Rough notes, starting from the end of ACKs and working backward. I’m doing this from my iPhone, so apologies for it’s rough state.
Game master section
Roll wandering monsters 3-4x per day for over land travel seems much. Overland hex crawling long distances seems impossible.
Dex “check?” or is it throw?
Magic swords:
No % for having intelligence
4.Magic staves
Wizardry and magi. Like arneson’s original creation of wizard sword and hero swords, why not introduce a random power mechanic for random versions.
Shouldn’t the giant squid have a giant sea shell on it’s back granting this portion of it’s body AC 2? Help differentiate between octopus, otherwise why bother?
Can manticores chose the target w/spikes or is it random? Good recent dragonfoot thread on this.
Lycanthropy as 0d&d elf split class, why not, using your xp table from reincarnation spell, force the player to decide which class gets the xp. Keeps lycanthropes playable.
Wish Orc villages had an option for dragon wizard/lord. The gygaxian naturalism gets to be tedious and repetitive for every beastman and it’s nice to see monsters ruled by something other than chieftains in light of the fact that you include them in the hireling rules–after all they are all created monsters in ACKs, not evolved Darwinian forms–Orcs in Tolkien were ruled by wizards and balrogs after all, not chieftains. Only the goblins had goblin kings.
How much can gargoyles carry, if any.
Elf villages have 100% and 5% females and children. What do think of saying 100% adult non-combatants" instead?
How many stones can an elephant carry? Mammoth? Triceratops…?
How about a note: “at the GM’s discretion any creature that can be communicated with may become a retainer…”
Dragon breath: note that the same “mistake” when translating fireballs and lightning bolts from CHAINMAIL to d&d apply here as well. Given the size of d&d dragons (perhaps 15-20 feet body length–using the same basing as giants in CM and S&S) a 100 foot long breath weapon is incorrect. Red dragon breath in CM was 9 yards long and 3 yards wide at the end. 27x9 feet. Really only enough to deal with a hero or small body of men and not devour whole armies. Especially in light of their # appearing and use in mass combat. This is a big deal in my opinion. Dragons weren’t expected to be 300 foot monstrosities. Even the starting point of 1/2" puts their mouths at 1 foot 6" inches wide, not 5 feet wide! Think how big a dragon with a 5 foot wide mouth would have to be!
“Humanoids” the way it reads is that even Humanoids above 5hd are subject to charm person, at odds with the spell description.
Roll wandering monsters 3-4x per day for over land travel seems much. Overland hex crawling long distances seems impossible.
Dex “check?” or is it throw?
ALEX: Gamemaster Section isn’t actually written yet. The material there is just OGL material from Basic Fantasy & LL.
Magic swords:
No % for having intelligence
ALEX: Sentient swords have their own line item in the Swords sub-table. 1 in 100 swords are sentient. This is actually much lower than the number of sentient swords in the Auran Empire campaign so we might change this.
4.Magic staves
Wizardry and magi. Like arneson’s original creation of wizard sword and hero swords, why not introduce a random power mechanic for random versions.
ALEX: I didn’t follow you. But it sounded cool. Could you elaborate?
Shouldn’t the giant squid have a giant sea shell on it’s back granting this portion of it’s body AC 2? Help differentiate between octopus, otherwise why bother?
ALEX: Hah! Good point.
Can manticores chose the target w/spikes or is it random? Good recent dragonfoot thread on this.
ALEX: I always let them target with their spikes. Do others play it differently?
Lycanthropy as 0d&d elf split class, why not, using your xp table from reincarnation spell, force the player to decide which class gets the xp. Keeps lycanthropes playable.
ALEX: Neat idea. Let me chew on it.
Wish Orc villages had an option for dragon wizard/lord. The gygaxian naturalism gets to be tedious and repetitive for every beastman and it’s nice to see monsters ruled by something other than chieftains in light of the fact that you include them in the hireling rules–after all they are all created monsters in ACKs, not evolved Darwinian forms–Orcs in Tolkien were ruled by wizards and balrogs after all, not chieftains. Only the goblins had goblin kings.
ALEX: Funnily enough I just wrote rules for Chaotic Domains and so on for the upcoming v17. I’ll have to consider if that has any retrograde implications for the demographics of beastmen. That might be something best left for hand placement.
How much can gargoyles carry, if any.
ALEX: Good catch
Elf villages have 100% and 5% females and children. What do think of saying 100% adult non-combatants" instead?
ALEX: Hmmm – Do you not like the idea that they have so few women, are not like the idea that elven females are non-combatants?
How many stones can an elephant carry? Mammoth? Triceratops…?
ALEX: “How many stones can an elephant carry” sounds like the beginnings of a good Monty Python skit. But yes I should include that. I actually have that data somewhere in my notes…
How about a note: “at the GM’s discretion any creature that can be communicated with may become a retainer…”
ALEX: I just updated v17 under the Hirelings rule to reflect that creatures whom you achieve Friendly relations with can become retainers. I probably need to tighten that up a bit but the idea is now formally included in the rules.
Dragon breath: note that the same “mistake” when translating fireballs and lightning bolts from CHAINMAIL to d&d apply here as well. Given the size of d&d dragons (perhaps 15-20 feet body length–using the same basing as giants in CM and S&S) a 100 foot long breath weapon is incorrect. Red dragon breath in CM was 9 yards long and 3 yards wide at the end. 27x9 feet. Really only enough to deal with a hero or small body of men and not devour whole armies. Especially in light of their # appearing and use in mass combat. This is a big deal in my opinion. Dragons weren’t expected to be 300 foot monstrosities. Even the starting point of 1/2" puts their mouths at 1 foot 6" inches wide, not 5 feet wide! Think how big a dragon with a 5 foot wide mouth would have to be!
