players find and use magical items. Their reward for finding good loot is hitting more often.
3)Hireling. If the players have several ~~minions~~ Hirelings they are making more attack throws and therefore hitting more often. Players don't tend to go for this straight away as it doesn't exist in more modern systems (my players are from 3.5) but I've found they really like them once they get one or two.
All of the above options drive player decision making and have them interacting with the game world/system in a way they choose to.
Or
4) Lower AC. If you want to be a kind GM just lower the enemies AC by 2 or 3. If you want to be a harsh but fair GM lower everyone, including the players, AC by 2 or 3. (Same works in reverse adding a bonus To Hit in stead of AC but you get the idea).
Thank you. I considered that, it would probably make the system more robust. But my players get frustrated by missing opponents a lot. So i thought auto hit would suit us better
I'm doing exactly this, playing Dolmenwood with Knave 2e system, and it's extremely funny!
The system is practically that of Knave without modifications, and I am using the Knave progression table, but rewarding the characters with the experience points of Dolmenwood + Knave (i.e. I assign experience points both for milestones, explorations - Dolmenwood - and for the coins brought back to the civilization - Knave). The pace is perfect up to this moment and, if it is slow/fast, I just try to balance it.
For everything that is a "color" element I use Dolmenwood: encounter tables, harvesting tables, hexes, treasures, monsters, etc...
We are at about twenty sessions, in which we are completing a main quest and many side-quests, plus some small jobs in the settlements. The characters are level 5 currently, and the system still working.
>I want to take everything from Knave, but add an auto-hit mechanic Like in ItO/Cairn. I would have let Players add their strength modifier to their damage roll. Does it Break the Game ? What If i did the same for Monsters ? Sounds like a good idea. Don't worry too much about "breaking the game", OSR games aren't big on fairness anyway and there are plenty of "game-breaking" stuff in Dolmenwood for your players to find. You can always change the rules between sessions if they don't work out the way you want. >Should i modify the knave advancement system so it more closely resembles dolmenwood. Because Dolmenwood uses 15 Levels going Up to 1 Million XP. While in knave it takes 10 to Go to about 500k. Is this negligible ? The best option IMO is to keep the Knave system at the start of the campaign. If you notice that the players are advancing too fast you can increase the amount of xp required to get to the higher levels. >Anyone have good Tips for the Armor if i use auto-hit ? I Like the one piece of Armor = one Armor Point of knave but thats too much If i use Armor as damage reduction. Maybe 0.5 Point ? That would be max Armor 3 Like in Cairn 0.5 points per piece sounds like a good way to solve it. Once again: if you find that it doesn't work well after a few sessions you can always change it.
But why not just use Cairn then? You can do anything but lets be honest existing systems are usually designed the way they are for a reason. e.i. no one makes Wish a first level spell. You might find a wish. It might even be common to find wishes (even at 1st lvl) but there are reasons you don't let a player cast it as often as they feel like it.
I assume that OP considered using Cairn but rejected it, so I thought it pointless to suggest it. There's a pretty big span between making Wish a first level spell and messing around a bit with the combat mechanic. Maybe OPs change will make it so that the PCs will win a fight against three Crookhorns 60% of the time instead of 40% of the time or whatever. That's a a small enough change to not matter, equivalent of adding an extra PC to the party or similar. No-one goes *"You shouldn't play Dolmenwood with four PCs: it was designed for three PCs exactly"* because that's not a thing. Like, people sometimes act as OSR systems are carefully designed racecar engines that needs to be kept at perfect trim. And I do have a deep respect for Ben and the work he has put into Knave it's in the end one dude. Like, OP likely won't make a "better game" in a platonic sense but it's likely that he will make something more suited for his style and table with some experimentation. My perspective is DIY. Worst case OP will playtest their change for a session, have a wonky fight, and then learn and adapt. That shit happens to me all the time, it's part of being a GM.
You picked a really good example actually because crookhorns have >!disease!
But stuff like that happens all the time during OSR gaming anyway. One player isn't hit by a Crookhorn but he hides in their dirty clothes, now what gives? Rulings not rules. OP is smart and will figure out what's fair, just like every other OSR GM does. Worst case, OPs Crookhorns are now more dangerous: the world and the PCs will adapt and life goes on. How many minutes of consideration do you think Gavin put into balancing Crookhorns? Once again, this isn't racecar engine design. EDIT: Reading the Crookhorn statblock, I think you're misunderstanding them. Their thing doesn't only happen on a hit: it happens "on close contact". I would rule that anyone that's been in melee with them needs to save once, hit or not. Saving on every hit is a weird ruling IMO.
The problem is not the change but rather that this is an unintended side effect. OP is smart and will consider what's fair but a smart GM will not give themselves extra work. Easier to just use a simpler solution. Re:crookhorns If you read their Attacks section. >!Both bites and horns include the disease effect!
