Going All Out in RPGs

One of the hardest things to pin down in my own RPG design is this: How do you allow a character to go from affecting one target to many? Or to put that extra effort into going all out on something? And balance the whole thing so as not to go overboard?

After a little testing and a lot of study, I want to share this small library of system-agnostic game design mechanics for shooting, swiping, and generally increasing the breadth or depth of player action.

1. KISS: System Agnosticism
2. Player Choices
3. Cy_Borg: Keep Rollin’ (Within Reason)
4. Warhammer: A Smattering of Splattering
5. A Spicy Homebrew
6. All Out Enemies
7. –

KISS: System Agnosticism

To keep the library ‘clean,’ I will not emphasize the types of dice or player stats / abilities used in altering the outcomes of dice rolls. Adopt and adapt as necessary.

The only assumptions here are:

1. Dice rolls for determining any random outcomes.
2. There exists the possibility to have a extreme / critical failure or success on those rolls.
3. (Suggested:) Critical failures result in some sort of over-extension. If using a projectile tool, this could mean running out of loaded ammunition (e.g. empty mag, quiver) or an explosion (e.g. plasma containment breach, failure to launch the rocket). In melee, the tool of choice gets stuck, or every other action against the over-extended character has advantage for a turn, or at worst, the tool breaks or is damaged down a tier of effectiveness.
4. Players may choose when to end their spree – either by selecting a finite number of targets to begin with, or choosing not to continue when in the middle of the act.

That’s it! Let’s rock:

Player Choices

Point 4 above intends the players to be in control of the actions their characters take, reaping the consequences as they come.

To do this, players must choose as to whether or not focus down a single target or spread their care around.

In the first instance, choosing one target per action is the default for games – a “do this to that” situation.

The act of spreading the effect around is where this library will be the best leverage:

Cy_Borg: Keep Rollin’ (Within Reason)

Cy_Borg adds what its grimdark fantasy ancestor could not: Automatic weapons. How does this system handle going all out?

Act aggressively up to three times choosing a target (same or different) every time. However, stop acting anytime or when failing a roll.

The main difference here in going all out is a higher chance to need to reload after the fight and it uses a different stat than regular shooting actions. Just roll versus difficulty!

How I might spice up something similar:

• Allow a character to keep acting forever until they run out of targets (they choose either to spread fire or concentrate before rolling) or they fail the roll.
• Option: Each subsequent shot gets harder to roll or all shots are a tier-of-difficulty harder to hit.
• Option: Any failure is a critical failure (i.e. out of ammo or otherwise cannot fire until action and/or resource is spent immediately vs. post fight).
• Option: Combine the two options above!
• Extend this ability to swiping in melee – be able to target all in surrounding proximity if in a group or ganged-up on the character.

Warhammer: A Smattering of Splattering

I am a sucker for Warhammer games, especially 40K. In Only War and Deathwatch, both D100 percentile systems, there are options:

• All Out – Attack in melee with +20% effect. Cannot dodge or parry until next turn.
• Full Auto – Attack at range with +20% effect. Extra hit every 10% aka degree-of-success. Crit fail is more likely (jams). Allocate extra hits to nearby targets or the original up to the weapon’s max “full auto” value of number of rounds spent (these are spent regardless of hits). Get a -10% effect instead if also moving.
  • Burst firing is less impactful, and a distinguish I will forego further comment on: +10% effect, spending “burst” number of rounds automatically and capping the number of possible hits, get an extra hit every two degrees-of-success, gain no bonus effect if moving.
• Suppressing Fire – Pins (rather, chance to pin) all foes in a 45-degree arc over a distinct area. -20% chance to hit. Crit fail is more likely (jams). Allocate extra hits at every two degrees-of-success to a random recipient, capping at rounds spent. Spend “full auto” rounds automatically.

Auto-fire along with explosive-typed weapons are also the only way to put a dent into hordes of enemies.

Spice things up:

• “All Out” is the term for diving into melee or unleashing auto-fire. Allow extra hits to allocate to the same or new enemies, but once moved off a target, cannot move back and must move to any new targets in the same direction.
• “Suppression” pins all entities in or entering/exiting an area. There is disadvantage to hit if the target stays still, but no disadvantage if they move. Cannot critically fail. Roll to hit for all similar targets moving and staying put (e.g. all easy-but-moving vs all easy-but-in-cover vs all moderate, etc.). Use an entire magazine’s worth of ammo by the start of the character’s next turn (mitigate with large-capacity magazines).