ALEX: There is a big fight brewing about this over on the Mass Combat thread on the blog. Could you please check that over there?
Your point on dragon size is interesting. I think dragons are larger in ACKS than perhaps envisioned in Chainmail. I usually put full-sized dragons at about 40’ long, ie the size of a tyrannosaurus rex.
“Humanoids” the way it reads is that even Humanoids above 5hd are subject to charm person, at odds with the spell description.
ALEX: Can you point this out to me? That sounds like an error I need to fix. What page/section/chapter…
Re: gender: One of the things I noticed on my read through was that there seems to be a default assumption of traditional gender roles. It’s not that the rules are inconsistent with female fighters, or with noncombatant males. But the rules seem to assume that gender roles will be followed. I would prefer a stronger tilt towards egalitarian assumptions, especially with regard to PC gender assumptions, but also with regard to gender of NPCs. The historical pattern of patriarchy isn’t a fun thing to assume in a setting for me–I sometimes play in games that have patriarchal assumptions because they’re planning on directly addressing issues of gender, but as just a background assumption, it’s a negative thing for me. Also, some of the players I often game with have refused to play games that they found insufficiently welcoming to the idea of female characters. I doubt they would refuse to play ACKS based on the gender normative assumptions, but they would find it negative.
Re: magic item pricing: I actually think that we’re a lot closer in position than I, at least, thought we were this morning. The big things I would like to see are a set of guidelines for buying and selling that include both a base value, and then modifiers. For example, it might say: The base value of a magic item is its manufacture cost, but characters will rarely be able to buy or sell at that cost. Magic items found in dungeons, or otherwise of questionable provenance, will typically sell for no more than 25% of the base value. PCs may occasionally have the opportunity to buy magic items at that price, but 50% of the magic items will be cursed, have false enchantments, etc. Magic items can typically be made to order by an NPC mage, if one can be located, for twice the base value. Mages who have their own sanctum and regularly make and sell magic items can find X orders for bespoke magic items per year in markets of size Y; they will be paid twice the base value for these sorts of tasks. Mages who regularly make and sell magic items may also try to sell “used” magic items at normal base value, by identifying them and placing their reputation behind the items; demand for these sorts of items can be determined by…
Basically, it’s not the idea of a spread between the price you’ll get selling a sword +1 found in an ancient crypt and the price you’d pay to have one made from scratch that bothers me; it’s the lack of any guidelines to figure out how that works.
(Also, I think you have the economics of dissertations wrong; in my view, while people learn from writing dissertations, the reason that they do it is significantly because of credentialing–a PhD opens many doors that would otherwise be closed–and because of competing in a prestige market that will then allow the PhD candidate to get status and jobs. I don’t have a PhD, but when I write academic articles, a major part of my motivation is career advancement, although I do of course learn from the process. I could imagine a wizards’ guild or similar society that created prestige markets like this, like how historical craft guilds would require the construction of a masterpiece to advance to the rank of master, but then I want guidelines for that sort of social process. )
Notes on the spell list:
There’s a mostly-consistent thread of Arcane getting plant spells and Divine getting animal spells. Interesting.
Animate Dead: With no cap on total number of undead animated and controlled via multiple castings, raising an undead army is a very viable option. Excellent.
Conjure Elemental: I haven’t gotten to any cosmology yet, but it’s nice to see the Elemental Planes.
Contact Higher Plane: As an Arcane spell, I wonder if “Other” rather than “Higher” might be appropriate, what with the dark sources of knowledge and insanity and all. The table column listing the entity’s “Don’t Know” percentage rather than its “Knows” percentage seems backward. Taking both columns into account, the actual chance of getting a true one-word answer ranges from 12.5% for three questions up to 90.25% for 12 questions; for an Archmage, 21% actual chance of true answers on 5 questions with no chance of insanity makes it a pretty good “throw me a bone here” spell. The lose/lose proposition built into the spell playing Knowledge against Sanity has a very Lovecraft feel, especially compared to Commune - the River of Wisdom vs the Firehose of Knowledge. As a possible elaboration of the 3-12 week insanity, this would be an excellent place for a Horrific Results table a la the Restore Life & Limb side effects table, with levels over 11 and weeks of insanity being modifiers on the roll.
Dispel Magic: A brand new 5th level Thaumaturge has a 55% chance of ripping down an Archmage’s spell, making it useful right away. Makes Permanency very vulnerable (maybe too vulnerable given its cost) and item creation even more important.
Glyph of Warding: The Spell Glyph variant says that the cleric must be of high enough level to cast the spell stored, but doesn’t make explicit whether they have to cast the stored spell or not - I’d read it as not.
Haste: Is using Haste aggressively to age your enemies enough of an edge case not to specify the target gets to save vs. spells?
Locate Object: I’m seeing a market for gold boxes.
Restore Life & Limb: Love the table.
Reincarnate: There’s no level cap mentioned for characters reincarnated as monsters. That’s one mean goblin.
Teleport: The 5% chance of instant death in the best possible scenario makes this a panic button (or interesting offensive option) rather than a generally useful tool. Effective way to limit magical travel.
