You can get carried away with writing rules, it's very exciting when you're locked in, but at some point you need to stop... and see if they work.
Although I have 30 some odd classes, the usual plus oddities like plague doctors and amazons, this test included four standards, warrior, cleric, thief, and sorcerer (to call it wizard or mage or sorcerer is more of a quandary than it should be).
To sum up the system super fast:
- Instead of fighting fantasy's skill, we have four stats ported directly from D&D (str, dex, wis, cha). All skills are linked to a stat.
- Skills are roll equal to or under.
- Combat is opposed roll, roll higher. Winner does damage regardless of who's turn it is.
- Damage uses a chart, the d6 roll is modified by armor.
- Character creation offers mandatory skills by class plus a few random rolls on a class skill chart.
Party: prime stats: (Fate is luck, the better your core stats the lower your Fate, the thief had the best stats. Fate lowers with use, but only if it succeeds).
Sorcerer: HP: 16, Fate: 9, AC: 0, Weapon--Dagger: 4
Warrior: HP: 22, Fate: 9, AC: -3, Weapon--Sword: 8
Thief: HP: 17, Fate: 8, AC: 0, Weapon--Dagger: 6
Cleric: HP: 14, Fate: 9, AC: -2, Weapon--Mace:7, Faith: 7
Entering the dungeon the party chose the north passage (random roll). The thief checked the door for traps and failed. The thief's traps skill is a 7 (that's a 58% chance of success) and the thief failed this roll every time -- attempted 4 or 5 times. That's just a bit of bad luck.
Moving along, they entered the triangle room with standing coffins and out came the skeletons:
Skeletons: HP: 10, AC: 0, Fighting: 4, Damage: Sword.
Immediately, I see, your stealth and initiative rules have to be solid (not vague) choose something, lock it in. Also in this system, who goes first doesn't always matter, combat is an opposed roll--high roll wins and does damage; you can kill a monster on its turn. This makes whose turn it is at times confusing. However there are only certain things you can do on your turn. There are strengths and weaknesses to doing it this way and this is something I'm pondering.
Anyhow, the skeletons were less of a threat than they could have been, thanks to some lucky rolls (and more than a few ties, something that happened throughout, surprisingly, I ruled stalemates though I wrote different options for this). Also, the sorcerer unleashed a spell I call Arrow Storm (costs 3 HP and unleashes a number of arrows equal to your roll) rolled a 4 (arrow storm skill of 7, but was raised to 8 using what I call a downtime skill of astrology to improve 1 spell by 1 until the next downtime) those 4 arrows helped undo the skeletons.
Moving on around they entered the ghoul room where I was reminded to solidify my surprise rules as the ghouls jumped out. This should have been a tougher fight, but the cleric used turn undead (via the faith skill, Faith, like fate, lowers with use, but only if you fail your roll) to keep the ghouls cowering on defense mode, which means even if they win a combat, they don't do damage. The others chopped them up. Warrior finds a magic sword (+1 on damage rolls).
They then failed to find the secret door to the gorgon (medusa) who certainly would have ended them.
They entered the fountain room and I rolled randomly to see if anyone would dare drink; none did. They also failed to find that secret door as well (there is a secret door skill but none had it, no even the thief, so it's a straight wisdom roll. So, they opened the other door and woke up 2 ogres...
Ogres: HP: 15, AC: -1, Fighting: 5, Damage: large beast -- this is considerable damage.
During this fight the warrior got knocked down to exactly 0 HP, so he had to roll fate every round to avoid death, which he kept making. The fight only lasted 3 rounds technically, but remember, everyone's action is damage for someone. The thief chose to hide in shadows to sneak attack. Worked but he died anyway. The sorcerer was almost dead, so cast disappear (invisibility) on himself -- this actually reduced him to only 1 HP left. Then the cleric died, and finally the sorcerer took a chance because one ogres was dead and the other was at 1 HP.
TPK.
During the ogre fight, several people (including an ogre) went prone due to fumbles. When prone you can only defend and can't get up until it's your turn.
Lessons learned:
- The fighting fantasy damage charts are fun in theory, but I'm wondering if rolling damage the traditional way wouldn't be better and have armor as damage reduction as opposed to lessoning the d6 roll.
- To have proper turns or not to? That is the question. There are pros and cons.
- It's amazing how many different games have convoluted surprise and initiative rules; these need to be clear and simple. Side initiative works just fine for any system.
- Monsters have less HP than PCs in general, otherwise you wouldn't survive a single fight.
- How would this little gauntlet have played out using D&D rules (any)? I think much the same, so I think I've captured the right feel. The difference here is that in D&D as you gain levels you become quite powerful and combat becomes sometimes a pointless drag. That will never happen here... ever. An ogre will always be dangerous, and I think that's the way it should be.
- How necessary is 2d6? I could write the same exact game using d20 contested combat rolls with percentile skills. This would give more wiggle room, yet doesn't this already exist in the form of Palladium?
Pondering time...
Oh yeah, then this arrives!
Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint (ACKS II) by Alexander Macris (Autarch).
Talk about high quality books!
These things are insane. This is about as comprehensive a version of B/X, BECMI as you will ever find.
The art is great (comic book style) some A.I. it seems; the theme: Imperial Rome.
This was the most I ever spent on a Kickstarter and I did so because the canceltards were pounding Macris quite hard. So a little support was in order.
Anyhow, reports on these beauties will begin to pop up very soon. It's a lot to digest though.
Well done, Autarch.
