Haven't Thought About Symbaroum In A While.....

Sometimes I miss graphite sketches, but ink has seduced me.

Lately my mind has been going through different fantasy systems like a crazed pinball. I do this from time to time, consider different systems, what I like, what I don't. It's all a part of that impossible quest to find the perfect game. 

Symbaroum: A game with a shit-ton of potential:

• Serious contender for best art in a fantasy game.....or, any game for that matter. 

• Nice fluff, tons of flavor -- great flavor in fact.....but, I care as much about system mechanics as flavor (probably more) because I always look at a game with eyes on doing my own thing with it. Basically, I wish every game was generic enough for me to use in my own way (well, almost every game, with something like Warhammer 40K, you need to be all in, and who wouldn't want to be?) Which leads to.....

• Magic corrupts. Which is cool. Not sure I like how it's handled mechanically, meaning, once you're through a scene you can usually manage to recover from any corruption gained and be fully recharged by the next encounter, and, the stigmata gained is just descriptive -- who cares if your breath stinks -- Brimstone Cascade!  Characters will mutate back and forth on a daily basis, not just the sorcerers, everyone. This game needs a d100 effects of corruption table with actual mechanical banes, think Dark Heresy and it's Perils of the Warp, something that actually makes you think twice about pushing magic too far, instead of smelly breath that'll go away in an hour. I know there is the risk of too much corruption and you become a blight-crazed NPC, but I'm talking about interesting middle ground. Having said this, the spells/powers are all cool as are the rituals.

• Player-Facing rolls (players make all the rolls.) I've mentioned before, it's a trend I'm not a fan of. Numenera does it -- irreversibly. Symbaroum is reversible. Seriously, you could just make every combat roll a contested one like BRP does (easily done in a d20 roll under system) and even have fun with critical hits and failure combinations. Not a big deal.

• Seriously cool abilities, powers, and sorcerous traditions. For real, there are a ton of options from which to build characters and so many of them are cool as fuck. You can even take monster traits. Makes you want to play every type of character. This is a serious plus for the game. It's actually a rare quality (think feats and how many suck.) But.....

• You can max out your character way to soon. It takes a while to build up XP to buy new abilities, but you'll only have to save up about 50 XP for two improvements, and boom, your main ability is maxed out. This ability will be so good, it's all you'll want to use (Brimstone Cascade, ok, you'll have some corruption to manage, but you're still beyond bad-ass.) Everything after is just dabbling in other things. It's like hitting 20th level in D&D after only a few sessions and being forced to take levels in other classes. My solution might be something like not allowing characters to take Adept levels without having X amount of Novice level abilities (abilities improve in ranks from Novice to Adept to Master.) And no Master levels until you have so many Adept levels. This forces you to focus on several ideas (like building a spell-book) instead of simply rocketing straight into orbit. Visually, it would look something like a pyramid. Or, somehow make the process random, at least parts of it. Little trickier. Another idea: Require X amount of total XP to have been earned before you can start spending to improve abilities to Adept level and a further barrier for Master level. I would exempt core stat advances from these barriers. The idea is to play a character for a long time before you can enjoy something like Master level Brimstone Cascade. You could also rewrite some abilities as some gamers have done.

• The published adventures are so linear. They should just be novels. 

• Dungeon crawls are more like excavations. Now this, is actually kinda cool. I've been toying around with this notion for D&D. Symbaroum is fairly deadly, attempting an actual D&D style dungeon crawl would be fascinating and almost certainly short lived. But, you never know.

• Character generation is a standard array with an option of randomly rolling 2d6+3. I totally prefer the random option as it helps prevent maxing-out characters way too soon. And the OSR in me says, you get what you roll.

• There are abilities that allow you to fight using non-melee type stats. So, your thief is so quick, he's the equal of the fighter, he gets to fight using Dexterity. Your bard gets to fight using Charisma. The cleric gets to fight using Wisdom. It all becomes the same thing with different names. Symbaroum's action stat -- Accurate -- becomes a dump stat. THIS TYPE OF GAME BALANCE CAN TAKE A HIKE. Another reason I prefer random stat generation.

• Magic items (artifacts) minor and major are very cool. No boring "sword+1" and many come with a price -- I love this. Almost every item is unique.

• A D&D 5th Edition version is coming out.....sigh. What will be lost in this translation? Much I think. (Iron Kingdoms is doing the same thing, and that was another game with massive potential. Shouldn't have tied it so closely to minis.) When every game tastes the same..... However, looking through the playtest document, this could be cool. At the very least, you'll get a darker D&D 5e with some rule tweaks and MUCH BETTER ART. On the radar.

The beauty of Symbaroum makes you want to play it. It reminds me of Fall, the books, the colors, the feel, even the elves are ranked by seasons. Ultimately, it's a nice system and the tweaks I'd make aren't that many. Perhaps, that's the measure of a game.....