Tongues: Does Garble interfere with spellcasting, I wonder?
Ventriloquism: Fun synergy with Mimicry.
Wall of Ice (Arcane 4) appears in the spell descriptions but not in the list of Fourth Level Arcane Spells. Wall of Iron (Arcane 6) appears in Sixth Level Arcane Spells but not in the spell descriptions.
Apologies for my excessive posts on the blog in the mass combat post, I just now got my laptop back up and running. I fear my posts are unreadable.
3. magic swords 1% intelligent. Wow, that’s a huge difference the original incarnation. 100% were assumed to be intelligent in 0d&d; this was the fighters big benefit, what do you see as balancing this class wise for the fighter?
3. magician swords in the FFC: In the FFC Arneson wrote the chart that later informed the intelligent sword category in d&d, originally the referee rolled like a d6 and a 1-2 indicated a “magician’s sword” and a 3-6 was a fighters sword. Everyone knows what an intelligent sword in d&d looks like (ego, spell like abilities etc), to see what the magicians sword looked like (remember in CM wizards could wield swords) simply look at the three examples brought over into d&d, the staff of wizardry, power, and the staff of the magi. What I am proposing is, of course to leave in those two great staves, but to allow for random creation a la intelligent swords for different powers and abilities. Variations on the staff of power, wizardry, and magi in other words. Does that make sense? Why only three awesome staffs? I’m not saying make staffs intelligent, I’m just saying make up a table for random powers perhaps. If only to give wizard PC’s ideas on different types of staffs they might create.
6. Manticores: Well, spikes are missile weapons and missile weapons cannot be aimed in melee at specific targets once enemies are engaged, just like sword blows cannot be assigned once melee with multiple foes begins. (maybe acks has decided not to use that rule?)
10. female elfs. doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t account for the weak and infirm. Non-combatants should include old men as well and combatants should leave room for women like that chick from LotR who killed the witch king as well as female body guards of orc leaders in B2. Female kobolds in B2 fight the same as males, while most orc females do not (with the above noted exception). Better just to say non-combatants and children imo. But I do like the flavor of the only 5% elf children, so it wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t change anything. I just happened to notice it for some reason.
12. Dragon breath. As I mentioned in the blog. D&D scales are as screwed up as the economy is. Fact is d&d mixes 10 yard/10 feet/3 feet scale all over the place. With figure basing at 1" = 1 yard, time scale at 10 yards and movement underground at 10 feet. It’s a mess. in chainmail there were multiple rounds of melee per minute for example, but changed in order to keep wizards attacking as often as a fighter swings his sword (if you ask me melee rounds should be 6 seconds and spells should remain on the 1 minute time table which is what CHAINMAIL effectively had as there would be 3 or more rounds of melee every 1 minute turn).
If you guys are going to fix the economy, you might as well fix the scale. So pick your dragon breath, but make sure figure basing in a 10’ corridor works as well and that movement rates underground blah blah blah…
14. pg. 129 monster types, “humanoid”. “humans…do not cease to be humanoids even if they achieve 5th level or higher. All humanoids are vulnerable to charm person…”
re: 1% intelligent magic swords. Really makes the clerics weapon restriction more for flavor rather than any thing else. 99% of the time a mace is just as good a weapon as a sword now. So to me it appears as a weaker fighter and a stronger cleric by this ACKs rule. Intelligent swords is the reason wizards and clerics have weapon restrictions.
STRONGHOLDS
Man I would love me a sample type I, type II, and type III castle drawing with prices. I like building strongholds, but I don’t like counting doors and windows…it’s what arneson did right in the FFC and 0d&d, but was sadly missing from the gygax DMG. I need to be able just pull a generic stronghold off the shelf. Just as you have an awesome “average monthly profit” chart for merchant caravans (I don’t see myself selling each barrel of spice individually, though I’m glad it’s there for those who want it). I would love to have a generic stronghold. It’s important for me to be able to say, "ok. buy a 10,000gp sailing ship and you get 275gp per month in profit from trade. Leaving the option open of course for detailed arbitrage or what have you. But if my design is just to figure out how big an army two players can raise, I don’t want the nuts and bolts. If those generic rules could all be in the same place, that would be awesome as well. What would a simple wizards tower cost to build that would hold 6 apprentices and 12 men? Including engineer costs? Or perhaps a primer on drawing simple stronghold plans? Is it just like drawing a small dungeon? Level 1, 2, 3?
how does “domain land revinue” effect the generic profit of merchant ships–if at all, If I use the ‘average monthly profit’ table?
Pg. 111 Paying expenses. The reading confused me a little bit. Are you saying a lord must hire 2-4gp worth of mercenaries per peasant family? Can these mercenaries be mustered into the army for a war, or must they stay behind to protect the land? What happens if the former happens and nobody’s there to protect/restrain the peasants?
What % of the male population can be pressed/hired into an army? FFC says 30% but only 15% at any one time is under arms.
Would a Lord granted land pay his 20% tribute to the king or to the baron above him? Does it flow up the pyramid as it were? Does the tribute of the baron to the earl include the profit from the 20% of the vassal below him?
