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Post by retrorob on Nov 6, 2019 3:57:50 GMT -6
deltaReduced, I guess. It's about evade that particular group of scouts.
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Post by linebeck on Nov 8, 2019 15:46:12 GMT -6
I re-organized the rules for clarity. Interpretive interpolations are in brackets, everything else is original text.
I. Evading
A. This action is a function of the size of the party of adventurers and the number of monsters, modified by surprise, terrain and comparative speed.
B. Use the following table as a guideline:
Party size % Chance of Evading A B C 1-3 50 70 90 4-9 30 50 70 10-24 15 30 50 25+ 5 20 35
# Encountered / # Possible = ≥ 25 % = A ≥ 60 % = B
C. Surprise 1. Surprise by a party means evasion changes are doubled. 2. Surprise by monsters negates all chance of evasion unless party is able to use some form of magic, or terrain is woods.
D. Terrain 1. Woods add 25% to evasion chances and give a 10% chance of evasion even if surprised.
E. Comparative Speed 1. If the comparative speed of the two parties is such that one is at least twice as fast as the other, the faster will have the effect of increasing/decreasing evasion chances by 25%. This includes surprise situations.
II. Pursuit
A. Occurrence 1. Pursuit will take place whenever it is so indicated with regard to castle inhabitants or when a party is unable to evade monsters.
B. Direction 1. A die is rolled, and the pursuit then goes in that random direction.
C. Chance monster will catch party 1. If the monster is faster than the party involved there is a 50% chance it will catch the party [and melee occurs]. 2. Woods or swamp will reduce the chance of being caught by 25%.
D. Continued pursuit 1. [If not caught] the party now moves another hex in a random direction, and a die is rolled [evasion die] to determine if pursuit will continue. 2. If pursuit continues the chances for being caught by a faster monster are exactly the same, and the same procedure is repeated if the party is not caught. 3. This procedure continues until pursuit is ended or melee occurs.
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Post by delta on Nov 9, 2019 2:40:37 GMT -6
Fiddling around with trying to find a formula that approximates the given evasion rates, consider: E = 50 + 0.75 * M - 20 * ln(P); where E is the evasion rate, M the number of monsters (expressed as percent of max number possible), and P the party size (in raw numbers). Specific results would be as follows: | | Mon % | | Party | 25 | 50 | 75 | 2 | 55 | 74 | 92 | 6 | 33 | 52 | 70 | 18 | 11 | 30 | 48 | 25 | 4 | 23 | 42 |
So, it's something; probably you wouldn't use it actively at the table. But maybe, hypothetically, in a computerized system to smoothly interpolate between different values of the inputs. The coefficients could be tweaked to taste.
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Post by aldarron on Nov 9, 2019 7:31:51 GMT -6
Now I'm debating what to do in conjunction with Arneson's rule in FFC that you only ever encounter 10-60% of monster numbers outside the lair. Should I still assess the percentage on the evasion table according to the full lair number, or the reduced wandering number? My sense is that the #monsters possible figure should be 10=60% of lair total.
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Post by derv on Nov 9, 2019 9:12:06 GMT -6
Read the introductory section and Human habitation section of "Outdoors in Blackmoor" in the FFC for some clarity on the subject (or just read all of the "Into the Great Outdoors). Wandering monster numbers are based on lair totals in Arnesons game.
Here's the thing about wilderness exploration in D&D, it doesn't appear to have coherence. It's basically a crap shoot without a lot of GM guidance. Yet, once you start reading Arnesons approach to populating hexes, you start to appreciate the system he was trying to create. Essentially, if a party runs into a monster that is not in it's lair, it's wandering, than you "know" that a lair is nearby. At least you know it's very likely. Perhaps the hex or surrounding hexes are worth further exploration in order to discover the lair. Then again, maybe it's better to entirely avoid it if possible.
Your encounter of 30 orcs on patrol should allow the party to make some deductions. The lair is probably close by. But, you don't know if there are 20 or 270 more in their village. Then again, this might be a scouting patrol for a passing caravan. Does the reward out weigh the risk? Maybe some of the orcs flee. Is it worth while for the party to pursue? The party needs to act quickly because the orcs may just as likely evade them.
