A Wuxia-Themed Hybrid: Is it Possible?

[Erasmas]

Okay, without getting too far into the details, I am going to be running an Asian-themed campaign in the near-ish future (about a year away). And one of the things that I really want to try and incorporate is faster-paced wuxia/kung-fu styled combat. There is a game that has a system for doing this that I really, really like... but I will be running this as a 5th edition game. What I'm looking for is a way to combine the two combat systems, if at all possible. I know it would require a lot of give-and-take, but I feel confident that it is possible. Thus, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea just yet.

Now, I don't want the focus of this thread to become a bunch of "why" type discussions. I would rather focus on the "how", if you please. If anyone is interested in helping me make this a reality, here is a link to the other game system, called Rivers and Lakes (http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/ben-wright/rivers-and-lakes/ebook/product-17387884.html). It is a free PDF download that I found via another poster here on the Playground. If you end up taking a look... I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts on this!

Thanks in advance.

[Notafish]

This is an interesting-looking system! I'd like to try it sometime. I see several obstacles to combining Rivers and Lakes with 5e. The two biggest, I think, are classes and magic. It looks like both of these are treated primarily as flavor in the Rivers and Lakes system, while there are clear mechanical implications for those concepts in D&D. I have some ideas about how these might be reconciled, but first I want to take a shot at describing the R/L combat system in a D&D setting.

I might calculate the number of dice in a player's dice pool this way, since it seems similar to the calculations used in Rivers and Lakes:
[Proficiency]+[Dex or Str bonus, whichever is higher]+1
(failure is the only risk level here, since I think that I would use hp loss to determine injury or death)

To make weapon choice relevant, you could roll damage on a hit (roll more or retain initiative with extra attack/valid sneak attack/monk damage?) and use D&D-style hitpoints instead of tally marks, but this would slow combat down. In my imagination, a successful hit with rolls for damage would lead to automatically passing the initiative. Not having used the Rivers and Lakes system, I'm not sure if this would be fun or break the flow of the game. My guess is that it would depend on the group. Personally, I think that hitting for massive damage is fun, so I might try something like this in a play test at any rate. I bet that damage would scale differently as well, so I'd get ready to fudge hp for a lot of monsters.

To make player AC relevant, I think I would also give players a number of poker chips equal to their AC-10. during combat, these could be spent as if they were dice showing "1" to block attacks (only blocking; no reversing or intercepting).

Initiative would need to be rolled on a d20, because otherwise this would feel nothing like D&D.



Some class features might be fairly easy to translate (for example, I think Extra Attack would be pretty easy to adapt; the fluffier features like Favored Enemy would not be an issue), but there are others that might be difficult to translate, especially those that rely on bonus actions, reactions, or advantage. There would be a good deal of homebrew here I think, and some classes would become much less appealing from an optimization standpoint, but I have no idea which ones. Because of this, if I were to try to do something like this with my group, I'd want to make sure I had buy-in from them first (some players in my group are a little on the power-gamey side).


For the most part, I think that magic would work OK in combat, provided you are counting hp and not tallying hits. I think casting any spell would count as a side action, but would also expend the spell slot and pass initiative automatically. However, I think that spells that would normally be "spell attacks" would have to be reframed as save rolls, since my rules don't give monsters any AC. I'd play damaging cantrips as weapon attacks: simple or stunty attacks until you can roll damage.
Like with classes, I bet there would be quite a few spells that would need... creative interpretation



As I was writing this response, I realized that bonus actions and reactions might be able to be implemented as free actions -- you get one bonus action option and one reaction option per dice pool. Advantage, unfortunately, seems like it would be difficult to implement in a satisfying way. On a related note, I think these rules that I'm making up here would make the rogue either the worst combat character or the best combat character, depending on how often you allow sneak attacks.

I'm not sure if this is what you wanted, but I had fun theorizing about this.
Good luck!

[Erasmas]

Thank you very much for taking the time to take a look at the system and theorizing some ideas here, Not-a-Fish!

