Im currently designing an aggressive Dark Souls-esque campaign which will involve tons of fighting and big boss battles...

Im currently designing an aggressive Dark Souls-esque campaign which will involve tons of fighting and big boss battles. What is a good system for this? I want something that is fast and engaging.

If it helps, I enjoy DnD 5e and Dark Heresy.

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4e D&D

Shit literally has limited healing like DS 1 and 3.

Not sure, but have some boss ideas.

desuarchive.org/tg/thread/48386461/

Runequest might be good for this if you want tactics and smart planning to be necessary for winning, but less so if you want PCs to be able to go up against big monsters straight up.

>Runequest might be good for this if you want tactics and smart planning to be necessary for winning

I might be up for this, essentially I want this game to be me vs the players. At the same time I want the system to be fun and engaging.

Like for example, one thing that I like about Dark Heresy are reactions for each attack (such asdodge rolls). Reactions keeps players active. But Dark Heresy has a bunch of stuff that I dont like, and if I used that system I would have to change a ton of things.

interesting, I will look into it.

This. It also provides a lot of combat tactics and you can structure multi-phase bosses with all kinds of tricks and shit.

but does it differentiate weapons, spells/pyromancies, and enchanted equipment?

does it have the potential to be pretty lethal?

I happen to have a souls-esq setting right here I was working on, thoughts?

Yeah, there are a bunch of different weapons and I remember them having some pretty neat different things going on.

Yes spells.

Yes Enchanted equipment.

And yes potentially lethal with a few tweaks or just a bunch of mean encounters.

this is pretty cool. Strangely enough I was also planning an insight system, where the world changes as players progress the story. I guess because, obviously, this campaign is based off of soulsborne games.

I made it several months ago when bloodborne came out.

I also compiled this, along with a bunch of the odds and ends. but that was for a sci-fi soulsbourne setting.

>easy babby mode D&D
>WoW-style gameplay
>Soulsian
GG NO RE

>jumbled mess of complaints
>probably has never even played 4e
>if he has was one time with a shit DM
>feels its enough to make an informed conclusion

/v/ plz leave

A friend once remarked that 4e felt too much like a video game.

I dont know if that's true, ive never played 4e, but that is kind of the idea I am going towards with this campaign. I will look into it.

One idea you could try is from co-op boardgames like Kingdom Death - a Monster Action Deck that randomizes the list of actions a monster will take on it's turn. Kingdom Death uses this deck as monster hit points as well, so a monster gets more predictable the more hurt it is.
This will give enemies certain "patterns" that can be learned over several turns.

You can mess with this too if you don't use the deck for health. You could start with fewer actions in the deck then add more cards in as the monster is wounded, so it gets more unpredictable. This is something that could fit into any game, but obviously will work better on games with several tactical options.

One important warning - the more complex the system gets, the slower resolution gets.

It takes much, much longer to resolve a turn in 4e than it is in an older edition of D&D (like B/X, where all you really do is roll an attack). Depending on the group, this can easily be a tension killer and make battles feel like a grind.

I've been asking in the odd Kingdom Death thread for lists of cards in these decks, and a scanned copy of more exactly how these rules work...

I wanted it for research for
because it STILL doesn't have a system

Have you tried google? There's plenty of card images that willl give you a fair idea.

K:D's monster cards are very wedded to it's system and setting. The whole point is just to take the general idea of making monsters semi-predictable by random choice out of a finite list of elements. You could roll dice on a table instead.

It's a mechanic that can easily be adapted to an existing ruleset - all you need is to define a set of actions and responses according to the rules of whatever RPG system you are using.

WFRP 2e.

Because it tied healing resources to be per character per day, rather than per healer per day?

A having clearly defined roles makes it WoW?

Sure, it's not Soulsian in that a given D&D encounter in 4e is a pain in the ass to rescale to work for just one PC, but I think that's something that the OP is willing to give up on.

