Last Time, on Song of Swords:
Zell Girls
Jimmy Rome gets a taste of the black death
Geralt of Rivia vs a Mongoose with a switchblade riding a horse
Previous Thread: >>44439979
Song of Swords is a realistic fantasy tabletop RPG that draws inspiration from historical fechtbuchs, weapons and armor. Its combat system is fast and it can be used for both fantasy and historical/mundane settings.
Call of the Void is a pulpy sci-fi tabletop RPG about fighting space-nazis and hunting giant whales with harpoons made out of the moon. Its combat system is more modern, based in the early 20th century, but can probably handle combat up to the present day.
Here's a .rar archive with the newest version of the rules as well as all related current working documents. At this time the latest version is v1.9.9:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/12xqm1p2q69m392/Song_of_Swords.rar
Here's Ballad of the Laser Whales' latest version: https://www.mediafire.com/?rtbjk51jnm2wv8a
Here's a wiki detailing SoS's fantasy setting, getting filled up bit by bit as Jimmy reveals more details:
http://tattered-realms.wikia.com/wiki/Tattered_Realms_Wiki
There's also a roll20 room where new players are encouraged to try the rules, test new rules, and find game breaking issues: https://app.roll20.net/join/346755/hRKd4w
The room might be empty, but the people who teach the game still browse the thread frequently. If you're looking to learn, post here in the thread. We also play Guy Windsor's card game Audatia in the room.
The Legend will never die.
>>44608372
Anything new in the oven?
Jimmy, or anyone else? Any comics, homebrew, ideas?
>>44609377
Band of Bastards guy is going to do demo run in a week or so.
>>44609735
I believe him about as much as I belive Jimmy.
>>44609377
I'm starting a campaign next week. Ancient Ruvia game. I need to start creating the sandbox map.
Anyone know of any Ancient Rome adventures or campaign modules I could steal from?
>>44609377
Jimmy might be a huge faggot but I don't think that means we should roast him alive in an oven, Anon.
>>44609377
Wasn't there just a monster hunting release?
If there was, how is it?
>>44611588
First time I heard this. Anyone actually played a game with those rules?
>>44611568
You make that sound so appetizing.
>>44611917
Gonna be playing one soon. I'm just looking for the chance to toss it at the players.
>>44612005
I'm thinking of working some early Celt ancestors to the Unkindlies into my Ruvia game so that the players can possibly deal with those rules. Probably some painted guys who hang out in lodges and drink monster blood directly.
>>44609807
What allowed Blade of the Iron Throne to break the Riddle of Steel curse and come out?
Are there any delinquents or other class of troublemakers in Vosca or are people generally peaceful?
How long can a relatively combat centric game of this last before the pc death count gets silly?
>>44616490
In the campaigns I've run, we've lasted several months with only a character death or two. So far the only guy who actually died in real combat was because he got bogged down in a crossbow fight after putting down his shield. Play smart and you don't die.
>>44616490
Not a lot, unless you implement something like the Luck mechanic from Ballad or any other thing to replace it.
One PC dying per session is the norm for me, if it's a fighting one. Now, if they planned throughly, got themselves support, armed themselves well, and got lucky, they're very likely to live through.
>>44616225
I can't imagine Genosian "Work makes you free" Vosca has a very high opinion of delinquents. Sarturi are probably all about that life though.
>>44615722
Tits on every page?
>>44617103
Delinquents burn farms and take up food. I guess it's all right as long as you're being delinquent in the south.
>>44618034
>burn farms
Holy shit, what kind of delinquents do you have? Are you sure you don't have an insurgent army wearing gakurans?
>>44615722
People with actual jobs and money, unlike Opaque.
>>44618591
A couple of idiots playing with matches can be incredibly destructive, anon.
>>44618975
That stops being delinquency and starts being criminal, anon.
>>44609377
There's a new Burning Wheel kickstarter out.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/burningwheel/the-burning-wheel-codex/description
>>44619587
If only I weren't saving money for an upcoming Kickstarter.
![5524-1600483434[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/g7CM0m6.jpg "5524-1600483434[1].jpg")
How do Esoterica's work? If I level a school up to that level do I get an Esoterica for each proficiency within the school(representing an esoteric level of mastery with each weapon) or is it a single esoterica tied to the school like learning Ansatsuken and getting the Shun Goku Satsu Esoterica of Pugilism? Is schooling not able to obtain esoterica as it's basically learning violence by rote and not being 'someone who has overcome the wall' on their own?
>>44620265
>How do Esotericas work?
No one knows
>>44615722
Like 3/4ths of it is literally cut and paste from RoS?
>>44620382
Can we get Jimmy in here, he knows.
>>44620407
Not THAT much of it is copy+paste. Maybe only 1/3rds.
>>44620748
Isn't it most of the combat system?
>>44621359
The magic is very different, I'll give it to them. I actually liked it.
>>44621393
What's it like and how easily is it stolen for Song of Swords?
>>44621645
It's not really what the SoS guys are going for, but if you just check out the book (it's been on the mediafire forever) it's very... Sword and Sorcery-ish. Vaguel, dark, dangerous, not terribly utilitarian.
>>44608372
Jimmy, who in Vosca is the happiest person alive, and who is the saddest?
Who has had the most arc points?
And most importantly, is this person happy with their life as it is?
>>44621680
That seems something like what Thaumaturgy is supposed to be. It seems the most Conan of all the magic systems, while Pyromancy and Sorcery are these weird metaphysical things tied into the Tattered Realms setting.
Hey SoS, stat me. Surely men of taste know who I am.
>>44621977
>/SoS/
>"Men of Taste"
Jimmy is literally a NGEfag.
>>44621998
Jimmy's not the only one here, and I can see smug Sakura and WIDE in there, which make up for the Keions. As to the claims of being a NGE fan, I'm not sure what this statement implies cap'n. Minato>Kaworu>Asuka>Rei
>>44621977
Girl, I don't even know who you are
>>44622475
It's Chick-Joshua from Fire Emblem.
>>44621998
I don't see any eva in there.I'm betting he's team Asuka.
>>44622475
>>44622625
Trash, the lot of you.
>>44623683
Degenerates, all of you.
>>44623766
>>44623683
Snakes, the bunch of ya.
>>44623683
Lady Lindis, marquise of Caelin.
>>44613396
That sounds super fucking badass. Like the Horned Men from Ryze if they were in a game that didn't suck.
>>44623683
hello,my waifu
What's Esoterica, lads?
>>44625030
It's the answer to the Riddle of Steel.Real talk: It was the original working title for SoS, and is now the name of a kind of super-talent you'll be able to get once you level a proficiency high enough.
>>44625047Do we have any idea of what that talent will do lad?
>>44625153
There'll be several to choose from, but so far only two that I can think of have been detailed. IIRC:
The first one is used by Gizka. Whenever you're hit, you're allowed to name one protected target zone. If the attack ends up landing on the zone, it instead misses entirely.
The second one is used by King. It allows you to freely pick any regular damage type to apply to your unarmed attacks instead of "unarmed" damage.
>>44625203
das some good shit mayne
>>44625203
>supermasterstrike
>animu bullshit
I want more
>>44625203
>inflict any type of damage with unarmed attacks
Oh my God.
>>44625608
It'd be ridiculously lethal, especially considering the usually low TNs of unarmed attacks.
>>44626780
You can parry unarmed attacks though
>>44626780
I was once part of a SoS homebrew where there was a claws perk that gave your fists +3 cutting and +2 piercing damage respectively.
It also stacked with the + damage from hand armor.
Shit was cash.
I kind of liked Laser Whales's old intro. Really just the part where the zell girl figures out who the bad guys were by how they held their guns. There was a guy down at the range where I grew up who everyone made fun of for how he shot, where he'd square himself towards the target and shoot one-handed. Later on he explained that he had been a cop way back when, and "point shooting" was something they used to teach because it's supposed to be really easy to point at something accurately with one hand.
There should be a skill for recognizing that sort of thing.
>>44625203
There's one guy who has an Esoterica. I don't remember his name or the name of his country. But, whenever he does an action that he believes is for the best for his country, all of his dice count as successes. Yes you read that right.
>>44628034
Yeah, isosceles was invented purely for target competitions. For actual fights, one handed is more than fine.
>>44628108
>A nationalist whose superpower is nationalism
This is world-ending shit right here.
>>44628034
>>44628131
It's a question of the particular situation. Point shooting is useful if the target is already very close, and the primary goal is to get the first shot in. It's easy and instinctive to use even in high-stress situations, and results in decent accuracy at ranges of less than ~8 meters. IIRC it was also the standard of military pistol training up until WWII at least, since close quarters combat would be the most likely situation where the pistol would be used in the first place.
