Hybridizing Dark Souls and D&D

[PunkManiak]

I’ve always wanted to get more involved in Tabletop gaming, and one thing I’ve always wanted to see, is if the feeling of the Dark Souls games could be recreated for the Tabletop more specifically for a D&D campaign. There are multiple hurdles to achieve this, however there are also multiple similarities already within the two games.

One of the big ones that occurred to me, was the combat system. Parrying, backstabs, and guardbreaks wouldn’t be easy to recreate for the D20 system from what I’ve seen. For those not aware each of these combat moves and actions lead to critical hits racking up massive damage. The glory of the system is that it relies heavily on the players’ skills, instead of random chance like a lot of RPGs, which would not be easy to replicate for Tabletop.

Another hurdle is the stat system which goes hand in hand with the game’s magic system. In someways this is a great similarity it has with D&D. When it’s applied to weapons however it creates something of a hurdle. The weapons in Dark Souls can rely on just about any stat for increasing damage, unlike D&D’s reliance on strength. One example would be my current build, which utilizes a Dex-Based Ultra Greatsword, a Dex-based dagger, and archery. The character is built as a pure damage character, with minimal investment in strength but pumped up Dexterity.

As far as the different magic systems relying on different stats goes, that’s a feature D&D already has. With different casting classes relying on Wisdom, Charisma, or Intelligence. This wouldn’t be unlike the different schools of magic in Dark Souls, such as a Miracles, Sorceries, Pyromancies and Hexes. One idea that would be interesting to see would be Pyromancy revamped as a Warlock style blaster class, utilizing Charisma as well. One of the trickier things to emulate would be Hexes, because they’re a cross between miracles and sorceries and having them rely on both Wisdom and Intelligence could lead to a level of MAD-ness that would be unappealing.

The single biggest hurdle in my eyes to hybridizing the two games, would be the feel, especially in D&D. One of the big points of the game is Dying and on a related note, Undeath and Hollowing. The world of Dark Souls is treacherous and deadly, and until you learn what to look out for, how to fight, and when to take a risk or not, you will die MANY times. In a Party focused game, having different party members dying again and again while trying to make it through a dangerous area could cause problems.

Another thought that occurred to me is potentially having it act more like co-op in the Souls games themselves. With the characters all reviving at a bonfire if they all die. However if a single PC makes it through the area, his allies will revive at the next bonfire he rests at. This would allow them to continue onward, but they’d miss out on XP and items as a result.

The biggest hurdle however might just be hollowing. In the games it’s largely a matter of whether or not you give up and give in. It’d be interesting to introduce a scale, something like Willpower or Spirit and the more and more often you die, the closer you come to hollowing and the more crazed and feral the PC would become. Possibly Frenzying when the scale hits 0. The problem would be whether or not to allow the Team to save their ally, or have the character die outright, having to be replaced by a new character.

Anyone else have any thoughts for such a project?

[Florian]

You take a somewhat wrong approach to it, especially since you already noticed that D&D is a fundamentally group-based game. You don't want the whole parry and dodge stuff, you'll want for some serious "combo building" as part of the core game experience.

[Uncle Pine]

D&D is just like Dark Souls, except with a few minor tweaks to it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoOC2y9s4VA)


One of the big ones that occurred to me, was the combat system. Parrying, backstabs, and guardbreaks wouldn’t be easy to recreate for the D20 system from what I’ve seen. For those not aware each of these combat moves and actions lead to critical hits racking up massive damage. The glory of the system is that it relies heavily on the players’ skills, instead of random chance like a lot of RPGs, which would not be easy to replicate for Tabletop.
D&D is a game where most actions are resolved by throwing dice arounds. Some characters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?131556-Nah-I-don-t-need-any-dice-3-5) may need to roll less dice than others, but in general players and DMs will need to roll to see if most of their actions go according to their plan. As a DM, I've critted to death my fair share of PCs and I can tell you that there's no skill involved in avoiding crits once you're in attack range. The "skill" factor is about weighing your odds and decide whether risking to get hit is a good idea or if there's a way to avoid getting hit altogether, be it by moving outside your opponents' movement+threath range or by disabling them with your actions. If you've ever played it, think about Fire Emblem or wargames in general. This is fundamentally different from what happens in Dark Souls, where as far as I know variance is only introduced to calculate damage.

