Not a Fan of the Resist Banes Mechanic

But with what attribute you are going to resist them? Because with that formula a simple d20 roll will rarely result in success, especially in the later levels.

Similar to attacks, I think I’d let them pick an attribute roll that fits the circumstance to give them a fighting chance. My goal is to eliminate the stock d20 roll…

I understand your goal, but I would think about a clearer formula when to roll what would be important, because else anyone can start arguing what they want to roll.

Isn’t that kind of how attacks work? I think if you’ve already been successfully hit with a bane, say Immobile, you aren’t going to be able to resist with Prescience… Similar to Defense Actions, you can defend with Might, Agility, etc… I will have to try it out, but it feels in line with other aspects of the rules to me, at least in theory. GM call in the end if you made a good argument for an attribute.

True, but if you start arguing everything during combat than you bog down the flow of combat, which is one the biggest strengths of OL.

A valid argument, and if banes start stacking up, tracking the PL of everything you’re hit/hitting with might get to be a pain, but I want to try something different as I’ve felt like banes have not been very fun or useful in their current form.

Anyway, it’s only my feeling and I try not to hold my opinions so strongly that actual experiences can’t change them over time. :slight_smile: Maybe it won’t work, but I want to try it out.

I really do appreciate the feedback and other viewpoints, and the fact that we can have these conversations in an active community!

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keep us updated, I like the idea of resisting with attributes also, mainly because the flat d20 roll can swing so widely and is entirely luck based, (plus I’ve had crap luck with a d20, don’t take me to a casino lol)

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I use Prescience to view the exact moment with the thing holding me immobile is weak, and break out at that exact moment.

ANYTHING can be argued with enough creativity :wink:

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I think this is all getting way too complicated. The system is meant to be easy, and smooth. If you have to do a bunch of math, that slows the game down. All of the formulas make everything way to complex.

My thoughts exactly; unless you’re focusing heavily on a minor mechanic (like resist) keep it simple so you don’t have to spend much time on it.

@Ponix_Dark You’re not alone in that argument if you read the thread… I think that’s fine if you like it as-is.

I had some other ideas and just posted to this forum to get feedback. I’ve gotten feedback on other questions/ideas I had that completely changed my mind. This one, I’m still interested in trying something different. If it turns out to work well, I might share that experience, but it still will just be one group’s experience with homebrew rules, and won’t change the core rules or make anyone else change their minds… :slight_smile: And if it sucks in practice, or I tweak it for the better, I will also be upfront about that too!

And in reality, it’s looking like I won’t be running my next regular game until September, so it will be a while until I can test it out anyway.

Also to add a little more context - I’m a new OL GM with maybe 8 sessions under my belt, and maybe 20ish sessions as a player across a few games. The first 4 or 5 of those were with @brianfeister himself, that was my intro to the game and I had so much fun, it was the catalyst for me getting back into tabletop RPGs (with any consistency) for the first time since childhood.

In the games I played with other newbs, Banes were often forgotten about entirely because it was enough to think about basic combat mechanics. As we got more comfortable, we realized we were missing a cool part of combat, and we started incorporating them more.

On both the GM side and the player side, there was frustration - or at least an underwhelmed feeling - when they were often resisted before doing much of anything. Considering you can build some attacks (or entire characters) around Banes that do no HP damage, but have other side effects, it can stink when a coin flip frees your target from any effect.

No idea if my approach is any better, but I feel like trying to tweak the current mechanic.

The reason that the Resist action works the way it does is as a way of simplifying to avoid tracking duration. That’s really the only purpose that the mechanic serves.

If banes had a duration and you couldn’t shake them, then combat would become an INSANELY slow slog-fest, which would alienate everyone from the game.

Also, remember that D&D mitigates this by controlling how many times you can apply a debilitating effect (spell or class ability). In Open Legend, since we’re ALL about not putting limits on how often things can be used, it becomes necessary to define a mechanical point where the limitation happens. The Resist mechanic just means that you don’t have to do accounting of 5 different banes that each last a different duration.

All that being said, I’m ALSO unsatisfied with it. Given my comments above, I’d love it if someone else solved the same problems I’m solving in a better way :sparkling_heart:

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EDITED and REPOSTED after I realized I forgot my own idea originally, then came up with maybe a better idea :slight_smile:

@brianfeister that totally makes sense, and maybe it’s just been our luck, or underuse of banes, but having little to no effect has been much more often the case than multiple banes stacking. Maybe I’ll run into that more if I start making them harder to resist… we’ll see, I suppose!

Maybe a specific example of what I’m hoping to try… I ran an OL conversion of Sunless Citadel and the final Druid, Belak, was a Level 4 Boss, with Superio Bane Focus (Immobile) for his entangling vines. He had Alteration 6. So, he was really good at getting people in his Vine bane attack with 2d8 attr dice and ADV 4 on a focused roll. The idea was that his minions would hack at them while they were stuck, or he could also do “Vine Whip” attacks. But players were getting out of it left and right. Rarely was someone entangled for more than one round of combat.

Also, with immobile, they can still cast and do other things, attack neighboring spaces, defend, etc - they just can’t move out of their space, so it really wasn’t a huge penalty (maybe that can be blamed on bane selection, or not stacking banes).

