Abstract Encounters

WIP: DO NOT USE

In Epic Path, we define two complimentary, but different, 'modes of play'. Structured play is the resolution of actions adjudicated by rules and game mechanics. Unstructured play is role playing, general time at the table, and fun time. Since it is unstructured, by definition, we're not writing rules for unstructured play, aside from the universal rule of 'have fun.'

Structured Play is governed (either loosely or strictly) by written rules, and adjudicated by the GM.

Structured play is then split into two further classes, Real Time and Abstract.

The order of play in most gaming sessions will begin with Unstructured Play, as people gather and settle down, prepare their character sheets, and socialize. The GM will then usually call the session to order, moving the game into a period of Abstract encounters of various levels of complexity and time. Often, this period of Abstract Play is not rigidly defined or tightly enforced. Eventually, in most gaming sessions, there will be a session of Real Time play, beginning when an initiative roll is announced, and play will then proceed using the Real Time rules.

The most common type of structured play in Epic Path is what we term 'Real Time' combat. This uses the classic D20 game system mechanics, with everyone rolling for initiative, time measured in discrete 'rounds', and with well defined, small-scale rules for movement, attacks, and resolution of skill checks. Much of the material presented on this site is for use in Real Time encounters.

However, in the arena of story-telling, Real Time encounters are not the only way of getting things done. A classic example is in a movie, where the characters are taking a long journey on a ship and/or plane to fulfill a quest. Rather than showing the journey, which would be mind-numbingly dull, the story-tellers ABSTRACT the journey, such as showing a montage of a dotted line on a map, to signify the progress being made.

This form of Abstract Encounter is a potent tool for GM's whose stories have evolved 'beyond the dungeon', and as such, we present these rules to represent such abstract encounters.

Scope and Usage of Abstract encounters

Abstract Encounters are usually played out in the 'Theater of the Mind", or, Abstract Mode. As such, there will not be a battle map or an initiative roll. Time in Abstract Encounters is measured in "Intervals". You are allowed to make one Skill Roll per Interval. However, the exact duration of an Interval is variable. For example, if you are crafting a magic item, the Interval for that Abstract Encounter may be set to one day, meaning you may roll an applicable Skill once per day and either expend or bank Action Dice and Pips. If you are administering a mighty army in a pitched battle, the interval may be one hour. If you are administering a mighty army in a great campaign, marching across a continent, an Interval might be one day. If you are a Guildmaster running a Thieve's Guild in its nefarious activities, the Interval might be one week. If you are mighty King with a vast realm and many provinces and armies and taxes and levies, an Interval might be one month.

The order in which various people act in Abstract Encounters is rarely relevant: All Abstract Actions are considered to play out simultaneously. In the rare case where the order of action DOES matter, each side should roll a Reaction Die, a D6, with the highest number going first, and re-rolling ties until a result is found. As all rolls in the Abstract Action system, no player stats have any effect upon this result.

One of the more common places where a Reaction Die may be required is during an Opposed Abstract Action. If you are using Abstract Actions to run an Assassin's Guild, for example, you may be opposed by His Majesty's Secret Service, a GM-run organization who will oppose you. Opposed Abstract Actions are resolved exactly like Abstract Actions, except that the target number is usually lower, but every Interval the GM rolls some Action Dice and may spend pips to directly subtract from the player's pips. Opposed Abstract Actions can be very exciting indeed when you are doing things like trying to hold a door shut against the press of demons on the other side.

NOTE: In all cases, you can only be involved in one Abstract Encounter at a time! If you are involved in a pitched battle, you cannot also be working on crafting a Magic Item. In all such cases, the Abstract Action with the longest interval is interrupted, and any progress made during the interrupted Interval is lost. If the Abstract Encounters have the same Interval, the player chooses which one to perform in each applicable Interval. This can lead to cases where the Wizard elects to sit out a terrible siege because he wants to keep working on his Rod of Invincible Stiffness. Wizards.

Game Mechanics

Abstract Encounters are resolved with skill rolls rather than normal combat mechanics. Note that many actions in Abstract encounters are resolved with opposed skill checks, or the basic mechanic of 'Skill check against a DC". There are many Abstract encounters that require a more formal structure than the simple Skill Roll, and those are detailed here. As a rule of thumb, Abstract Mode combats are of a different order, larger in scale and slower in time, so that the normal d20 roll to-hit mechanics are best abstracted into a more general system.

To resolve actions in an Abstract Encounter, you will make a skill roll, (or other D20 roll as determined by the game master) and then you will receive a number of D6's (called Action Dice) based on the result of that roll. These Action Dice are then rolled to generate Action Pips. You can spend Action Pips to perform an action in Abstract Encounters, or as needed, you can bank up some of the Action Pips and use them later, after you have had the opportunity to roll more Skill Rolls and thus gain even more Action Dice.

