"Finally, you and Dark Lord Septimus square up to cross blades. He draws his sword slowly, carefully, and levels it at you. His swordcraft is legendary, and he has never been defeated in combat. His vile blade drips tongues of black fire as it gutters in the torchlight, and almost without effort, he.... rolls a 21 to hit you for 15 points of damage. Your turn." As a narrative engine, roleplaying can be a fantastic tool. Your characters can develop, learn new skills, and engage in combat, but sometimes, some things can just seem a little dull for warriors. spellcasters get all sorts of fun names for their spells- Aganazzar's Scorcher, Disintegrate, Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion, and so on- but warriors just get to roll to hit and damage, without much depth to their system. Without inventing an entire new way to handle combat (like 3.5's Tome of Battle), just giving name to some of the things you're doing can make them seem a little more interesting. In this, I was inspired and led by an old Dragon magazine article (#289, November 2001) by Patrick T. Younts and Matthew Sernett, which featured a random martial arts move generator over an impressive double-spread which blew my mind when I first read it. I've tried to create something that captures the same kind of essence, bringing that to a more European fechtbuch style. It's a little kludgy, and the names may need some finessing, but if you describe using "Ognen's sudden twist" as a counter to your opponent's "Leaping Owlbear strike" when you disengage, the scene takes on a much more flavourful and dynamic set of descriptions. Here's the picture version, which I've colour-coded to make it easier to follow. Several results need you to make up bits yourself, or roll further results, so I'd recommend generating a few for your warrior characters up-front to avoid being stuck in Random Number Generator Hell while you're tyring to make stuff up at the table. However, it's complicated enough to be a little finicky, and the kind of thing that would be really handy if someone just threw together a computer version to make it simpler for you to use. So my wife taught me some HTML over the weekend, and here you go: Combat Technique Name Generator.
Feel free to 'reroll' if the generated name just doesn't work for you, but this may just help things along! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 10 August 2021. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
May 2022
Categories
All
|