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Post by aldarron on Nov 9, 2019 12:47:15 GMT -6
Okie doke, finally had the time for a closer read. So I am grafting the evasion and pursuit rules onto dungeon exploration. Before I do that, though, I want to make sure I understand the wilderness evasion & pursuit rules correctly.... Moreover, what does "25% or less of possible #" mean? My first guess is that this indicates the number of monsters appearing. So let's say you generate a random wilderness encounter with Orcs (a mere 1% chance on the wilderness wandering monster tables! You are conversely 12 times more likely to encounter a lycanthrope, such is the plague of lycanthropy that has beset the land!). Monsters & Treasure says that fully 50% of all orcs will be encountered in their lair... the referee hasn't decided ahead of time,... With you up to here. At this point I wouldn't say "decided ahead of time...", because I think the default assumption of the rules is random hex population, so I would allow for the possibility that's what the Ref is doing by saying "the lair has not previously been determined..." so he dices for it and discovers that this is a party of orcs that is away from the lair. He rolls dice to determine the size of the tribe (between 30 and 300), and gets 160... right in the middle of average. Since half of the tribe is back in the lair, this cuts the band down to 80 orcs. How do you know half the tribe is out of lair? % Lair tells you the chance that the encounter has occurred at the monsters Lair. It doesn't say anything about numbers. This is where I would go to Arneson's 10-60% stat. You could of course use whatever method you like, including the % Lair percentage but that would always give the same result - sometimes some very strange numbers. .... If the evasion is successful, the party can hide out in the forest. If evasion fails, a pursuit roll will need to be made and the party flees one hex in a random direction. If the pursuer is faster, then they have a 50% of catching the party. If the stable boy is lame (perhaps 6” movement), then maybe he will have to be "heroically" left behind to his fate! If the party is not caught, "a die is rolled" (page 20) to determine if pursuit continue. This could be another evasion roll,... Not another evasion roll. At the time this was published both authors and readers would read "a die" to mean a d6. Anything else would have been specified. I think this is a clumsy way of referring back to the earlier castle inhabitant rule at the top of the page "will pursue on a roll of a 1-3 if they are hostile to the party, and only on a 1 if they are basically neutral Ok, and now a separate post to discuss the applicability of these rules to dungeon evasion and pursuit. Pursuit in the DungeonFirstly... Doors must be forced open ..... Might it allow even slower monsters a 50% to catch up? .... if the players pursue and do not get a door unstuck on the first go, perhaps it would reduce their chance to catch the enemy or even make pursuit impossible. First, let's remember that the PC's are running, so that's 4 moves per turn or twice the move rate. That maters because it increases the distance between pursuers and pursued by a factor of 2 per move. In your example (" The Orcs are slower (9”) than the party (12”)), after the first move with no obstacles (doors) in the way, the party would be at 24" and the orcs at 18" (60 feet apart). by the end of the turn they would be 120 feet apart and the orc would likely have given up. Now if there is a closed door in the way, I think it only becomes an issue if the first roll to open fails. Another roll means the party had to stop and try again to force the door instead of simply barging through. It's up to you how long that takes - I'd say one move per roll or two rolls per turn. In this case I would be using 1 minute turns. A much more simple approach than this, of course, would be to assume the pursuit odds of 50% are just an abstraction to represent the complex assortment of terrain and obstacles within a 5 mile wilderness hex. If you take this approach, then you could simply say that the dungeon map clearly articulates all of the routes and obstacles in the way of a pursuit, and simply rule that flight and pursuit is an extension of combat. Thus, if you retreat from a melee, the opponent might simply follow you and, if they can catch up to you on the map, they can continue making attacks against you as you flee (or try to knock you over or corner you). With this method, it is quite easy to say that a failed attempt to force a stuck door simply results in no further movement for that combat round. I'm not sure why you want to go to the evasion rules here when you can readily play out pursuit with the usual movement and melee rules. The monsters "can catch up to you on the map, they can continue making attacks". Comparing multiples of movement rates does require a little bit of math but I personally haven't found it really very hard or complicated. <shrug> Also, if you convert everything to a percentage chance, instead of using the movement rates it seems like this method would have movement and encumbrance playing much less of a role - when really the whole idea of encumbrance is how much it slows you down..... Evasion in the DungeonBut all of the foregoing discussion is really about fleeing from combat. Before it becomes necessary to flee from a monster, you should have a chance to evade undetected. ............ Again, the situation will completely determine what these terms mean, but the takeaway is that there is a (relatively small) chance that the monster will be the one evading an encounter. That looks pretty much by the book to me. If dungeon evasion attempts will be by the players, how might this work? You could simply use the evasion table from the wilderness evasion rules to determine the odds of backing away "undetected" from a monster encounter...... I assume this would take the form of ducking back behind the corner, whispering sharply to your companions that something is lurking in the next room, or perhaps the players just stopping dead in their tracks and back away slowly. Instead of the monsters automatically "seeing" the party (when they are not themselves surprised, that is), the evasion roll would determine if the players were seen. It would look something like this: The dungeon master knows there are monsters in the next room. If there is a door, the players can listen at it and if they hear the monsters inside, they can evade automatically by simply backing away from the door and heading in another direction. If they blunder into the room, detection would seemingly be automatic with no opportunity to evade. If monsters were at the end of a long corridor or large chamber, then the referee would first need to establish surprise and, as long as the players were not surprised, then evasion could be attempted at the encounter distance rolled (if the monsters were surprised, the players' chance to evade would be doubled, as it says on page 20). If evasion failed, combat would begin, with the option to flee as normal (which would initiate pursuit). This idea is interesting and potentially useful, but, I think, not quite as you have it here. Let's look at the process we have for dungeons: "Evasion" is being undetected by definition right? To encounter means at least one side has become aware of the other, by definition right? I mean you can't encounter something that you haven't er, encountered. So in a dungeon, when monsters and characters are in encounter range you roll for Surprise. That will tell you the distance at which "awareness", that is, an encounter has occurred. That will either be directly through a positive Surprise roll, or if there is no Surprise, through the subsequent encounter distance roll. The big issue regarding when to make these rolls is doors, and whether monsters behind doors (as inside a room) would hear or otherwise sense an encounter with PC's outside the door (as in coming down a corridor) but that's something entirely dependent on the situation - much the same as it depends on what the PC's are doing, light sources and so on. For example a room of gambling or sleeping orcs would be entirely different from a room holding an elemental or some such. In the case of a water elemental quietly abiding in a dungeon pool, let's say, I would roll for surprise as soon as characters are 80 feet away - regardless of any doors between them. Surprise, when positive, will tell you who is aware of who and who can evade, if anybody. When there is no Surprise, the Encounter Distance roll will tell you that somebody has become aware of somebody else. Usually it will be the monsters becoming aware of oncoming PC's first, because of all the usual give away's, but if there is some reason it might not be the monsters who notice the PC's first, then I think it has typically been up to the Ref to decide who saw who first - DM fiat in other words. So this is the case where I can see the usefulness of using the Evasion roll as you propose. Actually, I think it could be a great idea in that case, but you would have to make some judgement on the "numbers possible" problem, as you point out. Honestly not sure what's the best solution there. I don't see any other situation where you would want to the evasion table in the dungeon though. The last question is "how far" does pursuit take you and "how long" does it take? ...... Well, interesting and well thought out but clearly a complicated problem. For me, this is illustrative of why I'd recommend the use of the movement rates for dungeon pursuits as discussed above. As far as travel speed, that seems entirely up to the referee, but I would say it would be at least at combat movement rate. Some referees simply determine combat movement rate to be 1/10th the rate of dungeon exploration (120 feet, for an unburdened human), since there are 10 combat rounds in a turn. This always seemed too slow for me, so I allow players to move their full movement rate every single combat round (thus they move 10 times faster than they do while exploring). Thus, I would treat the speed of flight as a single combat round with their full movement allowance. Again, as long as those stuck doors can be forced open... combat rate? IIRC Iron Falcon has a thing like that and Basic D&D does. There's no such thing in btb OD&D though. In OD&D there is Melee Range - basically 30 feet around the combatants in which they can move - no bean counting of rates. Movement rates only apply to movement, not combat.
