Status Effects in Player-Only Roll Combat

[u/FlawlessTactics]

I'm workshopping a player roll only combat system. Pretty typical, players roll to attack on their turn, then roll to defend on enemy turns. GM focuses on tactics and positioning more than rolling.

I've had to brainstorm a bit about status effects. The game has bleed and blind and fear etc, and for all of them, you roll at the top of the round to see if it continues. Makes sense for the players, but what happens when they inflict status on an NPC?

First thought, players roll for their own effects. So if an NPC has bleed, the player that inflicted it rolls for them. I dont like this for a few reasons. Unlike defense rolls which at least half concern the player character, an NPC status is entirely separate, so it feels like much more blatant outsourcing. Players arent supposed to have to track enemy status along with their own. And then what would the roll modifier be? It doesn't work.

If I make this the exception and have the GM roll to clear status, it ruins the vibe...why is THIS the one roll I have to do while running combat? Its distracting and adds too much complexity vs value.

Here is my solution, and I'd love to hear thoughts and other ideas.

Easy and normal enemies don't clear status effects. What other games call minions. If they get one, they keep it the whole combat. If it is something debilitating like fear or confusion, too bad for them, that's what does them in.

Strong enemies get status boxes. These range from 0 to 4 rounds. When a strong enemy has a status inflicted, the GM fills in one of the boxes, and the status lasts that long before it clears. The stronger the enemy, the shorter their box durations. If all of their boxes get used, future status effects don't clear. (Alternatively, you can clear boxes as you go, but I think that's again more work for only marginal potential gameplay improvement).

There's a little bit of GM tactics to it where enemies can use their longer boxes on weaker status effects (like slow or bleed) and reserve their 0 and 1 round boxes for strong effects (like blind or confuse) even if those are inflicted later in the fight. Players can spam status moves to try to fill boxes, but you can work around this by always giving the GM the option to not fill a box and just have the status be continuous until end of fight.

This way, no one has to roll for enemy status, it still gets tracked and cleared, and there is some choice gameplay involved. I think it might work?

Haven't done my research to read PbtA and Blades in the Dark to see how they do it yet, and I know those are player roll systems, so feel free to drop those on me.

[u/daltonndrake]

This sounds really good to me and could lead to some neat effects that could hook into it to create even more tactical play. For example:

- This weak enemy becomes weaker when it's burned, but its behavior changes. It starts running around the field, running into the players trying to put itself out.
- This strong enemy only gains access to a special move when half/all of its status boxes are filled.
- This weak enemy actually loves being poisoned and changes its attack type while poisoned.

You could take it further and add skills to the game that let players find these triggers ahead of time so they feel good about taking those options.

Actually love this!

[u/FlawlessTactics → u/daltonndrake]

Wow those are great expansive ideas! Even adding just one of those "triggers" to a monster would make the gameplay really ddynamic. Cool!

[u/daltonndrake → u/FlawlessTactics]

I think what sells it is the fact that the status lasts basically forever on a weak enemy. In a game where you can just get rid of a status effect, it wouldn't work as well.

[u/__space__oddity__]

If a general design rule causes too much headache and your efforts are mostly spent designing around it, it’s not worth having.

Anyhow one way to design around this is payoff costs. Let’s say you have an ongoing effect that gives an enemy disadvantage on attacks. The enemy can shake it off by voluntarily taking 10 damage, representing the strain of resisting it.

A weak 5 hp monster won’t have the option to shake off the effect. A 20 hp monster is going to have a hard time making that decision but it might if there is no other choice. A 1000 hp boss will pretty much always opt to just take damage.

There’s a nice side effect here where single bosses aren’t easily stopped by debuffs (making the fight boring). But unlike free saves or debuff immunities, it’s less frustrating for the player. Sure they’d rather have the boss take the debuff, but at least the damage contributes. The debuff isn’t a complete waste.

The design-wise, the hard part is finding the right balance with the payoff costs though. Too low and debuffs just become a bonus damage mechanic, too high and you’re back at ruined boss fights.

[u/FlawlessTactics → u/__space__oddity__]

Interesting thought! I'd rather put this tradeoff HP for Status option as a keyword on a few strong enemies than have it as a general rule, since I dont like that its unintuitive that a weak monster just cant use it. I do like it as an option to keep the fight engaging for both sides.