People say that, and I'm not sure what they are trying to say, besides trying to slur a tabletop game by comparing it to the boogieman.

so bicycle 52 deck, face-cards are special actions
spades are attack actions
hearts are self-heal, or withdrawing actions
diamonds are movement actions
and clubs may represent...I have no fucking idea...

jokers are the ultra-moves or "not even my final form" moments?

I WANT THIS TO BE A THING
IS THERE A SYSTEM THAT USES IT ALREADY?

and now I'm reminded of Wild-Cards

Clubs could be say... defensive. Or even parries. The enemy jumps into the air, or bundles up defensively. or does something to heighten its "Poise" perhaps. And hey maybe you could have it set up that the numbers could determine effectiveness. 2s Not very effective 5's middlingly so and 10's super effective

well , there is a dark souls system out

Yomi kind of.

Same with Universal Fighting System or whatever the fuck the card game is called

Still waiting for the right balance in healing/mana system in souls games.

>DeS
GRASSLOL, Regen Ring, Regen Shield. Mana system with SPICELOL.
>DaS
Here's your flask, good luck without faith. Spells have limited charges.
>DaS II
Slow flask, even slower Gems which are pretty much free. Spells have limited charges which can be refreshed with consumables.
>DaS III
Flask for hp and mana, Regen ring, regen shield, regen weapon upgrade routes.

None of these is perfect in my opinion. I don't know about Bloodborne.

Where to find it?

D&D 5e with homebrew content might be the way to go. There's a good amount of it.

How similar is this to Dark Heresy?

I think Savage Worlds does something like this

Bloodborne healing is basically demon's souls. However, in addition to that you heal from attacking enemies and having their blood sprayed on you. So the game rewards you for being fast aggressive. It's fantastic, I love it. Also, it makes you realize why ultrafast enemies dont work in DaS III (which is kind of why that game is shit).

Cool stuff, I will look into it.

I do enjoy D&D 5e. I think what I may end up doing is using D&D 5e but import the reaction system from Dark Heresy. Dark Heresy has a fun combat system, but imo it's shit for everything else for various reasons, mainly because people's skills start out so damn low. I havent decided, im still reading other recommendations in this thread.

>I think Savage Worlds does something like this
is there a copy of the savage worlds rules someplace that isn't just a quickstart rule-set?

...

What do you like about Dark Heresy's combat system?

Also, bloodborne is more Dark Souls then DeS, as the cap on vials you can carry is meaningful.

You just get alot more healing item recharges between rests at the fire/dream.

If I were to retool Bloodborne, I'd have you just always start with 20 vails once you get to the hunters dream.

...

>What do you like about Dark Heresy's combat system?

The reaction system. Once per combat round, you get a chance to react to something. So you can dodge or parry or move. It keeps the fights really engaging instead of "player damages enemy. enemy damages player."

Also, when it comes to combat I do prefer the d-percentile rolls from DH over the "i hope you roll over the number in my head" system from D&D. It feels less random and more confident than hoping you roll over the imaginary number.

However, when it comes to other things such as persuasion etc I prefer rolling for the number in the DM's head over the d-percentile stuff. Dark Heresy is a mixed bag for me but I enjoy many things from it.

GURPS.

Matches the deadliness.

Here's this.
It's for 5e.

... Eh, I don't really like having my dodge defenses depend on a once per round action to dodge.

Dark Heresy also has full auto be way too good, assuming your ase using first version.

One thing I dislike about Dark Heresy is that GM forget to give you bonuses or penalties based on the task at hand.

Wow! This book is so cool.

>One thing I dislike about Dark Heresy is that GM forget to give you bonuses or penalties based on the task at hand.

Without the bonuses you literally cant accomplish anything because your stats start out so damn low.

Are you being facetious or trying to make me look like a samefag?

Exactly.

Why do you think I was complaining about it?

Also, once when playing a Black Crusade one shot, we completely forgot to do toughness bonus as soak.

... Made it FUN to be a melee character, I tell you, when charging turrets of (can shoot you full of bullets)

you guys do know that this is partially the players responsibilities, right?...

