Blitz Chess

[Catullus64]

For a series of 5th-Level oneshots I run at a local restaurant, I'm planning a dungeon entirely themed around classic board and card games. What I need is help balancing the final challenge, the chess room.

My current idea is to run it as a combat, where the player characters roll initiative and take moves as normal, while the opposing side, a full board of giant animated chessmen, takes one turn for each turn the players take, and can move any piece, as per actual chess. The player characters can move and act normally; The enemy pieces would be restricted to moving and attacking according to the rules of chess. the squares on the board are 5x5 feet.

With all these design decisions already given, how should I balance the enemy pieces? Should they do significantly high damage to compensate for their predictable moveset? Should they automatically hit anyone in their targeted square, or should they have to make attack rolls and offer saving throws? Likewise, should the pieces have defenses, AC and HP and such, or should the PC attacks be enough to automatically destroy them, like a chess capture? And finally, should victory be solely dependent on taking out the king, or should I leave things more open to some kind of lateral solution?

(P.S: While I ask mostly for suggestions around the chess segment, since it's probably the most involved, I would appreciate any suggestions for cool stuff to do with other segments, which are Go, Mancala, Snakes and Ladders, french-suit playing cards, and AD&D.)

[nickl_2000]

For a series of 5th-Level oneshots I run at a local restaurant, I'm planning a dungeon entirely themed around classic board and card games. What I need is help balancing the final challenge, the chess room.

My current idea is to run it as a combat, where the player characters roll initiative and take moves as normal, while the opposing side, a full board of giant animated chessmen, takes one turn for each turn the players take, and can move any piece, as per actual chess. The player characters can move and act normally; The enemy pieces would be restricted to moving and attacking according to the rules of chess. the squares on the board are 5x5 feet.

With all these design decisions already given, how should I balance the enemy pieces? Should they do significantly high damage to compensate for their predictable moveset? Should they automatically hit anyone in their targeted square, or should they have to make attack rolls and offer saving throws? Likewise, should the pieces have defenses, AC and HP and such, or should the PC attacks be enough to automatically destroy them, like a chess capture? And finally, should victory be solely dependent on taking out the king, or should I leave things more open to some kind of lateral solution?

(P.S: While I ask mostly for suggestions around the chess segment, since it's probably the most involved, I would appreciate any suggestions for cool stuff to do with other segments, which are Go, Mancala, Snakes and Ladders, french-suit playing cards, and AD&D.)

First things first. You need a candy land one shot, and after you make it I want a PDF version of it so that I can play it with my kids. After all, you already have NPC and bad guys created for the game.



As for chess, I wouldn't plan on your players actually playing chess where there is a way to completely ruin your plans. I may actually look at a chess board as a trap scenario verses actual combat though. Only put certain pieces out on the board and have those pieces threatening squares on the map. If the PC steps into a square that is in the path of a correct movement for one of the pieces on the board/map then the players take damage from the piece moving into them (save for half. Knight does physical damage: dex save, Bishop radiant: charisma save, Queen cold: con save, etc). Then they are knocked off the square they are on whether they fail the save or not.

The way they win is to checkmate the king by threatening his square and all squares he can move into. The king also actively moves away from checks to avoid being killed.

[Wilko]

I've seen a similar idea done ( Skip to about 1:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MKE78FweGA) in that case they were playing on a chess board, against both chess men and other creatures (In this case spiders) and were considered chess pieces by the board so if they moved it was considered a move by the opposing chess pieces, triggering a move in response, however they could also forgo their movement to move a chess piece on THEIR side, which would attack anyone in the location it moved to as per a taking move in chess, instantly killing other chess pieces but just attacking anything else.
I liked the extra tactical dimension that you had these "Extra weapons" in the form of your chess pieces but using them invited an attack in response.

I feel like in your case allowing your players to move wherever they like while the chess pieces must follow the rules will allow clever players to nullify their opponents, i would say that something which designates them as particular pieces and enforces the movement rules would be better, they could still have an advantage to keep it from just being a game of chess, for example if they make a legal chess move as their movement which would "take" an opposing piece then that piece moves off the board, taking no more part in the battle, but still leaving them their action...

I would say taking out the king should be an auto win but give him quite high AC and HP to encourage them to try and take him with a legit chess move.

[Keravath]

You could have a situation where the players have to fight their way across the board and defeat the king.

Both the players and the chess board take turns moving. The players can move one square in any direction (as if they were all kings). The chess board is constrained to chess piece movement. If a player moves into a threatened square then a 1 vs 1 battle ensues between the player and the chess piece. If the player is defeated they are removed from the board and the chess piece takes their place (you decide what you want to happen to the player - imprisoned, captured, making death saves, perhaps even dominated and returned to the board on the other side if a chess board pawn reaches the end row?). If the chess piece is defeated it is removed from the board. This makes it a combination trap/combat.

The strategy would be to find the easiest fights allowing the players to corner and defeat the opposing king.