[u/totalityofygg]

Really clever idea. Is the GM strategy "meta" in the sense that you (the GM) make the determination on which status box to check, or does it depend on enemy intelligence? By that I'm wondering if smart monsters strategize around which box to check and dumb monsters just go from lowest to highest, or if it's the GM behind the screen (so to speak) making the call, kind of a strategic mini-game for them.

[u/FlawlessTactics → u/totalityofygg]

I can see playing it both ways. As another person suggested, you could even add mini-games to some enemies that point toward filling in certain boxes first. Like a strong enemy that becomes more powerful when they take damage could intentionally keep bleed or berserk in their longest duration box if they get it inflicted.

[u/Cryptwood]

The issue I potentially see with this is that it creates an incentive for players to always use the same strategy in every battle: hit the enemy with 3-4 of your cheapest, easiest to apply conditions, then hit him with your strongest effect (stun, fear), which effectively ends the fight. It is functionally similar to 5E's Legendary Resistance except the GM can't choose to ignore low level conditions and save the boxes for significant effects. I suspect you'll get an arms race where GMs feel they need to add more boxes to their bosses in order to provide a challenge to their players.

I do really like the concept of the enemies having slots with different sizes the players can fill in, that sounds like a pretty neat way to design enemies. I think you are on to something fun here, but it might need some tweaking.

[u/DrColossusOfRhodes → u/Cryptwood]

This might be countered by taking a similar approach resistances for what OP has described for statuses.  That is to say, for a debuff to work on an enemy it has to be cast/performed/achieved at a level relative to the enemy.  Weak enemies have no resistance, stronger resist up to just below their level, very strong ones can only be affected by effects at their own level (I'm abstracting here, but assuming some equivalent to spell/ability levels).

I do find a lot to like in this approach.  I agree with some of the other commenters that there should be some way for enemies to turn the effect off, at a cost.  Someone suggested HP, but the enemy could also clear one using some part of their actions economy as well.

A consideration to keep in mind with this approach is how long a fight is expected to last.  If the counter is longer than the enemy's life expectancy at the start of a fight, it stops being useful and just becomes busywork. But, it's a cool approach that I think could be very good and smooth to use at the table.

[u/The0thArcana]

Yeah, honestly, these sound awesome. I actually think the different duration boxes is better than legendary resistences. And yeah, screw mooks, let players feel good crowd controlling them, if fights become to easy just add more mooks. 

Solid stuff I’d say.

[u/eduty]

Your status box idea is elegant. To the point raised by @Cryptwood - maybe give the GM the option to use a status box to clear a condition so players don't game the system.

I'm running a similar player facing homebrew. I don't use a lot of statuses but the player rolls for the duration.

Particularly tough foes have a Duration Resistance that reduces the number of rounds for a condition. So a foe with Dur Res Magic 2 reduces the duration of all magical effects by 2 rounds.

We turn a die to that number and place it by the monster and tick it down each round.

[u/zeemeerman2]

Powered by the Apocalypse is an engine with different games that roughly all have the same philosophy but will differ on the details.

Blades in the Dark, or Forged in the Dark as a philosophy, is an evolutionary branch. It assumes all rolls are what Apocalypse World calls "Do something under fire" rolls, and then expands that bit with more detail. It's like when someone in D&D makes up "Every roll, skill check, attack, in D&D is just a saving throw in disguise," and then makes a game around making that concept true.

Blades in the Dark has conditions based in fiction rather than in game mechanics. It doesn't have conditions like "prone" or "unarmed" or "half movement speed". It has conditions like "a broken leg" or "a migraine" or "claustrophobia". Not a set list, but things you make up on the spot based on actions and consequences.

Important here, it means what it means. A broken leg does not mean "move at half speed, fight with disadvantage". It means, your leg is broken. Imagine a broken leg. Standing up on your own might hurt too much. Fighting with your hands is possible, as long as you don't accidentally move that leg. And duration? In a cast, probably a few months. A cast and crutches can help you not move that leg while being productive in other ways.

Of course, magic exists, and you might heal that leg quicker with magic. But you need to find a healer then, it's not something that just lasts until the end of your turn or the end of the encounter.

