Deviance #1 – Victory Condition: Checkmate

 
A while ago, I was over on a well-known RPG forum site and was dicussing the relative merits of some new powers that had just been released through Dragon Magazine.  There were a few relevant answers followed by one that jumped out and smacked me upside the head:

“The best condition to put on your enemy is dead. The sooner you figure that out, the better.”

Now I’ll give that forum member the benefit of the doubt that he (or she) wasn’t intentionally being rude, simply stating a point.  The best thing to do to an enemy in D&D (or many RPGs for that matter) is just straight out damage, because a dead enemy is no longer a threat.

The more I thought about, the more I agreed with him; the only reason you stun, immobilize, daze, push or do anything other than damage an opponent is to prevent it from damaging you while you try to damage it.  In that light, the whole thing seems very underwhelming, eh?  Why not just do more damage?

So that train of thought came onto the platform and got pointed down another set of tracks.  Why wouldn’t I want to deal more damage?  Is a push, pull, stun or restrain meaningful on its own?  Sure, you may have roleplaying reasons to not kill your enemy.   But mechanically speaking, what incentive do I have to use a less-damaging power or inflict a condition for its own sake?  Well, in these first four episodes of Aberrant Rules,  we will be offering to you various battlefield victory conditions to add variety to your combat encounters and make your PC’s Ranger actually decide that Twin Strike might not be the best option for once.

The first alternate victory condition to discuss is  Checkmate.   Most of you have probably played chess before and will get the basic idea without much explanation.  The opposition has one guy – a leader or a boss, let’s call him the King – that holds the opposition team together.  If you take the King out of the picture, the rest of the baddies will fall apart.  (This may be literally true if the King is a necromancer.)  All the PCs have to do is get that guy, and they win.  They do have to get him, though.  If he escapes,  the PCs don’t get full experience, or they can’t take a short rest, whatever – there’s some kind of penalty.  The King should be dead or otherwise rendered helpless for full completion.  There are several variants of the Checkmate, each with its own specific encounter design:

1. Standard Checkmate – The Standard Checkmate scenario is pretty easy to set up.  You need a somewhat vulnerable King and then a bunch of baddies that won’t stay down.  You could use your basic unending wave scenario, you could make the support enemies unkillable for some reason or just place entirely too many enemies on the field and make it obvious that they’re  not minions.   In any event, you want to cue to your players that this fight is not ‘balanced’ in the conventional sense – they will get overwhelmed if they don’t figure out the trick.  After the PCs learn the gig, the King should fall in maybe two to three rounds and the rest of the troops surrender, die, run  away, etc.
2. Pacifist Checkmate – the King’s cronies are unwilling or somehow innocent.  Maybe they’re captured and fighting against their will.  The PCs don’t actually want to harm them.  As a DM, you give more experience for a live enemy than a dead or injured one.To set up a good Pacifist Checkmate fight, you need minions, and I mean LOTS of minions.  Scads of minions on the field that can take opportunity attacks but are themselves verboten slow your PCs’ movement down and give the King lots of places to take cover from your PCs’ ranged and area attacks.  The minions should not hesitate to take attacks against nearby PCs – their lives or loved ones are on the line! – but will probably not be aggressive or move much if no PCs are nearby.  They’re essentially mobile terrain features.   Smart PCs will use Bull Rush, Grab, Cause Fear or similar non-damaging slide/push/pull effects to clear a path to the King.
3. Stalemate – the PCs simply aren’t powerful enough to stop the King.  They don’t have the magic weapon to pierce his armor or he regenerates until you destroy his phylactery or something. Perhaps the PCs would be out of their jurisdiction or social rank to hurt him.  All they can do is corner the King, keeping him temporarily contained (grabbed, immobilized, prone, etc) until the cavalry arrives.  The PCs should be star of the adventure and this is kind of a deus ex machina, so I wouldn’t use it often.  It is, however, a great way to set up a recurring or future villain that the PCs can take on properly at some later time.Determine what the endgame is, here, that’s the important part.  Do the PCs simply restrain the King?  If so, make sure they have some kind of item that lets them overcome the King’s high defenses to do so.  Also, there must a be condition progression of some sort.  For instance, their +6 handcuffs of Citizen’s Arrest only work if the King is Helpless, so the PCs have to figure out on their own how to get him to Helpless.  Preferably, Helpless should be the eventual outcome of first being Prone and then maybe Grabbed or Dazed or something.  Terrain powers are also important since some parties don’t have a lot of status-inflicting capability.  A quicker way is just to put out some kind of hazard or trap that the PCs have to maneuver the King into to defeat him – pits, bodies of water and lava are standard tropes here. Once the endgame trigger occurs, it’s Game Over for the King, regardless of HP.