Stat It Out: Held At Gunpoint
A rule for when you want the tension of a classic spy or crime thriller
You know that classic scene in a spy or crime thriller where some gun toting fellow's got our intrepid protagonist(s) held at their mercy? Well today, let's figure out how to run that in a ttrpg in a more complex way than your generic held action or skill roll.
So the purpose of this is tension, place players in a tough situation where they want to get around the enemy's weapon in a more clever way than just attacking immediately. However powerful you make the weapon the enemy is aiming, the players should know it immediately. This is easy to do in a setting like those that this trope emerged out of, where the characters are in mortal fear of the bullet. In something like classic D&D or other more high power settings, the players will have to be informed beforehand or receive some sort of demonstration otherwise they are likely to just rush.
Once the danger is established, choose a difficulty for directly overcoming the gunpoint. However the game establishes difficulty, be it a modifier, target number, or number of successes, choose and share with the players. The level should be determined by the distance between the weapon and those targeted, the level of speed necessary for a player to act before the enemy, the readyness/skill of the enemy, and the speed a player would need to cross to break line of fire before being hit. If player's have some sort of modifier like D&D's AC that reduces the enemy's chance to hit, then apply an appropriate reduction in difficulty.
Once the difficulty is set, let the player(s) threatened try actions with different skills and apply reductions to the difficulty from successes (by changing those original factors that determined the difficulty). If the difficulty is reduced to 0 or some other appropriately low number, resolve the challenge without needing to have the confrontation roll. If a player's action fails, it may increase the difficulty or force the confrontation roll to happen without any other actions. GMs may also put a limit on the number of actions before a confrontation roll based on the situation the player is in.
The Confrontation Roll: after whatever actions are taken, the player(s) finally either make a scramble for the gun/weapon, draw their own and try to act before the enemy, or try to escape/break line of fire. For this they make their final roll against the modified difficulty. Success means they are able to accomplish the chosen goal before combat begins. Failure means that the enemy fires before the player's goal is completed. This either means a free hit in systems where the exact result of the attack roll isn't needed to know its result, or just an attack roll with a very significant bonus to it.
Example: The scene from La Samurai that I used as the image for this post.
The player fails their perception/spot/notice/recon check and are taken unawares by the tan trenchcoated foe. The difficulty is set pretty high so the player does not immediately act. The GM makes an offer of a temporarily reduced difficulty as long as the player confronts without an action before (this is when the enemy frisks the protagonist). The player chooses instead to attempt some sort of Nerve/Will/Charisma style roll and succeeds, reducing the difficulty by not letting the enemy read any cues off him. He then rolls a persuasion check, saying that he doesn't talk to men with guns on him, and succeeds greatly. The enemy puts the gun into his jacket, reducing the gunpoint difficulty to an incredibly low level. The player then takes the chance and succeeds at a melee attack to overcome the confrontation difficulty, ending the gunpoint.
This is the first of a series of posts where I will stat out tropes and ideas mainly stuff from media. Reply with any requests and they will be answered.