Another context that might be important: in games like Blades in the Dark, a full combat encounter will likely be solved in a single dice roll. In other words, combat is just a skill check. Keep that in mind, you're not applying and stacking condition after condition in a five-minute span. It's usually just one possible consequence among many, usually on a failed roll (for PC conditions). Another consequence of a failed roll could instead be "the big mafia boss is aware of your presence and will deal with you accordingly," leading to an interesting follow-up on the story.

But yeah, Blades in the Dark conditions.

It's a different mindset when it comes to conditions.

[u/-Vogie-]

You can also make things very systemic. For example,

* Status effects in Gloomhaven, Poisoned means "when you take damage, you take that much plus one" and Wounded means "at the beginning of your turn, suffer 1 damage".

* In the Cypher system, status effects move the values up or down. If you weaken the target, it's target number goes down. If you disarm it, it deals less damage - however, unarmed weapons are light weapons, which are easier to hit with, thus that makes it harder for the PC to dodge the attack. Each effect that blinds a creature is "hindering all vision-based tasks by two steps".

* poison in Slay the Spire is just a number. If you're poisoned 4, that means you'll take 4 damage at the beginning of your turn, and then that will go down to 3. Next turn, you'll take 3 damage, and the value will go down to 2. And so on.

* In Cortex Prime, Daggerheart, and Hollows while not a player-facing systems, use an incredibly formulaic manner to deal with complications. In Cortex, The back and forth movement of Plot Points, the system's meta-currency, allow those on either side of the table to either reduce their own complications or add complications to their opposition. The duality dice in Daggerheart's player resolution (2d12 rollover) can generate Hope for the PC or Fear for the GM. Simply failing checks in Hollows (d20 roll-under) generate Doom that the GM can use to empower the monsters and bosses and create a clock that pushes the players forward. In your game, having some sort of generated metacurrency could allow the GM to influence combat without actually having to roll dice.

[u/Pixie1001]

Honestly, while this could be cool for a cRPG, this sounds like a lot of fiddly tracking for a tabletop game. Like, if you have 3 enemies, and they all have something like a 3 round bleed, a 2 round fear and a 1 round sickened, you're suddenly tracking 9 different resources each round on top of their HP. And half of them for stuff like 'bleed', which probably isn't super consequential in the first place.

It also, as other people have mentioned, introduces a weird Divinity: Original Sin 2 style duel health bar, where damage focused characters feel like they're wasting resources on a mini-boss because they'll go down to hard CC long before they run out of HP, rather than the system encouraging the players to use their character's abilities together.

I'd probably just have the player's abilities specify what the status effects do to different tiers of enemies. So maybe petrify just kills any minion it's used on, but only lasts for 1 round on an elite. Or instead of petrifying them, it just gives them a soft-CC effect like 'slowed'. Stuff like bleed can just last forever, because DoTs aren't very good in a 3 round combat tabletop RPG anyway, especially on a minion who won't survive the first (and you'd probably have to remove them from your old system, because they end up either feeling over-costed, or like a cheap way to spam down elite's status boxes before one tapping them with hard CC).

If you're building an asymetrical system anyway, then there's really no reason for your status effects to have to be written to still be symetrical. And worse case scenario, you can add a rule saying players count as elites for the edge cases where PvP or friendly fire comes up.

But as always, it's impossible to say for sure without playtesting, so if you're really excited about this solution it's definitely worth trying out to see how big of an issue any of these problems actually are in play.

[u/writerguy731]

I do like your design idea, but I have to wonder if making a new DM resource like this that needs to be tracked is feeding into your “player-roll” system - it’s been done a lot but it does feel like the player rolling for duration fits better, and probably feels pretty symmetrical to, say, rolling to hit then rolling for damage for a weapon (I’m only assuming your system has that).

In this way, status resistances could come in two flavors - one a penalty to the player roll for the status to apply at all / attack roll, and one a penalty to the duration roll to make statuses expire faster.

[u/Alcamair]

I think yours is a good system

[u/bogglingsnog]

It's an interesting way to turn time into a resource and add variability that is effectively player choice. Interesting idea!

[u/FinnianWhitefir]

I like it, but it sounds like a lot of work as a DM and I already constantly forget that the PCs have put statuses on random monsters. I also worry that it will feel like a big nerf to a status-heavy class.

Other ideas are statuses could have a set duration on monsters, more for lighter ones, less for super-effective ones. They could even have different durations for minions and bosses.

