So, long story short, the party is going to soon be up against a fragment of some sort of ancient, Titan-like bad guy.
That being said, I want the players to understand that some shit doesn't work like standard in these types of conflicts with primordial beings; to do this, I want to fuck with meta-concepts like Health, stats, turn orders, and other things like that, without getting pants-on-head retarded. Ideas?
>PCs take a point of damage that bypasses all defense every interval a set duration of real time passes.
>BBEG can adjust a stat of his own if he spends time during combat doing so.
>BBEG doesn't have 'health', but instead has a pre-set number of 'hits' it can take before 'dispersing'.
>BBEG can simply interrupt, reverse, or otherwise manipulate turn-order, potentially even getting an additional turn when some real-life time passes.
>>43600910
>>BBEG doesn't have 'health', but instead has a pre-set number of 'hits' it can take before 'dispersing'.
I don't know what system you're using, but this could be pretty unfair to people who've specialized in delivering lots of damage with single hits, especially if something like the reverse exists in the game.
>>43601047
I'm running Pathfinder because none of my player are willing to branch out.
I'm planning on throwing this sorta thing at them at first or second level; is that early enough to not be particularly unfair?
>>43600910
The entity does not have a place in the turn order. Instead, he has a turn after a certain amount of time passes. This amount of time can be anything you want it to be, 60 seconds, 30 secons, even 6 seconds if you feel like fucking over your players.
>>43600910
Combine combat with a game of Uno, including skips and reverses.
>>43600910
>BBEG doesn't have 'health', but instead has a pre-set number of 'hits' it can take before 'dispersing'.
And then the barbarian, fighter, and paladin all wept.
Whenever a character ends their turn, they swap places with the next character in the initiative order.
Choose a background track that isn't disruptive or annoying when you loop it, but has some kind of dramatic solo or something in it.
An effect happens whenever the solo plays.
Make it a recurring enemy. Have strange effects happen during the battle. The barbarian is moved away five feet from the boss one turn, and when the barbarian tries to step back up to attack it cannot occupy that space. Arrows fly past the wizards head. Someone who gets hurt has a healing spell cast on them from a source no one can identify. They beat the being rather easily however.
They think nothing of the strange encounter, until they meet it again, this time with an NPC who was investigating a phenomenon and freaks out because the worst case scenario has happened. This time, when they fight the same being, they see themselves as they were when they were weaker. The party is the ones that push away the past-barbarian to attack the boss. The party is the one who shot the arrows that missed and nearly hit the wizard. The NPC sees the past versions of the party fall down and says they should try to heal them and see what happens. But as they fight more random things are happening. The fight lasts just as long as last time, and it disappears like it did before. The next time they see the creature they see themselves in the past, fighting both battles simultaneously. The boss is a recurring enemy. The party should have learned all the random effects that occur are themselves from the future fighting the creature all at once, and that if they cannot replicate everything that has happened randomly during their battle it cannot be the final battle. Every time they fight the creature their past selves do the exact same things, and every fight lasts the same number of rounds, but the boss will do new things every fight that escalates the fight.
>>43601047
Maybe it's supposed to be unfair.
>>43600910
>BBEG can simply interrupt, reverse, or otherwise manipulate turn-order, potentially even getting an additional turn when some real-life time passes.
That's pretty much time manipulation.
>>43600910
Have your players print out 2 copies of their character sheet.
Every attack the thing does cuts part of the character sheet off, starting from the bottom.
Anything that's been cut off the sheet can't be used.
If they damage their past selves their current selves gain the damage instead. So at one point you'll have the barbarian feel like she has been cut through but not take any damage, and this will mean the barbarian will need to cut her past self to cleave the boss at some point. Throw in wacky effects that the party clearly wouldn't be able to accomplish at the point in time they see it, and some things they cannot do at all. They see a giant rock smash the creature against its head, so then at some point they throw a rock against it's head. Maybe they levitated it, maybe they use a catapult. Or maybe they launch the rock but it disappears, and during the next fight a stone wall is created and the rock smashes through it before hitting the thing in the head. Now the players need to be think ahead about what reason their future selves created that stone wall their since they didn't do it yet.
