Stuck on a Special Effect? Let the Dice Suggest One
Stuck on a Special Effect? Let the Dice Suggest One
You know the moment.
Someone wins an opposed roll and earns a Special Effect. The table goes quiet.
“Which one should I take?”
The character has a sword, shield, three useful Combat Style Traits, and a glorious menu of tactical possibilities. Unfortunately, nobody can remember which possibilities they actually are.
The new Roll Effects feature in Tools From Pavis Combat Styles is designed for exactly this moment. It does not replace choosing Special Effects. Instead, it throws a handful of weapon-appropriate possibilities onto the table and says: How about one of these?
Start with your Combat Styles
Go to the Combat Styles screen and search normally. You can use any of the available search criteria.
Perhaps you want everything involving a Main Gauche. Search for Main Gauche, find the styles you need, and select one or several.
Your choices appear on the Selected Combat Styles page.
If these are styles you expect to use again, mark them as Favorites. Favorites are stored in your browser’s local storage, so you can quickly return to the same collection later.
You can also choose whether Choose Location (CL) should be treated as a Critical Only Special Effect.
Then press Roll Effects.
What happens when you roll?
After a moment, each selected Combat Style appears with all of its weapons.
For every weapon, the tool randomly selects at least four Special Effects from those actually available to that weapon and Combat Style.
This is not completely blind randomness.
If a Combat Style Trait enhances the usefulness of a particular Special Effect, that effect will appear more frequently. So the suggestions should tend to reflect what the Combat Style is actually good at doing.
There is another little wrinkle.
Some Special Effects require an opposed roll or depend upon STR. Those can be excellent choices when circumstances favour you, but perhaps less attractive when your winning roll was 21 on your combat style and you suspect your opponent might roll better.
For these effects, the tool provides an alternative in grey that does not have the same requirement.
So instead of simply saying:
“Use Bleed.”
the screen may effectively be saying:
“Bleed could be nasty here. But if you don’t fancy the opposed roll, consider this instead.”
The decision remains yours.
Don’t like the roll? Roll again
The suggestions are not commandments carved onto a bronze tablet.
You can Reroll All and generate a completely new set of suggestions, or reroll just one individual Special Effectwhile leaving everything else alone.
There are also tooltips to remind you what the various entries mean.
This makes Roll Effects useful not only when somebody has forgotten the available Special Effects, but also when everyone knows the rules perfectly well and simply wants inspiration.
Reach gets a reminder too
Each weapon also shows its Reach and gives useful reference points for fighting at a substantially different distance:
- the shorter Reach, two Reach ranks below
- the longer Reach, two Reach ranks above
That is there to provoke another kind of tactical thought.
Perhaps the best answer is not another clever attack. Perhaps you want to close the distance and make that long weapon awkward. Or perhaps you want to open the distance and make the opponent regret bringing a dagger to a spear problem.
Special Effects are only part of Mythras combat. Distance matters too.
Take the results elsewhere
The generated results can be copied to the clipboard, so you can move them into whatever you are using at the table.
But the more interesting question is: how should you actually use Roll Effects during play?
Three ways to use Roll Effects
1. The GM rolls for players who want help
Before or during the session, gather the player characters’ Combat Styles onto the Selected Combat Styles page.
When somebody wins a Special Effect but does not know what to choose, roll.
Instead of opening the rulebook and examining the entire Special Effects list, give the player one of the generated suggestions:
“You rolled a crit in your attack roll. Here is a good possibility for your crit or you can choose also this non critical option for your weapon. Pick one.”
Or, for a very new player, simply give them one:
“Your opening is there. Trip him.”
This can be particularly useful when introducing Mythras to players who are still learning how Special Effects work. They get to experience the tactical variety without first having to memorise the menu.
2. Players roll their own suggestions
A player can keep their own Combat Style selected and use Roll Effects themselves.
Win an effect. Look at the suggestions. Choose one.
As familiarity grows, they will probably need the tool less often. But along the way they may discover Special Effects they had overlooked.
That is rather the point.
3. Give your NPCs a larger tactical vocabulary
This may be my favourite GM use.
It is very easy for NPC tactics to become habitual.
The swordsman always Trips. The spearman always Impales. The thug always Bashes. After a while the supposedly dangerous mercenary company begins to fight suspiciously like one GM wearing twenty different helmets.
Instead, gather the Combat Styles of the NPCs involved in the encounter onto the Selected Combat Styles page and roll.
Now their weapons and Combat Style Traits generate a spread of appropriate Special Effects. Reroll individual results you do not like, or reroll the whole collection when you want a fresh tactical palette.
Suddenly one guard Pins Weapon, another Compels Surrender, the veteran uses the effect his Combat Style Trait was built around, and somebody remembers that changing Reach is a perfectly respectable way of ruining an opponent’s afternoon.
The NPCs start fighting according to their weapons and training rather than according to the GM’s four favourite Special Effects.
A suggestion engine, not an autopilot
Roll Effects is deliberately not trying to determine the mathematically perfect move.
Mythras combat is too dependent on circumstances for that. Armour, Action Points, Reach, positioning, weapon size, injuries, opponents, objectives and what you are actually trying to accomplish all matter.
The tool does something simpler:
It puts several plausible ideas in front of you quickly.
Use one. Ignore them all. Reroll one. Reroll everything. Spot an effect you had forgotten existed and choose that instead.
The purpose is not to remove tactical choice.
It is to get you past the moment when everyone is staring at the Special Effects list and thinking.
“There must be something good I can do here…”
You will find the tool here
https://notesfrompavis.blog/2026/08/19/stuck-on-a-special-effect-let-the-dice-suggest-one/