I've been working on one and I'm currently using 5e mixed with homebrew. It's not a great system for ds but my players don't want to learn a new system. Anyway I'm doing a mechanic where everyone starts as a non caster class (I'm allowing semi casters like paladins and rangers) and on top of leveling the players can use souls to buy feats and class features of other classes, for example buying spell slots, or a cleric domain without taking a level in that class. I'm trying to in this way go for the very flexible and versatile build feel of darksouls. I haven't finished it yet but well we will see.

GURPs lite will be good for this.

...

Not super familiar with gurps, would lite actually be better than standard gurps?

i dont really know

try googling for the PDFs or something. you have internet , dont you?

I wrote this way back before DSII came out. I wanted to write a "default" setting for it but I never got around to it

A DS p&p adaption doesn't work well, because grinding through the same enemies over and over after you die isn't fun outside of a reactive videogame.

The concept also doesn't mesh well with groups instead of a single character.

When will people understand that making a dark souls setting isn't about designing combat encounters that feel like ds? It's about creating a lonely opressive setting shrouded in mystery which makes the player feel like a tiny insignificant speck traversing a world which, even if they succeed, will inevitably swallow them whole.

that was what I was going for in this setting document setting up a mostly lonely region of bleak and lonely land warped by powers beyond the merely human. with only occasional interactions with people

Sure, blame the neophytes.

As an experience player, when I ask for modifiers and my DM says 0, should I attempt to metagame and challenge to get a reasonable modifier?

These are the fault of the system.

>Recommends GURPS.
>Doesn't recommend a package for it with reasons

This is why I think GURPS is a meme game based on 3d6s and the theoretical "it can model everything"

To that point, there's no reason to use the immortality of the games in your RPG.

It's not like the games themselves do. Only the PC gets multiple deaths, while NPCs just get killed once before the game to be undead and go hallow without getting killed and never coming back in a timely manner

Im the op. Also, this is Veeky Forums, not /v/. I thought people enjoyed compliments and criticisms here.

>Also, once when playing a Black Crusade one shot, we completely forgot to do toughness bonus as soak.

>... Made it FUN to be a melee character, I tell you, when charging turrets of (can shoot you full of bullets)

Pretty much nail on the head as to why I dont want to use DH. Or if I do I will have to change almost everything.

>I'm trying to in this way go for the very flexible and versatile build feel of darksouls. I haven't finished it yet but well we will see

That's actually another thing that I want to implement with this campaign: custom classes. No preset classes, just pick your favored stats. I didnt see anything about custom classes in the D&D 5e rule book so that is another thing I would have to work on if I were to use 5e.

>That's actually another thing that I want to implement with this campaign
let them do point build like shadowrun then...

...

That's definitely true, but for me I feel like the immortality adds to the sense of age in the setting, people have been around for centuries unabke to die and slowly losing their minds. It's not necessary but it does add nice flavor. In my setting there is what accounts to "perma death" when your character goes fully hollow.

You may want to even look a little into tne mechanics of the DS board game that is being developed. Obviously it won't translate over perfectly, but maybe you can borrow some ideas from it? LikeI think they have an aspect where bosses create weak spots yiu can exploit with good positioning. Might be worth while looking in to.

...

Hey there. I ran a dnd 5e campaign that revolved a lot around Boss fights. What I did is implement some house rules that were spelled out really clearly at the start of the campaign.

1. Monsters / NPCs tagged as Bosses have more than 1 Health pool. They either have a Sequential HP pool meaning you must fully reduce one to 0 before damaging the next pool (with no spillover damage), or Locational HP.

2. More health pools = more turns in the Initiative order. For example, if a Boss has 3 HP pools, he has 3 turns a round, but can never perform the same action twice. Once he loses an HP pool, he's down to 2 turns etc.

3. As a full turn's action, a Boss can clear any status effect and immediately and permanently becomes immune to that effect so you can't just port him to another dimension or polymorph him or whatever.

4. Bosses with a Sequential HP pool will have phases, where they use different abilities dependent on which HP pool they are currently on. Locational HP bosses will typically lose abilities as they lose limbs.

