Bufkin and Instant Kills

I am a part of an ongoing 0D&D campaign GMed by Bogdan Szwarc (Fear and Loathing in the Old World). Well, to be exact, we are playing with an obscure “manuscript” called “…Beyond This Point Be Dragons…” by Mark Bufkin. 

Bufkin's lovely cover

Among many quirks of an old-school adventure game, this retro Dungeons and Dragons version has a little rule known as “Instant Kills”. This means that every hit besides an HP loss has a chance to instantly kill a character. The kill is determined by rolling 2d6 and comparing the result on a weapons vs AC table. 

The dreaded Instant Kills table

Long story short, the campaign is brutal. After 30+ sessions, we have a roster of 25+ dead characters, even more retainer cadavers, and the highest level attained at the moment is 5. 

And yet, there’s something alluring in this rule. Every combat is a nail-biter, can end in a couple of rounds and feels like an achievement when everyone survives. 

Naturally, I decided to steal this rule and hack it into something. I knew I wanted to implement instant kills into a more modern D&D, OSR or not. I briefly thought about 5e, then a small thing based on Into the Odd, but in the end, I decided to use Shadowdark. 

Ah Shadowdark. I have a love-hate relationship with this system. I love how this stripped-down version of 5e plays. I hate, just hate, that they left death saves in and made them… worse even? I despise the discrepancy between the fighter and wizard/priest toolkit and how utterly useless and boring the thief is. 

So, why not address some of my concerns and add some other, not-so-grimdark flavour? A bronze age flavour, to be exact. A perfect setting for a sudden, brutal instant death. Like a spear thrust into an exposed neck. Thus, Gleaming Bronze was cooked up. 

Hacked Instant Kills, weapon damage and armor

In Bufkin Instant Kill rolls are made in addition to weapon damage. I wanted less separation than that. Ideally, it would be a natural extension of weapon damage. I decided to link it with the damage amount. I wanted to use exploding dice and link instant death with the second dice roll on the explosion. Unfortunately, this would penalize higher dice weapons and would not make diegetic sense. A dagger won’t be as effective in instantly killing an armored target as a huge maul. 

Still, I thought I was on to something. Maybe player characters could just roll d6s? And if a 6 is rolled, it “explodes” into an instant death test. Two-handed weapons would roll damage with advantage. Exchanging better protection from a shield for a higher kill chance. This would mean a shadowdark weapon redesign. At least for player-facing ones. At this moment, I changed the exploding dice to 6+ as a requirement for the instant death test. The test became a simple reroll of the damage die with a kill chance determined by the target’s armor. This change meant that higher dice monster damage became more deadly. This felt good and brought me back to the allure of a dangerous and deadly monster encounter. All I needed now was the second part of the Instant kills table. 

My Instant Death rule final form:

If 6+ is rolled on any damage die, roll the weapon die again immediately and consult the table below. If multiple 6+s are rolled, roll only once for instant death. A result of 6+ is always instant death.

I opted for more vague armor tiers instead of named armor from Shadowdark. They are unarmored, light, medium and heavy. The armor tiers dictate the instant death chance of an instant kill. 

Player characters also have an option for Heroic Defence. It’s a variant of unarmored defence with CHA mod added. This represents heroic nudity known in Greek art and in my experience, does not happen often with standard Shadowdark stat generation. 

Instant Death chance vs Bufkin 

After sending previews of my hack, I was asked how the instant kill chances stack vs Bufkin. I knew they were lower, but it was a vague idea and nothing concrete.

I ran some numbers, I realised that the chances are not even close. (And how utterly devastating they are in the 1970s manuscript). 

So, let’s discuss swords and maces. The numbers are rounded up for readability, and I feel this does not change my point. For Bufkin numbers, I took 9, 7, 4, and 2 AC to represent my 4 armor tiers. The comparison is not ideal, but it gives an overall picture. 

Bufkin sword kills an unarmored target with a 58% probability. Vs light it is 42%, medium 28%, heavy 8%. 

My sword is 14%, 11%, 8%, 6%. Way more lenient. 

For Bufkin Mace its easy. It’s 41% across the board (more or less; there are some odd numbers on some AC values). 

My mace (which has a bonus vs armored targets) is 14%, 11%, 11% and 8%. 

So far, my hack seems to be more forgivable, which is not a bad thing necessarily. But what happens if we use a two-handed weapon or a monster that has a d8 attack? 

Two-hander: 26%, 20%, 15%, 10%

D8 damage die: 32%, 27%, 23%, 18%

Things become way more deadly. Cool. Monsters are scarier, all is right in the world.  

So, here you have it. My Instant Death Shadowdark hack had its most important part done. I planned to redo ancestries/backgrounds and add classes that built up on Instant Death. I realised that the 6+ weapon damage rule can also be used for weapon properties (or masteries as in 2024 5e). I will elaborate on all this in a future post.