Abstract Encounters are used for such things as Siege Warfare, Mass Battles, Naval Actions, Evacuations, Character Retraining, and the like.

Core Mechanics

Abstract actions are on a different scale than Real Time actions, both larger and slower. As a result, the stats and feats a character uses to fight in normal combat have little to no effect upon Abstract Actions. The player character uses their Profession skills or other applicable skills to make a skill check, which then grants them a number of Action Dice which they roll to gain Action Pips. You must exceed a Difficulty Category (DC) with your Action Pips in order to succeed with any Abstract Action. You may only make a skill check, roll Action Dice, and expend pips once per time interval as defined in the check you are attempting. Siege actions take ten minutes, for example, while retraining efforts may allow you to roll once per day. In all cases, the DM may adjudicate the frequency of attempts to generate Action Dice and bank Action Pips.

In more detail, this process is:

• Make a skill check:

Each abstract action has a skill or other source for a D20 roll associated with it, often a Profession or Bailiwick skill, which determines expertise in that particular Abstract Action. On your turn, you make a skill check against this skill.

• Alternate Skills: If you do not have any ranks in the skill for your Action, you may instead use any Bailiwick skill in its place, and the GM may allow other skills to be substituted on a case-by-case basis. Typically, using an alternate skill is significantly less effective than using the correct skill, but it is better than nothing.

• Determine action pool:

If you used the proper skill as defined in the Abstract Action, you divide your skill check's result by 5 (round down), and take this many d6 dice into your action pool for the round. If you used a Bailiwick skill instead of the appropriately defined skill, you divide your skill check result by 10 (round down) instead. If the GM allows you to substitute another skill, divide that result by 12, round down, to determine the number of Action Dice.

• Minimum action pool: No matter how poorly you roll on your skill check, you always get a minimum of 2d6 for your action pool if your skill check was insufficient to provide more.

• Roll action pool and determine expenditures:

You then roll your action pool of d6's, and may allocate the results of your roll to overcome your selected action's Target Difficulty Class (DC). If you do not know the DC (a distressingly common occurrence) you may spend pips in an escalating fashion to find the DC, or simply bank a large number in hopes you exceed the unknown number. Knowing the DC for an Abstract Action is a valuable piece of knowledge indeed. The number of pips you expend must equal or exceed the target DC to succeed.

• Determine Difficulty Class:

DC's for Abstract Actions are widely variable, and in all cases, the GM adjudicates what is needed to succeed at a given action. As a rule of thumb, Abstract Actions should have a Difficulty Class on the order of an Impossible Skill Check of the appropriate CR. Note that difficulties of this magnitude are very high, forcing most players to spend several intervals banking dice to build up enough pips to succeed.

• Banking dice: In the event that you know (or suspect) you don't have enough pips in your action pool to successfully perform an action, or you have left over dice which you did not use this interval, you can bank unused dice, adding their existing pips to your next interval's action pool. You must expend one die for each die you wish to bank (you will generally expend all the lowest die results to bank all the highest die results). This simulates making 'ranging shots' to get your weapon dialed in, or writing practice scrolls, or lining up your angle on a hard hill to climb. There is no limit to the number of dice you can bank each turn as long as you have an equal number to discard, and banked dice do not affect how many dice you get to roll due to your Skill roll in future rounds. Once banked, simply record the total pip value of the banked dice, which can then be added to any one expenditure you make in a future interval.

• You can't split dice: Note that pips from d6's in your action pool cannot be split up. That is, you must use all of the pips on a single die if you use any of them. This means if you wish to purchase an expenditure which costs 12 pips, and you have three 5's on your action pool dice, you must spend all three dice to pay for the 12 pip cost, effectively wasting 3 pips of your action pool. Alternatively, you could bank your dice until next turn, and hope that your next turn's action pool dice allow you to divide your results less wastefully. Note that once pips are banked, they may be spent as you wish and you do not have to track how many pips were on each die.

In general, only the skill check you make for the abstract action matters, as far as your character's stats, abilities, and magic items are concerned, and only rarely will other bonuses apply. A GM may assign a circumstance bonus for being in an advantageous position, having helpful NPC allies, or other situational advantages, but your normal combat abilities, such as your BAB or Maneuver Offense scores have no bearing on the outcome of an Abstract encounter. If you have a magic item which boosts the appropriate skill, that will certainly assist you, but having a very high armor class won't protect you from incoming siege weapon fire.

