Fantasy FiveCore? And Dungeon Tiles

 

I make it no secret that I like FiveCore, it's a great system, and as far as sci-fi goes, I hardly play anything else. But in my recent Fantasy focused delerium I had an idea: What if you could use FiveCore's basic mechanics for fantasy as well? I already have something for mass-battles, but for dungeon crawls and warband games, this might be something.

 

 

DISCLAIMER: This is in nothing offical what so ever, just a crazy persons attempt at converting existing rules and making them fit his nefarious purposes. This post is just an outpouring of ideas that might or migth not be kept,reworked or scrapped altogether. You have been warned!

 

The first thing I imagine you'd have to change is the brawl mechanic. A straight d6 vs d6 roll that always kills one participant works well when melée is scarce, but for a fantasy or medieval setting we need something slightly different. As it turns out we already have what we need; The skill dice used in the shooting mechanic. 

By using the same mechanic as for shooting, we get 6 possible outcomes on each of the 2 Dice variants, one that replaces the shock dice and one the Kill dice.

 

Both would remain much like they are now, 1 and 6s gives a result, with 2-5 doing nothing at all. Just like regular FiveCore.

The shock dice could push you back 2" on a 1, and either knock you down or force a 6" retreat on a roll of 6.

The kill dice would remain the same, knocking you down on a roll of 1, wounding on a roll of 6.

 

Using the mechanics for armour from FiveParsecs would allow a save against the effects of the kill dice, a successful save would downgrade the effect, turning a killing blow into a knockdown,a knockdown into a stunned result. (Stunned would mean you dont't get to activate, just like hunkered down in regular FiveCore)

 

If we only use 1 shock and 1 kill for the standard guy armed with a sword, there is a 40 something-percent chance that the attack won't do anything, before armor is considered. A 4 in 10 chance of a complete miss in a ranged combat isn't unplausible, but I don't know if this is a good enough chance to cause some effect in melée.

 

You could solve this through extra dice, awarded from skills and or weapons used to reduce the chance of nothing happening through several rounds of fighting. By rolling 3 dice, you reduce the chance of misses to about 29% if I did my math right. Another way is to grant a number of re-rolls to characters based on their level or some other factor.

 

I have also considered the idea of retaliations; If you use skill dice, it means you automaticly have a strike order, as the initiator will always attack first and the defender can only strike back in his own turn, if he survives. This is nothing unordinary, but if the defender is allowed a chance to strike back if he survives the attack and isn't stunned or knocked over, it would help reduce the chance of no results from melée combats.

 

I'd borrow heavily from the expanded character creation rules from FiveCore 2nd edition to be able to create leaders and other strong characters for warbands, as well as from the new "Hero" rules to allow them some staying power. Both these rules will also allow for the creation of parties of heroes and villians for my dungeoncrawls.

 

I did a quick playtest to try out both 2 and 3 melée dice, both with retaliation and without.

I have to try a few more times before I can decide which I like better, but I hope to share my findings with you soon! 

 

The Playtest saw a sorcerer with a demon and a x-bowman face off against a wight leading a skeletal bowman and warrior.

Ranged combat is as deadly as ever, tough the armor absorbed a few blows.

 

 

These are my Dungeon Tiles; made from double-corrugated cardboard with the guidance of the Youtube-channel theDMGinfo.

So far I only have the tiles, but I have started work on some doors, pillars and other things you need to fill out a dungeon. 

 

 

 

I hope to make a fantasy FiveCore-mod a reality, any and all tips and ideas you good people have are welcome!