MAGIC ITEMS
If magic swords are 1% intelligent, is this rolled for when a PC makes a sword? What happens if a PC makes a sword with permanent effect detect magic 3x per day then the sword turns out to be intelligent and can detect magic…?
whats the loyalty of constructs? What if my magician wants to create a beautiful female construct what’s her loyalty? Chance to disobey? Do they count as retainers? Does a created vampire from a retainer still remain loyal?
do wizard apprentices count as retainers?
thinking ahead here to the war-game. If creatures of 3-4+ hit dice count against your retainers, how do you field an army of 25 giants? (I’d post this in the war-game blog post, but I’m mortified at how many posts I made within 1 hour…)
given the extremely small # appearing of 4+ hd creatures (reminicient of both the FFC 15% of budget limit, and the fact that fantasy creatures were 1:1 scale while goblins and elves were 1:20 and therefore in d&d have much higher # appearing; given this, given that giants have # appearing as 1-3, how do you get to 25 giants or more for a stand in the army? Can those 25 giants all throw rocks? Will they act as a battery of catapults? I personally like the individual nature of magical creatures in armies (which would count as retainers). How do you handle a battalion of basilisk?
COMBAT SPECIAL MANEUVERS:
subdue pg. 99: subdual was to force surrender (and then make an offer of service) or force surrender to sell as a slave. In ACKs it seems it’s purpose is to knock the victim unconcious, is this right? It sounds boring.
wrestling. Man, I loved the overbearing rule from the mule abides. Where is it?
SAVING THROWS:
0- level man? I suggest 1 point worse than 1st level fighter.
INVULNRABLE MONSTERS:
In CM this was hero-1 (3hd or more) could harm fantastic foes that required a magic weapon to hit. ACKs pegs it at 5HD.
pg. 94 missile weapon ranges.
Ok. This looks like ad&d. CM and 0d&d took a different approach. Think of a mass combat. What range would 90% of arrow fire come at? short or long? Long of course. Arrows are a distance weapon. +2 to hit at short range, +1 at medium range, +0 at long range. This is balanced by the fact that at short range chances are, A) you’re going to be in melee soon and wont get many arrows off, B) if you are firing at short range, chances are you’re firing into melee and will hit your companions, C) can’t pick your target. Ad&d was wrong with this. CM and 0d&d had it right.
Now, if you’re talking about hitting a “specific” target at short medium or long range. Fine. 0/-2/-5, but not for just shooting at arrow at a host of goblins or firing into a melee. But you have “precise shooting” that adds another -4 on top of that. 0-level Mercenary archers are worse than storm troopers…
INITIATIVE:
Personally, I like the 6 second round as each second can correspond to a pip of the die. and since most mvt. 12/9/6 is divisible by 6, it is easy to say a charging character moves 2/1.5/1 inch per segment. When still works in mass combat at 1 min turns. This is close to what elderitch wizardry did. So a 4th level spell takes 4 segments and if the thief (12’) is less than 8’ away, he gets his charge attack before the spell takes place. I mean, you max out at 6th level spells as well, so it works perfect.
As it stands, you have 10 second rounds…but you use d6 initiative, and max at 6th level spells. Ad&d went to the 10 segment round because of 7-9th level spells; something ACKs doesn’t worry about in combat. If you’re going to switch to 5’ move squares and 10 second rounds, you might as well use d10 initiative, but if not…
Sell me on the 10 second round with a d6 initiative dice and 12’ mvt. rate.
I was under the impression ACKS was built on top of a Labyrinth Lord (Moldvay B/X) skeleton, which might explain a lot of the divergences away from older editions like Chainmail, OD&D, and Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign. Is that assumption correct?
(My knowledge of pre-B/X D&D is very limited, so forgive my ignorance.)
Not being able to pick your targets when in melee with multiple foes would definitely make cleaving (if they’re dropping, keep chopping) problematic. I’m thinking that the intent is for combatants to be able to select their targets when in melee. Was the “non-aimed sword blow” rule Bargle mentions intended to simulate the fog of war in a highly abstract combat system? The way cleaving is written in ACKS certainly suggests that the GM would be keeping track of combatants’ positions during a fight.
Re: gender: One of the things I noticed on my read through was that there seems to be a default assumption of traditional gender roles. It’s not that the rules are inconsistent with female fighters, or with noncombatant males. But the rules seem to assume that gender roles will be followed. I would prefer a stronger tilt towards egalitarian assumptions, especially with regard to PC gender assumptions, but also with regard to gender of NPCs. The historical pattern of patriarchy isn’t a fun thing to assume in a setting for me–I sometimes play in games that have patriarchal assumptions because they’re planning on directly addressing issues of gender, but as just a background assumption, it’s a negative thing for me. Also, some of the players I often game with have refused to play games that they found insufficiently welcoming to the idea of female characters. I doubt they would refuse to play ACKS based on the gender normative assumptions, but they would find it negative.
ALEX: I wasn’t sure how to answer this without writing an essay, so I’m writing an essay! First let me say that I’m sensitive to the issue. My two weekly groups are 25% and 33% women respectively, and Greg Tito’s group is 50% women. As a result, I avoid running campaigns set in environments which leave little room for female characters, such as A Song of Ice and Fire’s Westeros, or RECON’s Vietnam, as its distinctly un-fun for a third of my players.
Now, let me distinguish this into separate issues:
Rules Text: The rules text uses third person masculine as the default pronoun. Where a female gender is relevant (e.g. bladedancer), she/her is used.There were occasional glitches in v16 but these are fixed in the recent draft. I find “he or she/him or her” to be clumsy and hard to parse, and third person plural even worse. The only other option is to alternate between “he” and “she” in the text. But then the writer has to constantly decide what gender to use for each passage. (“If I use ‘she’ for the Riding proficiency, am I playing to the stereotype that girls love horses??”). That way lies madness.