In 3.5e, "parrying" is mostly handled as part of the AC system, with items such as the parrying dagger or parrying feats giving a flat AC bonus to a character using them. There's also the wall of blades maneuver, which allows you to use a to-hit roll against an attack instead of your AC, but as far as I know there are no other parrying mechanics and all of these rely on dice rolls. I'm not sure if the Parrying skill in Neverwinter Nights was actually part of 3.0e or they just made it up for the game, but even that was used as part of an opposed check against the opponent's to-hit.

In a way, spells remove most of the variables from the combat by just doing (or ending) things as they're cast, so one solution could be to just make everyone a spellcaster and then optimize from there. The higher you optimize, the less dice you will be forced to roll (your mileage may vary). I've been told Spheres of Power is a little "like giving spells to everyone, but done right" for PF, so you can look that way and see if they have made something for parrying or search the Homebrew section of this forum, where you'll likely find at least a few dozen people trying to make up a parrying system. At least one of them ought to have a rule such as "if you don't attack you can automatically parry a number of hits equal to your BAB/5 rounded up".


Another hurdle is the stat system which goes hand in hand with the game’s magic system. In someways this is a great similarity it has with D&D. When it’s applied to weapons however it creates something of a hurdle. The weapons in Dark Souls can rely on just about any stat for increasing damage, unlike D&D’s reliance on strength. One example would be my current build, which utilizes a Dex-Based Ultra Greatsword, a Dex-based dagger, and archery. The character is built as a pure damage character, with minimal investment in strength but pumped up Dexterity.
Speaking of making everyone a spellcaster, there is a 3rd party book somewhere introducing the "Lost Tradition Feat" which you can use to key your spellcasting to the ability score of your choice. Dex-based pyromancer with a katana and throwing dagger? Str-based hexer with a full blade? You've got them covered. Both the feat and the source it comes from are generally regarded as pure madness and I don't personally see the need of actually keying everything (or mostly everything) of a character to a single ability as long as the general character concept is concerved, but it seems to fit your criteria. Also check X stat to Y bonus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?125732-3-x-X-stat-to-Y-bonus).
Still, keep in mind that there are endless different ways to make anime dark souls-style characters that are perfectly functional without trying to have a given stat apply to everything said character cares about.


As far as the different magic systems relying on different stats goes, that’s a feature D&D already has. With different casting classes relying on Wisdom, Charisma, or Intelligence. This wouldn’t be unlike the different schools of magic in Dark Souls, such as a Miracles, Sorceries, Pyromancies and Hexes. One idea that would be interesting to see would be Pyromancy revamped as a Warlock style blaster class, utilizing Charisma as well. One of the trickier things to emulate would be Hexes, because they’re a cross between miracles and sorceries and having them rely on both Wisdom and Intelligence could lead to a level of MAD-ness that would be unappealing.
You seem to have this part covered. Keep in mind that it's entirely reasonable for any given category (sorceries, miracles, piromancies and hexes) to be split around in different schools or even lists. There are A LOT of spells in 3.5e so you should never have problems translating any given dark souls concept to it, especially considering most dark soul spells are "I throw this stuff which explodes".


The single biggest hurdle in my eyes to hybridizing the two games, would be the feel, especially in D&D. One of the big points of the game is Dying and on a related note, Undeath and Hollowing. The world of Dark Souls is treacherous and deadly, and until you learn what to look out for, how to fight, and when to take a risk or not, you will die MANY times. In a Party focused game, having different party members dying again and again while trying to make it through a dangerous area could cause problems.

