Havoc's Pyrrhic Weaselry 3e

10 Sep, 2025

This started out with a thought experiment: how do I make the fact that a character is simply more fierce than another be one of the key determinants for settling a fight without leaving it up to the dice and without having their own skill not be irrelevant?

The why is really very simple: it's just closer to how my favoured fiction operates. Goku doesn't defeat Vegeta because he has better numbers¹, people in War and Peace aren't scared of Dolokhov just because he's a good shooter. Goku fights for his friends, and Dolokhov loves getting into duels.

The how is where things get difficult. A few different methods would be the obvious ones:

• Just Pendragon it. Give them a bonus. The issue there is that the mechanism is too reliant on luck, and if that is removed, it becomes too fiddly of a modifiers game. Of course, I like Pendragon and I think this works fine, but it's not what I was looking for.

• Use D&D and give them an Attack Bonus. This doesn't work as it would still leave the ball in the court of he with the higher HD, who can simply tough out the fight. You could further complicate it, but I think it would become needlessly full of elements: can't just double HD either as it would mean a 3 HP Magician would still be pretty bad, but adding at a flat rate means the difference between someone of higher levels who is impassioned will be proportionally smaller. And what about damage? That magician might still be landing 1d4 damage blows... you see what I'm driving at.

There are other ways of doing this, such as making "courage" a stat and just rolling that and things of that type, but I didn't find any of the ones I saw satisfying, so I built my own out of parts from this post by Spwack (link) and by the seminal Pyrrhic Weaselry (gonna have to find that on your own, boss), which I had interpreted previously for a Pendragon game, which you may read here.

I have tested Pyrrhic Weaselry and my own hack of it at length, but I haven't done the same for these rules as of writing it, so I expect them to change once they hit the table.

Bidding and Compromising

Whenever serious, weighty, delicious Conflict is present, you’re gonna bid what you’re willing to sacrifice to avoid a negative consequence. Your opponent - either an NPC, another PC, or the natural world itself - will have to either match your bid to avoid it, or offer a compromise to mitigate it.

If they match the bid, they’ll say what they’re betting (it must be of equal or greater value!) and pick Heads or Tails. The ref will toss the coin and whoever loses forfeits what they bid for the duration of the fight, usually. Whatever you bid, though, cannot be bid again in this conflict - it doesn’t mean it’s spent, it just means it’s not advantageous anymore, the conflict has adapted to it. For DM characters, this might not necessarily be true. Staking your life on it always matches the bid.

• Ex - Sinbad finds himself in a storm in the high seas. The storm doesn’t have much to bet, so it says it will be willing to bid letting Sinbad pass. Sinbad says he’s willing to bid “getting stuck in the storm”, but the referee and the other players agree this is not really a good bid, so Sinbad thinks of what he has currently: his ship, his crew, the respect of his crew, and the tactical advantage on his enemy the Sultan.
  • Sinbad reasons he can’t lose his ship, so he says he’s willing to sacrifice the respect of his crew: he gives a bunch of orders that are clearly extremely risky, and even puts a topman as a lookout to guide them through the storm. He calls Heads.
  • The referee flips a coin:
  • If he gets Heads, Sinbad’s gambit works. He passed through the storm virtually unscathed, and the men now believe him to be a crack captain.
  • If he gets Tails, the topman is struck by lightning, and the crew starts yelling about how they knew this wouldn’t work. They will plan a mutiny later, but right now they have bigger issues, as they are still within the storm. Next round, the storm may bid its willingness to let them pass again - as it is all that it has - but Sinbad will have to start burning through increasingly dangerous resources if he wants to escape.

If they compromise, they describe how they’re mitigating the effect of the active party. This usually involves sacrificing something of similar or greater value, such as fictional positioning, equipment, honour, your horse, etc.

• Ex: In the same situation above, Sinbad could simply have said “I don’t need the respect of my crew, I will tie one of my men to the bowsprit and call upon the true name of Lightning to appease it and let us pass”. This lets him pass through the storm at a cost.

Skills

Conflict only exists when you lack the *competence *to confidently affirm that it is beneath you. To the wise old cook, making dinner to impress a nobleman wouldn’t be much of an issue, he’s likely done that thing before; a challenge would be impressing the Sun in her court. Meanwhile, the novice scullion cannot even dream of managing that, there is no amount of luck that would suffice there.

Thus, characters have degrees of mastery **in a certain number of **skills, defined before the campaign by the group. These go as such:

• 0 - Unqualified. The character has no training in this at all.

• 1 - Novice / Amateur. The character has just begun her foray into this field, perhaps she’s a hobbyist or only has the most basic of training.

• 2 - Apprentice. The character has the basics down, but still a long road to go. In modern terms, this would be like a college minor.

• 3 - Journeyman. The character can confidently say they’re competent at this, they know this. This knowledge either comes from years of experience or something akin to a college major.

• 4 - Expert. The character is advanced at it, and they can say they’re the best in their region. This comes at the tail end of decades of experience in a field, or something akin to a graduate degree.

• 5 - Master. The character has devoted her life to the craft. Her peers are those who shape it. This comes, usually, either only after an entire life of dedication, or the guidance of the top of her field.

Circumstances might reduce or augment the mastery of the character in a skill. Even a master sailor, like Sinbad, when presented with the Mother of All Storms on a small sloop, must humble himself and put his hands in the dough. However, were Sinbad at the helm of a powerful galleon with a motivated and competent crew, there is no natural-born storm that could not be conquered by him. Consider, thus, if there are any advantages or disadvantages that can clearly be named by player or referee, be they in the form of equipment, situation, time left to be done, etc.

