Betrayal of the Stick

This is a set of rules in development to have the Order of the Stick explore the House on the Hill. All players should be quite familiar with both "Order of the Stick: The Dungeon of Dorukan" and "Betrayal at House on the Hill". This will get confusing as it is, and will become a hopeless morass of insanity if confusion over the original game rules is added.

There are two ways to play: The Haunt and the Dungeon. Choose one. Either way, the OotS characters will begin exploring in the Entrance Hall of the House on the Hill, as if they were playing Betrayal.

• If you play with the Dungeon, then Dorukan's Dungeon starts at level four beneath the basement. Base battle size* is one on the ground floor, two upstairs, and three in the basement. Make no haunt rolls; your object is to beat Xykon, not the Haunt.
• If you play with the Haunt, do not use the Dungeon deck. Just roll normally for the Haunt upon finding Omens. Base battle size* is one before the haunt is revealed, and two afterward. (Note that PvP shticks may turn out to have more use here than in OotS:DoD.) Optionally, occasionally introduce creatures from the Xykon deck after the Haunt is revealed. (Killing Xykon should not cause the house to collapse.) For example, new battles might have a one in six chance of starting with a card from the Xykon deck.

* battle size is increased in some rooms. See below.

Choose your Order of the Stick character to explore the House on the Hill.

Betrayal Stats:

• Your character has Might, Speed, Knowledge and Sanity stats that work as per the Betrayal rules.
• Your Betrayal stats start at 3, 3, 3, 4; have minima of 1, 1, 1, 2; and have maxima of 6, 6, 6, 8.
• You choose which of your stats is the high one.
• For simplicity, your stats always change in increments of 1. [So there's no "raising a stat to the same value it just was" as in Betrayal.]
• For every two points above 3 in a stat, you gain a +1 bonus to rolls using certain types of shticks. Similarly, you suffer a -1 penalty to those shtick rolls if you have a 1 or 2 in the relevant stat:
  • Speed affects Armor and Hide shticks. (It also determines your movement.)
  • Might affects Weapon shticks.
  • Knowledge affects Magic shticks.
  • Sanity affects Verbal shticks.
  [Note that this should balance out the extra importance of Speed in Betrayal, since Armor and Hide shticks are less useful than others in OotS.]
• Physical and Mental damage are separate from Wounds.
• Durkon's Healing can heal Betrayal stat damage: A use of his Healing shtick will heal one fewer point of stat damage than it would heal of Wounds. (Thus, he needs it boosted at least once before he can start healing stats.)
• Resting heals either one wound or one point of ability damage.
• No healing (e.g., resting, Durkon, Entrance Hall or Healing Salve) can raise stats above their starting value plus bonuses from items/omens currently possessed.
• In general, OotS die rolls have about twice the range of Betrayal stat rolls. Bonuses from one, applied to the other, should be doubled or halved accordingly. (For example, perhaps your OotS loot gives you a +2 to trap evasion, and your group decides that trap evasion bonuses apply to the roll for the Collapsed Room. But that's a Betrayal stat roll, so your loot only gives you a +1 to avoid falling through.)
• Things that affect "all trait rolls" also affect all d12 rolls other than attack, defense, searching for stairs, and certain random effects not under the control of the character (at the discretion of the players; luck might influence things that adrenaline cannot, for example).

The house:

• The Entrance Hall substitutes for the Dungeon Entrance: Ending a turn there will fully heal your Wounds. If you have no Wounds and Durkon is not in play, ending a turn there will heal one point of stat damage instead.
• "Searching for stairs" in either the basement or the Foyer can locate the Basement Stairs. "Searching for stairs" in the basement will yield stairs into the Dungeon of Dorukan, if the Basement Stairs have already been found and you are playing with the Dungeon. (Please don't be a dick and search on the other side of the Catacombs.)
• Exploring new rooms in the House, and ending your turn in empty rooms, will trigger new battles, just as in the dungeon. Rooms with Item and Event icons add 1 to the battle size; Omen icons add 2. Battle size is always 0 in the Entrance Hall, the Basement Landing, the Upstairs Landing and the Mystic Elevator.
• Resolve item/event/omen cards before initiating battles, in case they change anything (such as moving the character or starting the haunt).

Battles:

• Most attacks will be resolved by OotS rules. For example, the "Bite" omen has you suffer a "Might 4" attack. Treat this as a monster with an attack strength of 8 (due to the 2-to-1 conversion mentioned above), and do battle. Haunt monsters will be judged on an individual basis until we have a more comprehensive rubric for them. (If it says it makes Sanity attacks, you could just let it make Sanity attacks.)
• Otherwise, Betrayal rules still apply to haunt monsters: If defeated, they are stunned rather than killed (unless the haunt says otherwise). (If you can kill them, go ahead and save them for 1 XP each.)
• The Traitor can choose whether to battle the OotS monsters in a room or to live and let live, but cannot be picky about which monsters in a room to fight: If they fight, they fight from the top of the stack down as normal. If the traitor chooses not to fight, they may pick up one loot card (if present) from the room in lieu of picking up any other loot that turn.
• Once a Haunt has started, suffering 5 Wounds or dropping below a minimum stat will kill you; before the Haunt, it merely causes you to flee back to the Entrance Hall (at a speed of at least 3). (If you have no path to the Entrance Hall, fudge it and conveniently "forget" how you got there.)
• "Stunned" monsters cannot win a battle; any "win" is a draw. (This overrides Bloodlust.)