These were basically the standard rules laid out, but the bosses all took a decent amount of design work behind them.

(1/2)

For the bosses themselves, I'd give each a smattering of abilities, typically enough that they'd use all of them or most of them per phase. MOST abilities would not be classified as spells unless the boss was explicitly a caster, in which case I'd attach a level to the spell for the purpose of mage counter spell and such.

I'd almost never just include a default weapon attack. Most bosses would have maybe one actual attack roll attack, and every other attack would provoke Dex or Con saves etc. to put things into the player's hands so it feels like they are evading rather than the boss missing.

Usually, per phase, I'd like to design bosses to have 1 standard vanilla attack, 2ish evasion attacks, that might also be AoE slashes or whatevers, and one special funky move. As the boss fight advances through the phases, the attacks become more powerful because the boss has less turns in a round to compensate.

I chose to do multiple turns rather than legendary actions because it really lets your players strategize and think about their actions, but be sure to put them on a turn clock of like, a minute to declare their turn, max, or you could get bogged down.

The other BIG thing, IMO, is arena design. The set piece is as much a part of the boss as the monster itself, and the way it interacts with the arena, and the way the characters interact with the arena, are huge and IMO its that kind of interactivity that makes a battle legendary.

The most popular boss fight with my players was one where they were on pre-cannon era galleys fighting on stormy seas ramming other ships to try to board the Boss' warship, and then fight them on the rain slick deck.

(2/2)

Oh, you can use DaS's nobody dies of ol' age and everyone is seeking a meaningful death that doesn't come.

You just don't need to have in-game death be a slap on the wrist.

Remind me, how do legendary actions work again?

its an action that a monster can take at any point. Like he can just interject it whenver the DM wants. I like that, but I didn't want the bosses to be unpredictable. I wanted the fights to reveal patterns and stuff so the players could learn how best to beat the boss aside from just "hit him."

Oh yeah, another thing I did was make sure all the Bosses had at least one Vulnerable and one Resistant damage type.

Ah, 4e did have a lot more out of turn actions than 5e, but generally they had a particularly trigger to them, so players could get around it. (for example, bloodying a dragon might trigger a reactive fire breath.

... If there was one thing I would change about 4e monster design, it would be to have it be more clear what timer attacks were on.

In a game I was in, there was one time where the Tiefling retribution for damage attack happened, and we assumed that it was an at-will and started attacking other Tieflings instead.

That encounter was pretty painful, and without looking at stat blocks, there wasn't a clear way to figure out what mistake we had made.

That said, I love 4e for having half health be an explicit thing you should tell your players, even when concealing everything else about a monster stat block.

bump

What are you going to do if Dark Souls isn't still popular when you finish working on it?

that doesn't make sense...dark souls will always be popular...

Is there anything good you can cannibalise from the Dark Souls boardgame maybe? I heard it was alright, but ultimately random.

The Souls games have been doing well for 7 years. I think s/he'll be fine.

...

new game+/10
would play

really?

cause I think it's still incomplete.

for sure, there's a lot of mapping to do and lore to be fleshed out, but it's already the basis for a good game in my book

yeah, I stalled really hard on it and never picked it back up.

lore suggestions?
mapping software that doesn't suck?
maps for towers and towns?

Very nice! I like all of this. I do enjoy dnd 5e so I may read into the rules more and see if I can start designing some bosses around them. Thanks for sharing your experience!

The campaign/universe etc is influenced by dark souls, but it isnt based off of dark souls. The players wont even have to have played DS to enjoy it.

So basically what I am planning is that at the start of the campaign the world will be cheery and normal, like average fantasy settings. Then as the game progresses the world becomes more cold. Once the campaign reaches it's mid point, the world has totally changed into this cold ruthless wasteland, with marauders and bandits raising hell and demons coming out of nowhere. There will be a build up until the universe goes totally dark souls.

Also, thanks to all who suggested the DS board game and the DS 5e edits, I will look into those as well.

I think I am settled on DnD 5e, or a system very similar to it (savage worlds possibly?) with the occasional house rules.

