D&D Geekitude: Extreme Vengeance

[kent_allard_jr]

It became a cliché in 80s action movies: The bad guys came and murdered your wife, kidnapped your kids, shot your dog, killed your partner the day before his retirement ... NOW THEY'RE GOING TO PAY! Despite its overuse, the trope had a nice cathartic logic to it. It made the hero sympathetic (despite the vast numbers of people he kills) and the resolution emotionally satisfying. It was also often used to explain the hero's success. The hero's righteous fury gives him the strength to endure hardship, and his blows against the villain are powered by his insatiable rage.

I always wanted to simulate this dynamic in an RPG (without switching completely to narrativist mechanics, which I view with suspicion). Hero is Wronged, Hero is Enraged, Hero Goes Medieval on Villain's Ass. Yet most RPGs are realistic in this regard: It doesn't matter how much you hate the guy you're fighting, you have the same chance to hit and you do the same damage.

You could say some D&D classes -- the raging barbarian and the cursing warlock -- are powered by their righteous fury, but unfortunately these powers used routinely against anyone that stands between them and the treasure. What I'd like to see if some game benefit you get only when you've been grievously wronged, and one that can be given to any class.

So what benefits would make sense, in D&D terms? Free criticals? Free healing surges? Extra action points? Or simple bonuses to attack rolls? I'd be interested in what people could come up with.

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, action points (or hero points) seem to be the consensus choice. Now in D&D4 action points just get you an extra action; this action can be healing, rerolling an attack, or whatever, but that depends a lot on class, race, paragon path and so forth. So it simulates some effects of Righteous Burning Fury, but not all of them; in particular, it doesn't change the war-of-attrition dynamic that you rightly emphasize.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, the James Bond game was a pioneer in the type of "hero points" I'm thinking of. They could be used to dramatically (in both senses) alter the players' fortunes--turn a crucial miss into a hit, a hit into a critical, that type of thing--and you got a certain number of them per "episode".

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Following up... I think that the first-generation HeroQuest rules used "dueling masteries" to automatically move any roll up a level--if you were one Master level higher than your opponent, then a fumble becomes a mere failure, a failure becomes a success, a success becomes a major success, a major success becomes a critical success. Combining the two ideas is a pretty obvious "here's the big finish!" mechanic--if you can save up your hero points through the adventure, you can spend them all at the end for a critical success even against the Swack-Iron Dragon-Golem.

Alternately, for dramatic structure, the player and the game master could agree to game events & situations which automatically generate hero points which could not be saved. If the protagonist is really beaten down, then getting three hero points from coming face-to-face with the man who killed her husband won't be enough--but then when she's confident and healed, those three points will allow her to roundhouse-kick him so hard he doesn't get up for three more sequels.