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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Has anyone in the history of D&D ever used the flight rules? Because it keeps showing up in the rules and I can't imagine where it would ever be so relevant as to need to be worked out that precisely

Kavak posted:

Yeah, I swore off using the level drain abilities of any of my monsters because gently caress calculating that poo poo.

Pathfinder actually solved that issue by making level drain simply apply a -1 penalty to all relevant d20 rolls instead of making you redo your whole character 1 level lower

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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Pathfinder Unchained

Esoteric Material Components

This is a fairly simple rule on its surface: whenever a character casts a spell, they have to pay a certain amount of money, as referenced against the chart below, as the abstraction of buying and consuming material components for spells.



quote:

A Wizard 8 wants to cast Fireball. It would cost them 24 GP to do so.

There's a couple of frills you can add onto this system:

If you're playing with the Limited Magic rules, you can have the player pay for material components in exchange for letting them cast at the normal caster level rather than with the bare minimum.

Players can deliberately reduce their caster level for spells (down to the minimum needed) in order to make spells cheaper to cast.

quote:

A Wizard 8 wants to cast Fireball. They can choose to cast the Caster Level 5 version instead. It would only cost 15 GP instead of 24 GP, but it would also only deal 5d6 damage instead of 8d6 damage

There are four specific kinds of components illustrated in the book. Each of them covers spells from two different schools. You can have players buy them (measured in equivalent gold amounts) and then expend them separately. If the player doesn't have the correct component, then they can use twice as much of another component. They can also use twice as much of a component to activate a particular additional effect.

* Entropic Resin is used for evocation and necromancy spells. The additional effect is to allow you to treat your caster level as 1 higher for the purpose of calculating damage dice, even beyond the normal maximum
* Prismatic Sand is ued for conjuration and illusion spells. The additional effect is to allow you to treat your caster level as 4 higher for determining the spell's range, or allow you to modify the area/spread/radius of a spell by 5 feet larger or smaller
* Geodes are used for abjuration and transmutation spells. The additional effect is to allow you treat your caster level as 2 higher for determining the spell's duration
* Verdant Salts are used for divination and enchantment spells. The additional effect is to allow you increase the save DC for the spell by 1.

A Wizard 8 goes shopping in town before leaving for their adventure. They buy 300 GP worth on Entropic Resin, 150 GP worth of Prismatic Sand, 200 GP worth of Geodes, and 100 GP worth of Verdant Salts

quote:

They cast a Fireball, and consume 24 GP worth of Entropic Resin to do so. They now have 276 GP worth of Entropic Resin left.

...

While fighting a particularly powerful enemy, the Wizard decides to spend twice the amount of Entropic Resin to increase the power of their Fireball. They spend 48 GP worth of Entropic Resin, and their Fireball deals 9d6 damage instead of 8d6. From 276 GP worth of Entropic Resin, they now only have 228 GP left.

(if they were a Wizard 10, casting a Fireball at caster level 10 would cost 30 GP. If they tapped the additional effect of Entropic Resin, it would cost 60 GP, and the Fireball would deal 11d6 damage, even if Fireballs are normally capped at 10d6 damage)

...

After lots of fighting, they've used up all of their Entropic Resin, but they still want to cast a Fireball. They can choose to spend 48 GP worth of any of the other material components to force the issue.

There's a fifth material component, called Yliaster, that can be used to let you completely uncap a spell's damage dice, AND let you treat yourself as 2 caster levels higher, AND increase the save DC by 1, but the cost is supposed to be exorbitant: 200 GP for every 1 caster level, so casting a Fireball as a Wizard 5 would cost 1,000 GP.

quote:

If a Wizard 12 wanted to cast Fireball with Yliaster, it would cost them 2,400 GP, but the Fireball would deal 14d6 damage: first, the damage is uncapped, so it can scale up to 12d6 instead of the normal limit of 10d6, and then it goes up another 2 caster levels beyond that to 14d6.

It's difficult to judge how well this rule would actually end up working in practice, since a lot of it hinges upon how much loot the party gets and how much that loot respects the wealth-by-level rules, but it seems like a decent way of putting some kind of opportunity cost to spells without the complete hand-waving done by default PF, but also without delving into the fiddly BS of TSR-era D&D. By assigning a generic cost per level of spell, there's a workable framework here. I'd certainly be open to trying it, and the ability to spend extra on your spells doesn't make this a purely punitive rules change.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Pathfinder Unchained

Automatic Bonus Progression

D&D 3e, and by extension Pathfinder, has a certain "gear treadmill" of bonuses that you're supposed to get from magic items in order to scale properly with how the monsters/NPCs develop. In no particular order, these are:

- a resistance bonus to saving throws, starting at +1 and capping out at +5
- an enhancement bonus to weapons, starting at +1 and capping out at +5*
- an enhancement bonus to armor, starting at +1 and capping out at +5*
- a deflection bonus to AC, starting at +1 and capping out at +5
- a natural bonus to AC, starting at +1 and capping out at +5
- enhancement bonuses to ability scores, which is generally goes as high as +6 to +12 to a single stat, and then smaller amounts to every other stat

* weapon and armor enhancement bonuses go up to +10, but half of that is "spent" on special item abilities, and only the actual numerical amount is limited to +5

These "Big Six" items were critical to running the game "as intended", and the cost of the acquiring them was tightly tuned against the expected "wealth-by-level" of characters, and by extension the rates of randomly dropped loot, but because it was never (to my knowledge) explicitly revealed that things were supposed to work this way, there was no shortage of people who ran games with a "low magic" setting where they weren't all available, and then the game became janky at higher levels as a result. And that's to say nothing of people who deliberately held back their players from acquiring such items because they thought it would make them "too powerful" or whatnot.

