I love DnD 5e, I truly do, but non-combat encounters can be a bit clunky and boring. Simple successes don’t always have a lot of drama and just scaling down combat can be long and protracted. I wanted to find something that would be interesting for my players and offer them a different mechanic to try. And I found it in Improved Downtime -- Fighting.

The basic premise of this supplement is that your party wants to engage in a fistfight, and you don’t want to do regular combat, so you assemble three different dice pools, adding extra dice based on racial and/or class abilities. Your opponent does the same, and you roll offensive and defensive dice pools, eliminating matching dice, and dealing or negating damage. If so many dice get matched and pulled, then you lose. Fairly simple.

Overall, I like the idea of this mechanic, and I really like this document. Not only does Damion include the basic rules of the fistfight, but he also includes special rules about difficult terrain, pinning, throwing, audience interference, dozens of special abilities, story hooks, NPCs, and betting rules. It’s a really comprehensive document, and it basically includes everything you need to make a fight club style event. It’s super detailed!

However, I struggle to place this supplement fully within the world of DnD 5e. You only use d6s, you have dice pools, and movement, combat, and NPCs work in an entirely different way. Honestly, this supplement seems like a TTRPG all on its own, not an extension of the DnD ruleset.

I don’t think this is a bad thing, just perhaps not what I was looking for.

However, at a pay-what-you-want price and a suggested price range of only $1.00, I do think this is a steal of a supplement. The mechanic is cool, and the document has so, so many different features to it. I think it would be really fun to play in another type of system (like one that specifically uses d6s), and my players were impressed when I pulled it out for them to try. So do I think it’s worth a purchase? Absolutely. Do I think it’s really a DnD 5e supplement? Eh, not really.