What I’m thinking is if you used the same Power Level Based scale as Heals use 10 + (2 * PL of Bane) they’d need a 12 to get out of his vines. Then, maybe give two options:

Passive Resist

Same rules as in Core Rules, but you must roll >= (10 + 2 * Bane PL) If the Bane is PL 5, you need a natural 20. If it’s PL 6, you’re screwed… BUT

Focused/Active Resist

You can spend your major and move action to roll an attribute roll/attack against the bane to resist with all your Might/Agility/etc. This might be something you could allow them to do even after the regular Resist rolls are depleted, that might be a bane by bane decision though…

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TOTALLY know this feeling. If you want my 2 cents, you have to consider that any bane can be resisted 50% of the time after one round. What I would do if I were writing up this concept you outlined is give the boss Potent Bane (Immobile).

Nah, just use Potent bane. Doing this is going to turn the tables completely and characters will more or less NEVER get free from your banes.

As an alternative, you could give bosses a SPECIAL ability to have a bane automatically apply for two rounds (no save allowed). That’s actually a good enough idea to put in the NPC creation options if I actually had room for it, LOL!

This is actually a good idea. Perhaps you have a Focused Resist where you can use a Focus action to get advantage 1 on the rolls. In fact, I guess that’s technically already the way Focus Actions work, so possibly it’s already in there but could be more explicit

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Definitely good suggestions for bosses… though doesn’t help PCs when their banes are cast off left and right. :frowning:

I’m thinking of a PC that has a PL 9 Death Bane attack and then the target rolls a 10 and is all like “whatever, dawg.” It feels like higher PL banes should be harder to shake. In that case they’d need to roll a 28 or greater with whatever Attribute makes sense to fight back their flavor of death :slight_smile: Maybe fortitude or creation in this case.

Oooh, I even just came up with better names for them - Passive Resist and Focused or Active Resist Maybe you just can’t passively resist some banes. As I say above, I may regret it come game night, but this already sounds fun to me… :slight_smile:

I like this. I think I could get behind a rule like

PL 5 or greater banes require a (12 | 15) or better to Resist.

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Potent bane is available to the PC as well.

In regards to the Death Bane, it is powerful as soon as it hits. You are incapacitated and prone, and subject to finishing blows. You team up with another player, hit the death bane, then have the other player go and do the finishing blow, that’s a free potential insta kill without the bane doing its full thing on the 3 failed resist.

Combo Death + Persistent Damage (from another player), on their turn they auto take a finishing blow, but anyways…


@brianfeister I have used the CR 15 on resist and it certainly gave the bane a much bigger pop. That was the goddess empowering a PC who did the Death Bane on a target.

15 = 30% chance to shake, 70% failure
12 = 45% chance to shake, 55% failure (just switching the numbers for @ 10)

Banes do get their highest power level on a successful hit, so that is something to consider in determining CR of resist.

Also, long ago it USED to be a minor action to do the Resist Action. This made it so there was hardly any penalty to the person if they got hit with a bane and resisted with their minor, so it was changed to the move action so they would at least lose the move action.

So making 2 types of resist (Passive vs Active), but making the Passive resist much harder could make it so it is a minor.

hmm hmmm hmm… Flowing thought process here to spitball ideas that others might grab ahold of better.

I wonder if something related to the level would make sense to some degree, which would make levels important for more than just attribute score advancement. That wouldn’t solve the problem of complexity with rolls though, but something like CR = 12 + Invoker’s Level

if we went with the passive option, CR 14 (PL < 5) would be roughly 1/3 chance to shake, CR 18 (PL >= 5) 15%

Active you defend with Toughness/Will/Presence, whichever makes the most narrative sense, and thereby not opening it up to EVERYTHING, and giving more importance to those attributes (which may or may not be a good thing). But then what do you have to beat with the Active Roll, seems the same passive CR might be too easy.

CR 18 & CR 24/26 for active resist rolls?

18 is the average challenge rating for an Attribute Score 4
24 is for Attribute Score 7
26 is for Attribute Score 8

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Also flowing thought process going on here, but my latest thought:


Passive Resist

Same rules as now, roll d20, except CR is 10 + PL of Bane and you must roll higher, like an attack. This means even a PL 9 bane could be passively resisted with a natural 20. So there are no banes in current rules that can’t be resisted passively.

Active Resist

Pick an attribute you are fighting the bane with, and make an attribute roll with your major action, can be focused using same rules as attack. But this roll goes against a CR of 10 + (2 * PL of Bane ).


I realize that this may be too “math-y” for a core rule, but I kind of like it. It feels like it would be fairly balanced in practice vs. the bane’s PL.

I think one thing to remember is that you always have “succeed with a twist” etc. to play with these rules. If a character doesn’t roll a success, you can always have them succeed but take lethal damage, or anything you can come up with…

I find anything that can use a character’s attributes to “fight back” much more interesting than anything that is just a d20 roll, though if they are “passively” resisting, d20 seems more understandable.

You could even flavor this where if someone rolls a great roll on an active resist, they can invoke their own bane… This seems like it could get fun :slight_smile:

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I like the idea of having a Passive Resist and an Active Resist. But how would it work if you have multiple banes on you?

I would assuming Passive Resist to try and get rid of all of them and/or Active Resist to get rid of one bane?

And how would potent bane interact with Active Resist? just dis 1 on the roll?

Finally stupid question, but are Resist Bane rolls considered Action Rolls? If so are they affected by Bolster?