Making Cairn Combat Better

The Rules

On each character's turn, they get two actions, but only one of which can be used to attack or take a similar action (push, disarm, trip, etc.). A PC can forgo their second action to guarantee they go before their opponents (ignoring the DEX save).

Combat takes place in zones. Zones are approximately 40' areas. Moving between zones is an action, but moving within a zone is free and can be done at any point. A blast hits all creatures in a zone (or a number of creatures equal to the damage roll). You can use melee weapons to hit anything in your current zone. Ranged weapons can hit up to one zone away.

When a creature is hit in melee combat, it becomes in engaged with the creature that hit it. While engaged ranged weapons cannot be used, and if an engaged creature attempts to flee, all enemies engaged with it can attack it for free. A creature can disengage as an action to escape an engagement.

As an action, a PC can take a defensive action (block, dodge, or parry). If they take a defensive action and are attacked, they gain fatigue (but gain no fatigue if they are not attacked).

• Block - Attacks against you are impaired. You need a shield to do this.
• Dodge - When attacked, roll a d8, subtract your armor, then reduce your damage taken by the result. If the damage s reduced to 0, you are disengaged for free.
• Parry - When attacked, roll your weapon's damage and if it's greater than your opponent's damage, deal damage equal to your roll to their STR. If its lesser, take their damage directly to your STR. Neither of these hits trigger a critical damage save. If equal, nothing happens.

Everything else is Cairn as written.

The Explanation

I'm trying something out here, giving you the rules first and the reason for the rules second.

Anyways: Cairn's combat isn't the best. That's not a complaint, it's not trying to be good. I however, prefer my combat to be a bit more tactical. This is the goal of Block, Dodge, Parry, but I have some issues with BDP's implementation.

Quick and full turns are better represented by two actions (in my opinion) and I prefer zones to vague range bands, though that one is entirely personal taste, and I think engagements are necessary to allow the fighters to actually protect their squishier comrades in the back line, but what about the eponymous block, dodge, and parry.

Blocking and dodging in BDP work the same, they grant two weapon speeds (balanced and either fast or slow) impaired. Frankly, this has always felt really weird to me. For one its a punishment for using the middle tier of weapons, with none of the narrative bonuses of a fast weapon (ie: easy to hide) but none of the mechanical benefits of a big two hander. Yes you get a shield, but you can do the same with a dagger.

BDP attempts to fix this with the weapon clash system. I think it's a good system, though I wonder how useable it is at the table, but I applaud the implementation. A balanced weapon is equally likely to be the first to hit as it is to be the last to hit. That's useful, being average is often good.

But it doens't change that blocking and dodging are binary choices in BDP. Either blocking does the thing, or it doesn't. That's dull.

In my attempts at changing it, I wanted blocking, dodging, and parrying to hit different niches. Dodging is better than blocking, but only if you are unarmored, and blocking requires a shield (or a weapon capable of blocking). Parrying prefers big weapons (or a parrying dagger) but comes with high risk and reward. And that's ignoring passive defense in armor. Is it better? I don't know! It's not tested! Most of what I make isn't!

I've still been trying to implement the face down defensive card mind games of His Majesty the Worm into a game with dice. I'm not sure it's entirely possible, but the mind games of playing a horrible roll as a riposte and then acting like you played a good card is just so tempting. I need to find a way to implement this into a game that doesn't use tarot.