How many times have you been faced with the issue of Players getting itchy to throw some d20’s, but you haven’t got any good encounters lined up for that session?
It is no secret, Player Characters simply love taverns! They are a good place to collect information, but how often have you really wanted the PCs to go into a really seedy bar, and have a good old fashioned bar fight, like right out of the cowboy western movies?
Normally, these bar room brawls are regulated to the same old sword and shield affairs, but . . . Why? Cowboys and Pirates had lots of brawls in such conditions, and always felt like a good fight was simply entertainment! Clearly real bar fights are non-lethal affairs, the goal of a bar fight isn’t to kill anybody, it’s simply to knock people out. The PHB carries lots of rules for attacking without killing, but what we want to do is add some style to this!
Unstated Rules of Brawls
There really isn’t any real anger involved in brawls, except for maybe between two individuals who start the fight, but even then we can assume that they are friends who wish to settle an argument with their fists rather then . . . You know, being civilized and talking it out. The rest of the combatants will gladly join in for a free-for-all!
There is only one rule to these friendly little melees, drawing a weapon and using it to kill is bad form! Folks who do this may be able to kill their intended target, however they will get mobbed by everybody in the bar.
Combatants are blowing off aggressive steam, and trying to knock each other out, fist fights are handled as described in the PHB, but the expectable brawl room weapons that I’ll be adding will cause damage as described for Non-Lethal Weapons Attacks, which causes 50% temp damage.
Knock Outs!
To figure out a knockout, we simply need to calculate how much damage was taken. For non-lethal combat you’ll want to use two hp scores, 1 is normal damage, the other is Temp damage. As soon as your Temp dmg drops to 0, a knock out has occurred, there is also a chance of KO per hit which depends on how many hp an opponent has. If Randolf smacks a 1st level fighter who’s got 10 hp, and does 2 points of damage, there is a 20% chance that the fighter will be knocked out. If Randolf smacks him with a bottle, then we’ll add 35% to the KO roll, which makes weapons like bottles very desirable to have!
New Non-Weapon ProficiencyBrawling: A Character with Brawling is skilled at fighting in non-lethal conditions. He does not suffer any penalties to attack while fighting with improvised weapons.
Now this isn’t the same as Pugilism, or specialization in wrestling or hand to hand combat, however you can easily add this to all of those others at DM’s discretion, as it is in the same family. Depending on a characters social class, he may also get this proficiency for free, lower class folks enjoy brawling as much as high class society enjoys reading! People who don’t have the Brawling Prof, or something like it would suffer a -4 penalty to hit.
Improvised Weapons
Bar fights utilize weapons that are simply picked up and either thrown or used as a standard weapon. Through this list, you can use it to quickly figure out the stats of things that are like them, everything that isn’t nailed to the floor can be used as a weapon in a brawl!
| Item | Size | Type | Speed Factor | Damage S-M/L |
| Bottle | S | B | 2 | 1d3-1/1d2-1 |
| Beer Stine | S | B | 2 | 1d3/1d2 |
| Stool/Chair | M | B | 5 | 1d6/1d4 |
| Wooden Bench | M | B | 10 | 1d8/1d6 |
| Bucket/Lantern | S | B | 4 | 1d6/1d3 |
| Roasting Spit | M | P | 6 | 1d8/1d6 |
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Boot Hill Brawling in AD&D - related?
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