Another thought that occurred to me is potentially having it act more like co-op in the Souls games themselves. With the characters all reviving at a bonfire if they all die. However if a single PC makes it through the area, his allies will revive at the next bonfire he rests at. This would allow them to continue onward, but they’d miss out on XP and items as a result.
Give every character something similar to the continual resurrection effect described here (http://web.archive.org/web/20090218080723/http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080428) as part of the Eternal Hero epic destiny, except they can only revive to bonfires and maybe they still lose the usual level whenever they die as per raise dead (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/raiseDead.htm). Hand out experience points, aka "souls", instead of gp so characters also have to craft their own magic items with it and use it as currency. Read Ghostwalk (a setting entirely based on everyone being horribly dead) and draw inspiration from there. Be unfair, be terribly unfair. "Oh, those Colossal kobolds in the graveyard? Yes, those are CR 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21713143&postcount=8)."
I'm not sure if I'd enjoy such an expressively and excessively punishing environment as a player, especially if I was forced to kill the same opponents over and over again, but as an optimizer I'd game the heck out of a setting like that!


The biggest hurdle however might just be hollowing. In the games it’s largely a matter of whether or not you give up and give in. It’d be interesting to introduce a scale, something like Willpower or Spirit and the more and more often you die, the closer you come to hollowing and the more crazed and feral the PC would become. Possibly Frenzying when the scale hits 0. The problem would be whether or not to allow the Team to save their ally, or have the character die outright, having to be replaced by a new character.
"Coming back from the dead is an ordeal. The subject of the spell loses one level (or 1 Hit Die) when it is raised, just as if it had lost a level or a Hit Die to an energy-draining creature. If the subject is 1st level, it loses 2 points of Constitution instead (if this would reduce its Con to 0 or less, it can’t be raised). This level/HD loss or Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any means."
The hardest part wouldn't be to find a way to punish players for failing, but to keep them interested and focused on the game. Dark Souls as a computer game has a comeback mechanism in the way that if you lose everything you can always go back to grind a few more souls and hop back on the cart, but having to kill the same skeleton mob from 4 levels ago five times in a row in a tabletop roleplaying game because Joe and Carmen got ganked is most likely NOT the way Mark and Wu would ever plan to spend their Saturday.

[Falontani]

I once created a homebrew parry/dodge system. Basically it requires the old facing rules (creatures are facing a specific direction)
During combat instead of straight up turns the group takes their turns, and once everyone has chosen what they will do, the combat all happens simultaneously. So if a melee decides to swing a weapon and the monster decided to take a 5 ft step back then the fighter missed regardless of his roll.
The second part was that during any attack action you could do one of 3 things. You could attempt to attack (normal, you swing and roll to hit) with the exception that you must choose a direction your swinging in your 5 ft square. You could swing in any of the 9 directions (from bottom left, to top right and everything in between), the swing direction only matters if the opponent attempts to dodge or attempts to parry. You could attempt to dodge (choosing one of the directions as normal) and if the opponent decides to attack you and their strike was high left then unless you dodge low right nothing happens, if you did dodge low right then they entirely miss. Finally you could attempt to parry, if you successfully parry then its like the sunder rules, except that if you win you take half damage and deal half your damage to them.

An example of the system at work: A drow elf ranger with two scimitars (yes completely intended) has a BAB of 6 and improved two weapon fighting. So on a full attack action he has 4 "attacks". He is engaging a barbarian with 6 bab and using a great axe. The barbarian has 2 attacks.

The Drow ranger chooses to dodge low right, parry left, attack low right, and attack high right.
The barbarian chooses to attack high to the left and then attack the left. since the drow ranger dodged low to the right the barbarian's first attack misses. Since the Drow ranger parried to the left and the barbarian attacked to the left then its opposing sunder rolls, the winner of which (obviously the barbarian here) deals full damage to the ranger, however if the ranger somehow managed to win (unlikely) then the ranger would still take 1/2 the damage the barbarian does and deal 1/2 damage that the ranger could do to the barbarian. And then since the barbarian is out of "attacks" the ranger would get two more attacks on the barbarian.