However, if you do have the time, the Weaver stance will generally give you overall even better accuracy, provided you have the time and space to assume it. I think the new hotness center axis relock is specifically designed in such a way that you can quickly transition between a close point shooting stance and a more extended target shooting stance.
>>44628235
Plus it was primarily used by cavalry, who like to have a hand free.
>>44628108
It's Jerzy. The only way to possibly defeat him in an action is to put more dice into it than he does I think.
>>44628491
Or to convince him that killing you is not in fact in his country's best interest. Strive to be the best politician or scientist it has ever seen, to the point where losing you would be a greater blow than losing Jerzy.
>>44628491
If you had enough people, you could just brute-force it. Like, if ten guys just rushed him and threw fifteen dice each on him, even he'd be hard pressed to survive it.
Yeah, then you just have to deal with a 30 CP murderhobo, and not one with weeaboo fighting magic.
>>44628566
Or have five guys shoot him with bows, or shoot him while he's unaware and can't defend.
Alternatively, you can stab him to death over something idiotic that has no bearing on his country.
>>44628566
>>44628708
I figure that'd go for any SoS character, really. Five guys with Heavy Knobbed Maces can just fuck your shit up even if they don't deal much damage.
>>44628794
Never don't post this when BoTits weapons or armour comes up.
>this is the most activity we've had in weeks
what happened lads
>>44628911
>18 unique posters
>most activity we've had in weeks
>>44628911
Christmas and New Year's are over, people are settling back into the usual routines, resolutions to stop shitposting are discarded...
>>44628959
That's 4 posts per person.
That's pretty bad.
>>44628911
Nah, we had way more around New Years. Jimmy said we'd be getting something big soon, so this is just the quiet before the storm.
>>44628959
we'd go hours without posting lad
>>44628988
>>44625030
>>44625153
>>44628911
What's the deal with ladposting?
>>44629140
it's the new fad lad
>>44629188
I do not like this fad. It is Bad.
Now I'm mad.
>>44629219
sick rhymes lad
>>44629264
Thanks dad. This whole thing's pretty rad.
>>44629264
Eh, just a tad. Well, they're pretty ra-
>>44629563
Fuck you, you cad. Now I've been had.
>>44629579
This whole exchange is pretty sad.
>>44629140
>>44629188
>>44629219
>>44629264
>>44629563
>>44629579
these are dark times in /sos/
>>44629649
Jimmy hasn't been around to answer questions due to illness. Honestly id be a lot happier if he were more transparent about what's going on on his end rather than just saying soon all the time.
>>44629649
truly, these are the dankest of times
>>44629706
They are literally called Opaque Industries.
>>44629723
Memes, the DNA of /sos/.
>>44629762
The DNA of the soul Jammy
But no really something on the topic of /sos/ now, what are some good plot hooks for agents of the British Crown during the age of Colonialism?
>>44630013
Crown is boring. Set it in the Protectorate.
Japan is your plothook. You are agents of the Protectorate sent to destabilise Dutch interests in the region and to spread the light of God where you may. But negotiations change, the war ends, lines get cut and you soon end up abandoned by Control in the middle of a land you don't know. Now you must do what only an Englishman knows to do in such a situation, and spread God's word with the wave of radical republicanism you yourself will engineer to bring about a new age of democracy to every man in Japan without the aid of Britain. Or side with the Shogun against his political enemies and engineer trade deals for a nation that betrayed you.
>>44630013
It would seem like you could crib a lot from more modern CIA/KGB spy movies, since some of the dynamics are quite similar. For example:
-Some dirty french/portuguese/dutch fucks are trying to subvert your righteous and god-given rule of one of your colonies, so try to thwart them and ideally fabricate/find some evidence to turn the government against them.
-Do the same thing to one of them, to lead their poor misguided subjects back to the light of the commonwealth.
-You got your hands on the schedule of a spanish treasure fleet, by attempting to catch them on the high seas is impractical. Instead, try to capture one or several ships in a daring raid while it's at anchor, and make it look like the action of unaffiliated pirates to boot.
-There's some prophet of a strange christian sect going around China, gathering support and fomenting unrest. Naturally this would be disruptive to Great Britain's trade efforts, so it's up to you to hinder or ideally halt this movement before it snowballs into the Taiping Rebellion.
Where the fuck is Jimmy Rome?
>>44629762
>They are literally called Opaque Industries.
Holy shit, they knew.
>>44630522
Recovering from vigorous buggery.
>>44630441
>There's some prophet of a strange christian sect going around China, gathering support and fomenting unrest.
Holy shit. I just realised how similar that was to the Yellow Turbans.
What the fuck China.
>>44609735
One of the Band of Bastards devs is in my D&D group. Last Saturday we were scheduled to run the demo adventure, but we didn't get started until too late so he spent the evening running fights for us.
>>44630568
Wait that's not a reference to the Yellow Turbans?
>Check Wiki
>Yellow happened in 184 AD
>Brain had turned the Boxers into Yellow Turbans
>What the fuck brain?
>"Not to be confused with the Red Turban Rebellion"
>What the fuck China?
>>44630793
Tell us more about it. We haven't heard anything in so long from the BoB people. Maybe you'll scare Jimmy into doing his job.
>>44630924
Anon, the Boxers were a whole other thing.
>>44630924
You're mixing all the Turbans and the Boxers up with the Taiping Rebellion.
>>44630970
>>44630999
Well I know that now but before further investigation China and my brain had got together to spit roast me.
>>44630793
I don't believe you. They've literally been saying "we got held up so we're doing it next week" for at least 6 weeks.
>>44630793
>>44631192
From what I understand, they've had the rules all done for ages but have been hung up with the actual writing of things so people can understand it. The main dev also writes for a living, so it may have something to do with why it's taken forever to get the writing done - chefs cooking at home, and all that.
The demo we were supposed to run was a 3 musketeers thing. We wound up running fights for an hour or so with the pregen characters instead. We probably did a dozen or so fights with the basic rules before we started adding some stuff in. Most of the group hadn't played anything of the sort before, so it took some getting used to. It was a lot of fun once people figured out not go all-in off the first throw.
This >>44631414
Was supposed to respond to >>44630942
>>44631414
How did the system differ?
>>44631508
>>44631414
And don't tell us stuff we already know, like everyone starts at TN 6 and it goes up with wounds.
>>44631508
>>44631939
We ran through the fights, so I cant comment on much outside of that context.
Attributes are scaled 1-6. Average seems about 3. It seems less detail oriented in some places - weapons don't have their own ATNs/DTNs. We did get a look at the weapon codices though. So while they don't have as much crunch and as many weapons listed, you can do some cool stuff with it.
Armor properties are neat. Armor both reduces damage and does different things to it - metal armors basically blunt any cutting damage. Plate also caps the amount of blunt damage you can actually receive through it.
The wound wheels looked funny at first, but after a couple times they clicked. I can definitely see why they went that way instead of the TROS setup. I imagine if you were fighting non-bipeds that it is way easier and more intuitive to call out a wheel location than have another chart that covers the attack angles.
That's what comes to mind immediately, anyway. I will say once you understand what you're doing, it goes pretty quickly and is fairly brutal.
>>44632054
>Plate also caps the amount of blunt damage you can actually receive through it.
That's new and interesting.
>>44632054
So they've abandoned the weapon building thing in favor of a weapon list?
>>44632104
From what I understand, certain weapons have a property that circumvents this, so hitting someone with a sword will do blunt damage, but it isn't going to do much no matter how well you roll.
Hitting someone with a wooden staff is a blunt weapon, but you aren't going to cave someone's breastplate in the way a hammer might.
If I get more specific questions, it might jog my memory.. though we were mostly looking at the early "learning curve" stuff last saturday. The melee combat system is apparently structured in such a way to let people learn parts of it at a time, which I appreciate.
>>44632158
So they've abandoned the weapon building thing in favor of a weapon list?
No, the weapon building thing is what I was talking about. They have some sample weapons listed with each one, which is what I was referring to. As far as I can tell, it's basically the same concept they had on their site.
>>44632206
How were your sample characters armed and armored?
>>44632206
Do falchions still have armor piercing or whatever?
>>44632268
We were musketeers, so everyone had some combination of rapier, wheellock pistol, dagger.. Armor was buffcoats and breastplates. A notable exception was the big slugger guy who had a schiovana instead of a rapier.
>>44632525
Hide your wife, or she's gonna get dunkied.
>>44632341
I saw something called maille piercing or maille biting or something. It was listed with axes and swords, so I assume so. Not sure how it works specifically.
>>44632658
>maille piercing/biting
UNNACEPTABLE
>>44632658
You should let him know his error if you ever see him.
>>44632757
>>44632823
I'll ask him about it. I might also be misremembering something.
