I’d like to give my party the ability to control an unstable godling in combat. Do you have any suggestions on how to make this fun?
I have four party members. I’m thinking that on the godlings turn, each party member will be able to declare a target enemy and an ability to activate. If more than half of the party members declare the same target, then the target is selected, ditto for the attack. If they fail to meet that bar, something random will happen to a random target (including the party).
They’ll probably be fighting 7ish clerics and cultists, and the godling will probably have two-ish attacks.
Edit: Any suggestions on how to make the control more fun for the players? I want a strong element of chaos, but more than half of the attacks should be controlled by the party.
Here’s the context: My party has gotten involved with an almost-extinct god that has been revived. It’s an unstable bundle of power that throws off random miracles. It has manifested a set of curse/boons for each party member. The godling had a portfolio of growth, but it’ll probably get rebirth/reincarnation.
Use a die to determine whose action the godling listens to. 1-4 could each be a player, the remaining numbers are a random action. Pick whichever die gives the right balance you want. A d6 sounds right to me so there’s a 1/3 chance of random shenanigans
This is a lovely bit of business.
I would add that perhaps OP should have the players jot down their plans in secret, call it listening to their heart or some such, because it will minimise metagaming.
Alternatively, think of it a bit like Q’s Son in voyager. Basically a god but also a pugnacious wee shite who you have to sorta trick into doing the right thing.
That’s a lot less complicated than the other proposals.
So like when you have a Pokémon with a level higher than you have badges for?
It’s a godasaur.
Make them submit their choice to you in private, don’t let them communicate with each other.
Otherwise you’re breaking immersion, almost like its asking their characters or something, which would be silly. Almost impossible to avoid meta gaming, you’d just change your pick to the majority pick, even for a disciplined and experienced player trying to role play well.
Instead, pretend its pulling the information from their subconscious or something. So you can’t ask the players publicly, they can’t know what the other players said. Or just roll for it.
Definitely! We play through Roll20, so I’ll get them to whisper the attack to me. Or tell everyone to hit “enter” in the chat message at once, so they can see each others’ results and second guess themselves at the next round.
In the end, using your idea will only work if you really know your players. With an arbitrary random group, I figure the result would be either 100% success rate (they all agree with each other and coordinate perfectly) or a close to 0% success rate (they rarely cooperate). Neither situation is what you want.
Luckily, when you want a certain percentage of success, that’s exactly what dice are for! Now, my group tends to be one of those “cooperators” so I’d tend to want to balance it assuming the party will always agree on what they want the godling to do. Then, maybe use a combination of religion, arcana, and diplomacy checks across the party to determine whether their characters are able to successfully pull off coordinating themselves to control the nigh-uncontrollable thing. I’d still use the “they have to agree on the action it will take” thing but then use the dice to add uncertainty.
If, on the other hand, you expect a lot less agreement amongst your players, you can still use dice, but this time, make the skill check determine whose commands get followed, with close results or consistently low results across the whole party leading to no one’s commands being obeyed and it doing something random and chaotic instead.
In the case of a cooperative party, we’re using dice to lower the success rate. In the bickering party, we’re using dice to increase the success rate. But in both cases, we have in mind a certain target success rate, and it is dice that will get us there.
Dice are a really good choice for simplifying the interaction.
I’m going back and forth on requiring something more than dice. On one hand, I want a fun encounter with a novel mechanic that makes them think a bit differently, but on the other, I worry that it’ll be too gameable or complex.
If you want to make them think a little differently, try a blackjack-esq dc. Set a RANGE they have to hit with their collective skill checks (that add together). If they roll below the range, or above it, either way the control doesn’t quite work— maybe a different consequence for too low or too high. Let them also choose whether to increase the sum or decrease it with their skill check, in the case of overshooting.
And make a variety of skills they can use to control the godling, so that they can strategically try to use the most appropriate bonus to get them where they need. Maybe using certain skills requires doing something on the battlefield too, like standing in a certain spot relative to the godling or some such. Or perhaps doing that sort of tactical movement can let you manipulate the roll or take 10.
That’ll get them thinking different! But if you make it fiddly like this you’ll need to make the payoff for successful control powerful enough to make it worth it.
DnD doesn’t really have rules where you can’t coordinate with your other players, and requires a hive mind consensus. My worry is that it will be too far afield from what the players are used to.
If you wanted to keep it more similar to 5e rules, you could give the players a free action to order the godling to do something, but require a DC roll to make the check (whatever makes sense, Arcana, persuasion, wisdom, religion). If the DC is failed, or multiple characters do the order action, then some random combination of target/ability is executed. If no order is given, do some random stuff.
Could even keep track of the “rolls” players make and use the total of all of them as the basis for what category of random thing happens.
This way they’re “taking part” without it being directly coordinated.
I like the idea of the DC. It feels more likely to produce a desired outcome than relying on consensus. At the same time, I want a bit of chaos, so maybe something like:
- The godling has two attacks.
- On the godling’s turn, each party member can command it. Requires a DC 15 religion check.
- Assign the attacks in the order of successes.
- I want some chaos, so any tie (with differing targets) results in a random attack.
- Any unassigned attack is random.
That sounds awesome. What do you want suggestions for?
Controlling the godling. Combat will probably only last for three or four rounds, so there’s a pretty low chance the party will be able to coordinate an attack.
Unless it’s a godling of Order I think semi-controlled chaos is exactly what I’d expect, and unless you’re planning around the fact that they will be able to coordinate, it honestly sounds like fun.
But also won’t they be able to talk?
They’re pretty good about avoiding table talk when I ask them to. We play through Roll20, so I’ll ask them to type their attacks into the chat and all hit Enter at once.
I honestly love your suggestion. I feel like the chaos is exactly what trying to control a godling should be.
I want to know how it goes though. Sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun
I’ll try to post an analysis after running it.
Hmm, I don’t mind your idea at all but it is hard to implement so I see your trouble. Some folks have given good options but I’ll offer a different way to do it. I’d have one attack per player since it is a god, let him wreck house. Maybe increase the number of enemies to accommodate the attacks. Since this is a god regaining their power and their trying to control it I’d have two DCs for their check each round. First DC is if they listen and should be passed most of the time maybe 10 or 15. If they don’t then it might be bad for the party but otherwise they attack the target as intended. The second DC should be failed most of the time, maybe 20 or 25. If they fail this DC the the god still acts as ordered but releases a chaos burst as it does. I personally always use the d10000 list of chaos burst, its fun.
it is hard to implement so I see your trouble
Yeah. I have that problem a lot. Combat in D&D turns into a grind, so I’ve been trying stuff to spice it up. The whole godling subplot came from wanting to give each PC a boon/curse pairing that would give them more options in combat. It’s mostly different ways to grant advantage or disadvantage, so it worked within the existing rules.
I’d have one attack per player since it is a god, let him wreck house. Maybe increase the number of enemies to accommodate the attacks.
That makes a lot of sense.
The chaos burst is a good idea. It’s a well understood way to add some randomness.
