Chapter Three: Game Rules

As previously mentioned, attributes and skills are rated by die type. To use an attribute or skill, the player makes an open-ended roll of the appropriate die type – attributes and skills do not stack – and tries to beat a 4. Every multiple above 4 is a "raise", indicating a better success. Unskilled attempts are made at d4-2.

The twist is that the PCs and significant NPCs are "Wild Cards". Such characters get to roll an extra d6, called the "Wild Die," along with the appropriate attribute or skill die, taking the higher of the two. Non-Wild Card characters are "Extras".

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Playtest: The Wild Die mechanic somewhat mitigated my usual distaste for games in which attributes have no bearing on skill use, inasmuch as the Wild Die serves as a kind of replacement for an attribute default. Consider that unskilled Wild Cards forced to roll d4-2 still get that d6 Wild Die as well, making them superior to Extras with a skill of d6. (Knowing that would be the case based upon my previous game as GM, I found myself factoring in Wild Card status when considering which skills to leave at d4 or to ignore altogether during character creation.)

In practice, being a Wild Card with mediocre skills made my character in Robert's game much more competent than the average Extra. Certainly, this level of ability fits with the game's high-action theme... but somehow, it just didn’t feel right. It felt as though I had to lean too strongly on that Wild Card status to make my character remarkable, rather than making him remarkable on his own merits. (Compare this to Feng Shui, in which a PC without that game's special PC status would remain a noteworthy "mook" based upon ability levels alone.)

The system also makes it difficult to give the players NPC allies who are really worth having outside of combat. For example, those tribal elven archers I mentioned earlier by all rights should have been very good trackers. Unfortunately, "very good" by Wild Card standards becomes just "okay" for Extras without that Wild Die to boost rolls and add a curve.

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Wild Cards have a further advantage in the form of "bennies," with which they can purchase as many re-rolls of attribute and skill rolls as they like. They can also be used to automatically remove a Shaken condition or to make Vigor rolls to reduce wounds from a single hit (see below). PC Wild Cards get three bennies at the start of each session, gaining more through clever moves and good roleplaying and losing any that go unspent by the end of the evening. (Each unspent bennie does, however, give the character an experience point on a 1d6 roll of 5-6.) The GM gets a pool of one bennie per PC and two for each Wild Card NPC.

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Playtest: Bennies seemed to get more use outside of combat. That didn't surprise me. A character may have multiple chances to hit an opponent, but only one chance to leap across a chasm.

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Initiative is almost completely random, based upon single draws of a playing card for each individual or group involved in the combat. (All Wild Cards get a single card, and any allies they may have act on that card.)

I say "almost" because two Edges can affect initiative: Quick, which lets the player redraw on a 1-5, and Level Headed, which lets the player draw two cards and take the highest. (Or the best of three, with Improved Level Headed.) And the two Edges can combine, allowing a Level Headed and Quick character to draw two cards and re-draw on both of them if they both come up 1-5.

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Playtest: I really, really despise this method in concept, since it means that by default, all characters have the exact same reaction time – a slow, stupid zombie could just as easily win initiative as could a graceful elf, barring the appropriate Edges. In practice, however, it really does speed things up. It was particularly nice to have the cards as "cheat sheets" to remind me who goes when.

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On a Joker, the characters get +2 to both trait tests and damage and may act whenever they choose during the round.

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Playtest: This is probably the biggest argument for not going with Agility rolls, which a sidebar offers rather dismissively as an option. I have to admit, it does add still another layer of excitement, and some potentially startling results. In my first trial combat, for example, the enemy ship's crew got a Joker right off the bat and destroyed about 1/3 of the PCs' allies in a barrage of musket balls.

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Characters can "Hold" an action to wait and see what happens until later in the round, attempting to interrupt another character's action by making opposed Agility rolls; e.g., if Ben gets a King, he could hold his action in an attempt to shoot the first person coming through a doorway. If Frank, on a Six, tries to come through that doorway, Ben and Frank would make opposed Agility rolls to see whether Frank can get through the doorway before Ben shoots him. I like the idea, but conceptually it seems odd. Why is Agility irrelevant to quickness for normal initiative, but not for interrupts?