Switching Between Modes of Play

Abstract Mode and Real Time Mode can be switched back and forth at the DM's discretion as required to progress the game. In a naval campaign, there may be a days long contest of skill between two sailing captains as they each seek to maneuver against the other, resolved using an Interval of one hour per skill roll. But when the two ships are finally done firing cannon volleys at each other at long range, there may be an exciting boarding action, and the GM may declare that the boarding action is resolved in Real Time Mode, using the conventional D20 system rules. Another example could be siege warfare, where Abstract mode is used to represent days of catapults and bombards battering at the castle gate, but when a battering ram closes in, Real-Time mode can be used to show the heroes sallying forth to try and disable or destroy the Ram before it tears down the gates.

Precedence of Mechanics

In general, all action in Real Time mode is resolved in Real Time mechanics, and all action in Abstract mode is resolved in Abstract mechanics. In all cases, if a PC wishes to use a Real Time ability (such as shooting a bow), they may do so while in an Abstract encounter, but they must resolve the action using Abstract mechanics. If you have a pair of airships in a long stern chase, the groups Ranger, an archer of legendary prowess, may get on the deck and pepper the pursuing ship with arrows. But, as long as the encounter is working in Abstract mode, the Ranger has to resolve their attacks by a Skill Check (such as Profession, Soldier or Profession, Siege Engineer) to generate Action Dice. The player then rolls those Action Dice to generate Pips they may use to attack the crew of the enemy ship. (Note that a ranged weapon cannot attack the ship itself unless it can generate Sunders.) This abstracts the Ranger firing many dozens or hundreds of times. When the Ranger reaches the DC for the action desired, (shooting the other ship's Spotter, for example) they inflict damage for their weapon as normal and the result is thus resolved. Note that in Siege Warfare and Vehicle Combat, range becomes a major factor, and very few weapons can reach even the outer limits of Short range, much less Medium or Long range.

Spellcasting in Abstract Actions

If you have access to spells, you may generate rolls in the Abstract Action system without making a Skill roll. Instead, you may spend five spell slots, of any level, to generate a D20 roll, which is divided by five to grant you Action Dice. You may then use those Action Dice as any others to reach DC's for actions in the Abstract Action system. This allows a mighty spell-caster to stand on the deck of a ship working their terrible magics for hours on end, and once they have enough action dice, strike at commander of a fortress guarding a harbor. The attack is resolved as if they cast one of their spells as normal, with the caveat that it must obey all rules for range, creatures affected, area of effect, components, etc. Note that in Siege Warfare and Vehicle Combat, range becomes a major factor, and very few spells can reach even the outer limits of Short range, much less Medium or Long range.

Scale of Abstract Actions versus Real Time actions

As a rule, almost all activity performed at a distance or scale of greater than fifty feet can be resolved in Abstract Mode. Almost all activity at a distance greater than two miles MUST be resolved in Abstract Mode. The reason for this is the simple fact that most gaming mats used for play are less then a few dozen squares across. In all cases, the DM adjudicates whether an action is resolved using Abstract Mode or Real Time mode, and adjudicates when you switch between the two modes of play. Any ranges with either Real Time mechanics or Abstract mechanics must be obeyed in both systems. Note that most ranged weapons and spells have maximum ranges of less than a mile.

Abstract Actions are the default mode of Structured Play

When moving from Unstructured play to Structured play, Abstract mode is the "default over ride" mode. When the GM is describing the setting, walking the players through a gates of their home city, meeting a caravan master on the road, all these things are resolved in Abstract, meaning it is usually resolved with Skill Rolls and role-playing. The Interval is usually undefined, because a precise definition is not required. In all cases, when an initiative roll is made, that indicates that Real Time mode is beginning. This means that unless the GM has declared an initiative roll, all resolutions are made using Abstract Mode. Vehicle Combat and Siege Weapons/Mass Warfare are usually resolved mostly in Abstract mode, with the occasional exciting bout of Real Time mode combat.

Non-Combat Uses of Abstract Encounters

In the movies, it is extremely common for the hero to 'level up' with a classic 'training montage'. Of course this is resolved in Abstract mode! All out-of-combat activities can be thought of as variations of Abstract Mode activities, and are almost always resolved as Skill Rolls (or other D20 rolls), to either determine success or failure directly, or to build up Action Dice and Action Pips to determine success or failure. The Action Dice/Action Pips mechanic is a good way of emulating a task that can be completed eventually with enough effort, no matter how big or complicated. Building a pyramid begins by banging two rocks together, and if you bang those rocks together long enough and just keep working, eventually you will finish, no matter how long it takes. This is also applied to such activities as building a players stronghold, running a thieves guild, merchant guild, or business, creating a magic item either for yourself or via an NPC, and many other actions.