3 Simple Ideas to Steal from Blades in the Dark for D&D 5e
Header Image: Blades in the Dark Rulebook by Evil Hat Productions
One of the best things that any Game Master, or player, can do is to expose themselves to a wide variety of game systems. Not only does it open your mind to new ways of playing your games, but it also gives you new ideas to use in the systems you like the most. One game that I’ve been enjoying lately is Blades in the Dark, a fantastic game focused on being scoundrels and committing crimes.
Blades in the Dark, 2017
There are a ton of gems located throughout this game, though I am just going to focus on three things that can be easily adapted for your Dungeons & Dragons games. Just to let you know, Blades in the Dark is a narrative or fiction first game. What this means is that you, and the rest of the table, build the narrative of whatever is going on in the scene and adjust your actions to that. A mechanics first game may allow you to do things that don’t quite fit the narrative or story happening, or may require a certain suspension of disbelief. The difference between these two can be seen in the following example.
A fighter is wanting to grab an enemy spellcaster and hold their hands or put a hand over their mouth to prevent them from casting spells. In a fiction first game, if they succeed on their check, they can effectively stop the spellcaster from casting spells in that fiction. In a more mechanics-focused game, that would have no effect because the grapple condition merely reduces the spellcaster’s speed to 0. In one situation, we can see that in a mechanics first game, we are bound to the mechanics of the game, while in a narrative first game, we are bound to the fiction of what is going on. Each style of gameplay has its pros and cons, based on what the table likes and the game being run.
Progress Clocks
The first mechanic we are looking at provides GMs with a way to track the party’s progress while attempting to overcome an obstacle or take down some sort of trouble. Each clock is divided into a number of segments, typically into 4, 6, or 8 slices depending on the complexity of the obstacle and how dangerous the situation is. It is a method of tracking the party’s progress against overcoming an obstacle, but can also be used as a way to keep track of failures.
Progress Clocks, 2017 Blades in the Dark
A progress clock is a circle divided into segments (see examples at right). Draw a progress clock when you need to track ongoing effort against an obstacle or the approach of impending trouble.
Generally, the more complex the problem, the more segments in the progress clock.
A complex obstacle is a 4-segment clock. A more complicated obstacle is a 6-clock. A daunting obstacle is an 8-segment clock.
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Remember that a clock tracks progress. It reflects the fictional situation, so the group can gauge how they’re doing. A clock is like a speedometer in a car. It shows the speed of the vehicle—it doesn’t determine the speed.
Bringing this into your games is as simple as drawing a clock on a scrap piece of paper, placing a label for an obstacle that the party is attempting to overcome, and filling in the segments as they get successes. You determine the complexity of the obstacle by the number of segments on the clock; the more segments, the harder and more difficult it is to overcome.
For example, if the party is attempting to scale a cliff, you can create a 4-segment clock if the cliff doesn’t have multiple dangers or hazards throughout it. In this situation, you only want 4 successful actions to overcome the obstacle. Note that I said actions, and not skill checks. Since Dungeons & Dragons have powerful spellcasters, they could always come up with a few spells that allow them to fill in a segment without having to make a check, like using misty step to help them navigate a wide gap or some other spell to control earth and make it easier for their party to negotiate the climb. They could also just stick to making skill checks and filling in the clock that way.
This is very similar to the concept of skill challenges that Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition came out with, though progress clocks are often placed in public for the whole table to see it, while skill challenges often hide how much progress is yet to be made. It also is much simpler to create a 4-segment clock and ask the players to come up with their own ideas of how they defeat the obstacle in front of them than to create a skill challenge with pre-planned challenges in them, especially in the moment when the players do something you did not expect.
But progress clocks don’t just have to be used for overcoming obstacles; they can be used to track progress on experiments, long-term goals, and more. If you have someone working on a big project, you could create an 8-segment clock that gets slowly ticked down as they find more information or material. Or maybe you create a 6-segment clock that shows how well hidden their lair is, and, as they cause trouble in whatever location they are in, you continue to fill in that clock until they attract enough attention for their base to be found. They can then take actions, before the clock is filled, to reduce the clock’s filled segments by sowing rumors, paying bribes, and more to keep the authority from them.
