They Have a Cave Troll

Understanding THORN and healthless combat

A year ago, back in February of 2024, I was working on trying to define what LUMEN 2.0 was going to be. I did a series of three design streams to go over it, and during the third one, I started thinking about combat.

LUMEN is obviously a combat focused system. It gets its inspiration from video games, looter shooters, action RPGs, all that good stuff. But as I moved towards a diceless approach for LUMEN 2.0, and became increasingly aware of my disdain for tracking HP, an idea came together.

This was actually alongside some really cool discussions in the Gila RPGs discord server that were happening around the same time. A lot of that with Aaron Joliffe and Binary Star Games, where we were talking about what it would me to have a HPless, or healthless, RUNE game (and other games in general).

So, some of that came together, and ultimately starting pushing LUMEN 2.0 in the direction it sits right now.

The thing you need to know before we dive into the cave troll fight is this:

All enemies die when they take any source of Harm. One shot, one kill.

The exception to this are what we might call “elite” enemies, who also die in one hit, but only after the players have gotten past their defenses. Defenses are narrative descriptors that don’t have a specific mechanical counter, but require the players to think creatively.

For example, an elite enemy might have the “armored” defense, and the players need to figure out how to get past it. They could rip the armor off, freeze it and make it brittle, melt it. Anything they can think of. Once that defense is taken care of, the enemy dies in one hit.

Anyway, all that was cooked up about a year ago, and has been implemented in two games: THORN and DUSK. THORN is the fantasy one, and DUSK is the sci-fi.

One last piece of context. Over the holidays last December, my wife and I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the millionth time. As the cave troll fight tool place in Fellowship, I realized that it was the perfect analogy for a fight in THORN.

So, how does the cave troll fight work in THORN?

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Let’s start with the fellowship, and the scenery. The fellowship are the PCs (or Thorns) in this example. They are in the tomb, which is broken up into some distinct areas, or zones.

When the goblins start bashing down the doors, Aragorn and Legolas start letting loose arrow. Each one fights its mark. One shot, one kill.

We aren’t rolling to hit, nor to calculate damage when we’re killing goons in THORN. They have no defenses, they just die. You feel like a badass taking out waves of them, just by using your weapon. The Aragorn PC on their turn might say “I use my bow to shoot a goblin” and then it dies. One less enemy on the board.

Eventually though, Boromir says “They have a cave troll…” and then the big beast comes bashing into the room.

Enter our THORN elite enemy. It has a number of defenses, mostly in the space of it being incredibly resilient to harm.

The first attacks against the troll don’t do anything. In THORN, this would be the PCs learning that they are dealing with an elite. See, the GM doesn’t say “this is an elite enemy and here are its defenses”, it’s a puzzle solving game, so the PCs need to figure this stuff out on their own. After a failed turn or two of weapon attacks not working, the PCs change up their strategy. Their standard weapons aren’t cutting it (literally), they need to try something different.

After scrambling away from the troll for a while, Aragorn eventually grabs the cave troll’s own weapon, a giant spear, and jams it into the side. They needed something a bit tougher than the weapons they had to pierce its hide. One defense down, the troll is injured a slower.

However, it’s still extremely resilient. They can’t count on using that giant spear over and over, so the PCs think quickly. Legolas is great with a bow, can hit any target. Maybe he can hit a soft spot. But, the troll is fast, wild, it needs to be distracted.

Enter our hobbit PCs, Merry and Pippin. They hop onto the trolls back and start stabbing down.

Now, we’ve already established the PC’s weapons can’t harm the troll (not yet at least). But these THORN PCs are being intentional with what they are doing. They are trying to stab a million times into the troll to distract it. Mechanically, they might be spending a point of their Flow Approach to do a rapid stab, distracting the troll.

Said troll stumbles over, roars, and Legolas finally has his shot. The Legolas PC says “I shoot into its mouth, right into the brain.” Similar to the hobbits, this very intentional use of a weapon would probably call for an Approach (Focus in this instance) to be used. Or, maybe Legolas had a Tactic that allowed him to make a bullseye shot once per fight, and he is spending it here.

Either way, the trolls defenses are overcome, and we see once again: one shot, one kill.

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So yeah, I just thought this would be a fun example of play to write up, since it uses a movie a lot of folks might be familiar with.

Hope you enjoyed. And make sure to check out THORN if this sort of thing sounds interesting to you!

-Spencer