A Triad from Bosses

The Three S's

I had a realisation about Dark Souls.

This is a design insight, and I think it’s one that’s applicable to TTRPGs.

Some Dark Souls bosses (a lot of people’s favourites), essentially have three methods by which you can beat them:
1. Skill | Just outright pracice and precision letting you take a small enough amount of damage to survive while dealing a large enough amount of damage to kill.
2. Strength | Whether through stats or a power solution (either being 10 levels high enough or using a damage type the boss is weak to).
3. Solution | You “Solve” the combat before it begins, either through an item that trivialises the fight or a puzzle that outright bypasses it.
These “Three S’s.” can of course mix and match, and I think the Eldemonsoulsbornekiro games (sorry) lean on Strength as a primary pillar, Skill as a close second, and Solution as a surprise tool they occasionally pull out, but I was considering how these principles could and could not be applied to TTRPGs. So... Do they?

First, they require some adaptation. TTRPGs don’t have the bounding boxes that video games do, nor do they maintain as much of a balance between elements like player skill and character build. What adjustments do we need to make?

Well, while Skill certainly continues to exist in the TTRPG space, dice luck can have a very large dilutive effect on one’s ability to express Skill. Skill also, I’d argue, has much more of a direct impact on “Strength” in TTRPGs than it does in video games. Building a character here has, again, weaker bounding boxes than a preprogrammed game.

Strength can vary wildly depending on the style of the TTRPG, but regardless of the chosen book table play tends to be farther away from insurmountable/trivial encounters than video games due to GM tailoring. If you’re in an encounter, there’s typically both an expectation for you to engage with it and knowledge that it won’t waste your time.

And Solution is interesting. Depending on the GM or the story scenario, this may be all but impossible. But it might also be the primary focus of your game. Every fight you take meant to be solved, every combat a puzzle. Also typically, the higher allowance for Solution expression, the more Skill expression has space to shine. After all, someone’s gotta find those solutions!

With weaker availability for Skill expression, a usually tighter box on Strength expression, and Such a wild variation in Solution expression, what kinds of incentives and rewards can we now build into our campaigns?
- We can build in Power rewards for their Skill in character creation.
- We can prompt Skill growth by facing our parties with difficult tasks they can still achieve.
- We can create narrative or prompt creative focus and reward Skill by putting all of our eggs into the Solution basket, waiting for our parties to “Figure it out.”.
- We can create a feeling of immense resistance (or outright despair) by using combats that require more Strength.
...and more! Balancing encouragement and reward between these three pillars to create your style of encounter, I would say, covers just about every design you’ll ever field.

Think about the Three S’s next time you’re building an encounter! Hopefully this can provide a solid framework for your next brainstorm.