Another great way of using progress clocks is to track failures when they are trying to sneak in somewhere, climb up a high cliff, or any other situation that is dangerous to fail at. Instead of just letting a single chaotic d20 decide their fate, and maybe get a natural 1 when they are trying to sneak into a castle, you can instead create a clock that shows how alert the guards are. Each time someone fails, you fill in a segment (and maybe 2 segments if they get a natural 1!) and the guards are only actively searching/attacking the party when that clock is filled. You would, in this situation, decide how many segments a clock gets based on the difficulty of breaking into the castle and how alert the guards. In this situation, a 4-segment clock would mean the guards are highly trained and aware that someone is trying to break in while a 12-segment clock would mean that the guards just aren’t paying attention and are sleeping on the job.
Pushing Yourself / Devil’s Bargain
When you make an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw - there isn’t much you can do to say that you are giving it your all. The player can, of course, make weird faces as they roll the dice - but there isn’t a mechanical way for them to try harder at the task in front of them. They just roll a die, add their modifiers, and hope it is high enough. Within Blades in the Dark, you can willingly increase your stress (a type of hit points or stamina) and gain a bonus die to roll to try and help you overcome the situation. In this fiction, you are giving it your all and providing greater focus to this event at a cost.
Or, maybe you don’t want to sacrifice any more of your stress (as you only get 9 stress before you are out of that scene and you gain a trauma). In this situation, you might ask for a Devil’s Bargain, in which case you still gain the benefits of pushing yourself but you don’t take the penalty to your stress… you just end up taking a penalty elsewhere. This could be something minor, like making a new enemy in the city, or maybe something major like sacrificing your money or weapon you are currently using - you may even take harm and get yourself, or your team, a few more wounds to deal with. In this case, it is typically a deal made between the GM and the player who is interested in taking the bargain, and one can always try and adjust the bargain if they dislike the one given to them. Though, in the end, it is up to the GM to determine which bargains are valid.
Pushing Yourself
You can use stress to push yourself for greater performance. For each bonus you choose below, take 2 stress (each can be chosen once for a given action):
- Add +1d to your roll.
- Add +1 level to your effect.
- Take action when you’re incapacitated.Devil’s Bargain
PCs in Blades are reckless scoundrels addicted to destructive vices—they don’t always act in their own best interests. To reflect this, the GM or any other player can offer you a bonus die if you accept a Devil’s Bargain.
The Devil’s Bargain occurs regardless of the outcome of the roll. You make the deal, pay the price, and get the bonus die.
The Devil’s Bargain is always a free choice. If you don’t like one, just reject it (or suggest how to alter it so you might consider taking it). You can always just push yourself for that bonus die instead.
So how can we use this in Dungeons & Dragons? A few options open up, like suffering exhaustion, losing hit points, taking a penalty afterwards, etc. Exhaustion feels too severe and lost hit points doesn’t really feel that big of a deal (plus it favors barbarians and fighters, while wizards and sorcerers feel a bit penalized). I think the fairest balance here is by using hit dice. When you decide to push yourself, you expend a hit die (without gaining hit points) and then, you can push yourself to ever greater feats. While this favors higher level characters (as lower level characters aren’t going to want to expend their very limited resource that keeps them alive when the cleric informs them they don’t do healing…)
But what do greater feats look like? The obvious answer to that is advantage, but advantage is silly-easy to get in 5th edition - and you can’t stack advantage so that quickly doesn’t become as useful when your allies are quick to say that they help. Instead, I think it could be an extra d4 to whatever action they are attempting to do.
So, what this looks like is that a player announces they want to push themselves and really impress the king or kill an awful, horrendous monster in front of them. They then expend a hit dice and then add a d4 to their ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. It’s kind of like how the bless spell works, but now it is something that happens one time and comes with a cost, an expended hit die that they can’t use later on to help heal them. And before a player asks, no, you can’t stack them. You also have to announce you are pushing yourself before you roll your d20.
But what would this look like if they wanted to take a Devil’s Bargain? Instead of burning a hit die, they instead make a deal with the Game Master. If they are willing for something negative to happen to them, they get to add a d4 to their ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. They must decide to make this bargain before they roll their d20. In this situation, the negative thing can be a wide variety of ideas or situations, though a few options can be found below.
The monster they are fighting gets to make a free attack against the player character, regardless of whether or not they would be at 0 hit points or not after the character’s attack.
The character suffers exhaustion.
They make enemies with a faction
A segment on the progress clock ticks over, further ushering in their doom - or perhaps a new clock is started.
Someone sees what they are doing and the guards are alerted, and news of what they’ve done spreads throughout the city.