No discussion of an item treadmill would be complete without making mention that D&D 4th Edition also used a similar model, but in that case, later books would introduce an "Inherent Bonuses" system that would award these numerical bonuses at certain character levels. They would let you DMs "low magic" campaigns (especially within the Dark Sun setting) where the players didn't need to have so many magical items in the narrative, and even in regular games DMs could still use it so that they couldn't "go wrong" with how they were awarding loot.

And so we get to Pathfinder Unchained, and these Automatic Bonus Progression rules are intended to do the same thing: simply let the players earn their Big Six bonuses without having to derive them from items.



As you can see, all the Big Six bonuses are here:

- resistance +1 at level 3, getting to +5 by level 14
- enhancement bonus +1 to weapons at level 4, getting to +5 by level 17
- enhancement bonus +1 to armor at level 4, getting to +5 by level 17
- deflection +1 at level 5, getting to +5 by level 18
- toughening (natural armor) +1 at level 8, getting to +5 by level 18
- mental ability score bonus at level 6, and physical ability score bonus at level 7

The table extends through to level 22*, but starting at level 19 and higher, players instead earn "Legendary Gifts" which allow them some customization on getting additional enhancement bonuses on their weapons and armor, or for more ability score bonuses, or for a +5 shield, and so on.

This rule has its heart in the right place, but the devil is in the details. The main issue is that the order of the bonuses tends to be rather biased towards spellcasters (see mental stats getting boosted first), and also because the rules suggest cutting the wealth-by-level of players in half to account for all the bonuses that they're getting "for free".

As a martial class, not only would you be getting your bonuses later than the spellcasters do, but the reduction in wealth means that you're a lot more constrained in customizing yourself for the items that you do need. There's a sidebar that eliminates the extra cost of paying for the enhancement bonus prerequisites for item abilities (so that you don't need to "pay" for a +1 sword to attach the Flaming property to, if you already have a +1 sword as an inherent bonus), but that still means having to make some compromises.

If you're playing with "old hands" at Pathfinder that know their way around the system, it's almost always better to run the game as-is, ensure that they're getting the proper wealth-by-level (or more), and simply let them but the items that they need.

If you/your players aren't that into the game, or you don't want to dive into shopping lists, or you as the DM want to have a "back-up" in case you mess up the wealth-by-level / loot drops, it can be useful to still use these rules, but with an eye towards maintaining normal wealth-by-level anyway, and/or perhaps rejiggering the order of bonuses to be more accommodating to players.

I personally use my own version of Inherent Bonuses as I have, and continue, to run games of 3e, and while Unchained's implementation is flawed, the effort into making these explicit and codified is appreciated.


* in games where you don't want the players to have magical items at all, you're supposed to treat everyone as being two levels higher (i.e. they get resistance +1 at character level 1), which is why the table is extended up to level "22"

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Are there any straight adventure modules set in this world, for any system?

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Pathfinder Unchained

Innate Item Bonuses

This is very similar to Automatic Bonus Progression: you can no longer buy items with the basic enhancement bonus numbers, but instead any item that's expensive enough to be the equivalent of having an enhancement bonus, will automatically have it.

So for example, you'd buy some Light Fortification armor, and it would automatically also be a +1 armor.

You'd buy a Courageous longsword, and it would automatically also be a +1 longsword. If you bought a Vorpal longsword, it would also be a +5 longsword.

You'd buy a Circlet of Persuasion, and because it's worth more than 4,000 GP, it would also grant you a +2 bonus to a stat of your choice. If you bought a Helm of Brilliance it would also grant you a +6 bonus to two stats, or +6 to one and +4 to other stats because it's worth 125,000 GP.

You'd buy a Periapt of Proof Against Poison, and because it's worth more than 18,000 HP, it would also grant you a +3 natural armor bonus to AC.

You'd buy Wings of Flying, and because it's worth more than 25,000 GP, it would also grant you a +5 resistance bonus to all saving throws.

You'd buy a Ring of Animal Friendship, and because it's worth more than 8,000 GP, it would also grant you a +2 deflection bonus to AC.

This seems to be address some of the issues of the Automatic Bonus Progression rules in that players can get to choose the order in which they access the inherent bonuses that they want, and it doesn't mandate a reduction in wealth-by-level, but it's still not a "perfect" solution because this rules includes a proportional increase in item costs such that everything is more expensive anyway. It's an improvement, and would be preferable for people who are interested enough in the game to pick through item lists even if they're not savvy enough to "optimize" their item selections.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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I always thought Cold Iron meant that it wasn't forged, which meant that it had to be shaped by someone strong enough to work iron ore like it were clay.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Halloween Jack posted:

Re: Sigmata: Even if I had a copy, I doubt I could review it without posting videos of Zizek yelling "PURE IDEOLOGY!" for every page of the book.

it's my understanding that SIGMATA's problem isn't one of being too ideological, but rather that it isn't.

this is based from what we know from the Kickstarter, but the players are supposed to balance four factions within the Resistance: evangelicals, libertarians, right-wing militiamen, and tankies

now, the enemy is very explicitly made out to be (neo-)Nazis, but to think that the first three factions would become part of the Resistance is completely incoherent - not only does it represent a misunderstanding of what leads to Nazism in the first place, it effectively cedes all ideological ground to the Resistance anyway. If Pat Robertson stans, Silicon Valley techbros, and Duck Dynasty/Doomsday preppers are all fighting The Government, just what is it that The Government does that's so objectionable? It's obviously not a left-wing government either, both because the game explicitly invokes Nazi imagery, and because the Bolsheviks are part of the Resistance anyway.

an F&F would be useful to examine things like the book organization and the actual mechanics of the game, but premise-wise, SIGMATA lost the plot really early on

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Halloween Jack posted:

It would make slightly more sense if he'd modeled it on Syria, because then you'd have all these factions fighting each other. You'd still have to answer the question of how right-wing militiamen are a separate faction from the religious conservatives and not their paramilitary wing, how both of those things are a different faction from Neo-Nazis (because the word "overlap" is insufficient to describe the connections there), and how Silicon valley libertarians have any military power.