The chance to hit an opponent in hand-to-hand combat depends upon the target's Parry score. Parry is ineffective against ranged combat, but factors such as range and cover apply negative modifiers to the attacker's roll.

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Playtest: I found it mildly annoying that difficulty in melee combat takes the form of an increasing target number, while difficulty in ranged combat takes the form of a roll penalty. I'd have preferred it to be one or the other for both.

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Damage is random and open-ended, using a range of die types and quantities. (On the weapons list, the highest damage I saw was 5d10, for 125mm AP tank shells.) Each raise on an attack adds an additional +2 to the damage. On a hit, a character is either unhurt (for attacks less than Toughness), Shaken (for attacks equal to or greater than Toughness), or wounded (for raises on the damage roll, or for additional hits on an already-shaken opponent). Shaken characters can't do anything other than move at half-speed and try to "snap out of it". Wounded Extras are out of the fight (and may or may not be dead), while Wild Cards have three wound levels with a cumulative -1 penalty.

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Playtest: In the large combat I ran – a piratical boarding action – the damage rules did keep things moving along quickly. The open-ended damage rolls accentuated the chaos and uncertainty of combat, with the heroes surrounded by allies one moment and standing in a pile of bodies the next. The Shaken rule did create a kind of odd "clean up" impetus, however, that's completely logical given the rules but that may seem unsporting. When an Extra was Shaken, the players tended to take the opportunity to "kick him while he was down" in order to put him out of the fight.

On the other end of the scale, attacking a high-Toughness opponent, Wild Card or not, can be a little tedious. Hits that don't meet the foe's Toughness do absolutely nothing aside from some scratches and bruises for effect. Since the players know that an effective hit will at least cause a Shaken condition unless the NPC spends a bennie, it won't be long before they'll figure out what the Toughness score is that they need to beat. And if that score is high enough, it may take an open-ended roll to do the job.

Also note that big, tough monsters that aren't Wild Cards – in my playtest, a very large alligator, for example – will take a very quick death spiral if they're on their own. It may be hard to hurt, but once it's hurt, it's either Shaken (in which case everyone will take the opportunity to dogpile it) or out of action.

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In the test drive rules, a Wild Card taking more than 3 wounds must make a -2 Vigor test or die; in the standard rules, taking such damage calls for a roll on the Knockout Blow table. Depending upon how many wounds are caused by the blow that sends the character to the Knockout Blow table, he may have had anything from the wind knocked out of him (1 wound) to a mortal wound (4+ wounds). In addition, two or more wounds on the Knockout Blow table send the character to a random roll on the Injury Table, with a Vigor roll determining whether the damage is permanent.

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Playtest: Again, this made combat against a high-Toughness NPC drag a bit. Once the enemy captain had taken three wounds, their effect ceased to accumulate. And because cumulative 1-wound results on the Knockout Blow table have no effect after the first, there was almost a feeling that damage against the captain hit an odd sort of "plateau": 1st wound = -1 penalty, 2nd wound = -2 penalty, 3rd wound = -3 penalty, 4th wound = wind knocked out, 5th wound = no effect, 6th wound = no effect, etc.

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One clever concept introduced by the game is the idea of players controlling – and rolling for – their characters' NPC allies during combat.

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Playtest: The boarding action combat took about two hours. However, that was due mostly to our inexperience with the system. Without the players handling the friendly NPCs, I suspect it would have taken much longer, given the large number of combatants involved – around 30 altogether. (And, in fact, I wouldn't have even attempted such a combat with any other system I've used. At least, not without handling the overall tide of battle narratively.)

I'd also have to say that the game definitely shows its roots as a miniatures game. While it does deftly handle large combats, it does so at the price of a heavy dependence upon maps and figures. Even the battle with the single alligator would have been difficult without them.