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graelth
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 111
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Post by graelth on Nov 9, 2019 20:28:48 GMT -6
Okie doke, finally had the time for a closer read. Thanks for your thoughts on the OP! How do you know half the tribe is out of lair? % Lair tells you the chance that the encounter has occurred at the monsters Lair. It doesn't say anything about numbers. This is where I would go to Arneson's 10-60% stat. You could of course use whatever method you like, including the % Lair percentage but that would always give the same result - sometimes some very strange numbers. Ah I think I was reading % In Lair to be the percentage of the total group that is typically in the lair. So if there is a tribe of 240 Orcs, 120 of them will be wandering the wilderness nearby and 120 will be guarding the lair. I think your interpretation of % In Lair as the percentage chance to encounter the monsters in their lair is probably the more common interpretation. Not another evasion roll. At the time this was published both authors and readers would read "a die" to mean a d6. Anything else would have been specified. I think this is a clumsy way of referring back to the earlier castle inhabitant rule at the top of the page "will pursue on a roll of a 1-3 if they are hostile to the party, and only on a 1 if they are basically neutral You are probably right, although as others have mentioned, the evasion mechanics would also do the trick rather well. First, let's remember that the PC's are running, so that's 4 moves per turn or twice the move rate. Ah, I had forgotten the flight/pursuit movement rate mentioned on page 8 of UWA. It does strike me as oddly slow. For an unburdened human, it comes to less than a foot per second... quite a slow speed for a chase! Perhaps we should assume that it includes time spent opening stuck doors etc.? A much more simple approach than this, of course, would be to assume the pursuit odds of 50% are just an abstraction to represent the complex assortment of terrain and obstacles within a 5 mile wilderness hex. If you take this approach, then you could simply say that the dungeon map clearly articulates all of the routes and obstacles in the way of a pursuit, and simply rule that flight and pursuit is an extension of combat. Thus, if you retreat from a melee, the opponent might simply follow you and, if they can catch up to you on the map, they can continue making attacks against you as you flee (or try to knock you over or corner you). With this method, it is quite easy to say that a failed attempt to force a stuck door simply results in no further movement for that combat round. I'm not sure why you want to go to the evasion rules here when you can readily play out pursuit with the usual movement and melee rules. The monsters "can catch up to you on the map, they can continue making attacks". Comparing multiples of movement rates does require a little bit of math but I personally haven't found it really very hard or complicated. <shrug> Also, if you convert everything to a percentage chance, instead of using the movement rates it seems like this method would have movement and encumbrance playing much less of a role - when really the whole idea of encumbrance is how much it slows you down..... I think I misspoke... I believe I meant to say that the 50% was to determine if the faster pursuer caught the slower party. You could actually map out the movement and move each party a number of inches equal to their movement rate, of course. It depends how complex the dungeon map is, to be honest. I could imagine some of my past dungeons that would be quite burdensome to track this! But in any case, encumbrance still matters as it helps determine which side is faster. If the fleeing party is faster, they get away automatically (although they end up in some random room nearby, which can be a whole world of trouble). If they are slower, they might get caught in the next room by the pursuer and subjected to further attacks. I do really like the idea of player-characters fleeing in random directions. Routing from battle is a thing of sheer panic, like a character fleeing from a murderer in a horror movie. They barge through the nearest door they find, even if it means a dead end. It seems a very suitable punishment for fleeing battle and makes the dungeon that much more dangerous. By the bye, it's interesting to note that pursuit in a dungeon setting has a very similar mechanic to wilderness pursuit. In the latter, "a die is rolled to determine if pursuit is continued" (UWA 20). Likewise, in dungeon pursuits, you roll a six-sided die “when a corner is turned or a door passed through or stairs up or down taken" etc. to see if the monster will continue pursuit. This idea is interesting and potentially useful, but, I think, not quite as you have it here. Let's look at the process we have for dungeons: "Evasion" is being undetected by definition right? To encounter means at least one side has become aware of the other, by definition right? I mean you can't encounter something that you haven't er, encountered. So in a dungeon, when monsters and characters are in encounter range you roll for Surprise. That will tell you the distance at which "awareness", that is, an encounter has occurred. That will either be directly through a positive Surprise roll, or if there is no Surprise, through the subsequent encounter distance roll. The big issue regarding when to make these rolls is doors, and whether monsters behind doors (as inside a room) would hear or otherwise sense an encounter with PC's outside the door (as in coming down a corridor) but that's something entirely dependent on the situation - much the same as it depends on what the PC's are doing, light sources and so on. For example a room of gambling or sleeping orcs would be entirely different from a room holding an elemental or some such. In the case of a water elemental quietly abiding in a dungeon pool, let's say, I would roll for surprise as soon as characters are 80 feet away - regardless of any doors between them. Surprise, when positive, will tell you who is aware of who and who can evade, if anybody. When there is no Surprise, the Encounter Distance roll will tell you that somebody has become aware of somebody else. Usually it will be the monsters becoming aware of oncoming PC's first, because of all the usual give away's, but if there is some reason it might not be the monsters who notice the PC's first, then I think it has typically been up to the Ref to decide who saw who first - DM fiat in other words. So this is the case where I can see the usefulness of using the Evasion roll as you propose. Actually, I think it could be a great idea in that case, but you would have to make some judgement on the "numbers possible" problem, as you point out. Honestly not sure what's the best solution there. I don't see any other situation where you would want to the evasion table in the dungeon though. The more I think about evasion in the dungeon, the more it seems unlikely and unnecessary. In my original post, I have it that doors automatically block detection and encounters (which seems to be the only way that spells like ESP and abilities like listening at the door make any sense... they get around the fact that doors normally prevent detection through them). On the other hand, we also know that "any monster or man can see in total darkness as far as the dungeons are concerned except player characters" (MT 5) and "Monsters will automatically attack and/or pursue any characters they 'see,'" (UWA 12). So even in the "long corridor" scenario I describe, there should be little to no chance to evade. Seemingly, evasion in the dungeon is either automatic (with a successful listen at doors or ESP) or impossible (in any other scenario). Thus no evasion rules are actually required. combat rate? IIRC Iron Falcon has a thing like that and Basic D&D does. There's no such thing in btb OD&D though. In OD&D there is Melee Range - basically 30 feet around the combatants in which they can move - no bean counting of rates. Movement rates only apply to movement, not combat. I remember references to 3” being the range of melee, but no explicit discussion of movement is given. So if you were using figurines to resolve a battle, you would allow each to move up to 3” per combat round?
