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View Full Version : [3.5] Group movement, psych warfare?



Choco
2009-04-30, 03:09 PM
Basically I would like y'alls opinion on some house rules I have made regarding common issues in my games (sorry for the long opener BTW..):

Group/formation movement during combat - To sum up what the issue here is, the group I am currently a player in had the following encounter a few sessions back:

We came across a very organized group of Gnolls that were obviously part of a military. Skipping over the long and boring setup, everyone hid in various locations, my Sorcerer initiated the combat by throwing an alchemists fire at them, and then the fighter came out into plain sight down the road shouting insults and challenges at them. That was it for our surprise round, then combat officially began. The cleric was hidden behind a building directly on the Gnolls' path to the fighter, and had readied an action to cast some AOE stun spell at them as the group charges past (forgot what it was).

Neither me nor the DM could find anything in the rules regarding group/formation movement in a normal combat encounter, so he fiated on the spot that those who charged the fighter (bout 2/3 of them) did so in a group, moved them to the same slot on initiative order, and allowed the cleric the AOE attack. This does make sense, since technically everyone's turn in a 6 second combat round is happening at the same time, only difference being who reacts the fastest.

This becoming an issue in my game, I houseruled that a group can move in formation by setting them all to the average initiative of the group while keeping them in the same order they were in before the merge (in relation only to others in the group of course). They make their one formation move, then they can each attack in that order. If they want to move in formation again, they are conveniently at the same initiative already provided no one readied actions or otherwise moved in the initiative order (and even if they did, they could just be set back with the rest of the group). In addition, if any of them break away from the formation then the stragglers need to spend 1 combat round getting back into it before they can move with that group again. Of course this needs some major fleshing out, so any help/advice would be appreciated.

Psych warfare - Basically a general houserule taking care of certain psychological effects of various actions that are not considered in the rules, yet me and my players agree should be somehow dealt with, such as:

1. Coming around the corner and taking a few surprise arrows from the hidden archers that had their bows readied. Even a heroic person would be very much shaken by that, and likely not be able to react the very next second.

2. Using the Prestidigidation to make yourself look more intimidating (demonic sounding voice, pitch black eyes, intimidating skin color patterns, etc.). On it's own it is just fluff, but combine that with a sudden and violent battlefield entrance, and you got one scary scene.

etc.

My basic idea is to either make an intimidate check with some bonus applied or roll a will save of some DC fitting the situation (defaults to 10 and adds the "Gm's best friend" +/- 2 modifiers maybe?) and depending on how much the save was failed by, there would be a different effect (cowering for horrible saves and natural 1's, shaken, etc.)

K that's bout it, just would like some advice/thoughts on my ideas there. They are nowhere near fully fleshed out yet, but I think they would be useful in my game as I have a particularly creative group of players that try things like that all the time and I would like to reward them for it (and use it against them of course :smallwink:).