Level Titles: The level titles use third person masculine as the default pronoun, except where a gender specific title is relevant. If a female character would prefer to be called a “sorceress” instead of a “sorcerer” that is up to her. Even if I wanted to adopt gender-specific titles more broadly, 21st century gender norms here are almost useless. For instance, “actor” is now the preferred term instead of “actress”. Generic third person masculine is the simplest and cleanest approach.
Game Mechanics: There are no mechanical differences between male and female characters. All classes are open to female characters. One class is female-only. (In the Auran Empire as a whole, there are some male-only priestly orders and some female-only priestly orders but I only included the bladedancers in the core rules).
Demographics: ACKS assumes that the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid is filled with peasants who largely toil in gender specific roles, with women of necessity devoted to childbearing in order to maintain the labor pool. (Beastmen societies are worse, as they are polygamous, with the strongest chief keeping all the women as a harem.) ACKS assumes that the merchants, nobility, military, priesthood, and mages in society are egalitarian with respect to gender, and that specific orders and institutions exist as outlets for high-caliber young people to advance in these positions.
To understand how I reached these demographic assumptions:
In pre-industrial societies, death rates are high, and need for labor is great. Women must be oriented towards childbearing or the society will demographically collapse.
In societies with gender equality, birth rates invariably plummet because free women with career opportunities prefer not to spend their lives childbearing.
If magic is so common that it replaces technology and creates industrial-like societies, the labor pool could be smaller and infant mortality substantially lower, so this could alter the demographic implications. This is not the case, however, for the commoners in ACKS. Only the rich and noble have access to sufficient magic that they could overcome the constraints of labor and illness. As a result historical norms will largely apply to the agricultural commoners.
In pre-industrial societies, men tend to gain political power because both labor and military might are dependent on physical strength, which men have more of (and perhaps also because men tend to be more competitive and power-hungry than women due to the effects of testosterone, but let’s assume ACKS women are equally ruthless!)
If magic is common enough that it is useful in war and politics, possession of it can guarantee power regardless of their physical strength or lack thereof. This is assumed to be the case in ACKS.
Therefore, power in the middle and upper stratas is likely to be far more evenly distributed in an ACKS setting than it has been in any historical society.
There will be some trickle-down from above such that women are unlikely to be anywhere as oppressed and degraded as they have been during history’s worst periods (except in vile societies such as, e.g., beastmen).
From these thoughts, I designed the Auran Empire as follows:
It is politically and economically egalitarian with regard to gender for those that have political and economic power. It is stratified on the basis of wealth and class (noble, armiger, commoner, or indentured).
The middle and upper professions are assumed to be made up of a mix of genders. The agricultural masses are assumed to be largely stratified by gender roles with regard to labor out of necessity, although not necessarily patriarchal in politics.
Because women with options pursue those options, the middle and upper classes are assumed to have a lower birth rate than the lower classes, partly but not entirely made up by magical healing (e.g. modern Europe still has a lower birth rate than developing countries). As a result, there are provisions for social mobility to allow the lower classes to move up to maintain the army, priesthood, etc.
So the Auran Empire setting is definitely more egalitarian than, e.g., the historical Roman Empire, or JRR Tolkien, R Scott Bakker or George RR Martin’s worlds. I hope that makes sense and answers (over-answers?) your question.
Animate Dead: With no cap on total number of undead animated and controlled via multiple castings, raising an undead army is a very viable option. Excellent.
ALEX: Muhahaha!
Conjure Elemental: I haven’t gotten to any cosmology yet, but it’s nice to see the Elemental Planes.
ALEX: I’m not sure if we’re going to include the Auran Empire’s default cosmology in the rules.
Contact Higher Plane: As an Arcane spell, I wonder if “Other” rather than “Higher” might be appropriate, what with the dark sources of knowledge and insanity and all. The table column listing the entity’s “Don’t Know” percentage rather than its “Knows” percentage seems backward. Taking both columns into account, the actual chance of getting a true one-word answer ranges from 12.5% for three questions up to 90.25% for 12 questions; for an Archmage, 21% actual chance of true answers on 5 questions with no chance of insanity makes it a pretty good “throw me a bone here” spell. The lose/lose proposition built into the spell playing Knowledge against Sanity has a very Lovecraft feel, especially compared to Commune - the River of Wisdom vs the Firehose of Knowledge. As a possible elaboration of the 3-12 week insanity, this would be an excellent place for a Horrific Results table a la the Restore Life & Limb side effects table, with levels over 11 and weeks of insanity being modifiers on the roll.
ALEX: How about Contact Outer Plane? Great idea on the insanity chart.
Dispel Magic: A brand new 5th level Thaumaturge has a 55% chance of ripping down an Archmage’s spell, making it useful right away. Makes Permanency very vulnerable (maybe too vulnerable given its cost) and item creation even more important.
ALEX: “A permanency spell lasts until it is dispelled by either the caster or a higher-level spellcaster.” It’s not as vulnerable.
Glyph of Warding: The Spell Glyph variant says that the cleric must be of high enough level to cast the spell stored, but doesn’t make explicit whether they have to cast the stored spell or not - I’d read it as not.
ALEX: No, they don’t.
Haste: Is using Haste aggressively to age your enemies enough of an edge case not to specify the target gets to save vs. spells?