There will be a prepped session on Saturday I think. I'll know more then.
>>44632823
>>44632757
What error? Why are your panties in a knot?
>>44633459
There's an old myth that falchions are axe-like and heavy swords used to chop through maille. It's some sort of redirection, along with falcatas and forward swept swords, of the old idea that swords in general were incredibly heavy chopping weapons. It used to be so widespread that SoS repeated the myth. Then a guy who's doing a large survey of extant falchions in museums started posting and demonstrated how falchions are actually thin weapons designed to slice rather than hack.
>>44633579
Okay, but anon only said that there is a Maille Biting quality, not that he saw falchions (still) had it. It might be different now.
>>44633631
It's just something we give Jimmy shit for, so we figure we might as well share the love.
>>44633631
That's true. Our last look had it, but that was years ago. I'd just like for the guy who can actually change it to make sure that it doesn't happen.
>>44633579
> Then a guy who's doing a large survey of extant falchions in museums started posting and demonstrated how falchions are actually thin weapons designed to slice rather than hack.
Neat. Can anyone dig up a link?
I'm bored. Time to post old Builder teasers.
>Why's it called Builder?
Band of Bastards
want to be abbreviated to 'Bastards, but that's stupid so fuck that, we call them BoB
BoB the Builder
why builder? because you build your weapons in this game
Hence, the game is called Builder. Also it starts with a B, just like Bovine and Ballad and Burning Wheel. Moving on:
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH "DYNAMIC WEAPONS?"
In any conversation about historical weapons, you have three primary troubles when the goal is modeling them with accuracy.
The first comes from terminology. The fact is that in most period sources, regardless of its characteristics a sword was called (you guessed it) a sword. This shows up in many cases whether we’re talking about shorter swords, fatter swords, longer swords, one-handed swords, two-handed swords -- very few swords were called something other than “sword” in their period, and most often when they were it was usually something that translated to “Big sword” “large sword” “two-handed sword.” Very distinctive. The interest in precise categorization of different kinds of weapons is a relatively modern phenomenon, and this makes classification quite difficult with any kind of authenticity. Even the venerable longsword goes by a myriad of names, and the term longsword itself has even been applied to single-handed rapier-like blades in certain manuals.
The second problem you will encounter is that even if one can come up with definable categories for these individual weapons (agreeing exactly on what constitutes a side sword compared to an arming sword blade retrofitted with an elaborate guard, as was often historically done) you are then stuck with the unenviable task of trying to work out what an “average” item of this type actually is, how it performs, and so on. This itself is kind of a frustrating exercise, as even two swords which look identical may be vastly different based on how they are weighted.
>typing #7 in your name gives you a trip
Well fuck that then
Slight changes in balance make one a nimble thrusting weapon and the other a dirty great chopper.
This gets even less fun when you get away from swords. Oakeshott typology and some serious scholarly work give us a pretty decent information about swords. But then you have to deal with axes, and maces, and crossbows, and guns. If there was an absurd amount of variation in types of swords and their characteristics, the amount of variation in even less standardized weapons borders on the infinite. We won’t even discuss the problems encountered if one wants to research early firearms and start defining terms. Arquebus, Spanish musket, late musket, caliver, petronel.. it was difficult enough to reach a consensus on which term means what to whom, but then getting common figures on calibers?
The final trouble you encounter is, as Mike Loades said "ultimately, a sword is an iron bar with a sharp edge and a point." In most cases, the actual difference in performance between different types of swords that were actually meant to be used is surprisingly small, save for preferences in how they have been weighted and the trade offs they may have made in specialization. Weapons are meant to be an answer to a question. While swords represent an exceptionally wide variety of attempts to find answers, the answers they arrive at are very similar.
SO. WHAT HAVE WE TAKEN AWAY FROM THIS?
Weapons are very fluid in their “types” and except in situations in which a standard was imposed (such as the mass-produced sabers for the British army), the handling characteristics of a given weapon usually had more to do with the preferences of the person having it made than anything intrinsic to a “type” of sword. Rather than take up a quarter of the book with spread-sheets on 150 types of sword, we decided that we wanted to model that fluid, dynamic quality.
In ‘Bastards, weapons are handled through what we call Codices, which are systems we use to help you generate content for your game. In the Arms Codex, weapons are broken down by type: One-handed sword, two-handed sword, mass weapons, pole-arms, daggers, bows, crossbows, pistols and long guns. Each weapon type has its own base stats, and then a series of options you can take that alter the characteristics of the weapon you are having made.
BOW (4P, SHORT/MEDIUM, INSTANT, DRAW: ST3)
- Ambushes at d6 Sequence
- Reaches up to Long range in a formation
- Damage becomes 2p if Draw Weight requirement is not met
Choose Bow Type:
- Self-bow (+1TN, in a pinch, can be crafted in a day with basic skills and limited tools)
- Recurve (-2DR when wet, composite*, crafting takes often weeks, requiring special tools and glues)
Optional: Change Draw Weight
- Child’s (-2 Damage, requires Strength 1)
- Target (-1 Damage, requires Strength 2)
- War (+1 Damage, requires Strength 4)
- Epic (+2 Damage, requires Strength 5)
Features: Increase Cost for Each
- Long (reaches up to Extended range in a formation; can’t be used on horseback)
- Heavy Draw (+1 Damage, one shot per round, always uses d10 Sequence)
- Whiskers (adds string silencers, subduing the twang)
Examples
- Shortbow (4p, short/medium, instant, St3) Recurve
- Poaching Bow (5p, short/medium, d10, St3) Self-bow, Whiskers, Heavy Draw
- English Longbow (6p, short/medium, d10, St4) Self-bow, War, Long, Heavy Draw
- Daikyū** (4p, short/medium, instant, St3) Recurve, Long
* composite and recurve are not separate traits -- the only way to get a recurve bow is to build it out of composite materials. this is contrasted by crafting a bow out of a single piece of wood, which makes a self-bow.
** this asymmetrical Japanese bow made out of bamboo strips is the only historical recurve longbow that we’re aware of
Like in the above example, each weapon section will give examples on how the parts can work together, and some very common “forms” of those weapons. To make life easy on the GM, a back appendix will feature the fairly complete kind of arms catalog you would expect for easy reference. So far, we haven’t come across any period weapons that we haven’t been able to easily replicate within our setup, and that makes us ridiculously excited.
The real strength of this system is two-fold:
First, it allows a far more subtle variation and characterization as you see in fiction. Even in a knightly setting with little variation where the default assumption is that everyone would have carried an arming sword, your hulking brute of a character may be carrying one that’s deliberately hefty and blade-heavy, meant to brutally hack his way through an enemy. By contrast, the guy at your table whose character is a pampered noble may decide that his character would have preferred a lighter, more nimble weapon. There is a sense of ownership when designing your character’s weapon, rather than just picking one off the rack.
Second, it avoids long debates over the relative merits of different swords and keeps the focus where it should be: on the people who use them.
>>44633862
He's called cutleranon. He doesn't use a name and he posts in threads all over the place. If you search that you can probably find a link to some of his posts on the subject.
Further dev comments:
Polearms probably got more benefit out of this than any other category, given how modular they are in nature. It also saved us the benefit of writing down every possible permutation of polearm head out there, as .. seriously. Europeans loved their funny shaped pig-stickers. Mass weapons got very similar benefits. Weirdly, I'm more proud of the crossbows than anything, as when we started that was a category we didn't think we had much to work with.
>I assume armour is getting a similar treatment?
It's something we've been playing with, actually. As it currently stands, we have the more "Standard" approach, but we're definitely playing with the idea of making an Armor Codex as well, where armor can be more customized and so on. With the vast variety of panoply out there in this period, it seems like it would be something definitely worth taking on.
Just like with weapons, if we do wind up making an Armor Codex, we'll be keeping a pre-gen list handy for reference for GMs and players who aren't interested in fiddling with it.
>Shields?
dev 1) Yes! Yes, you dogged bastards. You're getting a Shield Codex.
dev 2) We actually tried to do that for a while, but there just aren't really a lot of factors you can come up with for a shield, historically. Weight. Size. Grip. Most of these permutations fall under more or less specific designs, and the major changes fall under "how durable is it," which thus far isn't an issue. We've got an idea for an optional shield destruction rule, but that's a lever rather than a core item.
Instead, what we wound up rolling with is making each shield type actually have some interesting feature to account for why you would use A over B.
For instance, Bucklers have an in-built use in that you can carry them as side-arms, as opposed to other shields. That relies on your GM remembering that the setting isn't skyrim or D&D where you are carrying around full battlefield kit all the time, but it is historically why they were so popular. Bucklers are also considered "off hand weapons" for the purpose of a dual strike.
