A situation like the one in today’s comic is solved by a simply rolling damage and subtracting the object’s damage resistance or hardness or whatever from it. When you overcome the rating, you break the object. Simple, right? Sure, there’s no way to botch that, because a low damage would just mean that you didn’t break it and that’s it – but in our game we like to add a little twist to it. You see, sometimes in life we just suck. Like when you miss the trash can and you’re not more than a foot away from it. So what we do is that before you do the strength check or damage roll or whatever, you have to do an attack roll and just not miss. The target number would normally be very low, because we’re talking about big objects that are just standing there – and sometimes, when the object’s something so big that there’s no way you could possibly miss, then all you need to do is not roll 1.
But you can still roll 1 and mess up. Why? Well like I said, because sometimes we just suck. I know I’ve missed that trash can I was standing right next to plenty of times. Sometimes destiny just doesn’t want you to be happy. If you do just happen to botch the roll, it doesn’t mean that your character can get killed or anything like that. It just means that something funny happens and the situations that come from those botches frequently make for some of the best role playing I’ve ever seen take place at my table.
Besides, the Game Master also needs to have his fun, right?
Good hunting;
O
NOTE: The comic looks at bit different today because it’s done with water colors. As so many times before, it’s not something permanent, just a little bit of experimentation that I like to play around with every now and then. Opinions?
I love it. I do the same thing in my Pathfinder game and sometimes your players just suck. Once had a player light himself on fire with alchemist’s fire thanks to a botch even though the creature he wanted to douse was standing right beside him. Hilarious.
I’m mostly chipping in because I love the watercolor effects, then again I’m a sucker for watercolors, which is probably why I love Valkyria Chronicles so much. More water colors for the fantasy pieces!
Game Master needs to have his fun, I agree. Completely.
I do the same kind of things all the time to my players. I can’t say if they love it, I do. I like to have more of an realistic characters that aren’t superheroes. That said. The first game I ever had, we had an Game Master that thought of this in same way that I did. My 50 year-old thief fumbled all the time in that game. No fighting for him. He was awesome, though.
I like the watercolored look. I think it fits perfectly especially to these RP storylines. That said, keep up the good work.
ugh.. REALLY bad colouring-_- plz dont go with this, seems really..third rate in a way..
You are so incredible with water colours.
I always envy you people who know how to do it right. I mean, I can draw pretty decent. But I can’t colour for shit.
Also, if I might add, I’m happy that you’re into a period of “Adventures of Elf, Dwarf and weretiger” again. I love that D&D stuff. Kudos, friend.
I love the coloring, I have not figured out how to work with water colors…
That said, I love the D&D storyline(s). I’m starting up a D&D group with some friends, and hope we have some epic Fails like this one.
Chipping in to say, LOVE the watercolors. Experiment successful! IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIIIIVE!!
5% of the time? That is an awful lot of fail for easy stuff.
I’m an uprising DM and sometimes i do that but its more likely i’ll make a stupid\impossible situation. On the new players first night out he had a good feeling but two minutes later he nearly died from a scorpion bite on his back side, and it didn’t help that the mage didn’t know that magic missile could miss now.(missile in arse ha)