ALEX: Wow. I’m going to call that an edge case…
Restore Life & Limb: Love the table.
ALEX: Greg Tito wrote that. It’s very, very fun. We still have some gaps in the boxes so if you have ideas, share them.
Teleport: The 5% chance of instant death in the best possible scenario makes this a panic button (or interesting offensive option) rather than a generally useful tool. Effective way to limit magical travel.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s by design. Freely available Teleport essentially destroys any semblance of a medieval economy.
Tongues: Does Garble interfere with spellcasting, I wonder?
ALEX: I’d say “no”. Magic probably sounds like gibberish anyway.
Wall of Ice (Arcane 4) appears in the spell descriptions but not in the list of Fourth Level Arcane Spells. Wall of Iron (Arcane 6) appears in Sixth Level Arcane Spells but not in the spell descriptions.
ALEX: Thanks, good catches.
ALEX: I’m surprised you had no comment on the big changes to Protection From Evil and Continual Light!
magic swords 1% intelligent. Wow, that’s a huge difference the original incarnation. 100% were assumed to be intelligent in 0d&d; this was the fighters big benefit, what do you see as balancing this class wise for the fighter?
ALEX: Fighters in ACKS are considerably mightier than in other versions of the game. At first level, they get a +1 bonus to damage, and this increases again at 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th level. They also can attack again any time they kill an enemy, up to one per level. A high-level fighter doesn’t need an intelligent sword to compete.
magician swords in the FFC: In the FFC Arneson wrote the chart that later informed the intelligent sword category in d&d, originally the referee rolled like a d6 and a 1-2 indicated a “magician’s sword” and a 3-6 was a fighters sword. Everyone knows what an intelligent sword in d&d looks like (ego, spell like abilities etc), to see what the magicians sword looked like (remember in CM wizards could wield swords) simply look at the three examples brought over into d&d, the staff of wizardry, power, and the staff of the magi. What I am proposing is, of course to leave in those two great staves, but to allow for random creation a la intelligent swords for different powers and abilities. Variations on the staff of power, wizardry, and magi in other words. Does that make sense? Why only three awesome staffs? I’m not saying make staffs intelligent, I’m just saying make up a table for random powers perhaps. If only to give wizard PC’s ideas on different types of staffs they might create.
ALEX: Ah, that’s a cool suggestion.
Manticores: Well, spikes are missile weapons and missile weapons cannot be aimed in melee at specific targets once enemies are engaged, just like sword blows cannot be assigned once melee with multiple foes begins. (maybe acks has decided not to use that rule?)
ALEX: Ah, I see. Yes, melee blows are targeted at specific opponents in ACKS. Missile weapons are aimed at specific targets prior to melee engagement, but cannot generally be fired into a melee unless the character has the Precise Shot proficiency and even then there is a penalty.
female elfs. doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t account for the weak and infirm. Non-combatants should include old men as well and combatants should leave room for women like that chick from LotR who killed the witch king as well as female body guards of orc leaders in B2. Female kobolds in B2 fight the same as males, while most orc females do not (with the above noted exception). Better just to say non-combatants and children imo. But I do like the flavor of the only 5% elf children, so it wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t change anything. I just happened to notice it for some reason.
ALEX: In ACKS there are no old and infirm elves. They are ageless until they die. I suppose some might be crippled from battle, but I’m not sure if that’s worth representing. Beastmen are an awful set of races where the alpha males keep harems of submissive women for breeding purposes.
Dragon breath. As I mentioned in the blog. D&D scales are as screwed up as the economy is. Fact is d&d mixes 10 yard/10 feet/3 feet scale all over the place. With figure basing at 1" = 1 yard, time scale at 10 yards and movement underground at 10 feet. It’s a mess. in chainmail there were multiple rounds of melee per minute for example, but changed in order to keep wizards attacking as often as a fighter swings his sword (if you ask me melee rounds should be 6 seconds and spells should remain on the 1 minute time table which is what CHAINMAIL effectively had as there would be 3 or more rounds of melee every 1 minute turn).
ALEX: It is a mess, yes…
If you guys are going to fix the economy, you might as well fix the scale. So pick your dragon breath, but make sure figure basing in a 10’ corridor works as well and that movement rates underground blah blah blah…
ALEX: I think Delta’s mathematics on this front have made a good justification for why the interior feet / outdoor yards scale makes sense; that’s what we’ve retained. ACKS rules allow 3 man-sized figures to fight side by side per 10’ corridor, and allow characters with spears to fight from the second rank. The implicit size of the squares would therefore be about 3’ rather than the 5’ that 3.5 D&D uses. But the game doesn’t assume you’re using miniatures… I certainly do not.
pg. 129 monster types, “humanoid”. “humans…do not cease to be humanoids even if they achieve 5th level or higher. All humanoids are vulnerable to charm person…”
ALEX: Good catch, thank you.
re: 1% intelligent magic swords. Really makes the clerics weapon restriction more for flavor rather than any thing else. 99% of the time a mace is just as good a weapon as a sword now. So to me it appears as a weaker fighter and a stronger cleric by this ACKs rule. Intelligent swords is the reason wizards and clerics have weapon restrictions.
ALEX: The cleric’s weapon restriction is not as important in ACKS as it is in some other versions of the game, that’s correct.
STRONGHOLDS
Man I would love me a sample type I, type II, and type III castle drawing with prices.