Yeah, a set-up where you've got the YPG/Kurds, Saudi-backed Wahhabists, ISIS, and whatever other "FSA" groups that the US can cobble together are all ostensibly on the same "side" against the Assad regime would make a bit more sense.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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I'm kind of really late to this, having just read that Sigmata post, but I've developed a particular stick in my craw over the use of "populist" as a descriptor for figures like McCarthy:

1. it's an adjective that gets draped over Trump, Putin, Erdogan, but then also Sanders and Corbyn, under the justification that "a guy who riles up the masses against Commies/Jews/Latinos" is the same as "a guy who riles up the masses against rich people". It not only flattens ideology, but it also ends up treading this horseshoe-theory both-sides-ism where both of these things are bad because both of them involve leaders speaking "angrily" and both of them involve targeting a particular cross-section of the population, but without drawing a distinction on who those targets are and what they represent. At times it almost seems like this conflation is deliberate.

2. it's also rather historically uninformed. The capital-P Populist party on Kansas in the 1890s had a platform of railroad nationalization, telegraph-line nationalization, progressive income taxes, land redistribution, direct election of Senators, and a more flexible (i.e. relative to a gold standard) currency. That's really quite far on the spectrum from fascism.

3. even when taken literally, "populism" is literally how democracy is supposed to work. The majority of the people want to do A Thing, and it gets done. The way the word gets slung around, you would think it's somehow "cheating" to win elections by appealing to the masses ... but that's how you're supposed to win elections in the first place! The only way it wouldn't work like that would be if your society and your electoral system was set-up in such a way that you could appeal to a minority and still win ... which means that your system is undemocratic (which, to be fair, it can be argued that most extant governments are).

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Josef bugman posted:

What makes it fun/good? Other than the Nostalgia ofc!

What I will say of AD&D 2e is that it was written much more clearly than 1e.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Siivola posted:

Strength affects the things you'd expect, coming from a later edition: Melee attack rolls, damage, encumbrance and maximum carried weight. Note how you don't get any damage bonuses until 16, and non-warriors flat out can't get more than +1 to attack. The disconnect between attack bonuses (+3 at best) and damage bonuses (up to +6) is a bit odd to my modern eye. I'd hazard a guess this is because the range of possible ACs is so narrow that even a +1 is a meaningful bonus to hit, but hit points just keep growing?

the AC range didn't really have anything to do with it - it was directly supposed to a disproportionately large bonus for Fighters, as a special ability for being a Fighter.

Siivola posted:

Exceptional strength works weird with strength-affecting modifiers. Instead of going up to 19 or down to 17, you move from one category of exceptional strength to the next. This seems to mean that non-warriors (or warriors who didn't opt to roll for exceptional strength) get more out of Gauntlets of Ogre Strength or whatever, since those can boost them straight into 19 instead of getting stuck in the percentages.

Yeah - Exceptional Strength was created in the Greyhawk supplement for Original D&D, and the discontinuity was a function of wanting something beyond a flat-18 Strength that only Fighters could have, and yet insisting that you couldn't go higher than 18 because 18 was the limit of human capability. So they write some fractional numbers for 18, but then if you ever got a 19 Strength, which was by definition a "superhuman" level of strength, there's a big jump.

Ultiville posted:

The mechanics I think were probably better than 3rd, but worse expressed. As others have said, it didn't just have the "my attack roll goes up and your defense goes up about as much" grind

One thing I want to throw out there is that AD&D did have what we now call an "item treadmill" - if you were randomly rolling scores, even with 4d6-drop-lowest-assign-as-desired, chances were you still wouldn't get an 18 in your primary stat (much less your Fighter getting an 18/00 in Strength), so you really did want that Circlet of Intellect or those Gauntlets of Ogre Strength. And you really did want a +1 Weapon because not only for the raw benefit, but because some monsters were straight immune to non-magical weapons.

The difference was that this treadmill was all randomized - if you were playing it by the book, the DM would create dungeons, roll randomly for their contents, and you'd go in and loot them ... and if you didn't quite get the item you wanted, you just had to keep going into more dungeons until you got it.

Now, in an RPG there's obviously much more wriggle room to negotiate, compared to praying to Everquest's servers - the DM might give you a quest for the Gauntlets, or they might let just buy the drat things for most of your gold, but something that I learned to appreciate in the AD&D -> 3e transition is that the creation of the Wealth-by-Level model was kind of like how MMO loot changed from being completely random, to something you could buy with tokens.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

2e does also have probably the most diverse range of retroclones and modifications, doesn't it? (and sadly probably the largest amount of heartbreakers)

Perhaps surprisingly, no. The D&D Basic/Expert sets are far-and-away the most cloned and most hacked versions of old-school D&D, followed by Original D&D, followed by AD&D 1st Edition, with 2nd Edition falling dead last. In fact, AFAIK For Gold & Glory is really the only significant 2e retroclone out there.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Ratoslov posted:

Also, the random tables everywhere granted magical longswords more often than any other melee weapon by an order of magnitude or two. Planescape: Torment's aversion to longswords was a reaction to this.

