Yet More Thoughts on "Attacking the Darkness" - BAD ASS

Back in October I wrote about my Attacking the Darkness houserule, otherwise known as BAD ASS: Benefits from Attacking the Darkness, Advantages Shared and Simple.

The idea was pretty simple:

When players roll a natural 1 they Attack the Darkness. Roll damage as usual and put it in the Attack the Darkness Pool.

Every 25 points in the pool can be cashed in for various rerolls. Unused points are converted to XP for the players at a rate of 1 XP per point.

After playtesting the rules, I discovered that 25 points was too high a threshold to hit. So I lowered it to 10 pts of damage per BAD ASS Token, and kept the points rolling per story arc (not starting new each session).

I then upped the conversion to expo to 10x per point. So, the XP actually matters. Result?

My players didn't cash in the 2 BAD ASS tokens they earned for a reroll, but the thought did come up. Instead, everyone cashed in the points for 290 XP at the end of the adventure.

I'll need to roll with it for a second arc to see if I need to tweak it again, but I do like it's potential.

Here it is in it's current glory:


BAD ASS - Benefits from Attacking the Darkness, Advantages Shared and Simple


Attacking the Darkness: On a natural roll of 1, the character in question "Attacks the Darkness". Roll damage as if you had a successful hit. These points are added to the BAD ASS Pool.

BAD ASS Pool: Points are placed by the party in the BAD ASS Pool as described above. Points are accumulated in a per session manner, and unused points will be "cashed out" at the end of the game session.

At 10 points (and each interval of 10) the party has the option of converting 10 points into a BAD ASS Token (you can use coins or just make a note of it). The BAD ASS Token, or a BAT, can be used to reroll certain rolls during the game session. Some examples are as follows:

- A single attack roll (but not a natural 1)

- A saving throw

- An initiative roll (group or individual, depending on system used)

- A damage roll for a weapon or spell

- A skill roll, such as a thief's open locks or an elf's hear noise chance.

- A moral roll for a party member's henchman.

Points spent on BATs can't be cashed out at the end of the gaming session. They are gone.

Unused BATs can't be saved between sessions and will expire and the end of the gaming session.

Cashed out points are converted into expo on a 1 pt to 10 XP basis . Everyone in the party gets the full value of the cashed out points - they are not divided amongst the players.

More Thoughts on "Attacking the Darkness" - BAD ASS

Yep, I've got some more ideas for the Attacking the Darkness idea I wrote about yesterday.

First off, every subsystem needs an awesome acronym, so I'm introducing:

BAD ASS - Benefits from Attacking the Darkness, Advantages Shared and Simple


Attacking the Darkness: On a natural roll of 1, the character in question "Attacks the Darkness". Roll damage as if you had a successful hit. These points are added to the BAD ASS Pool.

BAD ASS Pool: Points are placed by the party in the BAD ASS Pool as described above. Points are accumulated in a per session manner, and unused points will be "cashed out" at the end of the game session.

At 25 points (and each interval of 25) the party has the option of converting 25 points into a BAD ASS token (you can use coins or just make a note of it). The BAD ASS Token, or BAT, can be used to reroll certain rolls during the game session. Some examples are as follows:

- A single attack roll (but not a natural 1)

- A saving throw

- An initiative roll (group or individual, depending on system used)

- A damage roll for a weapon or spell

- A skill roll, such as a thief's open locks or an elf's hear noise chance.

- A moral roll for a party member's henchman.

Points spent on BATs can't be cashed out at the end of the gaming session. They are gone.

Unused BATs can't be saved between sessions and will expire and the end of the gaming session.

Cashed out points are converted into expo on a 1 to 1 basis multiplied by the receiving character's level. Everyone in the party gets the full value of the cashed out points - they are not divided amongst the players.

I'll find out next Saturday how good my players are at accumulating and using their BAD ASS BATs 

Attacking the Darkness - A Way to Get Value Out of "Natural 1s" (Hat Tip to Greg Christopher)

So, last night I ran a session of Greg Christopher's Ambition & Avarice is James Mal's Dwimmermount (you can read a sort of recap of last night's session here).  There was a point in the session where it seemed like Natural Ones were coming up every other attack for the PCs. It was so damn depressing that someone yelled out "I attack the darkness!" and someone else suggested "roll damage" and they did.

It was at this point that Greg half jokingly said something to the effect of "You know, you should get a benefit for "attacking the darkness". As gamers are known to do, we passed ideas back and forth real quick. In the end, we decided to convert the damage to an expo poll, at straight up value. So, if the party "attacks the darkness" 13 times during the course of the session for 47 points of damage, there's 47 points of expo to distribute to the players. It's kind of like "learning from one's mistakes".

I'm going to take it a little further in the next session, because I like the idea of finding value in failure. This will be a "beta rule", which works as we are beta testing Ambition & Avarice.

Attacking the Darkness: On a natural roll of 1, the character in question "Attacks the Darkness". Roll damage as if you had a successful hit. These points are added to the Attacking the Darkness Pool.

Attacking the Darkness Pool: Points are placed by the party in the Attacking the Darkness Pool as described above. Points are accumulated in a per session manner, and unused points will be "cashed out" at the end of the game session. At 25 points (and each interval of 25) the party has the option of converting 25 points into a "bennie". The bennie can be used to reroll a single attack roll (but not a natural 1) or saving throw. Points spent on bennies can't be cashed out at the end of the gaming session.
Cashed out points are converted into expo on a 1 to 1 basis multiplied by the receiving character's level. Everyone in the party gets the full value of the cashed out points - they are not divided amongst the players