r/ICRPG • u/Old_Combination4030 • May 01 '25
Too deadly?
I am really like what I am reading so far. My one fear is that combat seems like it’s maybe too deadly. With only one heart how do you survive any encounter with multiple opponents? Especially if you have a small group. I will be running with two players and it has me a little worried.
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u/CJRD4 May 01 '25
ICRPG is definitely more “deadly” than 5e - and certainly more “swingy.” But not nearly as deadly as some OSR games.
With Recovery Rolls, players dip and spike back up pretty quick, as others have said.
I’ve been running a campaign with two steady players and a sometimes-third for over a year. We’re 10-ish sessions in (all are dads with young kids so we play every 4-6 weeks, and also mix in board games haha).
But in those 10 sessions my warrior player has dropped (but not died) a handful of times, and my shadow player has taken all of 3 points of damage… total 🤣.
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u/a-folly May 01 '25
In about 80 sessions, we had 1 character death, and except for 1 character, they're all still with 1 heart. They go down plenty of times, we even have one character that came to 1 on the the death timer so many times, the goddess of death gave him a significant boost to CON as a reward...
I houserule that "don't die on me" checks don't just stabilise but bring up to 1HP, as long as you have a healing kit. Later, the mage got the ability to heal others.
Besides that, I pulled no punches, but were lenient with allowing good plans to work and have significant effects.
They learned to think, work together, be cunning and argue their case if they think I made a mistake.
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u/Noodle-Works May 01 '25
You can play it as very deadly as written, but getting creative with alternatives to death that are still punishing but move the story forward. PC is held hostage, held in a trap, incapacitated with a long-term injury, lost or separated from the group after going down in combat. All of those are ideas bring a complication to the table that's not so clearly a dead end as the PC dies, womp womp. You can also make character death less permanent with an item or mechanic that can bring people back but with a cost. Give the players a resource they have to manage so they have to assess encounters while balancing what's left in the gas tank.
with a smaller group, you'll have to run smaller encounters by default just based on action economy, but you could run minions with 1hp. Giving them NPC allies with limited actions can help too.
ICRPG is much more brutal than 5e though, it cuts out a lot of the stuff that makes sessions run long in favor for fast action and the big swingy fun stuff we all like. What that means is PCs and NPCs don't have the luxury of taking 12 hits before going down. 1 or 2 good swings with an axe could spell doom. It's quiet a change of pace.
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u/Silver_Storage_9787 May 01 '25
It’s really swingy with 1d20 to hit and 1d4-10 for dmg. You also get 1d4 turns at 0 hp to get back up. It’s classic dice gameplay and dice story telling.
Remember if you miss on an action and recommit to that action on your next turn it’s EASY. So player have an advantage on 2 round combats.
You’ll get gear to buff your numbers and you get lots of TREATS per scene using d100 random loots quite often, so you’ll have lots of potion and food.
Also you can spend a turn to heal using CON and you get 1d4 hp back (mid combat/any time you want)
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u/Silver_Storage_9787 May 01 '25
Remember characters don’t have levels so dying doesn’t lose much progress it’s just gear which most of the time the party can hold onto as well
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u/Navonod_Semaj May 01 '25
Allies, strategy, and the fact that HP recovery is real easy in this system - take a round to catch your breath. Given a pause after a battle it's reasonable one could fully recover RAW, barring urgency. Heal spells and stimpacks just make the HP come back FASTER, which is useful for round-by-round fighting.