FROSTKNAVE

Whiff, whiff, whiff

I've run 4 sessions of Knave 2e with two different groups.  In the first couple of sessions I kept running into a problem that I had previously left behind; my dislike for AC based systems with low level characters.  They can be a whiff-fest.  Anyone who played Morrowind back in the day will also have experienced this, left click to attack and see the *miss* floating up instead of damage on your enemy.  Prior to Knave I've mostly been running Cairn, Electric Bastionland and various Oddlikes.  These have led me to the belief that rolling to hit is vestigial and irritating.

In my first Knave session a player who ported his character from another system as a level 3 fighter/paladin just kept missing.  So did his opponent.  This is nothing new.  But what bothered me was that NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.  

Felstad to the Rescue

It just so happens that I'm also exploring Frostgrave a lot recently.  I know, I'm late to this party.  I've been playing it with my son who is 6 and his warband are very much the heroes.  His previous gaming experience has been Tiny Dungeons and he's played through the entirity of the Labyrinth RPG with me and his older cousin.  Frostgrave has been great, mostly because of the contested rolls.  I roll first at the table, and tell him what my total is, what his figure's bonus is and therefore what he needs to beat on the dice.  I do all the bookkeeping, but he gets so invested in the rolls.  The single die roll for to hit and damage is so satisfying, but it goes beyond the "You go, I go" (ugoigo) that I was experiencing in Oddlikes.  In oddlikes the combat isn't the focus of course.  The thing that Frostgrave kept producing at the table was dread that the big scary creature was about to attack his fighter and then through a bad roll on the creature and an excellent roll for his fighter, his figure flattened the big scary creature.  Much cheering ensued.  I roll all of this out on the table for him to see, no screens.  My only concession to "going easy" is that his wizard and apprentice can't die on the post game rolls, they can only ever be injured.  This way it's upsetting if his wizard goes down, but he knows he'll at least be alright for the next scenario (but maybe a little dinged up).  The rest of the warband can be killed though.

Because I was getting into both games at the same time I made the obvious leap to mash them together.  The next three sessions of Knave I bolted the Frostgrave combat system straight onto the Knave 2 chassis.  STR in knave became the Fight stat, WIS was the Shoot stat per Knave 2 rules and so on.  There are some obvious differences in the systems for anyone who has played both.  Fight stat only goes to +5, STR can go up to +10 in Knave 2.  I actually like this difference as it means that your attribute modifier matters more than a bad dice roll at higher levels, meaning that a more expert fighter is more likely to win and does more damage with the same type of weapon.  Combat is still swingy and dangerous at low levels but it also plays out much more cinematically at the table (because parries and ripostes are built in to that one die roll).

The other stuff I've added are the ability to use DEX to dodge attacks.  If you beat the opponents d20+STR with your d20+DEX roll, you have dodged.  You can reposition yourself behind the enemy or move up to ten feet (like it's a slide through the legs or a vault over their back).  In theory this could be used on your opponent's turn to reposition yourself around the battlefield.  Every time an enemy makes an attack aganst you you can dodge/disengage into a safe position, or if there's another enemy close enough you can dodge the first enemy and move close enough to put yourself in combat with the next enemy and daisy chain your dodge/disengages across a room to a tactically advantageous position.  It's risky though, what if your third attempt to do this the enemy manages to hit you? You take damage and now you're stuck in combat with them in the middle of a room full of enemies.

Manouvres

Manouvres such as pushes and trips are also usable, but only on your own turn, not as a response to an enemy attack.  At the moment they provoke a save that makes the most sense.  So a push is a STR attack, but it can be resisted by DEX or STR.  If you have flanked your opponent then you can make your manouvre target a specific stat within reason (a sneaky character can make the opponent roll DEX vs DEX with a trip, if flanking).  Importantly like in Frostgrave if you're engaged in combat you cannot disengage without winning some sort of contest.  In FG you can choose to push an opponent back if you beat them in a fight contest.  In Frostknave you would have to declare, before the attack that you are going to shove/trip an opponent instead of try to do damage.  They may still try to damage you in response.

Armour

I'm keeping the armour as is in Knave, with one exception.  Base armour is 10 like in Frostgrave.  Also I currently have a rule that each armour point gives -1 to DEX.  This means that if you have 17AC, you would have a -7 to any dex rolls.  This DEX penalty doesn't apply to any magical AC, such as cloak of protection or armour with magical armour bonuses.  The -1 to DEX is only for mundane armour.  This means that if you're going to be heavily armoured you're going to want to spec a little into dexterity and probably have a squire or two to back you up to stop being flanked from getting too disastrous.  You can tank in armour, but climbing is gonna be a challenge and getting tripped up and swarmed is a very real possibility (think Agincourt).

Archery

Ranged combat is close to vanilla Frostgrave shoot attacks. The difference is that it is versus DEX or ARMOUR: D20+WIS vs D20+DEX or D20+WIS vs AC.  If the opponent is unaware the target is D10+armour points.

Avoiding the Null Result

avoiding the "nothing happens" result was the original purpose of this rules mashup, and as such there is one further addition to the rules.  In Frostgrave you roll your D20+stat contest.  The winner then takes this number and compares it to the opponent's AC and if their result is less than AC, you do no damage.  In my version you will always do at least 1 damage to an enemy if you win the roll.  If your weapon has any damage amping (such as 2h weapon having +2 damage) then this is also included in minimum damage.  This means that a combat contest will always progress the narrative of the combat.  The victor will always do *some* damage.

Amon Hen

There are other things I've tinkered with a little in the system, such as magic.  Those changes are not really relevant to this conversation though.  The thing that got me writing this was a cool moment playing Frostgrave with my son.  His last figure, a knight hadn't quite made it off the table.  Three skeletons surrounded him and it looked terrible for the knight.  But through a series of great rolls on the Knight's part he killed all three skeletons on their turn;  the image in my head was of Aragorn at Amon Hen.  In rules as written old school D&D or Knave 2 Aragorn would have swung at that first Uruk, hit or miss, then he would have had to wait for the 30 Uruks to take their turn and hoped to survive to hit another.  In Frostgrave combat is super risky and swingy, but that situation could result in an heroic stand where the hero defeats all comers.  I've seen it happen at the table and it's epic.  It doesn't require the players to be super badass heroes and it could go horribly wrong.  Win or lose, it's way more dramatic.