If you’re walking in on the middle of the advanced fantasy dungeon series, there’s an index here.

The core text attempts to make combat chaotic, dynamic, vivid and simple. How do the existing systems facilitate this experience?

Saving Throws “save you from certain destruction, or at least lessen the damage of a successful attack”. This implies rolling to avoid attacks, not to hit, and it implies partial successes. This means we’re treating saving throws as ability checks, but you can’t be proficient in them, so we need to redefine advantage here.

Renaming them is unfortunately necessary, and calling them their definitions yields Will, Fortitude, Magic Attack, System Shock, Physical Attack, and Luck, but these names suck compared to the original. What about Domination, Poison, Wands, Transformation, Steel and Ill-Fortune and we rely on a definitions to broaden them, plus they’re closer to the originals.

If you are attacked, make a saving throw by rolling 1d20. If your position is controlled, roll with advantage, and if it is desperate, roll with disadvantage. On a full success, take no damage and no effect. On a partial success, take half damage and temporary or partial effect. On a failure, take full damage and effect.

The save you roll depends on the type of attack: Domination for psychic, enchantment, or death magic, Poison for physical fortitude, Wands for magical attacks, Transformation for anything that changes the nature of your flesh, Steel for physical attacks and Ill-Fortune for all else.

Magic Resistance is next, and in the original you roll a percentile dice, and a certain percentage of the time you aren’t effected by magic. This doesn’t need a separate mechanic to saving throws in my opinion, magic resistance should simply be a feature where you gain advantage on saving throws against all magic, and you can never voluntarily choose to fail a saving throw against magic.

If you have magic resistance, you gain advantage on all saving throws with magical sources, you cannot voluntarily fail a saving throw against magic, and you must fail a saving throw for any magic to have effect on you, even friendly magic. Magic resistance is always against a certain type, for example divine, wizardry, or demonic.

Now onto armour. Armour doesn’t absorb damage, it prevents it. Different armour types are strong or weak against different damage types (slashing, piercing, bludgeoning). This is easy, and there are trade-offs with magical gear and looking pretty which is neat, but the rule needs an example piece of armour.

At any point, a PC can use armour they are wearing to prevent damage against certain types of damage. For example:

Breastplate, heavy, 10d6 HP vs. slashing damage.

Rubber shirt, 5d6 HP vs. lightning damage.

Scale shirt, heavy, 7d6 HP vs. piercing damage.

Steel helm, 2d6 damage vs. piercing or slashing damage.

When armour is first used, roll its total HP. When it has no further HP it is destroyed. While it still has HP, it can be repaired by someone with the right proficiency and tools.

Now, in this flow, hit points is next, but this is already lengthy, so we’ll move to another post for that I think.

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on defending yourself, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

19th April 2022