So whenever a prospective conflict turns up, the ref and the players ask themselves if the player, with that present skill level and that present circumstances, would be able to conquer the challenge. If so, then bypass the bidding and compromise entirely, there is no need for that if the situation is not stressful.

Passions

The spindle of man’s life is moved by the passions inculcated in his being. Who wins the race, the best charioteer or the condemned gladiator, knowing his life is forfeit on a loss?

All characters have Passions - Jealousy (My Wife), Loyalty (My Liege), Love (Patroclus), etc. For each Passion that applies in a scene, you may raise your effective expertise by 1 for its duration. Whenever you do it, however, you must sacrifice something yourself - such as the knight who smites with fierceness that he breaks his weapon. Thus the mother with a knife fighting for her children and village against the viking raider will do so much like the cornered bear: with overwhelming ferocity and at great personal cost.

In my own games, whenever a character is possessed by a Passion in this fashion, I like them to tell me how this expresses itself physically. Are they so irritated with that other guy that they start growing fur? Do new arms sprout from their shoulders and back as they try and get everything done?

You may also “bank” these sacrifices beforehand to “cash them in later”. So you can be dismounted earlier as an additional, unnecessary compromise, so that in your next round you can call in your Passion without having to sacrifice anything that round.

Not only that, but conflict might arise from your passions themselves, such that the character needs to fight her own instincts and essential nature on occasion. Think of the recently married husband who acts with harshness and sulks out of jealousy for seeing his wife be courted by another man, even knowing full well she has his undying love already professed a hundred and one times.

When this conflict (and bidding thereof) arises is much more fluid than it is for competency challenges, seen as there are no gradations in passion, and is left to the better judgement of the referee and its players. Ideally, a balance must be struck between compelling the player and letting her actions be informed by her character.

Also, the threats of passion need to be big. Passion doesn’t just make you act in a strange way, it turns you into a beast who roams the wild and can only be pacified by your beloved, it makes you go mad or blind for up to a year, it moves you to strap the body of your enemy to your chariot and drive it in front of his family for an entire day.

If the character is inspired by Passion and fails, or when it becomes clear that the object of the passion is no more, or that the character will never have access to it again, that is a passion crisis. The conflict becomes “Will the character go mad from it for 1d6 weeks” or something equally menacing.

Advancement

To be decided by the table and type of game. My recommendation is saying that, every time you overcome a challenge above your current mastery level, you get a tally. You need an amount of tallies equal to the next level to upgrade it - so a single one to go from untrained to Novice, but prove yourself 5 times to become a Master. To cash in your tally, you need a teacher of that same level to teach you.

Violence

Initiative is handled through common sense and whoever attacks first. All things being equal, longer weapons go first.

Fights follow the same bidding-and-compromising structure as above, with one major difference: one can engage in the bidding process with anyone.

If there is a skill disparity, then once during the battle, the best fighter can bid it - such as “I am a master swordsman”. If it is forfeit, however, it means his training has been overcome for this battle, but he may bid a lower mastery level by simply reminding his opponent that he is still better than him.

During combat, if you say you are willing to be injured as a bid, and you do get injured, you cannot risk another injury. You must bid your life - either in the sense of losing it to the winner, or forfeiting control of it to him (such as being incapacitated, or left at his mercy). Next round, of course, your opponent can bid “my opponent is injured”, which is usually worth more than getting injured. However, that injury then ceases to apply for the rest of this battle.

Of course, you can always just offer up a compromise instead of bidding. “The opponent leaps out and tries to cut off your arm, what are you bidding?” “Nothing, I’ll drop my sword and pull my arm back” for instance.

Some other considerations:

Bids

• You can only bid "I'm willing to cheat" if there are rules of honour in play. Afterwards, you have cheated and kicked sand in their eyes (or whatever), and you can not bid it again.

• If you bid a single piece of armour, or a mild injury, or another tiny scrap, it won't give any benefit at all.

• If you bid "My blade is poisoned" then you are showing your opponent to scare them, forcing them into a bad position. Whether you have bid or not, if you cut them, they are poisoned.

Forfeits

• If you forfeit "I've got a sword made of fire" it means you have dropped the sword, at the very least. However, you don't always have to bid the sword in order to use special powers.

• If you forfeit "I've got a bunch of hirelings surrounding a single opponent" then they are scattered and divided (for now).

• Example: Fargus and his hirelings, Bargus, Kargus, and Jim, are hidden in the dark by the side of a road. They leap out at a passing traveller, an old man wearing a cloak. They attack with the *intent of injuring the old man! Fargus bids: surprise ambush at night, outnumbered four to one, using the ability of my magic sword to flash confusing beams of light. A very solid bid indeed, the traveller will have to put up quite a lot to match it.*

• The passing traveller flips back his cloak, revealing a jet-black sword, and answers that bid with: "I'm a master swordsman". Oh shit.

• The coin is flipped.

  • Heads (Fargus succeeds): The traveller can no longer use his master swordsman trait for the rest of combat, he has been outmanoeuvred. Fargus can't use the ambush advantage, since the attack is no longer a surprise
  • Tails (Fargus fails): The hirelings are scattered, for now, he can no longer bid the magic light beams.

• Alternatively, the old man offers a compromise: let them surround me (giving them an advantage to bid in the next round), but they won’t lay a finger on me just yet (thus they don’t accomplish their intent but an advantage is offered instead).