The leather grip of a targe allows you to hold a weapon in the off-hand (traditionally, a dirk). Center-grip shields have a bonus that makes them particularly prone to aggressive use (Per a discussion with Roland, they were ideal for single combat, but somewhat less useful for shield-walls and formations). Heater shields have a strap-system that means you can wield a two-handed weapon while using them. Tower / Kite shields don't get any of the above advantages, but they are way more cover.
So while there isn't currently a codex for shields, we did go out of our way to make the existing choices all interesting and have each affect the way you may fight with them.
dev 3) On the plus side, Hoplons and Rodelas make sense now mechanically. Also - ever notice how often people are depicted holding things in their shield hand in addition to said shield? Yeah, we did too.
Are the BoB bastardsNTR'ingus away from Jimmy?
>>44634213
They aren't doing a very good job. My hips haven't even moved on their own yet.
test desu
Hey /sos/ how are you doing?
>>44634445
Alright. Thinking bout the Ballad campaign I'll
never run. Feeling feels.
>>44634514
The one you'll never *run*? Why, I think most of us are more than willing to play with you!
>>44634526
Who would want to play with you catamites
>>44634526
I don't have the time, or rather, I don't have the time that will line up with an appropriate amount of other people that I would want to run a game for.
While the Band of Bastards Role-Playing Game is about a lot of things, it’s hard to deny that the portion closest to our hearts is its quick and bloody combat system. We set out to make combat as authentic and brutal as possible while still maintaining that sweet spot between simulationist detail and playability, doing everything in our power to keep the learning curve as generous as possible.
The core of ‘Bastards bloody combat system revolves around the use of specific maneuvers to emulate real-world techniques used in melee combat throughout history, each both providing narrative benefits and their own method of juggling your dice to gain an advantage on your opponent. In Band of Bastards, as in real-life combat, the first person to win the upper-hand often wins the fight.
While maneuver-based-combat has been done before, where ‘Bastards really shines is in the way it has organized and streamlined these maneuvers into something that can be approached in a way that is both fluid and new-player friendly, while losing none of the crunch more veteran players crave. We accomplish this in a few ways:
BASIC VS ADVANCED MANEUVERS
At the core of the combat system are a handful of Basic Maneuvers. These maneuvers are all available to anyone regardless of what proficiency or weapon they use (with the sole exception of Block, which requires a shield), and cover sufficient bases that an entire campaign could be played with them alone and you’d still have a quick and dirty cinematic combat experience. The Basic Maneuvers are relatively quick to learn and master, and are a godsend for getting new players used to the way combat flows and handles.
Advanced Maneuvers expand the repertoire of more experienced players by granting them new and additional tricks to play that are more proficiency-specific than the Basic Maneuvers. Once your players have gotten the hang of combat, breaking out the Advanced Maneuvers can add a layer of depth and tactical complexity to your game, and really bring out the nuances between the various combat styles.
AUGMENTATIONS
Rather than having several dozen free-floating entries, many maneuvers are linked together by a mechanic we’ve been referring to as Augmentations, allowing a player to group things together by more thematic associations. Through this method, more specialized attacks like Wraps or Draw Cuts are both listed as a kind of upgrade to the Swing maneuver, allowing the purpose of the attack to be augmented at the cost of a die from their combat pool. This arrangement keeps “maneuver management” to a bare minimum, while sacrificing nothing in terms of flexibility.
PROFICIENCIES
Mechanically distinct from skills, Proficiencies measure not just your character’s ability to fight, it says a lot about how they fight, with each proficiency granting access to different Advanced Maneuvers that reflect their individual style of combat. In keeping with our belief in empowering characters from the very beginning, each Proficiency has access to all of its associated maneuvers from the moment it is taken. While many of these will overlap with other proficiencies, the real defining feature for each proficiency is its Emphasis, which modifies the way it interacts with certain maneuvers or grants new maneuvers unique to that proficiency, incentivizing that style to behave in the ways most natural to it.
In ‘Bastards, it wasn’t good enough for us to create the very best system we could to replicate the kind of combat we wanted to see. We wanted to make sure that it was accessible enough that you’d actually want to run it at your table. That’s where we’ll measure our success.
--
For those out there that have some TROS under their belts, there are a few other differences you might find significant:
To reduce book-keeping, maneuver costs remain constant, regardless of which proficiency you're using. Differentiation comes from maneuvers available and the proficiency's Emphasis.
A lot of proficiency use similar maneuvers, reducing any "what if I want to use maneuver Y with proficiency X" issues. If a thing can reasonably do a thing, it's already built in.
As said above, we don't lock maneuvers behind proficiency rank requirements. You don't need rank 8 in a proficiency to unlock a certain rank, making book-keeping easier.
Dice mechanics are very streamlined and intuitive so you don't need to split pools within pools. The mechanics are also internally consistent, making them easier to pick up and roll with.
>As said above, we don't lock maneuvers behind proficiency rank requirements. You don't need rank 8 in a proficiency to unlock a certain rank, making book-keeping easier.
I just want to reiterate what this implies:
While the division of Basic and Advanced maneuvers exists, it is drawn for the players, not for the characters. That way, new players can easily figure which of the maneuvers form the system core, and if desired, levering the game becomes also easier. "Let's just skip Advanced maneuvers for now," etc.
Then again, for a group of veteran players, there's nothing that keeps them back from using all the maneuvers from the get-go. On top of that, there's no "advancement path" to plan out to finally get the "fighting move" that you want. You already have that move, but do you also have enough Proficiency to take advantage of that fact? Now, that is another question entirely.
Advancement paths are the main reason I avoid d20 like the plague. I am actually pretty down for a game of AD&D or Moldvay basic. I'm actually running one now. But I hate the idea of "building" a character and having to plan out some kind of advancement path from the get go to make sure I get the things I need / want for later. Not only is it a mechanical headache that relies on system mastery over player agency, it makes it really hard to change and adapt your character to the changing nature of the campaign.
Imagine your warrior character has a religious experience halfway through the campaign. In something like 'bastards it is entirely possible for you to begin accumulating religious skills and the like or begin studying the occult (some religions are different than others!) in a d20 based game you are faced with the choice: do you continue on with your preplanned and optimized build, or do you abandon it to start multiclassing as a cleric or wizard, or pick up any number of some hundred odd prestige classes? Either way you've got a ton of resources already tied up in feat trees you now won't be using and may not have finished. Most people I've played with or have seen play d20 aren't willing to eat the cost, and thus their character ends the campaign in the build they came up with before it began.
You can argue that this is a fault of players, not system, and you might have a case. On the other hand, I would counter that if the system doesn't encourage "building" in the first place, then it becomes a non issue.
>>44634865
>>44634892
where is all this coming from? I recognize some of it from the blog
>Even if that may be a bit unhistorical, but have you added some proficiency or even manoever to make axes a better choice of weapon? This has always been a flaw of TROS and its successors (like Blade). And are there manoevers for combat with multiple opponents? Not like "roundhouse kick" or the like, but maybe to control the foes a bit better... I'm really curious about your multiple-foe-rules!
The axe has a few things going for it. To begin with, almost every weapon has TN6 when used as it is intended to be handled, so axes aren't automatically clumiser weapons than swords. In addition, they benefit both from the bonus from the Mass Weapon proficiency (which currently allows them to hit harder than other weapons at a price) and many axes are set up to have the Maille-Biting ability, allowing them to deliver solid blows into and through maille armor.
Remember also that while we include pre-generated weapons for ease of reference, the Codex of Arms allows you to create weapons tailored to your specific tastes. Your axe could be relatively quick and nimble, a big bloody chopper, optimized for throwing, or any number of different combinations. Much like in real life, I suspect that the usefulness of an axe is largely dependent on the kind of battlefield you're dealing with. I'm certainly happy with it though.
As far as multiple opponents, we did a good bit of research on the subject before we even touched it. In short, there simply is no good historical example of an attack which can reliably hit multiple opponents (striking the first almost always takes the strength out of the blow), and the best advice the treatises seem to have about defending yourself against multiple opponents is do a lot of menacing, sweeping gestures with your blade and try to position your opponents so that they get in each other's way.
As for the outnumbering side, the two or three mooks trying to gang up on the one guy, a significant amount of their work is trying to coordinate with one another and find an opening where you can both attack your target and be relatively sure you're not going to murder your friend in the process.
We spent a pretty decent amount of time trying to crack this particular chestnut, and we're fairly happy with what we came up with. BUT that's a subject for another teaser!
--
A major trouble I personally had with TROS was micromanaging all of the options and rules as a DM. Keeping track of everything separately was a huge hassle, to say nothing of the difficulty in introducing as new player to the system.
A big part of our goals in this go around was making sure that the game was as manageable as possible.
