Morale rules

[Tavis]

Starting a new thread to preserve the awesome purity of intent of the Appendix N one!

I am 1000% in favor of morale for monsters. I like the way it makes the outcome of combat unpredictable and leads to all kinds of decision points and types of action that wouldn’t come up if I followed my own lead in running a combat instead of the dice’s. I enjoy how morale makes me figure things out like the monsters have surrendered, what information will they give up when interrogated, and gives the players choices like do we pursue our fleeing foes into the unknown, or fortify our position here in case they come back with reinforcements?

I think Moldvay's Red Box morale rules do everything I'd want out of such a system:
- Explicitly optional; if you decide you want a monster to fight to the death you're not breaking the rules
- Simple guidelines for deciding when to make a morale check, easy to remember and also to use as a basis for adding others. (The one thing Moldvay could use IMO is guidelines for solos; his work only for groups.)
- Very simple resolution for the check: look up a number, roll against it. Most rolls have no modifiers to add or calculations to perform, and it's easy to add your own modifiers and gauge what kind of effect they'll have

I also think morale checks for PCs would be very cool. Getting back to fictional sources again, it'd be cool to have paladins get abilities that let them rally a demoralized group of allies. And while I can see the argument that failing morale and being forced to run away deprives players of choice, in my experience many groups fail to see retreat as a choice due to their pride or overconfidence. Having the dice say "it's OK to run away now" might (as with monster morale) lead to a wider and more fun range of events in play, and the choice could become "do we run when we fail a morale check, spend some resource (like a remove fear spell) to keep fighting without penalty, or accept a penalty for demoralization and fight on regardless?"

[goodmangames]

Cool. Good feedback Tavis - thanks. In keeping with the rules being stripped-down 3E, I was thinking about basing morale checks around a Will save. Not sure yet what the DC would be but they would be simple: first blood = DC X, 50% of allies killed or hp lost = DC Y, etc. Make a Will save and try to get above it - at least if you're a monster or retainer. I'm not sure on PC morale checks...that's a "big stick" so to speak...but maybe I'll give it a try and see what comes out in play.

Morale for solo foes...I could see "first blood" and a "50% hp lost" threshold...what other ones should there be?

[Mike_Ferguson]

Just to throw another idea into the mix, I would think there would be some solo monsters that just don't have or need morale throws. Either because they're badass (like dragons and giants) and can't conceive of losing a battle to mere mortals, or because they're too dumb to run (ogres, I'm looking at you).

Also, if flunky monsters like goblins or orcs get paired with a truly badass solo, they should just get a flat bonus to all morale checks. Goblin soldiers wouldn't run so easily if they've got an ogre chieftain leading them into battle!

I wouldn't bother with a PC morale check at all. No player likes to be told they have to run just because a die roll says so. I can just picture that argument at my gaming table: "You failed your morale check". "Eff that, I'm not running."

[Rick Maffei]

Many excellent points raised.

Morale levels might be increased by

• * personal strength/might (echoing what Mike says about solos)
  * leader presence
  * strength in numbers
  * charm or magical influence

The first two basically work together, as a gnoll chieftain might have a higher morale level and also increase the morale of his soldiers.

As mentioned, the 50% hp/allies threshold sounds like a reasonable time for a check. The death of a leader might be another. I'm not sure about first blood. (In real life being struck could well cause an immediate "morale check" but in game terms ending a combat seconds after it begins seems anticlimactic.)

I'm also against PC morale checks. Tavis raises good points, but a really bad roll causing a PC to run from an easy fight will only irk the player. If the game/combat is deadly enough (as things were in the 1e days), even 4e-style players will soon understand they must occasionally run or they might well perish. But the decision to take the risk should be left to the player.
There might however be outstanding circumstances in which PC morale must be checked—demon lords, greater giants, demon or devil lords, and the like. These beings might possess a quality similar to the Frightful Presence possessed by dragons in 3e.

[Mike_Ferguson]

In thinking about it this weekend, I would also add the following:

If a monster's hit dice is a certain number above the character's average level (say 3?), then again, there's a flat bonus to the moral check for the monsters. It's just a reduced concept of what I mentioned before - a 5 HD troll, for example, is just not going to believe that a group of 2nd level characters would be able to kill him. Whereas a group of 2 HD bugbears would be more intimidated.

[Tavis]

basing morale checks around a Will save. Not sure yet what the DC would be but they would be simple: first blood = DC X, 50% of allies killed or hp lost = DC Y, etc.

The advantage of a Will save is that it interacts well with the rest of the system - e.g. if you can hit a monster with an effect that lowers Will, it becomes easier to make it rout. (Not all these interactions always make sense - raising a monster's Wisdom makes it more likely to fight to the death - but IMO that's not a big problem).