Other rules with this system (which is overly complex and should definitely be playtested/worked on if you want it to work seemlessly) is that you can set your shield to be constantly parrying a section based on your shield's size (a buckler/small shield is considered blocking one of the 9 areas, a large shield would be blocking 2 consecutive areas, while a tower shield would block 3 consecutive areas) for the duration of the round.
If the opponent takes a 5 foot step back then you would miss all your strikes unless you have reach or take a 5 foot step forward. But if you chose to take a 5 foot step forward and the opponent did not take a step back then you would be attempting to bull rush or grapple.

Honestly I'm only posting this "system" that I had come up with because I think it may assist; however I personally scrapped the whole idea before I got to the playtesting stage. So.... take from it what you will.
I hope this helps..

[Fizban]

Dark Souls is about the atmosphere, tone, etc, not the mechanics behind the numbers- they try to fix the numbers in 2, people hate it, they try to fix the numbers in 3 a different way, people still hate it, but it doesn't matter.

DnD is a slightly simulationist but mostly heroic fantasy set of rules. There are two main things it disagrees on: dex, as in giving all sorts of weapons including greatswords dex damage scaling (when DnD says dex is for ranged accuracy and dodginess), and secondly the stat scaling in general. Weapon damage in Dark Souls is so much more dependent on the weapon (and weapon size) it's laughable, while unlimited stat boosting in DnD eclipses the weapon damage almost immediately. But again, it doesn't matter, as long as you make the game feel like Dark Souls the differences in mechanics should be fine, as long as your players actually like DnD ('cause a whole bunch of people who talk about DnD 3.5 really don't seem to like it).

The Curse of Artaith (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?436134-The-Curse-of-Artaith-(a-3-5-Campaign-Journal)) campaign journal is a 3.5 "Dark Souls" game (probably still ongoing but I haven't caught up in a while), and it's pretty dang good. The DM eventually supplies their full "humanity" rules, but the main penalty for death for most of the game is the players knowing that something bad will happen if they run out, followed by fights they don't want to lose even if they will respawn.


As for parrying, it's not the parry that's important. The riposte, the backstab, running them through for massive damage- that's what people like, the parry is just the means to the end (or demonstration of mastery over PvE). 3.5 has feinting and sneak attack, and the value of feinting also increases dramatically if people actually fight defensively or use Combat Expertise. A feat line that lets you get crit multipliers on the attack after feinting lets non-SA characters get in on it.

[PrismCat21]

I came to link the Curse of Artaith campaign journal by Curious Puzzle, but Fizban beat me to it. It seems to be just what you're looking for.
For Dex based weapons, the Tome of Battle has an option to add Dex to damage, the feat Shadowblade.
the feat Zen archery replaces Dex with Wis for the attack roll on ranged attacks.
There are others out there of course, but you could always just homebrew a feat the uses a different stat for attack/damage for that individual character.

Start reading the campaign journal, it'll help you out a lot. If you have any questions you can ask them in the thread, Curiouspuzzle will answer you.
The campaign is nearing its end I think, after 2.5 years playing it. (Holy crap! I've been reading a long time...) So there's plenty of ideas and examples to pull from. :smallbiggrin:

[Uncle Pine]

The Curse of Artaith (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?436134-The-Curse-of-Artaith-(a-3-5-Campaign-Journal)) campaign journal is a 3.5 "Dark Souls" game (probably still ongoing but I haven't caught up in a while), and it's pretty dang good. The DM eventually supplies their full "humanity" rules, but the main penalty for death for most of the game is the players knowing that something bad will happen if they run out, followed by fights they don't want to lose even if they will respawn.

Thanks for the link, I've started reading the campaign journal yesterday and it's really amazing! :smallbiggrin:

[VisitingDaGulag]

they try to fix the numbers in 2, people hate it, they try to fix the numbers in 3 a different way, people still hate it, but it doesn't matter.People like 3. They don't think it's perfect, but they still like it. 1 might be better, but there are definitely things that 3 does so much better than it makes 1 feel 'clunky'. This is progress.