Sunday, January 31, 2021

Ironsworn - Handling Combat with Multiple Foes

Ironsworn is a table top role playing game that takes heavy inspiration from the family of games known as Powered by the Apocalypse. Compared to more well known games, like Dungeons and Dragons, these games are based on simpler, more abstract game mechanics with the intent of allowing more narrative freedom, and allowing narrative decisions to be the primary driving factor of the game.

Combat is one example of where Ironsworn's mechanics are more abstract than other games. Many table top games use hit points to determine who wins a combat. When someone has zero hit points, they die, and combat is over. In Ironsworn, only the player characters have hit points, which are called "health". Combat with an enemy is instead modeled using what's known as a progress track.

A progress track is ten boxes. As combat proceeds, you fill in the boxes of the progress track when you successfully hit your enemy. A progress track during combat could look something like this.

To end combat, you make what is known as a progress roll. You roll two d10s, or ten-sided dice, and compare each of them to the number of fully filled boxes. In the above image, there are six boxes that have been fully filled, so this track has six progress. If both d10s are less than your progress, that is known as a strong hit. If only one d10 is less than your progress, that's called a weak hit. If neither d10 is less than your progress, that's a miss. This is known as the End the Fight move, and it has the following outcomes.

On a strong hit, this foe is no longer in the fight. They are killed, out of action, flee, or surrender as appropriate to the situation and your intent (Ask the Oracle if unsure).

On a weak hit, as above, but you must also choose one.

  • It’s worse than you thought: Endure Harm.
  • You are overcome: Endure Stress.
  • Your victory is short-lived: A new danger or foe appears, or an existing danger worsens.
  • You suffer collateral damage: Something of value is lost or broken, or someone important must pay the cost.
  • You’ll pay for it: An objective falls out of reach.
  • Others won’t forget: You are marked for vengeance.

On a miss, you have lost this fight. Pay the Price.

To summarize, on a strong or weak hit, you win, on a miss, you lose.

This is all very straight forward when the combat is effectively one-on-one. When you roll your dice to end the fight, the fight is over one way or another. But combat isn't always so simple. What happens when you have more than one player character, and more than one enemy?

Let's say our two player characters, Alice and Bob, are fighting two bad guys, Xena and Yondu. When there are multiple enemies, you can assign each enemy a progress track. This results in one combat with two progress tracks. We'll fast forward through the combat to where both Xena's and Yondu's progress tracks are somewhat full, and Alice tries to end the fight with Xena.

Alice will roll her progress move, and the result will be a strong hit, weak hit or miss. On a strong hit or weak hit, the outcome is fairly straight forward, "this foe is no longer in the fight." Xena is incapacitated in some way, and the fight continues with Alice and Bob versus Yondu.

But what happens if Alice rolls a miss? The rules say, "On a miss, you have lost this fight." Who is "you" and what exactly does "this fight" mean? Does that mean Alice is out of the fight and the fight continues with Bob vs. Xena and Yondu? Does Bob then get a second chance to end the fight against Xena? Fortunately, Shawn Tomkin, the author of Ironsworn, has answered this on Twitter.

What this means is that the only thing the progress roll concretely determines is Xena's ultimate fate in this fight. If Alice rolls a miss, it means Xena must escape from this fight victorious in some manner. All options are on the table with respect to what happens to Alice in this moment. Also, it's possible for combat to continue, and either Alice or Bob can eventually try to end the fight with Yondu, as well.

In many of my conversations discussing this problem, many people suggest grouping the multiple enemies together and representing them with one progress track. Ironsworn explicitly allows this, and calls this a pack of enemies. This will often be the right thing to do at the table, but all it does is side step the issue of dealing with multiple progress tracks in a single combat. Since Ironsworn allows for the possibility of multiple progress tracks, it's important to explore and understand fully how that will work, even if it's rarely encountered in the game.