They have to spend a certain amount of gold for an expensive item.
Their weapon breaks.
And there are so many other options, based on what is going on in the story. If you are worried about a Devil’s Bargain being exploited, the Game Master controls when a Devil’s Bargain is available and what the ultimate effects of it are. If a player keeps asking for one for every attack, skill check, and saving throw they make, then you can let them, but the negative effects start increasing in severity. Instead of just one tick on the progress clock, now it’s 2 ticks. Instead of just gaining a bad reputation in the city, now the guards are downright hostile and are sending out patrols to arrest the party.
But you should keep yourself from being punishing. The idea behind pushing yourself or taking a Devil’s Bargain is to show that a character is going beyond their normal limits and accomplishing something great. It’s a chance to allow the narrative to further influence your mechanics and tell an exciting story at your table.
Flashbacks
The last mechanic I want to talk about is the Flashback mechanic within the game. The point of Blades in the Dark is to get to the action without being bogged down in planning. One way of doing that is that there is very little planning before the heist; instead, you just jump into the action. When a situation shows up, a player can announce they want to do a flashback, in which case they describe what the flashback entails and the Game Master imposes a price on that. If the player and GM are in agreement, the flashback happens and the player pays that price. Of course, there can always be a bit of back and forth if the player thinks the price is too high, they can adjust their flashback so it is cheaper or the GM can offer suggestions to increase the price but the player gains greater rewards for the flashback.
You can compare this to movies like Ocean’s Eleven (2001). We see the criminals do a bit of sparse planning, but we cut straight to the action without showing all of their plans. Then during their heist, they encounter a problem and we are then shown a flashback on how they forsaw this obstacle and what they did to prepare for it. The flashback doesn’t immediately solve the obstacle or make it pointless, but rather offers a solution to the criminals so that they can attempt a check and then overcome it. For example, if your party was in a dungeon and are dealing with a dangerous trap that sprays acid that melts through metal armor. A player could ask for a flashback where they purchased a heavy wooden shield, as a backup for their metal one, and the Game Master can then declare what the cost of such a flashback is. If they are in agreement the player then has the wooden shield to help them get through the trap.
The rules don’t distinguish between actions performed in the present moment and those performed in the past. When an operation is underway, you can invoke a flashback to roll for an action in the past that impacts your current situation. Maybe you convinced the district Watch sergeant to cancel the patrol tonight, so you make a Sway roll to see how that went.
The GM sets a stress cost when you activate a flashback action.
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After the stress cost is paid, a flashback action is handled just like any other action. Sometimes it will entail an action roll, because there’s some danger or trouble involved. Sometimes a flashback will entail a fortune roll, because we just need to find out how well (or how much, or how long, etc.). Sometimes a flashback won’t call for a roll at all because you can just pay the stress and it’s accomplished.
We run into the same problem as before; how do we adjust the cost for the players when it comes to doing a flashback? I like the idea of using hit dice as a default (and you could charge 1 or more hit dice for big asks). But you can also use gold (charging them a bit more for items due to using a flashback), impose a negative situation, or combine them for very big asks. Then again, if they just wanted to have purchased an extra spool of rope to help navigate a cliff, that could just be the cost of the rope and no other consequences. The goal isn’t to punish for lack of planning, but rather to give players more options to handle obstacles and problems that they encounter - and to get into the action.
A player could come up with a wide variety of ideas, from making a bribe the night before to get through a guard (the cost of which could be gold plus they expend a hit die) to having scouted the sewers a week ago (expend a hit die plus make a Survival check to see how good the map is). There are limits to flashbacks, like they can’t be in the middle of a combat and then announce they want to do a flashback where they poisoned the boss’ wine the night before in a heavily guarded castle. It has to make sense in the narrative and be something they could have feasibly done without going on an adventure to do it. To poison the boss’ wine in a heavily guarded castle is an adventure in and of itself. Flashbacks have limits as they aren’t meant to ignore obstacles, but rather to provide help to players and their characters.
Inspiration
Even if you have no intention in including any of these things in your game, I still hope it gives you something to think about. Finding new ways of playing a game can keep everything fresh and helps to create exciting stories at your table. And if you read all this, and it made you incredibly curious about playing Blades in the Dark, you should definitely pick up a copy and give it a read. It’s a light-weight rules system and can be a complete blast for those who want to go on heists, join a cult, or cause all manner of mischief in a haunted-victorian city powered by demon’s blood.
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