ALEX: Great suggestion!
how does “domain land revinue” effect the generic profit of merchant ships–if at all, If I use the ‘average monthly profit’ table?
ALEX: If you’re just using the generic profits for merchant ships, don’t worry about the domain land revenue. The merchant ships are assumed to go where they can make money.
Pg. 111 Paying expenses. The reading confused me a little bit. Are you saying a lord must hire 2-4gp worth of mercenaries per peasant family? Can these mercenaries be mustered into the army for a war, or must they stay behind to protect the land? What happens if the former happens and nobody’s there to protect/restrain the peasants?
ALEX: They needn’t be mercenaries, per se, but the lord has to maintain a fighting force costing 2-4gp worth of soldiers. For instance, if a Borderlands lord has 1,000 families, he’ll need to spend 3,000gp. That could be 50 knights (60gp/month) or 250 heavy foot (12gp/month). If he doesn’t maintain the fighting force, domain morale drops. If he takes the fighting force off onto a military campaign, domain morale drops. Reduced domain morale means less revenue and more peasants lost to various causes. A lord who is away at war for a long time may return to a domain in shambles.
What % of the male population can be pressed/hired into an army? FFC says 30% but only 15% at any one time is under arms.
ALEX: FFC’s 15%/30% seem to be based on the historical Roman Republic, which kept 10% of its males under arms at any times, and raised this to about 33% during the Punic Wars. However, this is among the HIGHEST rate of military participation of any settled population prior to the Industrial Revolution. Military participation rate was much lower in most other kingdoms, including the Roman Empire.
ALEX: In any event, in ACKS’ Domains at War, I assume that 20% of the population is men of fighting age (1 in 5), and that 10% of the men of fighting age can be impressed into the army, so 1 soldier per 10 families. This number can be increased but doing so will reduce domain morale and revenue.
Would a Lord granted land pay his 20% tribute to the king or to the baron above him? Does it flow up the pyramid as it were? Does the tribute of the baron to the earl include the profit from the 20% of the vassal below him?
ALEX: The baron’s 20% goes to his earl. The earl’s 20% goes to his duke. Etc. The tribute of the baron to the earl would include 20% of the profit of the baron’s vassals, yes.
MAGIC ITEMS
If magic swords are 1% intelligent, is this rolled for when a PC makes a sword? What happens if a PC makes a sword with permanent effect detect magic 3x per day then the sword turns out to be intelligent and can detect magic…?
ALEX: I didn’t include any provisions for a PC making an intelligent weapon, actually. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think it should be possible, I just hadn’t thought about it.
whats the loyalty of constructs? What if my magician wants to create a beautiful female construct what’s her loyalty? Chance to disobey? Do they count as retainers? Does a created vampire from a retainer still remain loyal?
ALEX: These are great questions! Constructs are assumed to be loyal and don’t count as retainers. (Neither do charmed creatures). I didn’t understand your vampire question.
do wizard apprentices count as retainers?
ALEX: No, followers are not retainers.
thinking ahead here to the war-game. If creatures of 3-4+ hit dice count against your retainers, how do you field an army of 25 giants? (I’d post this in the war-game blog post, but I’m mortified at how many posts I made within 1 hour…)
ALEX: As an evil overlord, you’d hire them as mercenaries. A retainer represents a very close relationship, a personal bodyguard, a henchman. I’ll need to be explicit about this.
given the extremely small # appearing of 4+ hd creatures (reminicient of both the FFC 15% of budget limit, and the fact that fantasy creatures were 1:1 scale while goblins and elves were 1:20 and therefore in d&d have much higher # appearing; given this, given that giants have # appearing as 1-3, how do you get to 25 giants or more for a stand in the army? Can those 25 giants all throw rocks? Will they act as a battery of catapults? I personally like the individual nature of magical creatures in armies (which would count as retainers). How do you handle a battalion of basilisk?
ALEX: As above, you’d have to actively recruit them as mercenaries. (12 Hill Giants would be a Unit). It’d be fairly hard to field many Units of Giants. That said, in Domains at War, you can have Units of monsters, but large or tough monsters can also act as Heroes. Heroes can either support Units (leading them and fighting with them) or act as Independent Units, moving on the battlefield on their own.
ALEX: A Unit of Giants can hurl a ton of rocks. Hill Giants hurling rocks at medium range against, say, plate armored cavalry would probably wipe them out in one Battle Turn.
COMBAT SPECIAL MANEUVERS: 1. subdue pg. 99: subdual was to force surrender (and then make an offer of service) or force surrender to sell as a slave. In ACKs it seems it’s purpose is to knock the victim unconcious, is this right? It sounds boring.
ALEX: I can count on one hand the number of times anyone ever has used subdual-to-slavery. On the other hand, people constantly want to deliver knock-out blows to “take them alive”. For what it’s worth, I think enslavement is better handled with the reaction rolls table and role-play than with OD&D’s subdual mechanics.
SAVING THROWS: 0- level man? I suggest 1 point worse than 1st level fighter.
ALEX: Thanks for noticing that. They got deleted somehow.
INVULNRABLE MONSTERS: In CM this was hero-1 (3hd or more) could harm fantastic foes that required a magic weapon to hit. ACKs pegs it at 5HD.
ALEX: Yes.
pg. 94 missile weapon ranges.
