Morale house rules?

[JoelSammallahti]

I'm thinking of jotting down some house rules on morale in combat, particularly to handle groups of NPCs. Gurps has its fine reaction roll mechanic, but I'm thinking of a slightly more substantial framework for when to roll and with what modifiers.

But I don't want to reinvent the wheel! So I'm asking for pointers: have you used a related house rule? Is there a Pyramid article, blog post, or forum thread I should look at?

[Ulzgoroth]

This doesn't do what you're talking about, but do you know about the rules from Tactical Shooting that cover some very individual tactical morale effects? (p34 and p21)

While they're written for gunfights, they're extensible to other contexts.

[weby]

I do not have full house rules, I use the Cool Under Fire rules from tactical shooting even for ancient melee combat.

The house rules I have are for triggering fleeing when others do so and for massive casualties making things even harder and the combat veteran bonus being at times higher than the base +1, specially for things like long term mercenaries and such that have seen a lot of combat(no formal rule on this, but I tent to give the +1 fairly fast, +2 for a dozen or so major combats, +3 for months of intensive combat and maybe +4 for someone who fought though the majority of a World War in an active role or similar)

The flee when others do: Each 10% of your that is fleeing gives a -1 and triggers a roll even if you did not see the event causing them to flee. If you fail by that penalty or less you do not suffer an actual fright check result instead you just flee.

Massive casualties: Each 10% of your side that is a casualty gives a -1 and triggers a roll. This penalty is used instead of the multiple of HP suffered penalty if this is larger. Failing by this-the HP penalty margin is the flee option too.

Both above are sense based so they are based on how many you can see as casualties/fleeing compared to how many not. They also do not count for the how much you failed by in your fright check if you fail by more than the above penalties and thus get an actual fright check result.

Sense of duty(fellow soldiers or similar) and code of honor(soldier) normally give a bonus of +2 towards the two above special penalties and might give situationally slightly more, like the sense of duty would fully cancel the "you knew at least one of the victims" penalty if you can see that they are alive but wounded and would need protecting and things like that.

I am not fully satisfied with the rules, so tend to fiddle with the numbers to make them fit the situation. But they seem to work a lot better than the proposed solution of using the reaction check.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

This doesn't do what you're talking about, but do you know about the rules from Tactical Shooting that cover some very individual tactical morale effects? (p34 and p21)

Originally Posted by weby

I do not have full house rules, I use the Cool Under Fire rules from tactical shooting even for ancient melee combat.

Okay, thanks! I'll have a look at those rules and see how they work. I'll need to work out something for handling whole groups though; I don't want to roll Will for each individual orc of bandit or whatever!

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Okay, thanks! I'll have a look at those rules and see how they work. I'll need to work out something for handling whole groups though; I don't want to roll Will for each individual orc of bandit or whatever!

I wrote an article for Pyramid #3/67: Tools of the Trade - Villains that didn't make it into that issue, but hopefully will still see print someday, that addressed this and some other issues with large groups of minions. The relevant bit is the section that says when to roll morale checks (on the NPC Reactions table) based on Loyalty (and some other factors like relevant advantages and disadvantages) and is such a small bit of the article I feel comfortable with posting it here:

Loyalty Casualty Threshold
Disastrous (0 or less) Roll at the start of combat, after every 10 seconds of fighting and after each casualty!
Very Bad (1 to 3) After even one casualty.
Bad (4 to 6) 1% of initial numbers.
Poor (7 to 9) 5% of initial numbers.
Neutral (10 to 12) 10% of initial numbers.
Good (13 to 15) 20% of initial numbers.
Very Good (16 to 18) 30% of initial numbers.
Excellent (19 or more) 40% of initial numbers.

This is based on the assumption that most military units are effectively neutralized after 10% casualties and even elite units tend to be unable to absorb more than 30% without risking breaking.

[Rasputin]

I stole liberally from the Moldvay Basic Set.

Essentially, make a Fright Check, but a failed roll doesn't go to the Fright Check Table. Instead, the foe flees or surrenders, whichever makes more sense. Roll for the whole group when the first foe drops (or, when fighting one foe, when that foe loses at least 10% of its HP), and when half of all foes drop (or when a singular foe loses at least half its HP). An intelligent (non-Bestial or Slave Mentality) foe will know when it is going to lose even if it makes both morale rolls, and as such should get an IQ roll to get an idea of its fate if hopelessly outclassed.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

I stole liberally from the Moldvay Basic Set.

Essentially, make a Fright Check, but a failed roll doesn't go to the Fright Check Table. Instead, the foe flees or surrenders, whichever makes more sense. Roll for the whole group when the first foe drops (or, when fighting one foe, when that foe loses at least 10% of its HP), and when half of all foes drop (or when a singular foe loses at least half its HP). An intelligent (non-Bestial or Slave Mentality) foe will know when it is going to lose even if it makes both morale rolls, and as such should get an IQ roll to get an idea of its fate if hopelessly outclassed.

This is what I came up with, without hitting that. I tried to outline some clauses and possible modifiers.

• Is the leader dead?
• What percentage of losses were suffered?
• Did combat start with the group surprised?
• Levels of fearlessness and combat reflexes?
• Unfazeable?
• Cowardice or Phobia to the enemy in question?
• Outnumbered or Overnumbering?
• Size Modifiers of Enemy?
• Supernatural effects from enemy or monstrous states?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Essentially, make a Fright Check, but a failed roll doesn't go to the Fright Check Table.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

This is what I came up with, without hitting that.

The Reaction Table already has Morale rolls, I think it makes more sense to use the existing system, then to try to re-purpose Fright checks, IMO.

I tried to outline some clauses and possible modifiers.

A lot of these are already modifiers for Morale Checks on the Reaction Table.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I wrote an article for Pyramid #3/67: Tools of the Trade - Villains that didn't make it into that issue, but hopefully will still see print someday, that addressed this and some other issues with large groups of minions. The relevant bit is the section that says when to roll morale checks (on the NPC Reactions table) based on Loyalty (and some other factors like relevant advantages and disadvantages) and is such a small bit of the article I feel comfortable with posting it here:

Loyalty Casualty Threshold
Disastrous (0 or less) Roll at the start of combat, after every 10 seconds of fighting and after each casualty!
Very Bad (1 to 3) After even one casualty.
Bad (4 to 6) 1% of initial numbers.
Poor (7 to 9) 5% of initial numbers.
Neutral (10 to 12) 10% of initial numbers.
Good (13 to 15) 20% of initial numbers.
Very Good (16 to 18) 30% of initial numbers.
Excellent (19 or more) 40% of initial numbers.

This is based on the assumption that most military units are effectively neutralized after 10% casualties and even elite units tend to be unable to absorb more than 30% without risking breaking.

That sounds quite good, though Very Bad through about Neutral run into some difficulty in that initial numbers in adventuring situations are often too low for them to be distinct. (You may have had a solution for that in the full article, though maybe not if it was intended only for handling large groups.)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That sounds quite good, though Very Bad through about Neutral run into some difficulty in that initial numbers in adventuring situations are often too low for them to be distinct. (You may have had a solution for that in the full article, though maybe not if it was intended only for handling large groups.)

The minimum casualty was one and remember that "casualty" includes taking injuries! But yes, the article is mainly about how the various variant cannon fodder rules interact with other parts of the rules, and is mostly about handling large numbers of faceless goons.