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Combat takes into account a wide array of fixed modifiers, as opposed to the more freewheeling approach taken by games such as Feng Shui.

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Playtest: That led to battles having an extremely tactical feel, very much like a board or miniatures game. After our first combat, I realized that every player should probably have a copy of the Attack Options Summary for quick reference.

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I'm not going to bore you with recounting every single modifier. Just trust me when I say that the rules have all the based covered – aiming, cover, double taps, suppressive fire, you name it. There are, however, some that particularly stood out to me.

For example, characters are allowed one Fighting attack per hand, factoring in off-hand and multi-action penalties. So, if a character is fighting with a sword in one hand and the other hand empty, he could, theoretically, strike with both the sword and a punch, but not with two sword strokes. (I suppose a sword stroke, punch, and kick would be acceptable as well.)

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Playtest: Again, this put Ambidextrous (to eliminate the off-hand penalty) and Two-Fisted (to negate the mult-action penalty) high on my players' shopping lists for Edges. I suspect that these will be popular choices of most any player of fighter types. The one-two combination is pretty handy for dealing with Extras – get them Shaken with the first blow and take them out of the fight with the second.

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Also, as is the case in the Buffy RPG, ganging up is an extremely effective tactic, adding a +1 to hit per additional attacker, up to a maximum of +4.

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Playtest: This proved to be a great way to get the most out of allied Extras when tackling an enemy Wild Card. (Or even an Extra with a high Parry.) Given the flat die roll-based resolution mechanic, a guaranteed +4 from a 5-on-one attack – and added to all five (or more) attacks – can be devastating. (And a powerful argument for the Sweep Edge, which allows all adjacent targets to be attacked at once.)

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Shane Hensley's love of Torg comes through in his application of tricks and tests of will. Successful tricks give the target a -2 penalty to Parry in the following turn, successful tests of will give the attacker a +2 bonus to his next action, and both leave the target Shaken on a raise. Tricks can be pretty much whatever the player describes; however, unlike Torg, there's no "Player's Call" result. In other words, the most a trick can do is leave the target confused, but it can't get him to take any particular action (e.g., tricking the foe into running off the edge of a cliff).

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Playtest: It took us a while to get just how potent these actions really are – despite the lack of a "Player's Call" – and so they didn't end up seeing as much use as they probably should have. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that on average, Savage Worlds tricks are more powerful than their Torg counterparts – remember that a Shaken condition is just one step away from out of the fight for Extras.

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Advancement

Savage Worlds is a level-based (but not class-based) system. Characters get 1-3 experience points every adventure and "level up" every 5 experience points, at which point they can:

• Gain a new Edge.
• Increase a skill one die type that is equal to or greater than its linked attribute.
• Increase two skills by one die type as long as they are not higher than the linked attribute.
• Buy a new skill at d4.
• Increase one attribute by a die type (once per Rank only).

I assume the idea regarding skill increases is that skills below the level of the linked attribute should advance more quickly; however, the rules only accomplish this by giving the player a "two for one" deal – you can't increase an individual skill by two die types at once. This actually could force players to buy skill levels contrary to their character concepts and/or common sense – consider what would happen if every skill the player considered relevant were above the linked attribute save one. To raise that skill, the player would have to purchase a skill level in a less relevant skill as well.

In addition, every four levels, the character increases in Rank: Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary. Rank determines the Edges and Powers (see below) to which the character has access.

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Playtest: One player was satisfied with his character at 1st level, but I bumped the other two characters up to Seasoned characters. In play, I didn't notice a whole lot of difference in their degree of ability so much as the range of their abilities. And that points out my biggest problem with the game's advancement system: it's inherently limiting to character concepts. For example, one player wanted his character to be a sharpshooter, but the Marksman Edge isn't available until the character reaches Seasoned. In other words, there's no such thing as a first-level sniper. Considering how dependent the system is upon Edges to distinguish characters, I'm of the opinion that this method is simply too restrictive.

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