>Also, I was wondering how (if at all) you were planning to handle winding and binding
Let's just say that Jake called the crux of our solution "brilliant".
>>44635100
http://www.grandheresyforums.com/viewforum.php?f=2
>>44634892
>But I hate the idea of "building" a character and having to plan out some kind of advancement path from the get go to make sure I get the things I need / want for later.
System mastery over player agency? What does that even mean?
Band of Bastards comes from a tradition of violent fiction and bloody ends. For all the work we've done on the fighting itself, it felt criminal to abstract damage out to some form of hit points. Instead, every injury in 'Bastards is measured in flesh maimed and blood lost.
So what does that mean in game terms? Band of Bastards measures all damage as Wounds, which represents the nature and severity of the injury received. There are three axes which combine to determine the exact wound taken.
DAMAGE TYPE
The first axis is the kind of damage taken. For the overwhelming majority of Wounds, the damage received is of one of three kinds:
Piercing damage, as done by arrows or the thrust of a sword.
Cutting damage, as done by the swing of an axe or saber.
Blunt damage, as the result of a club or hammer to the face.
Each type of damage results in different kinds of wounds, and interacts with armor differently, having its own advantages and disadvantages.
WOUND LOCATION
The second axis is the location of the damage. Those of you who have been with us the longest may remember our very first teaser, the wound wheel
No attack is simply that. Each attack is specified to be a swing or a thrust, and a target wheel is chosen to receive it. If successful, a d6 is rolled to determine where the blow lands, starting at the top and going clockwise around the wheel. The outside wheel is used for swings, and the inner wheel used for thrusts.
Why is this important? There are two main reasons. The first is that different wound locations have very different effects. A blow to the hand or forearm is liable to make someone drop something. A blow to the head may disorient your opponent. A blow to the legs may trip them or knock them off-balance. The second major reason is that getting stabbed in the face is going to suck way more than getting stabbed in the arm. The latter could potentially cripple you. The former is liable to kill you.
Naturally then, characters will want to prioritize their armor to cover their most vulnerable areas first just as combatants have done throughout history. Armor in 'Bastards is thus relatively detailed, as it becomes tremendously important to know whether your neck is covered by a maille coif, an aventail, a gorget, or whether they were prancing around with an exposed jugular like this guy: [pic related]
SEVERITY
The final axis is the severity of the wound. The harder or more skilled the blow, the more trauma you have potentially caused your opponent. Damage is the end result of a number of factors including how well you rolled, the physical strength of your character, and the rating of the weapon you've used. Because the proficiency of your character plays such an important part, a skilled man with a dagger can do as much or more damage than an opponent with a zweihander.
Wounds are rated on a scale between 1 and 5 levels of damage, with 1 being a light or glancing blow and 5 generally maiming or even killing an opponent outright. The exact results depend on the location and type of damage dealt, above.
THE BLOODY FORTUNE COOKIE
So you've taken your swing, overcome your opponent's defenses, and you know that your Kriegsmesser just scored a level 4 cut across your opponent's crown. What does that actually mean? This is where the fun comes in:
All of the above information is packaged in what we've taken to calling the Bloody Fortune Cookie. Each wound has all of the relevant information, effects, and a brief description in one place. In addition to having all of the mechanical detail, the flavor text gives a strong narrative picture of what's happening. This detail takes a lot of weight off of the GM's back in keeping combat fast and interesting. Gone are the ubiquitous shoulder wounds. Each blow is measured in blood and sinew. When the player finds himself on the wrong side of an axe, they'll remember exactly where and how badly they were hit.
>
This teaser doesn't tell us much. It's just "hey, we have wound tables!"
a) Blood Loss is exponential. BL2 is way more serious than BL1. BL3 is the max and can kill a character in two minutes (think femoral artery).
b) in addition, the damage type will have way more effect on the character than evident from this particular table (essentially, level 4 blunt wound will impair the character about as much as a level 3 edged wound)
--
Blunt weapons have a number of advantages in the system that aren't immediately obvious from the wound table alone. That said, Blunt damage is also an interesting thing to model, as you're technically modeling everything from a fist to black jack, to a staff, mace, or an ogre swinging the better part of a tree.
To borrow from a matt easton rant: In terms of killing efficiency, blunt weapons aren't particularly good at killing people or even disabling them. You can break bones and the like, but that tends not to win a fight - at least not fast enough to keep them from killing you in retaliation. You really have to hit something extremely vital in order to cause enough trauma to put someone down. If you're fighting naked man, you'd much much rather have a cutting or piercing weapon, which is why the first thing people do with staves is stick pointed heads on them when it's time to go to war.
Where blunt weapons shine is that they are much less diminished by resistance. It's much easier to overcome armor with a mace than it is with a sword. They are also very good weapons to put someone down when you don't necessarily want to kill them. You may note that peacekeeping forces generally always carry blunt weapons - it's much easier to repair broken bones than open wounds. Different weapons tend to fulfill different niches in 'Bastards, much the way they do in real life.
>>44634892
I have to say I'm pretty sympathetic with this. I really dislike SoS's talent system for this reason.
IMPACT
When a wound is taken, the victim suffers Impact, representing the immediate pain and distraction caused by an injury. This is measured by an Impact Rating and manifests as a number of dice discarded from your current pool, equal to twice the wound level received (4 dice, at level 2). This effect is immediate, and only effects the pool in the next tempo without the need for further tracking.
BASE TN
As you're probably aware by now, 'Bastards uses a d10 dice pool system based around the number of individual successes rolled, rather than adding them together. Each die that shows a number equal to or higher than you the Target Number counts as a success. For example, rolling seven dice against TN6 and getting 7, 6, 2, 2, 5, 3, 9 would be three successes.
The TN required is usually determined by what we refer to as the Base TN. By default, that begins at TN6 but when wounded or fatigued it can be raised. A broad guideline follows:
Had the character in our previous example been significantly wounded, they would have needed to roll vs a Base TN8 instead and would have scored only a single success.
In the case of multiple wounds, the Base TN is determined by the worst injury that the character has. A character with one level 2 wound and two level 3 wounds would make up Base TN8.
BENEFITS
The escalating Target Number system in ‘Bastards has a number of advantages over the "wounds reduce die pool" system that we used in early testing:
No need to adjust the character's Combat Pool, meaning that we need to do less math and track less information between tempos.
Base TN only shifts when you receive a worse injury than you already have; breaking two fingers does not hurt twice as much as having one finger broken.
Making the penalties for wounds scale on TN instead of subtracting dice means that wounded characters are penalized evenly, no matter whether they are making a skill check with 6 dice, or have 25 dice in a pool with SAs firing.
It can sound complicated at first, but in practice it’s remarkably simple. The first significant injury often decides the outcome of a fight, placing the victim at a disadvantage, and limiting the amount of wounds that need to be looked up at all. Impact takes effect immediately, requiring nothing in tracking. The agony and disability of a wound is represented in the Base TN, which is represented by a simple mark on the character sheet.
The only other details aside from the shifting TN you need to track are the wound location and its severity. Some wounds also cause bleeding, which we didn’t cover here, but in all but the most severe cases, Blood Loss is something that takes place in the aftermath of combat, rather than in the rapid clash of steel.
In short, discard a few dice when you’re hit. Mark down the wound location and Blood Loss (if any). If the wound was worse than your character already had, shift the Base TN. Repeat until someone surrenders or stops moving. If you’re still standing, have someone ready with bandages.
Basically, most die rolls have a TN of 6. That TN goes up when you're wounded. So if you do a skill roll normally, you roll attribute and skill at TN 6; if you're heavily wounded, you roll at TN 8. Instead of a direct penalty to the number of dice, you roll the same number of dice but each one is less likely to be a success.
Impact is the temporary die loss that affects you for a moment, while the Base TN is the long term injury that affects you till the wound is healed.
We went to the shifting TN mechanic since tracking the lingering wound effects via die loss (and their compounding values) turned out to be way more of a hassle than either of us remembered from TROS. When even the two most technical players in my test group had trouble with it... We knew that something needed to change. Basing the wound effects on the TN basically reduced the game mechanical rules bulk in that area by 85% and solved many problems in general. :)
Also, there's one additional thing that was implied, but not explicitly stated... Since level 1 wounds don't shift your Base TN, they deliver Impact alone. As such, it means that you don't need to write down every minor scrape or bruise as a wound.
>BTW, will there be rules for infections thus making cleaning the wounds all the more important?
These rules do exist and they're quite simple. Basically keeping the wound clean aids the healing roll and neglecting the wound hinders it. If you fail the healing roll completely (zero successes), the wound gets infected and the character strikes a fever. From then on all healing progress stops and your healing rolls will start working towards battling the infection instead. If you keep failing the rolls, the infection/fever will grow worse and eventually kill the character.
