Hello,
I’ve been thinking about Hankerin’s key mechanic video on the 3 Ds - Damage, Disruption, and Duration. It’s got me thinking especially about disruption. I’m trying to think of more ways to spice up encounters as far as disruption goes. I’m trying to think of disruptions that don’t increase damage to players, but make their fight harder.
Effects can be caused by the enemy or monster themself, the environment or terrain, or objects.
A high disruption encounter will likely mix multiple types of disruption. Even a single disruption can be very effective.
Key Disruptors:
Line of sight - Darkness magical or regular, smoke, Walls of stone, wood, earth, fire, wind, ice.
Crowd Control - Sleep, Stun, Fear, Petrification, Confusion.
Nullification - Anti magic or anti healing zones, fields, or cones. Spell absorption.
Movement inhibitors - Difficult terrain, Elevation, snaring, slowing, roots, freezing in place, time slowing fields.
Forced movement - Quakes, Slick or icy floor, listing ship deck, magnetism and reversing polarity to throw iron clad, wind, moving floor or ground.
Terrain Danger - Cliffsides, Drowning, Freezing water, Lava. Anything in the environment that can kill you but doesn’t deal damage outright. Mixed with forced movement is especially deadly.
Party Split - Teleporting out or separating a party member or portion of the party. Hank’s idea where “a pc is teleported to another place and has to kill a totem alone to get back go the main fight”. Anything that splits the party.
Initiative Disruption - bumping turn orders, rerolling initiative, legendary actions (monsters imposing more actions in the round off turn) @James_Horn came up with this one
Communication Disruption - Anything that will prevent a party’s ability to discuss tactics or communicate. DC will increase, or an enemies senses will be heightened. Must rely on hand gestures or psi.
@Lon came up with this one
Increasing DC - The DC increases every round, or the DC is very high causing most tasks to be difficult.
@James_Horn came up with this one
Attribute Disruption - Any disruption to rolls and modifiers. Lowering or scrambling a characters Attributes. Make successes failures and make failures successes.
@James_Horn came up with this one
Target Disruption - Disrupting the ability for a party to focus down a single enemy. Make damage redirected to a different enemy or even an ally. Spirit links and empathy. Make damage split and be shared by all enemies with shared health.
@James_Horn came up with this one
Identity Disruption - Effects that make characters turn on each other, Charm, Mind Control.
@Paxx came up with this one
Loot / Gear Disruption - Disarming players, destroying weapons, armor, and supplies. Rust monsters, Armor rending, shattered swords, thieving creatures who steal your stuff.
@Andreas @Paxx came up with this one
Immunities and Resistances - Giving monsters immunities and resistances. Passive buffs enemies have or objects nearby that must be destroyed first. Protective wards, totems, Barriers and shields.
@Andreas came up with this one
Activate-able Disruption - Neutral elements of the setting that can become problems if the players interact the wrong way. Innocent bystanders in the fray. Waking a sleeping or docile enemy.
@bleaquehaus came up with this one
Anything to add?
Happy disrupting.