The reason the boss was easier in the first fight is because he is focusing on the harder versions of you in the future that he is fighting simultaneously. He only sticks around for a limited number of rounds before disappearing, so you have a limited number of things to remember from last time and you just add what they did to the list of things that will happen next time. The fight gets more and more complicated as more iterations are added. But make it so the NPC from the second fight makes an attack, but that isn't looped. Make it so that anyone else present like a follower doesn't show up in the future battles that they see, and don't get attacked by the creature during the battle. If the PCs notice this they can use this. Eventually they get to the end point, where the creature reappears at the same time every day wherever they are and fights them for that duration of time, then disappears. Have this be a thing that happens consistently, wherever they are. Except it stops keeping track. It doesn't remember what you did yesterday or today. It keeps repeating until one day-
>>43602995
>PCs noticing anything
>>43602803
>>43602995
Interesting idea, but a lot of it seems like it relies way too much on the "future" fight's actions already being decided.
Something that can screw with your players (that I plan on doing in my own campaign) is using things from different systems.
Cast Stone Skin from Second Edition DnD. Cast a Fireball based upon the system of Shadowrun.
You could also screw with their dice. Instead of rolling 1d20 to hit, maybe they roll 1d10x2. Doubles chances of crits, but also auto-fails (bonus points: immunity to crits)
Doing shit like that makes it clear he is beyond the rules of this world.
>>43600910
I'm seeing a lot of Temporal stuff, as well as some stuff that involves using data from other systems which is getting me SUPER pumped.
I was thinking about using effects like Silence that prevent the PLAYER from talking for a small duration, but I'm uncertain if my friends would appreciate being told to shut up.
Also toying with the idea of messing around with making particular words 'banned' (basically, I give them a handful of words that can't be said either OOC or IC), that, when said, cause an effect on the field. Ideas on how to make that work? Or, if it can't, something that might function?
>>43601098
Hoping they'll like it and maybe become interested in other systems?
>>43606485
I gave up on that hope long, LONG ago.3 fucking years, Anon. 3 years I'll never get back. That being said, I homebrewed the fuck out of it about a year in, so reality raping spellcasters are rare as fuck.
Add in characters from other systems that pop in and fight as well. Like a gunslinger using plasma pistols pops in and uses entirely different mechanics to fight besides the other PCs. Maybe make a character from each alternate system you'd want to play and show them off in the game.
>>43601753
So as in, you can only take a turn when you can play a legitimate Uno move, and something happens when you run out of cards?
>>43601786
>>43600910 (OP)
>BBEG doesn't have 'health', but instead has a pre-set number of 'hits' it can take before 'dispersing'.
>And then the barbarian, fighter, and paladin all wept.
But the monk is like
>I'm finally useful! Stand back guys, I've got this.
>>43606332
Slap a pair of noise-cancelling headphones on one of them?
Give everyone a set of flash cards with the words on them?Give each of them different words?Keep a set of different effects for each player?There is overlap between each set, but everything has different effects for each player anyway?
>>43601098
Why are you escalating so quickly? You remove all the impact of a meta-gimmick boss if the players are subjected to it right out of the gate.
You want to fuck with the game mechanics, you really need to wait until the lategame of a campaign to make players flip their shit about it.
For example, a boss which is not on the initiative order. It moves in real time. Or maybe it just overrides all rolls into a natural 1 via picking them up and turning them over. Maybe it starts eating character sheets.
>>43602803
>>43602995
This is a decent idea for single author fiction, it's an absolutely horrendous idea for RPGs. Any time you dictate what a player has to do in the future, you should instantly rethink what you're doing.
What happens if the Barbarian decides they don't want to cleave through their past self? Do you force them to? Do you retroactively redo the earlier fight without the Barbarian taking the cleave damage? How do you decide how much damage the Barbarian takes in the first fight?
It's seriously the worst kind of railroading.
That sounds like a lot of stupid pointless bullshit. Do the players win the fight if they get fed up and punch you in the dick?
hehe, kinda sounds like a Fate game.
That game is a meta-game because of the whole permissions component in the narrative the group creates.
You just listed "Stunts, Create an Advantage, Stress/Consequence Boxes, and Stunt" in your greentext order.
To be fair, the system is like the narrative GURPS so you're always making shit up with its toolkitty ways as needed to fit the parameters of a session/story arc/setting
>>43607547
Well, this is an archetype idea; I'm not planning on throwing this at them with EVERYTHING off the bat, but instead, I'm trying to make a 'type' of enemy that will mess with how the game works throughout the campaign.