Next is Wrath & Glory, a D6 dice-pool system (more dice = more chances of successes):

• Salvo – Spend an entire magazine to add the size of weapon magazine to the dice pool.
• All Out – Add two dice to melee, but suffer two when in defense until next turn.

Wrapping up with fantasy, Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (another D6 pool):

• Spread – Specific to only certain ranged weapons. Hit everything of the same difficulty as the target (I spicily say lower difficulties too!) that is next to the target. Higher difficulties get a chance to dodge. Applies to things like shotguns, automatic weapons, and explosions.
• Cleave – Specific to only certain melee weapons. On each die roll of 6, do 1 damage to all foes next to the intended target.

Side note: most games have rules against using ranged weapons in close-combat. Deathwatch forbids it unless using pistol-like weapons. I would spice it up by allowing ranged weapons, but have an uncontested ~50/50 chance to hit the target or any other random target in close range to the melee (including the acting character!).

A Spicy Homebrew

All of the above is of great study. Some key points:

• Going “all out” applies similar mechanics to melee and ranged actions.
• Any “all out” failure is a critical failure and ends the spree.
• Going “all out” is one of the only ways an individual can take on a horde / mob / detachment.
• Degrees of success add to the number of hits.
• Hits can be focused on a target or spread among nearby targets.
• Pressing the point: Suppression guarantees a spending of ammo and denies riskless access to an area for a turn. Being “Reckless” or “Savage” in melee gets the cut in, but leaves one open to be disadvantaged against all else until their next turn.
  • This is similar to the concept of “blood magic” where a point of health can be spent to increase a die roll by 1 or reroll (with the chance of a critical failure) as many times as wanted to force a thing to occur. If used too often to get out of spots really meant to be too tricky, optionally require costs to reflect the tier of what is being attempted (1 extra value on the rule costs 4 for a tier-4 spell).

The biggest exception I have with these systems is that most rely on multiple rolls and/or bean-counting of ammunition. We can do better with one roll and degrees of success and by-magazine capacity. An example:

• Acting Normally – Pick one target. Roll to match or beat the difficulty of the target. A successful match is the effective hit of the tool, plus 1 effect for each degree-of-success above that difficulty.
  • A tier-3 sword strikes a target of difficulty 7. The roll (+ any modifiers) is a total of 10. The effect is 6 (3 for the sword on success + 1 for each number above 7 [10 minus7]).
• Going All Out – Pick one or a set of targets of the same difficulty. Roll to match or beat the difficulty. A successful match and every degree of success is another hit to distribute.
  • A tier-3 sword swipes at a crowd of difficulty 7 targets. The roll (+ any modifiers) is a total of 10. The outcome is 4 targets are hit for 3 effect each (3 effect for the sword, 4 targets for success and degrees of success [10 minus 7]).
  • Reloading – A ranged weapon critically fails, the magazine running dry on the trigger pull. Out of the character’s inventory, they apply the same kind of mag to the weapon as an action. Prevents counting bullets and maintains a level of tactical prep: how many mags does a character bring along? Can they find or scavenge similar where they are?

All Out Enemies

Perhaps an RPG character has found a machine gun, grenade, or is a spinning cloud of whirling blades. When they go “all out”, they are treated much like a mob or when using suppression: They either hit everything in an arc or focus-fire extra effect worth 2D6 divided by 2 (round up) on a single target, everything being an automatic success except for when crit rolls above this antagonist’s difficulty jamming their gear.

Give the character something like bombs? Or missiles!? A tank’s main auto-cannon? Automatically hit those in a zone with an extra 2D6 effect. Crit fail for an off-target, scattered landing.

To spare the scope of large groups going all out, keep the mechanic relegated to heavy weapons teams, berserkers, boss characters, and other identifiable, high-value targets (e.g. tier-3 specialists and above or vehicles).

All this to say, even lowly grunts armed with the right tools can take out the most heavily equipped knight!

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There are other mechanics out there for sure. Most of them involve rolling multiple dice over and over and over again, or putting arbitrary limits on what can be hit (e.g. Cy_Borg‘s max-3 limit).

Further, few systems seek to tie together melee and ranged actions, let alone having rules for either leaning into one target or many (something as simple to realize as, “does the character swing down, or side-to-side? Pull the trigger lightly or keep it pressed?”).

I hope the spicy additions if not the homebrew solves some of these conundrums for you as they have I. (Big thanks to my ol’ D&D group who asked what to roll when spinning like a top into a bunch of ratmen!)

This post has gone all in on going all out in RPGs. Share your favorite go-to mechanic and which of the above speaks most to you! Cheers to you going all out in play and living life ~