D&D Houserule idea: Narrated Kills

YesNoMu

Here's an idea I stole off of somebody else: if you kill an enemy, I tell you, "Narrate it." You describe the kill in a dramatic/gory fashion, and you get a couple of HP back.

I've been using this rule for a few weeks now, and it seems to work pretty well at encouraging my players to immerse themselves in their characters and abilities. The only problem is that this approach favors the high damage dealers. The ranger's player has gotten to narrate a significant portion of her foes' deaths, and I'm not sure the poor paladin has even done it once.

I still like the idea of using a carrot to add spontaneous roleplay, but I'd like to make it a bit more fair. Do you guys have any ideas on how to improve the rule? What methods have you used to immerse your players?

Plutonium

Why not adopt a bit of White Wolf's system, where you apply "Stunt" bonuses to rolls depending on how well the players describe their actions, all at your discretion, based on how immersed the players are in their character's actions.

This is probably what you don't want as a player's turn:

Player: "I'm going to use second wind as a minor action, move here, and sweeping strike the Beholder." *Rolls*
GM: "Hit"
Player: "Ok, rolling damage... 2d6.. seven damage."

Here, you wouldn't give them any special bonuses on either roll, or if you think that it would make it too easy to just slack, you could give them -1 penalties to rolls with no description.

Whereas when the player does something like this:

Player: "Binwin Bronzebottom takes a quick gulp of crystal-clear water from the flask at his hip, using his second wind as a minor action, and the rushes forward to here and sweeps his greataxe in a mighty arc, in an attempt to cut the legs out from under the nefarious necrotic summoner and leave him prone with a sweeping strike." *Rolls*
GM: "I add a bonus of two to that.... and you hit."
Player: "The axe deals a crushing blow to the summoner's legs, knocking him to the ground, along with the sound of bones cracking and a gush necrotic blood seeping across the axe's sharp edge." *Rolls* "Seven"
GM: "Ok, so he takes nine damage. He's bloodied."

In this situation, you would give them a +2 bonus to both the attack and damage rolls., or +1 if you're giving minuses to rolls for no description.

It's all at your discretion, and +1 (or +0 if you're giving minuses to nondescript actions) could be anything in between the two extremes. You can even go up to +3 for anything that's super-badass.

MinionOfCthulhu

Exalted uses a system like this if I remember correctly. You get bonuses to rolls and whatnot depending on how outlandish and awesome you describe what you're doing. It reminds me of the million to one shot in 'Guards! Guards!'

Silas Brown

In my experience with 4e, granting a +2 in a balanced encounter basically means an automatic win. This is assuming, of course, that the players will do such a description for most of their attacks, but isn't that the point?

Plutonium

ProfMoriarty wrote: »

In my experience with 4e, granting a +2 in a balanced encounter basically means an automatic win. This is assuming, of course, that the players will do such a description for most of their attacks, but isn't that the point?

Thus the idea of granting -1 on actions with no description, no change on actions with some description, and +1 on actions that are well described, and reserving +2 for those special super-badass moments.

Silas Brown

Ah, I apologize. I didn't parse that correctly and had figured you were talking about granting an *additional* +1 at some point. Don't ask me how I came to that conclusion, it makes no sense to me since I reviewed the post.

delroland

It also depends on the tone you want to set with the campaign. If you give the PC's a +2 for attempting awesome stunts, then it gives your D&D game a kind of Hong Kong Action Movie feel, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

leaf

Thought thread title said "dnd housewives", left disappointed