I think part of that was due to how Clerics can't use bladed weapons, but Fighters can, so weighing the drops towards longswords is an indirect buff to letting Fighters getting Fighter-exclusive weapons sooner and oftener.

PurpleXVI posted:

The random loot tables in 2e AD&D weren't "how it was meant to be played," it was an optional way to play it if the GM didn't have anything particular planned out. :v: If your GM rolled for literally all loot, then your GM was just lazy or uninspired. You'll notice that in actual modules, which is probably the best way to see "how it was meant to be played" in action, there's usually very little randomly rolled loot.

Okay, I'll cop to that, but I still stand by my point that there were certain equipment benchmarks that people wanted (if not needed) to hit, and that it formed a base for how the loot rules were formed for 3e.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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I think the metaphor they were going for is that the Signal causes these people to have special growths on their bodies, marking them as different the same way that Jesus had the Stigmata.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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in the vein of the Fighter discussion, I'd like to contribute that stuff like disarms, trips, shield bashes, and bull rushes were all originally introduced in AD&D 2e's Player's Option: Combat & Tactics supplement, and while there were certain special modifiers and circumstances to the rolls, none of them were as punitive as 3e's "free attack-of-opportunity if you don't have the right feat".

The only one that had that was the "Overbear" action, and that was supposed to represent a large pile of minions trying to mob-down a single heroic figure. So letting the PC Fighter get a free attack on the dozen-or-so goblins trying to drag them down into the muck is actually narratively appropriate.

A called shot was an attack roll with a penalty of generally -4.

A disarm attempt would have both sides making an attack roll, with the loser of the opposed roll losing their weapon.

A "grab" action was similar to a disarm attempt, except with perhaps more penalties based on the size and accessibility of the not-weapon item being grabbed.

A trip attempt was an attack roll to make a normal hit. If the attacker hit, there would be an opposed roll-under of the attacker's Strength versus the defender's Str or Dex, whichever was better. The attacker would knock down the defender if they won, or nothing would happen if they lost, or both of them would get tripped on a tie.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Ultiville posted:

On-level monsters stay about as hard to hit, and assuming they get to full attack you, hit about as hard (difficulty of discovering what’s an appropriate monster in 3E aside).

Between saves and the more tightly bound armor classes, 2E isn’t like this. Your higher level character is going to hit more often and save more often than your lower level one, regardless of opponent.

I'd like to respond this, not really as a rebuttal, but as an assumption that I also held for a long time and didn't really unlearn until I really dug deep into the math.

In 3e, player characters, especially full BAB ones, would be able to hit on-level monsters oftener and oftener as time went on. This was deliberate, as you were supposed to be able to have "excess attack bonus" that you could trade-off for Power Attack's damage bonus.

As an excerpt, I'd like to present the Trailblazer supplement's analysis of this:



In contrast, it was actually saving throws that never got better:



Whether you level 1 or level 20, forcing a save against an on-level monster was going to result in a slightly-better than 50-50 chance of succeeding against a monster that was good at it, or a 60-70% chance of succeeding against a monster that was bad at it.

(of course, it's also true that most casters could simply just target whichever save was bad for a monster, that they knew of)

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Crossbow chat: the advantage is supposed to be that you don't require special training to use it, so you can expect every class to be "proficient" in crossbows, as opposed to, say, only Fighters and Rangers, etc knowing how to use bows, but the problem is that A. classes that don't know how to use weapons instead use spells, so crossbows still don't really get used, and B. most people don't really play D&D in mass combat mode, where having fifty peasants armed with crossbows might actually matter.

OvermanXAN posted:

It's worse. It's still 3.5 derived, from what I can tell, but Taking 10 is a feat now. A multibuy feat, once per skill. With skill prerequisites for effect :smithicide:

I would like to clarify that Pathfinder 2's Assurance feat is not the same as 3rd Edition's Take 10.

3rd Edition's Take 10 gives you a base roll of 10, plus modifiers. If it's a DC 12 Athletics check, and you have 16 Strength, and you Take 10, you pass with a result of 13.

Pathfinder 2's Assurance gives you a final result of 10. If it's a DC 12 Athletics check, and you have 16 Strength, and you use Assurance, you fail with a result of 10.

Now, the final result does increase to 15 if you're an Expert in the skill, or 20 if you're a Master, or 30 if you're Legendary, but:

* You can't become Expert in a skill until at least level 2
* You need to take the Assurance feat for every skill that you want to use it with

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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are there people who are even getting into RIFTS nowadays as new players? Like, buys the core book and runs an unironic game of it?

(I actually do like RIFTS as far as I've read it, but I haven't been able to run a game of it. Yet)

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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megane posted:

Welcome to Rifts France, where bio-musketeers eat cyber-croissants at ultra cafes and fight demon techno-duelists with vibro-rapiers in the shadow of the Eiffel Mega-Tower.

I would like to play this yes

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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One of the Warlords being a descendant of the Romanovs is a pitch-perfect target, but the OCCs are just completely unsuited for being Cyber-Bolsheviks leading the Neo-Soviets

SirPhoebos posted:

Unless they added rules, then you won't be finding any guidelines to starting above 1st level. And the reason given by TSR was "Because starting at level one is so important to developing a hero and we can't deny players that crucial experience."

This is from AD&D 1st Edition, but it did actually have rules for creating higher-than-level-1 characters:




These rules weren't that good, mind you - as you can see, you were supposed to roll for your character level, and the items that you got were also largely random, and not even that high of a chance, though they did at least acknowledge that you were supposed to have them.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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an America with Eugene McCarthy as President would have been a more interesting premise

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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each RPG is really four RPGs: Impulse, Step, Fragment, and Toggle, which we pass through within every shuffle

gradenko_2000
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

Interestingly, I think the place kits resurface (or closest to them) is in Pathfinder's archetypes, which are the same kind of 'lose this standard thing, get this unusual thing for the base class' sort of deal, and in almost exactly the fashion you outline.