I am certainly going to mull over what you have said and see if I can't work some of that in. Rivers and Lakes is a really fun system that does an excellent job of capturing that rapid-fire cinematic flare of wuxia and kung fu movies. I haven't done anything more than one-shot games with it, so I don't know how it would hold up with longterm play. But, I highly recommend that you give it a try!

One of the things that I had already decided that I want to try to do is to form the dice pools out of two ability modifiers combined. I am taking a page from Legend of the Five Rings and having my various clans be based on different animals, which also have an animal-based kung fu as their particular martial art. For example, the Tiger clan will teach Tiger Talon Style... which would use Strength and Charisma. Adversely, the Mantis clan will teach Praying Mantis Style... which would use Dexterity and Intelligence.

The prevailing thought is that I could always have an enemy square off in an "obvious martial arts" stance (any time that I want combat to go that way) and have it be like a gauntlet being thrown down... where, if you accept, you will only use your kung fu. To do otherwise would risk damaging your Honor (a separate system that will be in place). In this scenario, those involved in the 'duel' would then play out their combat via the rules more like they are presented in R&L. While this seems like the "cleanest" way to incorporate it, I'm not entirely sold on the idea. I don't want to force everyone to have a martial art... it doesn't mix magic into it... or weapons... or class abilities... on and on and on. And I think the transition would be too jarring and would take something away from the immersion. That's why I brought it up here, so that I could get more than one mind working on ways to play Tetris with this thing until I can get it to fit snugly together.

So, again, thanks a million for taking a look at it!

[Notafish]

From an aesthetic point of view, I like the idea of relating abilities, backgrounds, and dice pools. If you were playing with D&D classes, I don't think you'd find too many Mantis clerics, though. :smallsmile: I do think that having brief rule system interludes can work, but I think that they work best if the rules are simple and if the encounter is both brief and story-driven Not exactly an rpg example, but in the Western-themed card game Bang, the dueling rules are different from the normal rules for attacking and defending, and it fits in the game very well.

That said, I had another idea, which might be a way to incorporate a less predictable initiative-switching system while preserving all (or most) of the 5e rules and features. If you use the "Side Initiative" rule in the DMG (page 270), initiative is just rolled for groups, rather than individuals (usually, just two groups: the PCs and whoever they're fighting). Normally, one side goes, then the other side goes, which the guide says can save time and allow for more coordinated attacks. However, I think a houserule that allows a character or monster to use its reaction to switch initiative after it is missed by an attack could lead to a more dynamic (possibly more cinematic) back-and forth between the sides. You'd need a way for tracking which parts of a turn had been used by each character/monster -- I'd use playing cards labeled "move","action"(extra attacks could be represented by tokens), "reaction", and "bonus action" -- that way, players aren't shortchanged on their turns when they are interrupted by a reaction.

[Erasmas]

Yeah. You would end up with certain clans were clerics were more prevalent, to use that same example. But, to me, I like that because it starts to outline some flavor elements about the differing clans. It brings forward interesting questions such as: Why are there so few clerics among the Mantis? What sets those that do become clerics among them apart from others from their clan; from other clerics? Thinking about the answers to these kinds of questions, it shapes things about how that clan fits into the scope of the setting. Each of the PCs will be from either one of two clans - the Crane or the Ram. These clans have an uneasy truce that has formed somewhat recently, with an impending marital union between two of their members.

And yes, I know exactly what you're talking about with the system switch; I've played Bang on several occasions. It's a great game! So, yes... simply hopping into a "martial arts time" moment could work - and it kinda plays off of that point in every wuxia movie where the two fighters take their stances and square off, just before the battle begins. We shall see if that will work.

The side initiative thing is something that I hadn't read about yet in the books, but I use that for running my games here on the Playground. The only real downside that I have notices is that it has the potential to swing the tide of a battle dramatically - as all of the damage occurs at once with no reaction between the sources of it. So, inserting the ability to reverse/interrupt/etc (as you can in R&L) very well could help to smooth out that little wrinkle! Another great idea to think over for this.

Thanks again!