Cards:
Item cards and tradeable Omen cards can be considered to be Loot worth one Drool Factor for anyone. Players should not be allowed to trade a haunt-specific item for a +2 in combat, though: That could easily be abused to teleport important items around the house. Also, a player should not be able to trade any card on the same turn in which they do anything else with that card. (This is an extension of an existing Betrayal FAQ clarification.)

Specific card modification ideas:
(An asterisk means that this text completely supercedes the printed card text.)

Items:

• Adrenaline shot: May instead be used to boost one shtick of anyone in the room.
• Armor: Boosts your Armor shtick.* [Durkon, Elan and Roy have Armor shticks.]
• Axe: Boosts Durkon's Thor's Hammer shtick.*
• Blood Dagger: Boosts Belkar's Twin Daggers of Doom shtick, at the cost of one point of Speed.*
• Candle: Read "One additional die" as a simple +2 bonus if used on a d12 roll.
• Dog: The Dog can pick up Loot (but not Loot under monsters) in a turn in which you do not. (Traps are set off where the Loot is picked up. The Dog is not harmed by this.)
• Druidic charm: See rule about "stunned" monsters.
• Dynamite: The Dynamite attacks with a strength of 10, and has the Enchanted, Mindless and Impervious abilities. (i.e., immune to magic, verbal and weapon shticks. Certain Loot can create exceptions as usual.) If defending with no shtick, the defender applies their Speed modifier. [Note that the other options are Armor and Hide shticks, which already incorporate the Speed modifier, thus preserving the Speed aspect of the original card.]
• Healing Salve: Also cures wounds.
• Medical kit: Boosts Durkon's Healing shtick.*
• Rabbit's foot: May not be used for attack or defense. Flips (like a shtick) when used.
• Revolver: Boosts Elan's X-Treme Diplomacy shtick.* (Imagine Elan: "Say 'what' again, motherfucker, say 'what' one more Goddamn time!!")
• Skeleton key: Also gives a -2 bonus to the roll to find stairs.
• Smelling Salts: Also cures paralysis.
• Toy Monkey: Attack strength 6. Mindless.

Events:

• Drip, drip, drip: -2 penalty on all d12 rolls. (That's a +2 penalty to find stairs.)
• It is meant to be: May instead be used to replace a d12 roll: Roll 1d12+2 instead of 4 dice.

Omens:

• Bite: Attack strength 8. Duel ability. [It happens too quickly for you to get help.]
• Ring: Monsters lose immunity to your verbal shticks. [i.e., negate "Mindless" ability.]
• Spear: Boosts Vaarsuvius' Seldom-Used Quarterstaff shtick.

(There's certainly more to be done with the cards. So far, Durkon and Belkar are making out better than the others, in character-specific items.)

NPCs:

• If you are playing with the Dungeon, NPCs will (as usual) stay on the lowest level with a PC present, but consider the ground floor to be on top for this purpose, because it has the smallest base battle size.
• If you are playing with the Haunt, the NPCs have no objective reason to go to one floor over another. Instead, to balance the game, the NPCs have different preferences. Each one will go to their most preferred floor, as long as there is a PC there. Put the NPCs in some order; they will tend to go to these floors, in order from most to least preferred:
  • NPC 1: Basement, upper, ground.
  • NPC 2: Upper, ground, basement.
  • NPC 3: Ground, basement, upper.
  • NPC 4: Upper, basement, ground.
  (If you have at least three NPCs, this will guarantee one on every occupied floor.)

Small things:

• Common sense suggests that ranged attacks and ranged trap effects need line-of-sight.
• The "Up a Level, Down a Level" card can put the Basement Stairs into play.
• OotS monsters do not cost extra movement to pass. Only enemies native to Betrayal (and enemy players) do that.

Open questions:

• Haunt monsters: Do they carry Loot? Do some have special abilities (Enchanted, Duel, Flying, et cetera)? Do they inflict Wounds or physical damage? (I think the latter, because we'll usually be close enough to the Entrance Hall to heal Wounds easily. Say, physical damage equal to the amount by which they won, divided by two (conversion again), rounded up.) Does a main haunt monster have Xykon's special powers? Should OotS monster stacks be created under them when they appear? (If not, Leader and Support abilities are neutralized.))
• Can the traitor rest in a room with monsters? I personally wouldn't trust the monsters that far. If so, they shouldn't get to pick up 2 loot from resting with monsters: That would be abusive.)
• Would NPCs help the traitor? (If not, they shouldn't be on his floor if he's the only one there.)
• Can the Mystic Elevator go to dungeon levels, or even to Xykon's lair? (I'd say yes, if and only if the player gets to choose the destination.)
• Balance issue: Does the Entrance Hall healing screw up any opportunity for deadly PvP action? (To fix, perhaps the players can choose to inflict stat damage instead of wounds on each other. That will require more consideration to implement. Even so, Durkon's healing, sufficiently boosted, may be enough to neutralize a monster's or traitor's combat threat.)

• Return to House Rules.

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