Bieeanshee posted:

I always thought that Prestige Classes were the 3E evolution of kits, given that some of the later kits seriously rewrote class mechanics.

I liked the ones offered in the Fighter's and Thieves' handbooks; they were mostly flavour, with some minor trade-offs. Nothing like that one that gave you expensive proficiencies like blind fighting for free.

D&D 3e had "Variant Classes", "Alternative Class Features", and "Substitution Levels".

The specific rules between each of these varied somewhat, but the basic idea was that they gave players a choice to replace something that the base class had, and gain something else.

For example, a Barbarian could take the Hunter variant class:

quote:

Lose: Rage, greater rage, indomitable will, tireless rage, mighty rage.

Gain: Favored enemy (as ranger), archery combat style, improved archery combat style, and archery combat style mastery (as ranger).

Or the Barbarian could take the Aquatic Barbarian alternative class feature:

quote:

Aquatic Barbarian
Barbarians often inhabit wild coasts or travel the open seas. They dwell in regions inhospitable to most humanoids, whether these are fetid jungle isles or the gloomy shores of arctic seas. Barbaric human tribes can be found almost anywhere, and some of them take to a life at sea. Aquatic elves and coastal clans of land-dwelling elves might also be barbarians, while darfellans favor the barbarian class above all others.

Barbarians of the waters and shores are expert in fishing and in following the seasonal movements of marine animals. They might follow migrating whales, taking to skin boats to harpoon the leviathans, or move up and down rivers with the salmon. On outriggers they pursue aquatic monsters, while others line a tidal flat with nets to trap fish when the waters flood in. Such barbarians are always adept swimmers and able to tolerate extended periods in cold water or heavy rain.

Maelstrom barbarians often take to raiding, descending in war canoes or longboats to ravage the shorelines of civilized lands. These reavers are widely feared and form the basis of many terrifying tales.

Fast Movement (Ex): Barbarians who possess a racial swim speed can choose to apply their fast movement bonus to their swim speed instead of their land speed. The choice must be made when the character gains the class feature and cannot be changed later. This benefit still applies only when the barbarian is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor and not carrying a heavy load.

Or the Barbarian could take the Fangshield Barbarian substitution level at levels 3, 5, or 7

* the level 3 substitution level would replace Trap Sense, with a +10 foot speed bonus when charging
* the level 5 substitution level would replace Improved Uncanny Dodge, with Awesome Charge, which lets the Barbarian make an Awesome Blow attack at the end of a charge
* the level 7 substitution level would replace the DR bonus, with Raging Vigor, which lets the Barbarian spend one daily use of Rage to heal HP equal to twice their hit dice

As you might notice, these "sidegrades" or "thematic changes" to a class's abilities, without necessarily being intended to be straight-up buffs, are the rough equivalent of AD&D Kits.

What Pathfinder did, was to condense these Variant Class / ACF / Substitution Level rules into Archetypes, so that instead of having to deal with three different kinds of rules, you only had the Archetype system - such as a Barbarian that chooses the Deepwater Rager.

gradenko_2000
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Chainmail

Someone in the general chat thread asked about how difficult it would be to learn the original Chainmail rules, and I've been on a wargaming kick lately, so I wanted to try and see for myself if I could grasp it.

* There is no prescribed scale for the game in the introduction, though some specifics are later offered:
- 40mm figures (Elastolin and Starlux are the brands mentioned), with a 1-to-20 ratio of figures to men
- 25mm figures (Airfix), with a 1-to-10 ratio of figures to men
- 1-inch-to-10-yards distance ratio
- 1-turn-to-1-minute time ratio

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* The playing field is intended to be 8 feet long, and between 4-feet to 7-feet wide

* Force allocations can be based on historical accounts, based on a point-value system (described later in the rules), assigned by a third-party, or narratively extracted from a larger campaign situation.

* The game supports either an IGOUGO turn sequence, or a simultaneous move sequence. In either case, the general order of a turn is Movement, followed by Artillery fire, followed by Missile fire, followed by Melee fire

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* Terrain:
- Hills reduce movement by 50% if going uphill, but normal movement when moving downhill, and units cannot charge uphill
- Woods also reduce movement and prevent charges, but also troops in ordered formations cannot move into it
- Marshes also reduce movement and prevent charges, but also heavy equipment (i.e. artillery) cannot enter
- Rough terrain prevents charges
- Ditches and ramparts also reduce movement and prevent charges
- Streams cost 6 inches of movement to cross, while rivers require that a unit halt at its edge, and then spend an entire (next) turn just to cross. That is, unless a ford or bridge is present that would allow movement
- There is a small card-draw system to randomly generate terrain features for a map

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* I'm not going to recreate the entire unit table here, but let's get some basics down:

6 inches is the slowest movement of any unit in the game. This covers armored infantry and siege engines
Archers, less-armored infantry ("heavy foot"), and light infantry move at 9 inches
Light cavalry move at 24 inches, medium cavalry move at 18 inches, and heavy cavalry move at 12 inches

Armored infantry still charge at 6 inches
heavy and light infantry charge at 12 inches
Light cavalry charge at 30 inches, medium cavalry charge at 24 inches, and heavy cavalry charge at 18 inches

Archers have 15 inches of ranged missile fire, crossbowmen have 18 inches of range, and longbowmen have 21 inches of range

Troops can either be in line, column, or square formation. Changing between each costs 1 inch of movement, except going from line to square, which costs 2.

