Visions of Aestia

(I originally posted this over at the True20 forums)

Combat in True20 is a whole new experience. The True20 and Blue Rose appendices do an excellent job of helping make the transition mechanically - the conversion process is relatively straightfoward and painless. This article is going to talk about integrating the new system into an ongoing campaign.

The biggest obstacle to adopting the new, streamlined system is player resistance. Combat in True20 is considerably more dangerous than in d20. Teams that are used to kicking in the door and going toe-to-toe are going to be in trouble; they’ll have to learn tactics and how to avoid combat through stealth or negotiation. Some people are not going to be happy.

Start by simply recalculating everybody’s basic combat stats (attack, defense, damage, and toughness). I find it makes things clearer to write the damage DC (15 +damage) next to a weapon’s final damage; it helps people gauge the relationship to toughness a bit better.

Introduce the damage track. You’ll need to run a sample combat at this juncture, so that everyone can get their heads around the basic flow of combat. Gloss over multiple attacks and AoO; you’re going to need to eliminate those, but just handwave it at this point; if you mention it too early it will colour people’s reactions negatively (unless you’ve already houseruled them away/know your group hates them).

The very next thing you do is introduce the minions rule. Take special care to emphasise this, as it causes a big adjustment in player perception. See, you’ve just demonstrated that True20 combat flows differently and is more lethal. By introducing the minions rule, you’re tamping down the overall danger level - they won’t consider “standard” encounters as overly threatening, and will instead be able to concentrate on those really critical battles.

Now, you need to eliminate attacks of opportunity and multiple attacks per round. High-level fighters may object to this, even if they don’t use the full attack action all the time. I usually point out that their (more numerous) enemies no longer enjoy these advantages, and that they no longer provoke attacks of opportunity themselves, allowing them to move about more freely and take other actions (like drinking potions) that they might otherwise be too paranoid to take. And your spellcasters will be happy.

Spend some time going over the Conviction benefits. I ended up with a half-page summary of all the things they could do with Conviction in combat; this addressed a lot of perceived issues with the new system.

Here’s how I summarized the major changes for my group.

* (new combat stats)
* You get one attack per round. If you have 2-weapon fighting, you get two attacks.
* You can spend a point of Conviction to take an extra standard action (which includes an attack!) anytime during a round.
* You can take 10 on your attack rolls except when fighting unique individuals.
* Only unique individuals can score criticals or called shots.
* If a minion fails a toughness save, they’re dead; you can choose to inflict a lesser penalty.
* You can spend a Conviction point to counter a bad Toughness save.
* (other Conviction uses)

With all that out of the way, here’s some advice on other conversion issues.

Weapons that do negligible amounts of damage (1d3 or less) can be converted to +0 or even negative values. Nonsense values such as 1d1-1 can become -3 or something similar, making the Toughness DC 12 (only a threat to unarmoured characters with low constitutions). This makes much more sense, even if it looks a little odd.

Feats that are activated by taking a “full-round attack action” can usually apply their effects to a standard attack. If really wanted, you can continue to use them as written, only now the character is giving up a move action rather than additional attacks.

In many cases, you can simply eliminate feats that adjust hit points (alternately, allow a bonus to Toughness). Feats that affect AC should add to either defense (preferred) or toughness. In many cases, you can simply eliminate the feat in question and substitute a more generic True20 equivalent. Feats that allow additional attacks should either be tossed or require the use of Conviction.