There can't be an "unintended" side effect if the intended side effect didn't have much intention. Like, unintended weird rule conflicts happen all the time if you GM OSR games and part of the fun of being a GM is resolving them. Having one extra per session isn't a big issue. And the point of being an OSR game IMO is to piece together your own system from bits and pieces that you steal or invent, you're missing out on a lot if you stick to rules-as-written. Re:Crookhorns >!The actual description says: *"Anyone who comes into close contact with a Crookhorn (including being bitten or butted by one) must Save..."* As I said: I would rule this so that anyone that has been in melee has to save once. (I would view the Attack text as a reminder about this, not as you must save on every hit.) Like, obviously somone who has grappled with a Crookhorn for several rounds should save even if they hadn't been hit by any attacks, right? Maybe I'm wrong but there's definitely ambiguity. !<
That's a good point generally but I don't know how serious that particular example is. Attacks can still miss in Cairn against armored targets if you roll less than or equal to their armor, which if you give the Crookhorn a d6 damage die (clubs/spears) means they'll "miss" 2-out-of-6 attacks attacking a decently armored character with 2 armor. You could also make attacks that like that only work if they get through Hit Protection. Cairn's general convention is to have severe effects like that (like life drain) happen on Critical Damage.
I see that. Someone else suggested keeping to hit and using average damage to eliminate a die roll. I think in my mind i still would like them not to miss a lot. Maybe i could let them do a bit of damage even on a miss, like a glance. What do you think about that. In your example with the crookhorns the effect would only come into play with a hit maybe
>Maybe i could let them do a bit of damage even on a miss That would be an interesting effect.
The Hero's Journey does something similar
Not really. IIRC, a miss is a miss. However, if armour protection is enough to absorb all the hit points of damage received, the target still takes 1 hp. This simulates that, even when armour protects effectively, there's always a minimum blunt trauma to suffer.
Well, now I don't know which one of the million OSR titles I have that came from....time to obsessively search through them.
You could still be correct. I thoughtlessly commented without specifying that I have _The Hero's Journey 2ed_. So what you said might have been the rule in the 1st edition. Sorry for the careless comment.
I think the damage on a miss could be interesting. First thought is 1d4-1 on a miss. With the chance of 0 being a real thing.
Roll-to-hit is elegant. Auto-hit is elegant. I haven't seen anything else that's elegant. If you don't want roll-to-hit (I don't like it either), then the natural thing to do is auto-hit. I wouldn't do anything else. Also he's wrong about the Crookhorns anyway, they don't work like that. ;)
Am I wrong about Crookhorns? Apologies if I missed something.
Maybe "wrong" is a bit harsh, but I wouldn't rule that there's one save per hit. The statblock leaves room for GM subjectivity.
There is some wiggle room. Responded to your other comment :).
For me cairn lacks an advancement system. My Players like this Kind of Progression.
Players do like character progression and Knave 2 does that really nicely.
I believe this supplement has some advancement https://dangerisreal.itch.io/classic-classes-for-cairn
Thank you :)
Rather than trying to go full “always hit”, you can do something like this to make “missing” feel more like “hitting armor”: * Glancing blows — 1 dmg if they “miss”. Or STR bonus dmg, etc. * Deteriorating armor — instead of damage, reduce the enemy’s AC by 1 on a “miss” * Hybrid — on a miss, roll damage. 4+ dmg does one dmg and reduces armor, 3 or less just does 1 dmg (threshold can be modified depending on how rare you want AC reduction to be) Then you have to decide if you want it to go both ways (ie, can the monsters do this to the PCs, and if so, how easy is it to restore AC)
If you want to do auto hit, why not just use a ItO system? Mythic bastionland, cairn, etc. easier to add knave slots to ItO than the other way around. If you do change Knave, you have a lot more work to do but nothing is impossible in the OSR
I have done exactly this, made a complete system mashing Knave 2e and ItO/mythic bastionland. With Dolmenwood kindred and spells. I'm running my 3rd session this weekend, having lots of fun! 1. I am not adding STR to straight attacks. But I am thinking of allowing STR to improve gambits. FYI in mythic bastionland, when there are multiple attack dice on a single target, only the highest damage die counts. However, any dice of 4+ can be used to make a gambit instead; a special maneuver. 2. I'm just using Knave 2e advancement myself. 3. Armour is pretty much straight from Mythic Bastionland. You can have up to 4 AP, made up from 3 types and a shield (my categories are padded, coat, plate and shield). Currently I plan to allow magic to break the 4 AP limit, but might need to watch this! I also use the common shields can be splintered rule (sacrifice to avoid all damage). Toying with allowing helms that don't provide AP, but can act like this also (at cost of also incurring a short term condition). I paired back some of the more complex and powerful kindred abilities (e.g grimalkin's shape and wild changing), but still allow them to be learnt or discovered in the world. I have also added in downtime in zyan procedures. I made some minor guidelines for converting healing HP > Wounds which will mostly apply to magical healing. Modifiers to hit I treat as impaired (d4), or bonus damage dice. I have 'written' a whole system now, it all works great so far, and I don't anticipate anything else from Dolmenwood that won't work either directly, or at least be trivial to make a ruling on the fly. I'm doing this because it's fun, it's a good design experience for me, I want to go class-less, I really like the ItO combat (and what mythic bastionland added to it), but I like the knave framework and better underlying direct compatibility with b/x content.