>it makes you realize why ultrafast enemies dont work in DaS III (which is kind of why that game is shit).

I really can't blame From for making them like that. Most people that buy the game have such a grip on DaS 1's style that they have to give enemies stupid bullshit just to challenge the hardcore base. The problem with 3 imo is that it's hillariously imbalanced. You don't have much reason to use anything other than longswords since they're stupid OP in both PVP and PVE, plus they nerfed magic to hell (just as easy to dodge with far less oomph) so the only viable builds are almost pure melee. I was hoping for s rebalance but they haven't done it so far. I like their take on magic this way through, though, even if etusus is super limited compared to one.

>There will be a build up until the universe goes totally dark souls.
>goes totally dark souls.

can this be a narrative device please?
I like it better than GrimDark

Malifaux uses a deck of cards for combat I think. I don't know how originally/elaborately

Pretty elaborately actually. The only thing I don't like is the large variance between card values (1-13) compared to stats (~3-7).

Start a thread on Veeky Forums or something with a character sheet and an alotment of points or whatever. Every once in a while pull a character sheet from the thread as a PvP invasion whenever you think it isn't being difficult enough.

That is an amazing idea.

That, or use skype and roll20 to actually allow anons to invade

What will cause the world to gradually turn into a shithole? I'm intrigued

OP, listen to this man, WFRP 2nd ed Is very similar to the mechanics of Dark Heresy, and will be a brutal ride for your player characters where they have to plan and fight tactically to overcome groups of similar size, and where a serious boss battle will be a well planned out Pyrrhic victory, or a total failure.

I would also advise having a less severe punishment than death for death, DS mechanics work for DS because of a different medium, but something like losing exp and returning at the last sacred rest site, might be better than making a new character each session.

Used in that context, both terms are synonymous with Crapsack World, which is the established trope name for settings where anything that could have went wrong, already did.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld

yeah, but I still want the verb that leads on a long drawn out path to a crapsack to be "Dark Souls"

because I like it better than Entropic Decay

It takes place in an eastern-styled universe. The team will be told by the emperor to kill off a bunch of demons. But the truth is that the "demons" are actually gods. so once the team kills all the gods the world goes to hell. Havent decided what happens after that!

Ok, I will read into WFRP 2e.

>I would also advise having a less severe punishment than death for death, DS mechanics work for DS because of a different medium, but something like losing exp and returning at the last sacred rest site, might be better than making a new character each session.

I want the game to be balanced yet challenging. The players need to always be on their toes, but im not going to throw anything at them that can turn one kill them (at the beginning at least). I want there to be room for character development and story, its just that instead of having characters put an emphasis on persuasion etc, they either need to put major exp in a weapon skill or they will die.

Holy shit.

the Dark Souls boardgame does. Sort of. A deck of cards simulates AI-driven bosses.

THIS
SO MUCH THIS

then what i need is a scan or PDF of either that AI deck or the Kingdom Death decks.

and then to steal ideas and convert them into a system that doesn't suck...

...

If you start with regular gurps combat will probably be slowed down by you trying to sort through optional rules, start with lite and when you get it down graduate to full.

Also i wrote up some basic rules for souls GURPS a while ago.

If you're remembering 4e magic item system being good at all you're remembering wrong. The way they set up scaling combined with the limited daily uses total for items meant all you were after was the incremental increases to keep up with enemy progress and if an item had a daily ability it was almost certainly a waste of a slot.

... They ditched the daily item limit, and there is a lot of power in items that just make your attacks better.

Eh, DaS basically has magic items just give you flat bonuses to actions, and not really modify your gameplay directly. So 4e works very similar to it

Hell, even the weapon advancement system looks familiar.

>4e is WoW
>3e with its mountains of races, classes, skills, spells, abilities, enchantments, equipment, broken crafting, books, vehicles, materials, forms of spellcasting, things to track, unbalanced monsters, and feats isn't a fucking MMO-wannabe

3e is WoW, 4e is Super Robot Wars.