Changing facing obliquely costs one-quarter of an inch of movement, left-or-right-face costs half-an-inch of movement, and an about-face costs one inch of movement. This is doubled if the troops are of bad quality, and halved for elite troops and cavalry.

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Fatigue:

Moving 5 turns consecutively, or moving 2 turns consecutively + charging + meleeing, or moving + charging + meleeing for 2 turns, or meleeing for 3 turns, will all cause a unit to become fatigued, which makes them attack and defend as the next-worse quality of troop (i.e. armored infantry becomes heavy infantry), and gives them a morale penalty.

One turn of not-moving lifts fatigue

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Missile Fire:

You take the number of archers in the unit, compare them to the target type, roll a d6, and the result is how many figures are taken out



So if you had a unit of 7 archers (representing 70 archers at the 25mm scale), and you were shooting at unarmored infantry, and you rolled a 3 on the d6, you would take out 4 figures from the targeted unit.



Archers can fire once per turn. If they haven't moved, and are not meleed by the end of the turn, they can fire a second time. They can otherwise move up half their movement and still get to fire.

Horse archers can move up to half their movement, fire missiles, and then still get to move the remaining half of their movement afterwards.

Units in cover will take half damage from missile fire

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Next: Charging and melee combat

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Jan 8, 2019

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Chainmail

(I am skipping a section on rules for missile fire from siege weapons as well as gunpowder weapons. I'm mentioning that they exist, but for the purposes of what I'm writing, it's far too detailed to get a basic idea of what the system is like)

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Melee Combat



The basic mechanic is that you take your base unit, and compare it to the target. That will give you the number of d6 dice to roll based on the number of men you have, and it will tell you which results will cause kills.

For example, if you have a unit of 10 Heavy Horsemen, and you're attacking 20 Heavy Footmen, you would roll 3d6 per Heavy Horse figure, and then every 5 or 6 result would kill/remove one Heavy Footman figure.



Simultaneously, the Footmen would roll 1d6 per four Footmen figures, and then every 6 result would kill/remove one Heavy Horseman figure.



if we were to play this out, 10 Heavy Horsemen at 3d6 per figure would mean rolling 30d6. I got a result of:

3,5,4,6,4
6,5,3,1,6
5,2,2,2,2
2,6,5,3,5
6,5,5,1,6
6,1,5,1,5

That would result in 15 kills

Then, the Footmen would roll: 20 Heavy Footmen at 1d6 per four figures would mean rolling 5d6. I got a result of:

5,5,5,3,1

That would result in zero kills.

The kills would then be applied, leaving 10 Heavy Horsemen and 5 Heavy Footmen on the board.

After this, morale is then checked.

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Morale:

Step A: First, the side with fewer casualties will take the difference between their losses, and the losses suffered by the enemy. A d6 is rolled, the result is multiplied by that difference, and then the output is kept.

In our example, that's 0 Heavy Horsemen lost versus 15 Heavy Footmen lost, so a difference of 15, times ... rolls a d6 = [4], giving us an output of 60.

Step B: Then, the side with more surviving troops will take the difference between the number of their surviving troops, and the surviving troops of the enemy. And then this output is kept.

In our example, that's 10 Heavy Horsemen remaining versus 5 Heavy Footmen remaining, so a difference of 5.

Step C: Then, each side takes their surviving figures and multiples them by a certain number depending on the unit type:



In our example
10 Heavy Horsemen x 9 = 90
5 Heavy Footmen x 5 = 25

Step D: Both sides will add up the numbers they arrived at in the first three steps:

Heavy Horsemen: 60 StepA + 5 StepB + 90 StepC = 155
Heavy Footmen: 60 StepA + 5 StepB + 25 StepC = 90

Whichever side arrives at a lower total, will then refer to the following table for the result:



Since the difference in our example is 38, then the Heavy Footmen will retreat their whole movement capability (in this case, 9 inches).

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Charging:

When a unit charges, it gets to move at the speed of its charge (which is more than its movement), but the unit must engage in melee combat before or at the end of the movement.

If a charging unit wins the melee, and did not use up all of its charging distance, it must use up the remainder of that movement after the melee is concluded.

If a ranged unit is interspersed with melee units, and is charged, the ranged figures may withdraw 3 inches, and leave the melee units to take the melee combat. However, if the melee units lose, and the charging attacker still has enough movement to come into contact with the ranged units, then the ranged units will still be attacked afterwards.

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Flanking:

Units that are attacking from the flank are considered the next higher class of unit, while Armored Foot and Heavy Horse get a +1 on their die rolls.

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Retreat and Rout:

Units that have retreated or routed (as opposed to the "back x move" result) cannot move on their next turn, because they are still rallying.

If a unit that is still rallying gets attacked, the defender rolls a d6, and on a 1 or 2, the defender immediately rallies and gets to fight normally. Otherwise, the attacker gets to roll for melee casualties, but the defender cannot.

If a unit that is retreating or routing moves into contact with a friendly unit, then the movement is immediately stopped, but both units are now considered retreating/routing and must be rallied.

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Rallying:

If a rallying unit is not moved by its player for one turn, and is not attacked while rallying, it return in good order on the next turn.

If the player controlling a rallying unit decides to move it, or if the rallying unit is attacked, then:
If the rallying unit is on its 2nd turn of rallying, then the player must roll a d6, and on a 3 to 6, the unit will return in good order on the next turn.
If the rallying unit is on its 3rd turn of rallying, then the player must roll a d6, and on a 6, the unit will return in good order on the next turn.
If the rallying unit is on its 4th turn of rallying, it is removed from play.