--
Yes, Tempo is one of our abstract time units. :) It represents the span of time in which a single close combat maneuver is performed.
In 'Bastards, there is no difference between axes and swords TN wise. You pretty much always roll vs the Base TN, whatever it might be for your character at the moment. There are some unwieldy weapon builds that can modify the TN, and shields keep a Fixed TN that is not modified by your wounds, but those are by far the exceptions.
This simplification doesn't really impact the simulationist aspect as much as one would think -- Jake himself has said that as he's been learning more about different weapons, the more he felt that most of them should be TN6 anyway. We simply took that notion further -- you're always rolling vs TN6 for everything, provided you are healthy. Slightly wounded? TN7. Significantly wounded? TN8. etc.
In TN terms, they're pretty much the same, but there's indeed a lot of differences that aren't immediately apparent here. For instance, axes are generally better cutters, can be adorned with different spikes and... of course, are used differently. Simply the fact that they use the mass weapon proficiency makes them brutal, whereas swords have other kinds of unique benefits, depending on the proficiency in which they are used.
And yes, it is all way less complex than it sounds
--
Base TN aside, 'Bastards uses Advantage and Disadvantage to modify the rolls. So, if something will give the character an Advantage, they will get -1TN, and if something gives them a Disadvantage, they roll at +1TN. Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out, but two Advantages don't stack (same with Disadvantages). So, yeah, if you're using an unwieldy weapon, which an chair definitely is, you're simply getting a Disadvantage, which is +1TN.
Needless to say, that makes modelling improvised weapons a breeze.
>[why use actual weapons over improvised weapons if the difference is just 1 TN?]
There's a whole lot of other reasons you'd want a sword over a chair. The damage isn't going to be all that great, and in a suitably cinematic fashion the chair will probably break over the person you're trying to hit.
I don't know if you played TROS, but once they introduced The Flower of Battle, something interesting happened to the weapon stats. They started including 7s and 8s as baseline and what we rapidly learned is that no one wanted to use weapons with ATN7 because they just weren't good enough to compete with parries and shields from other weapons. If you had a ton more dice than the other person, you could just about even the odds, but even then in practice you were often hurting. I don't know anyone that could use the ATN8 stuff. No one ever did. It was just too significant a penalty to be viable.
It might be realistic to start a chair off at ATN8, but what that would ultimately mean is that no one would ever do it in game. You'd never seen someone pick up a bar stool and smash it over another dude's back, because the game makes it too hard to pull off. Worse, when someone decided to do it anyway, the GM has to go look up the stats on a chair.
Keeping it streamlined has a lot more benefits than drawbacks. The GM doesn't need to look up stats on it. It's easy to make a judgement call on damage ("uh, strength+1 blunt.") and then it falls under the general rule that improvised weapons are Disadvantaged. Because the rules are simple and relatively forgiving, the player can get away with deciding that they want to hit someone with a chair and have a reasonable chance of doing it. In my book, that's pretty cool.
Whenever we're faced with a design decision, we try to go with the choice that lets the player do more cool stuff.
Axes were something we played around with quite a bit. Mass weapons and polearms are both swiss-army-knife kinds of weapons. They are tools that are specialized to a particular job, and the Weapon Codex lets you build and customize your axe to purpose, whether that is a light versatile tomahawk style weapon, or a great big nasty chopper. The same thing applies to basically all weapons, but it really shines with mass weapons and polearms with the sheer amount of diversity that existed in real life.
We kept Mass Weapons as a single proficiency. As much as we looked, the information we came across only ever barely touched the use of axes and hammers, and where they did there was a significant amount of overlap on how they were used by virtue of the way the weapons are - a long haft and a striking surface at the end. If we were going to break them up at all, we'd have wound up doing so by functionality: two-handed mass weapons, Mass weapon and shield, single mass-weapon... But since in terms of techniques, they all do roughly the same things, we went with the above decision: err on the side of players getting to do more with less.
Ultimately, it wound up being broken into Mass Weapons and Polearms. Mass Weapons is a fairly direct art form, chiefly about feeling out your opponent and waiting for that opening to deal a massive, overwhelming blow. That's not to say Mass Weapons have no tricks, but the emphasis rewards a certain play style. Polearms have more tricks up their sleeve and really reward you for keeping an opponent at range. It's more versatile in many ways, but if the enemy gets inside your range then you lose your primary advantage.
Most mass weapons will be Mass by default, but two-handed weapons can be used in either Technique. A Dane Axe thus can wind up being used as a polearm, or a mass weapon. The differences in techniques with it are made evident by the proficiencies and their individual technique choices and emphases.
>>44635572
the character sheets are neat looking.
>>44635698
My only concern is with the armor section. If their armor is like ours or Riddle's, what they have is woefully inadequate to represent the armor you're wearing.
>>44635698
It's much more stylish than SoS's. Might be more useful too, since the SoS one is kinda weak.
>>44635750
>implying SoS has a character sheet
No
No you can't make me remember
I won't do it
>>44635667
> Whenever we're faced with a design decision, we try to go with the choice that lets the player do more cool stuff.
This makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
>>44635727
If their armor is like ours or Riddle's, what they have is woefully inadequate to represent the armor you're wearing.
I could see that. I'm kind of a character sheet nerd anyway. Once I see how it plays, I will probably make my own (probably 4 page) sheet anyway.
>>44635750
I did notice that it looks like all the combat stuff is on one side, and all the non-combat stuff is on the other.. which shows some foresight.
>>44635786
My favorite part is how the sixth skills dot is much lighter than the others. This tells you the darker dots number 5; you're not confused over how many dark dots there are, you KNOW there are 5.
Contrast this with a bad character sheet, like the Burn Legend one from Exalted 2e, where there are 10 dots all together, with no spacing between them.
>>44635834
That is bad. They'd have salvaged the whole thing if they just put a small space between the two sets of five.
>>44635667
>They started including 7s and 8s as baseline and what we rapidly learned is that no one wanted to use weapons with ATN7 because they just weren't good enough to compete with parries and shields from other weapons. If you had a ton more dice than the other person, you could just about even the odds, but even then in practice you were often hurting. I don't know anyone that could use the ATN8 stuff. No one ever did. It was just too significant a penalty to be viable.
>>44636258
The Flower of Battle was pretty terrible that way. DTN5 shield vs ATN8 Swing from a Battle axe? That's never going to work out well
>>44636423
Jesus Christ. TN7 is their TN8 then.
>>44637052
From what I understand, their weapons don't have independent TNs, so much as certain situations are "disadvantaged" and increase the TN.
>>44637074
He's talking about Flower of Battle.
>>44637052
Rapiers were TN 5, Katanas were TN 5
http://knight.burrowowl.net/doku.php?id=equipment:weapons
Fighting with a weapon with stats like this would be stupid even in SoS. Now imagine a game where average TNs are lowered by 1.5.
>>44637052
TN7 wasn't too bad. I used flail and bardiche for duels in armor and survived.
Do Arc points work like Spiritual Attributes in ROS? Or are they just the XP mechanic?
>>44637579
Just XP
>>44637579
Currently XP. That's something a number of people have complained about because it kind of sucks at that.
>>44637716
>>44637601
Anyone know how builder does it?
>Your project is just like the Holy Grail for us TROS players... and you are the lovely maiden, filling it with the squishy crunch we all crave for ;)
Ugh, God. What the fuck. I hate forums and forum culture. We insult Jimmy by insinuating he fucks men; they bend over and spread their cheeks.
http://www.grandheresyforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91&start=150
>>44638141
Given the context and the wink, it might have been intentionally more tongue and cheek, given the dev's earlier statement about appreciating the encouragement.
>>44638197
They do this with every dev statement, though. It's just like Holden and the other Exalted devs on their forums.
>>44638279
I dont follow them enough to tell. I wish they'd put an update out though. If the dev is running demo adventures, it hopefully means they are close to release. The players must be staring at something in order to play.
>>44638141
Hey, there's nothing wrong with fucking men or young boys every now and then. We insinuate that he's fucked BY men and young boys. Get it right.
>>44634684
And not a word about how Advanced maneuvers work.
>>44638760
It'll have to involve advantage and disadvantage somehow.
It's easy to see how what they said is analogous to SoS. Although they have basic-advanced and we have universal-advanced, a more accurate overlay would consider the following SoS maneuvers as basic:
Swing
Thrust
Parry
Block
Void
Beat
Flee
With just those maneuvers you can have a good combat, which is what they say basic maneuvers ought to be. Now, these guys seem like they'll cling to Riddle of Steel's system tighter than SoS in how maneuvers are given. Bovine is the same way here too; in SoS, things like Hook, Hew, and Beat are universal. I expect maneuvers like that will be advanced in Builder.