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Post by linebeck on Nov 10, 2019 21:27:22 GMT -6
Fiddling around with trying to find a formula that approximates the given evasion rates, consider: E = 50 + 0.75 * M - 20 * ln(P); where E is the evasion rate, M the number of monsters (expressed as percent of max number possible), and P the party size (in raw numbers). Specific results would be as follows: | | Mon % | | Party | 25 | 50 | 75 | 2 | 55 | 74 | 92 | 6 | 33 | 52 | 70 | 18 | 11 | 30 | 48 | 25 | 4 | 23 | 42 |
So, it's something; probably you wouldn't use it actively at the table. But maybe, hypothetically, in a computerized system to smoothly interpolate between different values of the inputs. The coefficients could be tweaked to taste. Wow. Have you ever played the board game Talisman. Certain characters in that game can evade on a 1-2 on d6. I feel that all of these calculations may boil down to something similar.
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Post by aldarron on Nov 11, 2019 8:31:00 GMT -6
First, let's remember that the PC's are running, so that's 4 moves per turn or twice the move rate. Ah, I had forgotten the flight/pursuit movement rate mentioned on page 8 of UWA. It does strike me as oddly slow. For an unburdened human, it comes to less than a foot per second... quite a slow speed for a chase! Perhaps we should assume that it includes time spent opening stuck doors etc.? So I'm firmly in the camp that argues a "normal" turn in the 3lbb's is meant to be understood as taking circa 1 minute (per CM) unless you are traveling in the wilderness (1 day) or exploring and mapping (the 10 minute exploration turn). So the example characters would run at 480 feet (12" x 4) per minute or 8 feet a second. <shrug> You could actually map out the movement and move each party a number of inches equal to their movement rate, of course. It depends how complex the dungeon map is, to be honest. I could imagine some of my past dungeons that would be quite burdensome to track this! But in any case, encumbrance still matters as it helps determine which side is faster. If the fleeing party is faster, they get away automatically (although they end up in some random room nearby, which can be a whole world of trouble). If they are slower, they might get caught in the next room by the pursuer and subjected to further attacks. In my games it is all theater of the mind. The players very likely tell me where they are going usually, retreating along a route they have mapped on graph paper. It's not hard to count squares and pick a point where they get caught if the monsters happen to be faster, though usually they are not. It doesn't have to be a precise calculation - if the monsters are 1/3rd faster, I'd likely let the characters go about 1/3rd of their total movement before the monsters catch up. I do really like the idea of player-characters fleeing in random directions. Routing from battle is a thing of sheer panic, like a character fleeing from a murderer in a horror movie. They barge through the nearest door they find, even if it means a dead end. It seems a very suitable punishment for fleeing battle and makes the dungeon that much more dangerous. Okay - fleeing from combat is a bit different from simply running from an encounter. Turning tail during a fight should have consequences and you can certainly make the random direction thing a house rule. The more I think about evasion in the dungeon, the more it seems unlikely and unnecessary. ...... Seemingly, evasion in the dungeon is either automatic (with a successful listen at doors or ESP) or impossible (in any other scenario). Thus no evasion rules are actually required. Yeah, it's going to be a pretty rare occurrence, if at all. combat rate? IIRC Iron Falcon has a thing like that and Basic D&D does. There's no such thing in btb OD&D though. In OD&D there is Melee Range - basically 30 feet around the combatants in which they can move - no bean counting of rates. Movement rates only apply to movement, not combat. I remember references to 3” being the range of melee, but no explicit discussion of movement is given. So if you were using figurines to resolve a battle, you would allow each to move up to 3” per combat round? Let me just point you to a post I made in a fairly detailed thread debating the subject HERE
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Post by derv on Nov 11, 2019 20:35:21 GMT -6
<chuckle> My opinion and methods have changed little.
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