>>43607746
If you didn't want a lot of stupid pointless bullshit to happen, why the fuck are you playing tabletops? Go back to the closet, you skeleton.
>>43600910
>The BBEG can only deal 1 dmg per attack, but it will keep adding damage 'X' damage per 'Y' seconds until the turn is over.
>>43600910
I once made a demon "grab" one of the characters souls. The twist was that the soul manifested as the players character sheet, so the boss keep looking the character "soul" and making comments about they're status. It was a fun game.
>>43600910
Ignore players who say "I roll to do X" or "Can I make a Y check?".
>Why does a God care for your little carved cubes?
>>43600910
The boss can speak directly to the players. In fact he does this instead of talking to the characters, because he doesn't consider them to be real. He also can look at their stats and equipment and feats and such.
All he does during the fight is tell the players what they should do.
>"Your grapple modifier is pretty high! I look like a regular human, your guy can probably win a grapple against me."
>"You've only got 17 hit points left! My attacks deal 4d6... You're going to want to put some distance between me and your guy."
Nobody involved in the encounter suffers any ill effects from dropping below 0 hit points. He can't die and neither can the heroes. When they finally decide to stop fighting, he laughs and vanishes.
Every time they encounter an enemy in the future, roll to find out whether the enemy speaks with his voice.
Everyone gets a pet chicken. Every time their chicken lays an egg they get a egg token. They can use an egg token at any time to cause an egg to appear anywhere inside the game, except inside another creatures brain or something else that insta-kills things.In case your players already own chickens they still get a egg token for how many eggs they get
[spoilerIf they can't own chickens just make it every time they themselves eat eggs for a meal
>>43602987
Holy shit, this is fucking brilliant. I want to do this in one of myhypotheticalfuture campaigns.
>>43609326
This is so stupid. I love it.
>>43607675
Well it was written as a meta aspect. Perhaps instead of having to cleave themselves, an attack the boss makes on future them hurts them instead. The idea is supposed to be by the fifth time you fight the boss there are four of you in the way that complicates things. Having to cleave through your past self was just a suggestion of a meta-breaking mechanic. You are right that that particular suggestion was railroady of me to suggest. I did mention earlier that hitting your past selves should hurt you, not them. I was trying to avoid being railroady so that's why I stayed away from suggesting that you could see your future selves.
The boss attacks in realtime. It gets a turn every 1 minute/30 seconds/whatever, tweak the actual time gap depending on how difficult you want the encounter to be. It interrupts other players in the middle of whatever action they were doing, forcing them to both speed up their decision-making and learn how to counter on the fly.
Or just makes them pissed off, I dunno. But it certainly works on a different plane of reality than the game.
>Well, this is an archetype idea; I'm not planning on throwing this at them with EVERYTHING off the bat, but instead, I'm trying to make a 'type' of enemy that will mess with how the game works throughout the campaign.
Here's an idea:
Play with the concept of a "combat" acting like a JRPG battle or a Pokemon fight, where it exists in this separate place that isn't the real world, which works differently. In the real world, that would be like real time suddenly stopping and everyone being forced into set rounds and action limits.
So you can make every "combat" with this enemy archtype NEED to take 5 minutes or less, because at the 5 minute mark after a fight starts, the monster would just knock them out instantly and disappear. They wouldn't die, they would just be knocked out and not get experience for killing it, and they'd wake up some time later.
This means that you can have low-level monsters be normal, and the players have to scramble to end a fight in under 5 minutes. But as they power up, you have the option of making fights more challenging so they can still keep the players down to the wire.
I also like the idea of the boss making realtime attacks, not initiative-based actions.
Mess with the dice. Change the dice players have to roll - downgrade damage dice, it rolls 2d10 to hit instead of 1d20.
Mess with the players. Make them swap character sheets.
Change which mini represents which character and for what Hitting the dwarf damages the elf.
>>43606332
Roll 1d6. Character loses 10% of total HP for every time a banned vowel corresponding to a side of the die is uttered.
On a 6, all vowels are banned.
GLHF
>>43601406
This is pretty good. OP Listen to this guy.
Also combinable with >>43601996
>>43606332
Oh man, Dr Doom is so good. Is there a comic series just with him?
>>43610246
are you going to tell your players this? otherwise they're just going to think they're taking damage from some aura and never know why