>>44635511
>b) in addition, the damage type will have way more effect on the character than evident from this particular table (essentially, level 4 blunt wound will impair the character about as much as a level 3 edged wound)
This is different from Song of Swords. In SoS, a higher level wound of any damage type C/P/B is almost always better than any lower level wound of a different damage type on the same area. The vast majority of the time, inflicting a certain level wound is better than inflicting a lower level wound of a different damage type.
This is why you will rarely cut with a rapier in SoS.
>>44635572
Oh hey 'Bastards! He's not wrong, it really is very easy to pick up and run with (still salty I died because "we'll just pretend you didn't grapple"). The system is extremely lethal; one wrong move can leave you without a head as we saw often enough. With just testing the combat, I'm pretty damn enthralled with the system. I can't wait for the real demo this Sunday.
Is it just me or do people not really talk about Dwarves & Goblins? It's the various humans and Din. Before that it was only Zells.
>>44640334
They don't interact with other cultures much, they are not part of their history and practically irrelevant.
>>44640379
Yeah.
There are no important dwarves or goblins that have any actual effect on the world at large.
No politicians, corporations, magicians, warriors or artists.
Well, I'm glad the BoB guys are doing so well. There's some interesting stuff in there. It's funny, they ran into some of the same problems we did, even though our games are so different. The TN 8 thing is especially funny. Maybe we ought to just abolish it!
>>44640672
The stories are there, but the Dwarves are a very unobtrusive people by nature. They don't -want- to leave a mark on the world, they just want to survive and avoid notice as much as possible. Their thirst for grandeur is satisfied underground, in deep places where men will never look.
As for heroes, I think I've told a few stories about famous dwarvish warriors, and even a fort that withstood the wrath of a nation. Let me go find 'em.
>>44640897
>sneaky snek
You mean like every fucking snek.
>>44640897
Oh, there it was. The Wolkans. Wolkuta, a fort in Krajina, fought the longest siege in Voscan history against Dahaka the Black's army. That's a hook for a campaign or two I imagine, and the events have a place in the narrative of Voscan history.With Wolkuta besieged, the Branded Zells had to spend decades without the fine steel they had been used to having, and reverted back to wielding clubs.
>>44640955
The North American Boss Snake. Its Venom causes you to be extremely disappointed even though you're having a lot of fun. It gives the sensation of flying through the air.
>>44641065
This is why I won't be playing Boss Snake: Cold War Adventures
I love the series too much and can't handle a disappointing end to it.
Who were Wolkans? The dwarves? Why were they besieged? What was it that this fort protected?
>>44642190
Dahaka the Black was Queen of Krajina. No idea about the other reasons, though.
I'm looking at BoB demo weapon list right now. Why would I ever use choppers or short cutting blades? Long blade optimised for thrusting is much better without any drawbacks. Puncturing wounds to the torso are much more dangerous than lacerations, cause more bleeding and risk of fatal infection.
>>44644938
>being a homo gay man and not wanting to have a cutting blades merely because they're cooler
I can't believe I play the same game these faggots do.
>>44646449
>Calling people homos
>Not wanting to feel the sensation of penetrating the supple flesh of your opponent with your stiff, thick, long blade, feeling the slight tremors of her heartbeat as her mouth opens in a soft gasp...
Wait, shit, I forgot where I was going with this.
>>44646449
>waving military saber at your enemy to impress them and failing completely
How would you stat dopplehander under BoB system? It seems to be Elongated Hefty blade (+1c/+0p/Long). Looks kinda bad.
>>44644938
> Why would I ever use choppers or short cutting blades?
I think I was in the thread where the dev shared that in the first place. The short/compact thing is about terrain.. like in cramped areas, below decks, etc. There's some kind of penalty to using longer weapons in crowded areas.
Cutting weapons are swinging weapons, so maybe there are situations where swings are better? Might be in their maneuvers.
>>44646887
Per their announcement:
> In ‘Bastards, weapons are handled through what we call Codices, which are systems we use to help you generate content for your game. In the Arms Codex, weapons are broken down by type: One-handed sword, two-handed sword, mass weapons, pole-arms, daggers, bows, crossbows, pistols and long guns. Each weapon type has its own base stats, and then a series of options you can take that alter the characteristics of the weapon you are having made.
Two-handed swords have their own codex, so it likely has different base stats and options.
>>44646936
Stabbing someone with a knife in cramped area is even better. It inflicts dangerous wounds and they can't dodge or properly defend themselves.
>Two-handed swords have their own codex
Ah, okay.
>>44646887
Of all the names for two-handed swords, I'm reasonably certain that "Doppelhänder" in particular was never actually used.
>>44647108
this always bugged me
>>44640118
>The system is extremely lethal; one wrong move can leave you without a head as we saw often enough.
Just like SoS and Riddle of Steel and Bovine.
>>44646887
Nobody knows; the image posted above is for one-handed weapons, not two-handed. Besides that, who knows how much of that is still relevant to their game as it is today?
>>44632757
>>44632823
Do we have historical proof of axes significantly cutting into maille, or the damage all blunt trauma through the armor?
>>44648302
I don't have an historical source, but a modern test of a poleaxe against a maille shirt has shown that while it was capable of splitting several rings, the blade itself generally did not come into contact with the wearer underneath. Of course, that's with modern maille made from machined steel and everything, so the usual caveats apply. Still, it seems unlikely that a one-handed axe would be able to actually cut through maille into the person wearing it, especially if there's significant padding involved.
Historically speaking we do know that axes were a fairly common weapon during a period where (partial) maille was also a rather common armour, so it seems reasonable to assume that the axes didn't suck at it. A war axe, even of the one-handed variety, does have a markedly heftier impact than most sword would have, so even through maille you'd probably be able to inflict painful and possibly debiliating bruising, or even crack a rib or two.
>>44648968
We also remember that warfare didn't consist of walking up to a guy, delivering the strongest strike you could while he stood there as still as possible, and when the attack doesn't penetrate immediately walking away to try your falchion on some guy's Gambeson and then let an Archer shoot you directly in the chest at ten feet away. Repeated, lower powered strikes that weaken the integrity of armor and then eventually allow for a wounding strike are probably a lot more common than cleaving through a guy's mail and skull in one blow.
>>44649516
One interesting aspect of 12th century Chivalric literature are the descriptions of prolonged duels.
By the middle of the 1100s, maille coverage for the knightly class consisted of long hauberks with integral coifs (often with ventail) with maille mittens and leggings becoming popular in the second half of the century. So the armour is pretty much complete with only a section of the face and the backs of the legs exposed. Padding was worn in some cases but is far from universal at this time. Relative to the weapons used you could say that they were better protected than men-at-arms in full 15th century plate harness, and because of this protection and the honouring of surrender knightly casualties in 12th century battles are often extremely light.
We get descriptions of combats dragging with shields shattered, swords bent and the hauberks being torn to tatters. The fighters are bloody and exhausted but what ends the duel is combination of tiredness and accrued injuries. The point is that while one or both are wounded and their armour severly damaged, they do not suffer a single significant injury that stops the fight, but keep going until exhausted.
This tells us several things. The first is that maille can be noticeably damaged with links torn or ripped but can still offer enough protection that a fight-ending injury cannot be reliably inflicted. Second is that a fight between two armoured men can lead to mutual exhaustion before one is definatively beaten. Third is that if one combatant is put out of the fight they are often both concious and able to ask for clemency.
I should point out that both the literature and histories of the period do have accounts of fights between armoured men ending in a few blows or killing one outright but the scenario I have described is far from uncommon.
>>44650145
Modelling this in a game is of course tricky. I personally think that Burning Wheel captures a lot of the spirit of what I described with its armour degradation mechanics, atleast for maille-clad warriors.
A lance strike in one source pierces straight through, while in another it has no effect whatsoever. A duel could last for many bouts until both men can stand no more or be decided with a single blow that cleaves through helmet, coif and skull.
Wargames and RPGs tend to focus on a given armours interaction with weapons on an all or nothing basis. A weapon can or cannot penetrate an armour reliably in one or a few strikes. However as >>44649516 points out a combat, whether a duel or battle, can comprise of literally hundreds of /sos/ bouts and last a long amount of realtime. The videos that Matt Easton (what a guy!) and Tobias Capwell did about armour and arrows at Agincourt illustrate this point. A given arrow is vanishingly unlikely to penetrate a 15th century harness head on, which is awkward for the RPG archer who loose a handful of shots in a given session.
However when thousands of arrows are being launched then the possiblity of that arrow finding a gap or weak point such as a joint or in the side of a visor becomes non-trivial.