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Next: Additional melee and morale rules

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jan 8, 2019

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Speleothing posted:

The heavy foot scored no kills, since they only kill other heavies on a 6.

d'oh, you're right. I've redone the example with the corrected math. The result worsened from the Heavy Foot simply moving back, to fully Retreating.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Chainmail

Additional and optional rules for melee combat "for added realism"

Prisoners: there's a die roll and another table lookup involved in checking how many prisoners are taken from a unit that loses in melee combat. They count as additional losses on top of "kills" scored after a melee, but every 5 prisoners need 1 unit as a guard, lest they escape and fight again.

Impetus: Heavy foot, armored foot, and all Horse units get a +1 to their die rolls if they charge across flat, smooth terrain, or charge downhill.

Cavalry: if a Horse unit engages in combat without having moved during the previous turn, they're considered one category worse on the combat tables in terms of dealing damage/causing casualties, ostensibly because they perform worse if they're only stationary.

Hedgehog: Swiss and Landsknechte units can form a square-type hedgehog formation that moves at half of its base speed, and cannot charge, but also can only be attacked by units with similar pike or polearm-type weapons.

Instability due to excess casualties: if units lose a certain percentage of their original figures, they must take this other kind of morale check.

For example, light infantry or peasant levies will take this check upon losing at least 25% of their original number. 2d6 is rolled, and the unit passes on an 8 or better. Other infantry will check after losing 33%, and will need a 7 to pass. Heavy Horse will check after losing 50%, and will need a 6 to pass, etc.

Units that fail this check are removed from the map entirely and immediately.

Swiss/Landsknechte Pike Charge: units that are charged by these kinds of units must undergo the instability morale check mentioned above, except units that fail the check instead merely retreat (and must rally) instead of getting eliminated entirely.

Cavalry Charge: units that are charged by horsemen must take a different kind of morale check, using a third table and rolling 2d6 to pass a certain number. Failed checks cause the charged units to retreat (and must rally).

Historical characteristics: there's an entire section here in specific rules for Knights, Peasant Levies, Mercenaries, English Longbowmen, Magyars, Mongols, Poles, Russians, Saracens, Scots, Spaniards, Tartars, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese.

Army Commanders: players can designate a specific figure as an Army Commander. The unit that the figure is operating with, as well as all other units within 12 inches of the commander, will get a +1 to all die rolls. The unit that the commander is in will also always automatically rally, and the army commander itself will always be the last figure to be killed. However, if the commander is killed, then the entire army must take an instability morale check.

Baggage: each player will secretly designate a section of the map that will serve as their baggage camp. If an enemy unit ever enters this secret area, all of the units of the player who owns the area will have to break off and head for the baggage area in order to protect it from being looted.

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The next three sections are optional rules on Weather, Sieges, and Man-to-Man (what we might call Skirmish) combat. I'll be skipping them because they're not quite relevant to my interest in the system (that is, as a mass-combat "supplement" to a fantasy TRPG campaign that's expanded to this scale), but I do want to note that they exist).

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Point Values

These are given out on a per-figure basis:

Peasants are worth half-a-point
Levee's are worth three-quarters of a point
Light infantry are worth one point
Heavy infantry are worth 2 points
Armored infantry are worth 2.5 points
Light horsemen, Medium horsemen, and Heavy horsemen are worth 3, 4, and 5 points, respectively

Pikemen are worth 1 point
Arquebusiers/crossbowmen are worth 1.5 points
Archers are worth 3 points
Longbowmen/composite bow-men are worth 4 points
Catapults, Cannon, and Bombards are worth 15, 20, and 30 points, respectively

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Impressions so far

Everything I've read so far up to the melee combat seems eminently playable and reasonable, and bears a resemblance to the few minis wargames I've read (Age of Sigmar, Bolt Action). It's when you get to the morale checks that things kinda get janky because the three step process to figure out the morale result involves a "fourth-wall-breaking" amount of arithmetic that just feels tedious, especially given the number of melee rounds that I think any engagement would require.

Throwing in the instability morale checks would probably help as far as eliminating units faster.

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Next: the Fantasy Supplement

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Chainmail

The Fantasy Supplement

This section mostly deals with describing new units that would be appropriate for a fantasy campaign. All of the basic rules are the same, but then the fantasy units have special exceptions.

Halflings: they are archers, except two halfling figures count as three archers when computing how many units are firing while resolving missile fire. Also, they are "invisible" when moving through brush or woods.

quote:

Invisibility, as the game defines it, means that they never suffer any casualties during the first round of a melee. By the second round onwards, the enemy will have figured out the little Predator-esque visual distortions caused by an invisible unit and can start hitting them back, but the invisible units good and safe for that first round.

Sprites: they're light infantry, except they can also become invisible, and they can fly (ignoring terrain and other units) for as many as three turns at a time before having to land.

Dwarves and Gnomes: they're heavy infantry, except:
- they suffer no penalties during night fighting
- when inflicting casualties against Trolls, Ogres, and Giants, only count half as many kills, because they're so small that they can't hit these large targets very well
- when taking casualties from these large units, also only count half as many kills, because they're so small that these attackers can't hit them very well
- if a Dwarf or a Gnome is ordered to attack, and a Goblin or Kobold unit within charging range, the Dwarf/Gnome unit will always target the Goblin/Kobold unit, regardless of whatever else the player might want them to attack

Goblins and Kobolds: they're heavy infantry, except:
- they suffer no penalties during night fighting
- they suffer a -1 penalty to all die rolls if they are fighting in bright light or daylight
- they will also reciprocally and automatically target a Dwarf/Gnome unit if one is in charge range whenever ordered to attack

Hobgoblins: same rules as the Goblins/Kobolds, except their stats are as armored infantry (and they cost a little more)