The disadvantage is that Will saves scale with level, which is tricky. In Red Box, the target number is static: orcs run away if they roll 8 or more on 2d6. If you have a static DC, then low-level monsters will always flee and high-level ones never will.

You could base the DC on the party's level - addressing Mike's point that a high-level monster won't find low-level characters a threat. However:
- that's two lookups (one to see what the target DC is, one to see what the monster's Will save is) plus a roll that always involves a calculation (d20 + Will bonus), all of which is a lot more complicated than my beloved "look up the monster's morale score, roll that or under on 2d6"
- the triggers for the morale check already handle the issue of whether the party is a threat: that group of trolls doesn't know whether the party is second level or seventh, they just know that they've killed one of their brethren. (For this reason I think "first blood" is not a good trigger.)

My personal sense is that the advantages of interaction with other Will save mechanics are not worth the disadvantages of added complexity. I think it'd be best to just say, for example, "you fail a morale check if you roll 14 or more on a d20", with a brief table of modifiers for circumstances (e.g. check at -2 if your leader was killed, +2 if you outnumber the enemy, etc.) You could also give individual monsters a morale bonus or penalty - which could reflect whether it has an unusually high or low Will save.

In any case I don't think it makes sense for the check to be X under this circumstance and Y under this one - that makes the scaling by hit dice extra difficult, and it's a lot easier to handle if, after you figure out what the roll needs to be on the first morale check (e.g. first kill), you can use the same roll again on the next one (e.g. 50% casualties).

I'm not sure on PC morale checks...that's a "big stick" so to speak...but maybe I'll give it a try and see what comes out in play.

Yeah, this is a pet idea of mine. I think morale for monsters is essential to "old-school feel", while most old-school games do not use morale for PCs (although I think you would if you went right from Chainmail to OD&D).

The "frightful presence" idea would achieve a lot of the kind of heroics that I'd want PC morale to do - where you can rally your frightened allies, etc.

The only drawback with this is that monsters with a fear aura generally aren't encountered until higher levels (IIRC the hyena with a retractable skull-face howl was added to 3E to create a fear-causing monster for the level at which paladins become immune to fear). Note that the triggers for a morale check would generally start with the point at which one of your allies is killed - which is a good time to think about running away that scales with your party level.

I also think that, in considering this idea, it's best to think of the consequences of a failed PC morale check not being a forced run-away (which a fear aura might cause) but instead a penalty that still allows the PCs to fight on but weights the choice toward fleeing.

Morale for solo foes...I could see "first blood" and a "50% hp lost" threshold...what other ones should there be?

I think I'd just go with half hit points. One of the nice things about morale IMO is that it's easy for DMs to add their own - maybe the best benefit is teaching DMs to reach for the dice to make a decision whenever the circumstances seem like the monster might perceive the situation is hopeless.

EDIT: The concern about numbers scaling is less substantial if the highest level NPC has a Will save of +3 vs. a zero-level's +0! It's easy to forget how many potential concerns are addressed by a sharply limited level range.

[goodmangames]

Too much math! There will be 1, maybe 2 morale checks per combat, so it should be a very simple system - no math, no lookups, easy to remember. I don't want to include another monster stat, especially for something that isn't used frequently. It's gotta run off the existing stats.

Another option is to use hit dice. One idea: roll 1d20 + monster's HD. For groups, add total group HD. Flee on 10 or less. Large groups and high-HD monsters effectively never flee. But if your 2nd morale check happens after half the group is killed, the modifier is lower.

Alternately, the DC for the check could be 10 + number of PCs. So a party of 6 PCs is a DC 16 morale test. Strength in numbers! And now the retainers actually matter. Monsters score 16 or less and they fail the morale check. Hmm, 16 is a high number, so maybe it's 5 + number of PCs.

In this case the Will save remains purely a "magic save" and avoids the issues Tavis raised.

I'd say the check criteria should be similar to Red Book: first death and half of party killed. And "other" as Moldvay hints at; we could include some examples ("death of leader, powerful magic, etc.").

[Harley Stroh]

The disadvantage is that Will saves scale with level, which is tricky. In Red Box, the target number is static: orcs run away if they roll 8 or more on 2d6. If you have a static DC, then low-level monsters will always flee and high-level ones never will.

But a panicked rout (i.e. failed morale check) is 100% different from an intelligent monster deciding to withdraw. Asmodeus can back out of combat whenever he wants --- supremely confident, he almost never panics and fails his Will save. A tide of scrambling goblins flipping out when their shaman gets dropped by the elf's crit arrow is entirely different.

I think I like the unpredictability a morale mechanic would add to combat.

FWIW, I'm against asking PCs to make morale checks. Hirelings, though, should drop torch and run as soon as the first PC kicks it.

//H