[Donjon] Encounter Facts

[Darren Hill]

Since you get treasure from looting bodies, how would you handle the following:
A player uses Find Trouble and gets 2 facts - 1 fact: an enemy healer, 1 fact: has healing potions.

Basically - how do you handle players going looking for specific items rather than opponents. I'm not against it, I'm just looking for guidelines in how to implement it - how to judge what sort of Worth items they should get, etc.

[Jason]

I think the part here is that the player can state facts, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing that's going on. For you example of the enemy healing, he could be surrounded by the shock troop that he heals, or he could have a potion of mighty butt whooping. You need to warp whatever facts you are given to make the encounter more interesting.


Jason

[Darren Hill]

I think the part here is that the player can state facts, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing that's going on. For you example of the enemy healing, he could be surrounded by the shock troop that he heals, or he could have a potion of mighty butt whooping. You need to warp whatever facts you are given to make the encounter more interesting.


Jason

I accept that I can add other stuff freely, and all that. But assuming I want to let the players find what they go looking for (someone carrying healing potions, for example), how should I adjudicate its value/performance? What kind of Worth level - given that the players have bypassed the usual Loot Body roll.

[Lxndr]

Assuming they defeat said enemy, I'd still require them to make some sort of Loot/Booty/etc. roll to discover an UNDAMAGED healing potion on said corpse.  Or unused.  ("Wow, you failed your loot roll.  Sorry, but he used his healing potions in the process of going down... you don't find any left.")

[jdagna]

Don't add other stuff... hang the players with the rope they've given you.  "Why yes, he does have healing potions.  So all that damage you did to him?  Well, he seems to have just recovered all of it.   And he has four more similar-looking potions at his disposal.  While he continues fighting and drinking, he offers you terms of surrender."

If they still kill the guy, treat the body as usual for purposes of looting... so the potion may still not be found - it could have been smashed, drank, improperly brewed or intended for a different race/class than the PCs (for example).

Alternatively, let players use additional successes to boost the worth of the treasure heap.  In the example you gave, that's Worth 0 loot (1 fact to get the loot, but 0 facts to enhance it), against which the player can roll to see if the potion is useful.  If he had additional successes, he could use them to increase the Worth of the loot pile, making it increasingly likely that the potion would be worth anything.

[Darren Hill]

Assuming they defeat said enemy, I'd still require them to make some sort of Loot/Booty/etc. roll to discover an UNDAMAGED healing potion on said corpse.  Or unused.  ("Wow, you failed your loot roll.  Sorry, but he used his healing potions in the process of going down... you don't find any left.")

My concern with this approach is that it might make a nonsense of stating facts in the first place. Why devote facts to something like that when you can loot and get them anyway? You may as well have kept the dice for an initial attack bonus. Once players assume that, a lot of the unique flavour of Dojon games might be threatened.

[Darren Hill]

Don't add other stuff... hang the players with the rope they've given you.  "Why yes, he does have healing potions.  So all that damage you did to him?  Well, he seems to have just recovered all of it.   And he has four more similar-looking potions at his disposal.  While he continues fighting and drinking, he offers you terms of surrender."

Oh yes, I like this approach :)

If they still kill the guy, treat the body as usual for purposes of looting... so the potion may still not be found - it could have been smashed, drank, improperly brewed or intended for a different race/class than the PCs (for example).

I'm not sure about that. Donjon does allow for targets, I mean NPCs, to have pre-declared treasure. If their worth is above a certain value compared to the creature's level, no looting roll is allowed.
So, if I gave an NPC a bag of healing potions, and they managed to defeat him before he used them all, I'd let them keep the potions instead of the loot roll.

Alternatively, let players use additional successes to boost the worth of the treasure heap.  In the example you gave, that's Worth 0 loot (1 fact to get the loot, but 0 facts to enhance it), against which the player can roll to see if the potion is useful.  If he had additional successes, he could use them to increase the Worth of the loot pile, making it increasingly likely that the potion would be worth anything.

I like this, too. I could even boost the Potion strength by including a Curse/side effect - since they aren't getting the treasure by the usual process, it seems fair for the GM to include a few extra 'benefits'.

[Darren Hill]

One question that hasn't been answered - how exactly do healing potions work, game mechanically (pretend you're explaining to a simpleton).
They would be a one-time item, so Worth = 1 per dice.

So, say I choose a 4 dice healing potion.
What do I do with these dice? Do I add them to a value (like, say, Wherwithal) and roll against a difficulty - and what difficulty do I use? A Poison save doesn't seem reasonable since it's a beneficial effect.
Do I treat as 4 dice of gathered spell power, and just roll them - but again, against what?

[jdagna]

If I remember correctly, you roll the Worth of the potion against the total damage you've taken, which means it's much easier to recover from wounds early in the battle when you've suffered a few than later in the battle.  

Personally, I think one of two solutions might work better:
1) roll against the number of wounds remaining (instead of the number you've suffered) so that potions become more effective as you near death (and more effective for low-level characters)
2) have the potion add its Worth to FW without any rolling.

[Darren Hill]

"Difficulty = FW" - gah, that's pretty obvious now that you mention it.
Those other two ideas look pretty good, too. I'm not sure of the non-random one, but it beats having to roll for a potion during looting, possibly getting nothing, then rolling for effect and also possibly getting nothing.