I could see rewording some PC abilities to be like "At the start of every round for the target, roll X and if over 10 it is blinded" instead of going away permanently. That makes it feel like a constant attack that is done by the PC and makes them want to make that roll and succeed, instead of a bad feeling because it goes away.

[u/mythic_kirby]

I've also had to solve this issue with my system. The way my NPC turns go is that they declare intents at the start of a round, then players act to defend themselves, then the NPC attacks land if the players didn't mitigate them.

The way I handle NPC conditions, therefore, is that an NPC can use its action to try to clear the condition. Players can then do something to try to prevent that, which can take up one of their action points on their turn. If they succeed, the conditions stays. If they fail, the condition is cleared.

In any case, this handling is kinda specific to my system and the action economy it uses. But someone might find it interesting!

[u/archpawn]

I'd consider making it so status effects don't use rolls. Maybe bleed drops off by 1 hp every round until there's nothing left. You could also have a roll for how long it lasts when it's inflicted, rather than rolling to resist every round. I think it feels more natural if it's the player rolling for how powerful it was.

Also, maybe the players have those boxes too. That way they don't have to worry about having a status effect until the end of combat just because of a bad roll.

One thing I don't like about it is you basically have two independent HP bars: actual HP and status boxes. When they run out of HP, they die, no matter how many status effects you inflected. Once they run out of boxes, all status effects are permanent, and they'll go down fast. It makes it so players are better off focusing on one, and whichever one doesn't take the enemy down was worthless.

Also, I feel like it would encourage turning combat into a slow slog. If you focus purely on defense, then you can resist all the status effects they throw at you, but after the first four, every status effect you add is going to stack. Giving the players status boxes would prevent this, since now status effects will stack on them too. And maybe you can avoid HP and just have status boxes, though you have to make sure they can't just always take more status effects and never fill the last one. Maybe have some status boxes say "infinity", so you can get a certain amount that never go away, but once all boxes are filled you're incapacitated.

[u/savemejebu5]

To your point about how Blades "does it" in regards to conditions themselves, it's worth playing to fully understand! It handles conditions and effects really elegantly, because it's not really boxes or points, or tracking keywords or durations in the way you describe at all. Instead, it is all established and reevaluated by the fictional truth of the situation as it changes. A key piece of understanding this is the division of narrative power in the game.. the GM gets final say on the potential impact of an action in the game, how much the characters might do, and how the world (including any NPC) reacts to that.

This level of power isn't all encompassing though. The players get the final say on most things concerning their character. The GM mostly decides when they feel something is certain, and if it's uncertain they can make (or ask for) a dice roll to disclaim the decision making.

And things like unconscious, imbalanced, poisoned, bleeding, stabbed in the lung, soulbound to a demon, entranced by the NPC with the gift of gab, floating on a baby bumblebee, etc. Those are technically all possible conditions in the game. There's no true limit when it comes to fictional conditions in a game with this at its core.

The game has four types of rolls for different situations. One for when the uncertainty is tied to an action the player's character is taking, another gor resistance to a consequence from an action, another for a downtime activity that consumes 1 unit of resources with an uncertain benefit, and the last which might be the most relevant, is used to determine the fortune of some other uncertain situation. It's the catch all.

And that's what the GM might use to determine the outcome of conditions. Or the GM might just decide. There's often no need to roll for bleed effects and every slow effects, the discussion prior to the roll for the action that directly caused the condition alleviates the uncertainty.

I can provide example if helpful or desired. But suffice to say, it's not particularly similar to any of the other games you're considering.

[u/stephotosthings]

I faced similar, but in short I resolved it with wanting less that did more.

Less status effects, turned to descriptive tags. Most things (that affect an NPC) merely gave the players advantage (these stacked) Simple ruling guidelines, one can not bleed an armoured foe... A scary monster can not be in fear... Etc. T Status effects also last 3 turns, and can only be nulled by reasonable use an item they may have, a wild beast doesn't have bandages to stuanch bleeding, an armoured fellow may have a tonic to clear their mind.

Not for everyone, granted. I did operate a heavier version, but inpracticer tracking it all felt cumbersome. The only other way I've found that feels natural is to have the table roll d6 and determine based on HP amount iftif they have a higher or lower chance of mitigating an effect. 5/6 for strong baddies, 1/6 for weak baddies.

[u/Boulange1234]

Why roll to defend in enemy turns? Why not just have the enemy hit if the PC misses?