Battlefield excavations have produced skeletons with literally hundreds of wounds that go to the bone over the course of a warriors life and in a given battle it seems very common for soldier to suffer perhaps dozens of light wounds before one puts him on the floor and it only then when helpless is he actually killed. Or he could die in one hit.
I don't have any particular solutions to this conundrum but I do think that looking at weapons, armour and injuries through an RPG perspective produces a given set of expectations and prejudices colours our understanding. Real life does not have the burden of trying to make accessible mechanics to resolve combats with minimal bookeeping over a couple of hours every week.
>>44650632
>Real life does not have the burden of trying to make accessible mechanics to resolve combats with minimal bookeeping over a couple of hours every week.
Jerks.
>>44650145
I remember an early tournament Fecht had a crusader and a Saracen both in full mail end only after about thirty rounds because neither had proper weapons to completely penetrate the other guy's armor. Back then it was considered a Flaw, and from a gameplay standard it still is, but I guess there's some reflection of reality in that.
>>44652918
Well I'd say wrestling could solve this "problem", where is grappling right now anyway? When was it last changed?
>>44652918
Technically that was >50 rounds, since we kinda had to take a break in the middle so both fighters could take a breather and lose some fatigue. But yeah, wrestling had barely been a thing back then and neither character was specced for it.
Though it showed that full maille+quilted was a really powerful combination even back then before heavy quilt and layer were a thing.
>>44653166
>Well I'd say wrestling could solve this "problem"
It would have (especially since Throw was super OP back then) but it was the first fecht of the first tournament; we wanted to stay with basic fighting maneuvers, not delving into grappling.
>>44653526
We've had enough releases and updates that a new tournament might be something fun to do. It's something other than lad rhymes and waifu discussion at least.
>>44653695
That has come up a few times, but so far the consensus was that we'd best wait until the new release hits so we actually have something new to test. There's been plenty of fechting since 1.9.9 hit, and most of the gimmicks and faults have been figured out already.
>>44608372
We should probably update the copypasta since it's talking about Call of the void in one place and changes the name back to the original(and better) Ballad of the Laser Whales in other.
>>44654729
Okay, so do it.
>>44648968
>poleaxe
What do you mean by this? Do you mean like a pollaxe's axe head? Do you mean something like a voulge?
>>44653695
I have to say swordplay feels very bland and boring in SoS and I have no desire to make new characters for the tournament.
>>44653695
>>44656130
When would the tournament be? I want to watch.
>>44656130
What system do you prefer for your swordplay, and why?
>>44656610
I'd be down any time. Expect one like a week after the next release, whenever that is, though. Gives people time to read the rules and learn the changes.
>>44641065
Jimmy pls run tournament arc fecht like in my animes
>>44658385
Jimmy moderating and commenting on/converting a tournament into his own murder stories would be pretty cool desu.
>>44659688
It's how Gizka happened, but replace Jimmy with Galt.
Could someone post the Blood Magic rules for Unkindlies?
>>44646887
>TN 8 defense when in normal grip
>TN 6 defense when half-swording
My jimmies are in maximum rustle.
This is some of the wrongest shit I have seen about greatswords and that is saying fucking something.
Motherfucker needs to read some DiGrassi or Marozzo or some shit god damn.
Also as other anons pointed out doppelhander is also turbowrong. Zweihander would be correct in modern vernacular and bidenhander would be correct in a more contemporary context but doppelhander is just some made up bullshit.
>>44661152
>Motherfucker needs to read some DiGrassi or Marozzo or some shit god damn.
I'm fairly sure they did, but the rule of cool was important factor in game design.
>>44661152
For the uninitiated among us, could you explain what's wrong with the defense stuff?
Is anyone else troubled by the fact that in the current version of the game, one can gain more skill points with a single PCP into Attributes than by putting it into Skills?
Or the weird geometric scaling in the incredibly valuable Attributes category, while Skills scale at a slow and linear rate for their rather low value points?
>>44661828
Int used to be a dump stat, so they buffed it.
>>44644938
> I'm looking at BoB demo weapon list right now. Why would I ever use choppers or short cutting blades? Long blade optimised for thrusting is much better without any drawbacks. Puncturing wounds to the torso are much more dangerous than lacerations, cause more bleeding and risk of fatal infection.
Isn't this basically the "primacy of the thrust" argument that took place in real life?
>>44661858
Is this like how they apparently (and needlessly) buffed Charisma without any consideration for the social skills themselves?
>>44661707
In short, greatswords are considered a very defensive weapon, so having a pathetic TN of 8 when not in half sword is disgusting.
Text from here:
wiktenauer.com/wiki/Giacomo_di_Grassi
>>44661964
It's defense relies on its great reach and damage potential. It can fend off several enemies with its huge danger zone.
>>44662019
A combination of reach and a point of balance closer to the hands than is typical for weapons of such a size make it quite nimble and good for parrying.
Consider that FoB is a game where katanas and rapiers attack at TN 5, and that the weapon in this video defends at TN 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6MZ-dCpM2E
>>44662133
Show me his video with bidenhander defending against longsword.
>katanas and rapiers attack at TN 5
I would nerf them to ATN6 and copy other weapons without changes to SoS.
>>44662192
I don't believe you understand what you are saying. A weapon with DTN 8 trying to parry a weapon with ATN 5 is almost pointless. You will need to commit twice as many dice as your attacker to have favorable odds in most situations. How anyone could defend this as reasonable, especially as contemporary masters paint the defending weapon as not only capable but preferable in defense, is honestly beyond me. I will not search any more for you. I have shown you more than enough to prove my point, and if you will not accept that show hithertofore then you likely will not accept anything.
>>44662280
>I don't believe you understand what you are saying.
I believe you didn't read my post. I think ATN5 weapons are bullshit and should be changed.
>>44662306
I thought we were still talking about why "doppelhander" DTN is awful in FoB, probably because you were still trying to contest my point with yet more requests for evidence. But that's okay, just replace 5 with 6 and "twice as many" with "5 to 3". Everything else stands in this new context too.
>>44662192
>>44662280
>>44662306
Well, you'll all be happy.with the next update. We've largely eliminated TN 8s in general.
>>44662379
Just copy FoB stat blocks.
>>44662379
That's going to be an interesting change.
>>44662280
>as not only capable but preferable in defense, is honestly beyond me
Because long reach is the best defense, you big dummy. Fiore said that in his spear plays.
>I will not search any more for you.
Whatever, angry queen
> I have shown you more than enough to prove my point
That's just a guy doing big slow swings to thwart someone's attack. He only covers one side at a time and the other side is open.
>>44662379
To what end?
>>44662391
>Just finish removing most TN 8s
>let's put a million TN 8 weapons back in
Have you actually looked at the FoB recently? Every weapon would either be worthless or fantastically broken in SoS.
>>44662438
>Slow
I bet you're watching either his arms or the sword's strong if you think that's slow. Also, if reach is such a good defense, why does the doppelhander's TN go down by 2 when you reduce its reach? Checkmate rapiertheists.
>>44662465
>Have you actually looked at the FoB recently?
Yes, there a lot of good weapons from TN 6 to 8.
>fantastically broken in SoS
Why? Because of overbloated dice pool with low TN problem which exists in every TRoS successor?
>>44662525
>Admits low TNs are a problem
>Still wants them
JUST
>>44662438
Most of all attacks will come from the side of which their foot is in the rear, as most of all attacks are stepped into. Thrusts may be stepped into with a small incressa that doesn't change which foot is forward, but thrusts don't come from a side so that's moot. Have a largo play for the greatsword.
>>44662525
There are a ton of weapons with TN 6, because that was considered normal back in Riddle of Steel. It was also before the codification of special rules. It just doesn't translate well into SoS anymore.
>>44662461
Basically making more weapons usable in regular play. The defense has traditionally been that weapons with TN 8 tend to be for soldiers and battlefield use, and so the worse TN is less important because reach and high base damage are the order of the day.
Now we're trying it a different way--by simply making sure that every weapon at least has a 7 in its primary function, and also significantly raising the bar of what qualifies a weapon to have DTN 7.
This does mean that a lot of the longer polearms have probably become overpowered now, but we're hoping to balance that in actual play by including rules for trying to carry that shit around indoors and fighting in confined spaces.
>>44662481
>why does the doppelhander's TN go down by 2 when you reduce its reach?
Defense is general term for any activity to protect your health and life. Wearing plate armor, killing enemy before he can kill you is a very good defense too.
Let me quote TRoS rulebook: "The difficulty to parry with any given weapon is determined by that weapon's Defense Target Number (DTN)."
Parrying means deflecting, fending off or even blocking incoming attack with your weapon. Zweihander with shorter grip is more maneuverable and faster therefore its DTN is lower.
>>44662602
>considered normal back
Why was it bad for SoS to begin with?