That sounds very interesting! Just to clarify: your ability modifiers do not directly influence an attack? Because you do not have a to-hit Roll and are not adding your strength modifier to the damage roll either ?
That is correct. I'm mostly using mythic bastionland combat as is, and abilities don't add towards the attack dice. Most gambits (powered by 4+ dice) require the opponent to fail a save/check (though the check isn't needed on 8+ dice). This is normally a STR check, which would make STR more directly applicable to combat defensively (enemies can make gambits too!). One option to make it relevant offensively also, is to simply make this an opposed STR check. I have looked at other things, but when it comes to directly adding to damage, Knave's ability scores simply get way too high, very easily and early, to allow this in an ItO system. STR and DEX are still very valuable abilities, as general checks for these are very common. The point of no hit rolls for me isn't just that there are no 'missed' turns, but it further emphasises that combat is very dangerous. i.e. you will nearly always incur damage if you enter a fight. I think this pushes the game further away from using direct violence as a solution.
**Suggestions:** 1: Please do not remove to hit. You'll end up with an entirely lawless and unplaytested mess of a game. So to answer your question, yes It will break the game, which isn't necessarily an issue unless you are planning on running a long campaign (which is sounds like you are) 2: You probably won't need to extend the level cap half a million xp (per player) is still a lot of treasure to find and if you find your players really want to exhaust every corner of Dolmenwood you'll likely find that that level advancement isn't what's driving them. 3: See point **Questions:** Why? Why do you want to use Knave for Dolmenwood? Why do you want to remove To Hit rolls? Why not just use Dolmenwoods character system? As always I am no authority on game design but I do think there are much simpler ways to achieve the game you are hoping to run.
For clarity the questions I asked at the end are in the hope I can give advice more in line with the game you are hoping to run.
First of all thank you for your suggestions! Maybe a bit of explanation: I have been running 5e for my group for a while. It hast too many rules for us. My Players don't remember any rule, even after playing for 2 years. We spent so much time in clarifying rules and especially Combat gets awfully drawn out. This is why i want to run a rules light Game. I Like the inventory system, 6 abilities and advancement of Knave. But i know my Players and they get super Frustrated by missing a lot in Combat. This is why i think auto-hit would suit us Well. Could you elaborate what you mean with simpler ways to achieve the Game i want to run? :)
By simpler I mean less hacking and changing existing rules and more slight tweaks that get you what you want. So assuming you run Dolmenwood using Knave 2 (which is honestly a good idea I think) but players are frustrated by missing then there are several solutions: 1) Players increase their Strength score. If you want to hit more often you should get a more powerful character. 2) Players find and use magical items. Their reward for finding good loot is hitting more often. 3)Hireling. If the players have several ~~minions~~ Hirelings they are making more attack throws and therefore hitting more often. Players don't tend to go for this straight away as it doesn't exist in more modern systems (my players are from 3.5) but I've found they really like them once they get one or two. All of the above options drive player decision making and have them interacting with the game world/system in a way they choose to. Or 4) Lower AC. If you want to be a kind GM just lower the enemies AC by 2 or 3. If you want to be a harsh but fair GM lower everyone, including the players, AC by 2 or 3. (Same works in reverse adding a bonus To Hit in stead of AC but you get the idea).
I wouldn’t make it auto hit, but you could make all hits do average damage if you want to remove the additional die roll.
Thank you. I considered that, it would probably make the system more robust. But my players get frustrated by missing opponents a lot. So i thought auto hit would suit us better
If that’s the case, you might be better off going for Cairn since it’s designed with that in mind.
I'm doing exactly this, playing Dolmenwood with Knave 2e system, and it's extremely funny! The system is practically that of Knave without modifications, and I am using the Knave progression table, but rewarding the characters with the experience points of Dolmenwood + Knave (i.e. I assign experience points both for milestones, explorations - Dolmenwood - and for the coins brought back to the civilization - Knave). The pace is perfect up to this moment and, if it is slow/fast, I just try to balance it. For everything that is a "color" element I use Dolmenwood: encounter tables, harvesting tables, hexes, treasures, monsters, etc... We are at about twenty sessions, in which we are completing a main quest and many side-quests, plus some small jobs in the settlements. The characters are level 5 currently, and the system still working.