Ok. This looks like ad&d. CM and 0d&d took a different approach. Think of a mass combat. What range would 90% of arrow fire come at? short or long? Long of course. Arrows are a distance weapon. +2 to hit at short range, +1 at medium range, +0 at long range. This is balanced by the fact that at short range chances are, A) you’re going to be in melee soon and wont get many arrows off, B) if you are firing at short range, chances are you’re firing into melee and will hit your companions, C) can’t pick your target. Ad&d was wrong with this. CM and 0d&d had it right.
Now, if you’re talking about hitting a “specific” target at short medium or long range. Fine. 0/-2/-5, but not for just shooting at arrow at a host of goblins or firing into a melee. But you have “precise shooting” that adds another -4 on top of that. 0-level Mercenary archers are worse than storm troopers…
ALEX: As I noted earlier, the rules assume you are picking a specific target. If you’re shooting into a melee, it’ll likely be at 0 for range, but -4 for the melee. But you are right that we don’t have is a provision for shooting at a large group of targets and not caring which one you hit. I like that idea – basically you could reduce the range penalty if you are willing to let the arrow randomly hit.
INITIATIVE: As it stands, you have 10 second rounds…but you use d6 initiative, and max at 6th level spells. Ad&d went to the 10 segment round because of 7-9th level spells; something ACKs doesn’t worry about in combat. If you’re going to switch to 5’ move squares and 10 second rounds, you might as well use d10 initiative, but if not…
Sell me on the 10 second round with a d6 initiative dice and 12’ mvt. rate.
ALEX: The d6 is modified – with the + 3 DEX adjustment and +1 for Combat Reflexes proficiency, the maximum initiative roll you commonly see is around 10. The 10-second round works perfectly with this, should you care to think about it that way!
I’m not sure if we’re going to include the Auran Empire’s default cosmology in the rules.
It might be nice, even if it’s just part of the “When the Planes are Right” paragraph from the blog post given as an example. The whole bit with Ascendent and Descendent planes and so forth (and their presumed effect on things like clerical abilities, monsters and spells) is excellent, but I can see holding that back for the full Auran Empire setting, however that gets done (separate book or whatnot).
How about Contact Outer Plane?
Sounds great!
Missed the Permanency level clause. It’s good to be Archmage.
I’m surprised you had no comment on the big changes to Protection From Evil and Continual Light!
Protection from Evil is definitely an nice upgrade, though now it’s trading offense for defense. I’m generally not fond of “concentration and nothing else” spells because standing in one place and doing nothing - and for a passive bonus in this case - while the rest of the party has an encounter isn’t my idea of fun gameplay. It’s such a classic rendition of the magic circle, though, it’s hard not to love it, and it’s clearly the go-to spell for negotiating with dark forces. The Sustained upgrade helps out quite a bit.
It looks like there’s an almost-duplicate sentence in the description, and I’m not sure which one is intended to apply:
The protection against contact by enchanted creatures ends if the caster makes an attack against, cast a spell on, or tries to force the barrier against the blocked creature. The spell’s protection against contact by enchanted creatures ends if the caster or any protected creature makes an attack against, casts a spell on, or tries to force the barrier against a blocked creature.
If the caster’s protection against contact drops as soon as anyone in the circle makes an attack, that’s obviously less useful.
Continual Light/Darkness limited by level seems like an odd bit of accounting, and I don’t recall anything else working that way mechanically. Needing to keep track of how many dungeon rooms I’ve made dark seems wonky, but I suppose that’s necessary to keep cheap mass produced Arrows of Darkness/Infinite Torches out of the markets and battlefields.
re: slavery. I meant this more in the way a subdued dragon is forced to serve a PC. This could be an ogre, or wyvern as long as the PC knows the requisite language I assume?
re: vampire. You give rules on creating higher level undead. Is a created wight as loyal to a necromancer as a skeleton is to a necromancer? Is there a difference between granting unlife to an ogre (4hd) than granting unlife to a 0-level human but paying enough gold to give the human 4hd as an undead? If I only spend 2000gp, is the ogre a 1HD skeleton or does granting unlife to an ogre require 8000gp minimum?
re: movement. I really like the “combat movement” (though I’d prefer it at 10’ so the players could use the exploration map their drawing easier as a reference in combat without switching to a larger 5’ grid).
encounter distance in a dungeon is 2d6x10’ with the average being? 6-8? That means a fighter in plate 60 (20’) generally more than half the time takes 2 rounds to charge (what is the rule for charging over multiple rounds? How often can you charge? Every round? once per turn like ad&d? I’m partial to CM which assigns fatigue after 5 rounds of mvt. 3 rounds of combat etc.)
This means a dragon with a 90’ breath attack more often than not can breath twice before a fighter is in range. If the knight cannot charge, it will take him 5 rounds to close to melee. Perhaps a good reason to bring a warhorse down into the dungeon like net-hack!
Help me out with what I’m missing?
pg. 77 time and wilderness movement. Is “combat movement” still 10’s of feet per round per 10 seconds? Is a dragons breath still 90’ feet not 90 yards?
MONSTERS:
maybe this will be in the GM section (why aren’t monsters in the GM section?) But a list of creatures on one page with AC/HD/dmg/mvt. would be handy.
dragon subdual. What happens if the dragon fails a morale check before you subdue it to 0 hit points? Why is it implied that subdual only applies to dragons? If not, why is it repeated from the combat section here? I am partial to the 0d&d subdual rules that applies to all creatures, but is written up in the dragons description.
dragons have significantly fewer hit points than 0/Ad&d, but I suppose it is made up for in special abilities?
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