[CONAN] Roll dem bones!

[Supplement Four]

This is just a little ditty to see how different GM's run their games. If you want to put in some explaination as to why you'd make the call you would, then I would welcome that peek into your GM mind.



Here's the situation:

The PCs are in the local tavern. For color, you've been describing (you're the GM) some loud mouths sitting at a table not far away.

One of them gets up to go to the head and he bumps into the PCs' table. "Hey, you maggots, " he says to the player characters, "stay out of my way, or I'll piss on you."

The players take up the challenge. The Barbarian in the party stands, looks the NPC straight in the eye, and says, "Go ahead and try to piss on me."

The other PCs stand up and give their comrade room to fight the jerk.

At this point, the GM has an impromptu role playing moment on his hands that can easily degrade into a combat situation.

The NPC smiles a toothy grin at the fighter, takes a step closer to him, and jabs his finger into the Barbarian's chest, "You look like a toilet to m...."

"That it!" The player interjects. "My Barbarian hits him, right in mid-speech. I'm rolling my attack!"



So, here's the question:

Do you (the GM) make everyone roll initiative right there?

Or, do you automatically give initiative to the Barbarian, based on what has occured in the game?

Or, do you consider this a Surprise round, let the Barbarian attack, then roll nish for everybody else after the Barbarian has gotten off this free attack (and, in this situation, is it fair to give the Barbarian a free Surprise round and not just the first attack?)?

How would you handle this as GM?

Remember, often the reverse of this situation is true, as with a party going through an old cavern and having a spider drop down on them.

 

[superc0ntra]

I'd make everyone roll initiative but allow the Barbarian to take 20 on it. For clarity we roll initiative each round so it's a one time thing. Also if the other guy is really fast he has a chance to be first.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Yup, me too. The barbarian gave him some warning that he was going to attack. (Conan would have never done this! )

 

[Supplement Four]

I would give the Barbarian +2 on nish, let the Jerk roll normal nish. Then, I'd allow the other PCs to roll nish with a -2 penalty (and I'd allow the Jerk's friends the same modifier). Anybody else would be -4 on nish that first round.

+2 Barbarian
+0 Jerk

-2 Barbarian's friends
-2 Jerk's friends

-4 Anybody else "tuned in" to the fight.

 

[Spectator]

I would give the Barbarian +2 on nish, let the Jerk roll normal nish. Then, I'd allow the other PCs to roll nish with a -2 penalty (and I'd allow the Jerk's friends the same modifier). Anybody else would be -4 on nish that first round.

+2 Barbarian
+0 Jerk

-2 Barbarian's friends
-2 Jerk's friends

-4 Anybody else "tuned in" to the fight.

I kinda like that!

 

[Boneguard]

It depends on 1 fact: Were the loud mouths hoping for a fight or not?

If they were not hoping for/expecting a fight: Say they always bully people in town and no one fight back, then I would go for a surprise round for everyone except the barbarian.

If they were hoping for/expecting a fight: A bunch of Bravo trying to prove themselves as the toughest bastard in town, then I would go for standard initiative.

 

[Supplement Four]

If they were not hoping for/expecting a fight: Say they always bully people in town and no one fight back, then I would go for a surprise round for everyone except the barbarian.

You can't go for Surprise in this situation, at least not by RAW, because Surprise requires one side to not be aware of the other.

In this case, both sides are aware of each other.

 

[Boneguard]

If they were not hoping for/expecting a fight: Say they always bully people in town and no one fight back, then I would go for a surprise round for everyone except the barbarian.

You can't go for Surprise in this situation, at least not by RAW, because Surprise requires one side to not be aware of the other.

In this case, both sides are aware of each other.

Thus some DM perogative. The loudmouth were not not 'aware' of the violent reaction and were caught with thier pants down so to speak.

Instead of calling it a suprise round, just give the barbarian a free round while everyone scramble on the feet wondering "What the Hell is going on???"

 

[Ichabod]

Roll initiative as normal for everyone.

The point of dice or whatever random mechanic to resolve RPG situations is to describe (dictate) what happens. That may not be all that clear. Let me try examples.

In many RPGs or with many GMs, there's a desire to describe what you are doing in interesting terms. Rather than "I swing my sword.", it's supposed to be "I hurl myself to my foe's open side, sweeping my blade upward to slash through the unprotected flank, grinning maniacally with death in my eyes." or whatever. I've always had two major problems with this.

The lesser one is that it's not special to be more descriptive if it's done all of the time. Not to say the reason to do it is to make every single thing someone does special, there's still value in having a less bland, mechanical experience (for some), but some games/GMs give bonuses to doing this to incentivize and that breaks down when people do it all of the time, unless you are fine with everyone always getting bonuses, which I suppose is fine as a way to advantage PCs over NPCs.

The greater problem and what I'm getting at above is that you don't know what you do until you did it. It's wonderful to explain in minute detail how you disemboweled every demon in Hell with your eyes shut during a hurricane, but if you fail the roll, you failed the roll. When fighting mooks or in games that are much more descriptive-inclined or even with a GM who can do a lot of numbercrunching on the fly, you can have the character's actions do what was stated but not have the mechanical impact the player desired. Sure, you just shot 50 mooks with one bullet (failing your roll) but 50 more mooks suddenly appear. Or, you blow off the slugman's arm with your Kamehameha Wave, but he regenerates it instantly. Maybe to some people it's satisfying to know that they failed mechanically but succeeded in their minds' eyes. Not me.

I like describing what happens after the random resolution because it doesn't require coming up with some way to mechanically neutralize a failed roll while retaining interesting descriptions of what happens. So, if the barbarian wins initiative, he clocks the dude who annoys him. If the dude wins, he sees the barbarian pulling back his arm, whips out a knife and stabs the PC in the throat/kicks him in the groin/does a quadruple backflip on to a table and takes the one-legged Crane Stance. If some third party wins initiative, then the third party gets a chance to interfere in some way, such as causing a distraction or tackling one of the belligerents. Alternatively, maybe the third party just doesn't care and delays. Any of these are perfectly interesting ways for the encounter to go. Meanwhile, giving some bonus to the barbarian is seeing the whole situation only through the barbarian's eyes, which is fine if you want to advantage PCs, but maybe you don't.

Note the existence of Striking Cobra as a feat, which is exactly what someone would use in this situation to go first or to have combat advantage. I actually think it fails as a feat because these situations aren't common enough. You could have had everyone roll initiative earlier and the action of the chestpointer in the first round was to walk up and mouth off; doing things that way would have made Striking Cobra useless since initiative had already been rolled.

Well, I actually have a third problem with heavy description of actions, which is it takes up a lot of time and some people are far better at it than others. Obviously, the way you get better is practice, and if everyone is into the descriptions, then taking time with them is not an issue. Of course, it's a lot more work for a GM, who would be describing far more characters' actions.

On the other hand, I do enjoy describing cool and/or crazy stuff that happens, which is why I prefer short combat and extreme results on die rolls. Not terribly interesting to describe miss after miss in evocative terms, but it's worth describing the fumble in catastrophic terms.

 

[Supplement Four]

Instead of calling it a suprise round, just give the barbarian a free round while everyone scramble on the feet wondering "What the Hell is going on???"

For me, it'd be more "with the spirit of the rules" to lay a modifier on the nish throw so that it's likely that the Barbarian goes first, catching the Jerk flat-footed.

 

[vonOsk]

I'd go for standard inititive. Everybody is aware of the threatening situation. Perhaps I'd let the Barbarian and the loudmouth have a bonus to initiative. The loudmouth is obviously spoiling for a fight and unless he's drunk, he knows what's about to happen.