Elves and Fairies: they're heavy infantry, except:
- they can turn invisible
- they can shoot as archers
- they have the move-and-fire ability of horse archers, even though they're on foot
- if this unit is determined to be armed with magical weapons, they get a +1 bonus to rolls in combat. They also get to roll additional combat dice against Goblins and Orcs
- if this unit is determined to be armed with magical weapons, they are also capable of attacking and killing "high-level" (my term, not the game's) fantasy creatures, which would normally be immune to such attacks

Orcs: they're heavy infantry, except:
- they suffer a -1 penalty to all die rolls if they are fighting in bright light or daylight
- any two units of orcs are considered to be of different bands/tribes. If an orc unit approaches another orc unit within charge range, and neither are tied up by an ongoing melee, the player will have to roll a d6. If the result 4 or higher, then the orcs are "obedient". Otherwise, they will charge the other orc unit and attack them in melee combat
- there is also a Giant Orc unit that has the same rules, except their stats are as armored infantry (and they cost a little more)

Next: more fantasy units

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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The other thing that stood out to me is that a lot of these rules for the fantasy units already partake in a lot of the D&D/fantasy tropes, such as darkvision, goblins hating light, dwarves and giants having bonuses against each other, and so on.

That said, this is already the "3rd Edition" of the game, and this version of Chainmail already references Dungeons & Dragons directly as something you can use side-by-side with it, so of course such tropes would already have been "invented" by this version of the text.

I do wonder what the "1st Edition" might have looked like.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

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Chainmail

The Hero

This is really the first of the more special Fantasy supplement units, and they have a bunch of special rules:

- they never check morale

- their combat stats can range from being Light Infantry, to Heavy Horse, depending on their specific depiction

- as well, they count as four men at a time when rolling attacks

- conversely, in order to kill a Hero, they must take four or more hits in order to die

as an example, if you had a Hero that was considered by the players to be the equivalent of Armored Infantry, they were fighting a unit of Light Infantry:
- the Hero would roll four dice, and score kills on 4s, 5s, and 6s
- the Light Infantry would roll one die for every three Light Infantry figures, and score kills on 6s ... and they need at least four 6s (which would require 12 Light Infantry, minimum) to kill the Hero. If they only score three 6s or less, nothing happens to the Hero at all

- if they're made into being part of a larger unit, they will add a +1 to all of the rolls made by that unit, and they're also the last figure to die as that unit takes casualties

- if a Hero is armed with a bow, they can take shots at a Dragon unit if it flies within the Hero's range. The Hero's player rolls 2d6, and kills the dragon on a 10 or better. If the Hero is armed with a Magic Arrow, they get a +1 to this roll

- as a more general rule of combat, whenever these certain Fantasy creatures fight each other, instead of using the standard combat table, they use this combat table:



The attacker rolls 2d6, and:
- if they roll under the target number, nothing happens
- if they roll equal to the target number, the defender must move back a distance equal to their base movement
- if they roll above their target number, the defender is killed

There is also the Super Hero unit, as you can see on the table, and they're even more powerful: they count as 8 men on the attack, they need to take 8 hits from normal combatants to be killed, they can shoot-down flying dragons on a 2d6 roll of 8, and whenever they charge, the unit being charged takes an instability morale check.

The last thing I want to mention is that a Hero / Super Hero unit has a specific tie-in to Dungeons & Dragons:



That's right - if you're playing Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons side-by-side, and your Fighting Man has achieved level 4, then they can join the Chainmail battlefield as a Hero unit, and ostensibly the choice of which unit they count as (Heavy Infantry, Heavy Horse, etc.) can be based on what equipment the character has as a PC!

This actually makes Chainmail a pretty interesting choice for being used as a mass combat rules "expansion" for a D&D campaign: at a high enough level, you're powerful enough to take on entire regiments/battalions by yourself, rather than the "zoom-out" causing your character to become just another face in the army.

As a final aside, this feature of Chainmail where the Hero gets to attack multiple times against "regular" creatures (but not the high-level special ones), is something that D&D shared with / copied / was back-ported into. I blogged about this particular topic a while back.

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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Chainmail

Wizards

Like Heroes, Wizards are individual units. They count as Armored Foot when rolling in combat, or Medium Horse if they're mounted.

Further, they count as TWO of these - as in, they roll attacks as if there were two Armored Foot/Medium Horse, and anyone attacking a Wizard needs to score two kills in order to kill a Wizard.

Wizards are also "invisible" - which again in this game means that they take zero casualties during the first round of a melee.

Wizards are also unaffected by darkness.

Wizards will grant a +1 bonus to die rolls of a unit that is joined with.

Wizards will cause units to take an instability morale check if it charges an enemy unit.

But all that's not even their true power or purpose

Magical Artillery

At the start of the game, the Wizard will choose whether they will hurl fireballs, or lightning bolts during the Missile phase.

If they choose to hurl fireballs, then the Wizard uses the Heavy Catapult rules:

The player calls out a distance and an angle, and rolls two differently colored dice - one for an undershoot, and one for an overshoot. The player picks the higher die and makes the "shot" fall farther or lesser, as appropriate. If the die are tied, then the shot lands exactly. A Heavy Catapult's shot has a diameter of 3.5 inches. Anything fully or partially within that area, is killed.

If they choose to shoot lightning bolts, then the player will call out a distance anywhere within 24 inches, and anything from that point, to 6 inches back towards towards the Wizard, gets zapped by the lightning bolt.

Regular troops are instantly destroyed by these attacks, but high-level fantasy creatures (including Heroes) are allowed to roll 2d6 against a certain target number to save against its effects.

Next: Wizard Spellcasting

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