Heroic Companion Draft Discussion

Development and Playtest ACKS Heroic Fantasy Handbook Playtest
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With the release of the draft, here's a thread for commentary. I've only read through the first class description, so I'm not that deep in yet.

 

Am I a bad person for laughing at the Khal Drogo Memorial Rule?

 

For the Ecclesiastic, I feel like Curate should come before Priest in the title list, since a curate is an assistant to a vicar, rector, or parish priest. As the titles currently stand, a character becomes a priest, then becomes the assistant to a priest. (And yes, I'm being a nitpicky bastard, it's what I do)

 

On page 10, the 11th level description of the Ecclesiastic talks about them casting eldritch pells. I think there is a missing letter. Also, they can create cross-breads, despite not being bakers.

2

I've been skimming through it interesting so far. I'm a fan of the The Ashley J. Williams Memorial Rule (being a big fan of the Evil Dead series)

3

[quote="The Dark"]

Also, they can create cross-breads, despite not being bakers.

[/quote]

I just failed a saving throw vs. my sides

4

I noticed that loremasters collect divine power as clerics, which I thought was weird at first, with the idea of a loremaster leading a congregation in worship.

Then I realized that if you call the loremaster a professor or teacher, instead of a priest or preacher, and call his congregants students instead of worshippers, and they build schools instead of temples, it’s exactly the same mechanics but fits the loremaster beautifully, as well as explaining the henchman-becoming-PCs train of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato.

As far as actual feedback, it might be worth mentioning this somewhere, that while loremasters use identical rules to clerics for their divine power collection, they prefer to call themselves teachers and their congregants students, or some such. (Unless this is already called out later in the book in the magic chapter or something, I’m only partway through the classes at the moment.)

5

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] I noticed that loremasters collect divine power as clerics, which I thought was weird at first, with the idea of a loremaster leading a congregation in worship. [/quote]

It's more than just students, for the occultist it's sycophants and fanatics and such. A generic way to put it is that the eldritch caster has a cult of personality, essentially - personal power over the congregation given freely to him, and he or she can parlay that into the collection of divine power.

I'll allow James Earl Jones to explain it here, as he does it better than I: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgN1sLcAQnw

 

6

At 50' long and 5'8" diameter, the Giant Constricting Viper Snake seems to be either too short or too fat. Titanoboa was 50' long and 3' diameter, and it was a pretty fat snake. Frazetta snakes aren't fat.

As an aside, I keep looking for a length to diameter to weight formula for snakes, but there doesn't seem to be one.

7

Loremasters and occultists are very different classes, though :stuck_out_tongue:

Cult worshipers for an occultist makes perfect sense to me, while not so much for the loremaster.

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Divine Power can be harvested through sacrifice.  I suspect that this, rather than congregations, is what's intended, no?

9

Looking at the mitigate damage ability of the Nobirian Champion (Armiger) it mentions that the cost to repair armor or shield to be 10gp per point of effectiveness. I wonder if that's also true of magical versions of armor and shields. In a lot of genre literature if a magical item is damaged it takes special means to repair it.

10

The Proficiency Progression table on page 40 of the sneak preview shows that the Nobirian Champion gaining bonus proficiencies. I think that might be a holdover from an earlier version of the document as the Nobirian Champion has class powers depending on which path was taken.

11

I couldn't find where it said how much armour a warmistress is allowed to wear. The example Avenging Angel has light arena armour, which is noted as being equivalent to leather armour on page 44, so presumably a warmistress can wear leather, at the least.

It's a minor point, but on page 44 Red Sonja's bikini armour described as being chainmail. I'm told it's actually 'coinmail,' whatever that might be. I assume it chafes less.

12

According to page 72, traditional implements have an encumberance of one stone, regardless of level. According to page 46, they have an encumerance of one stone per level. Given that the implements don't sound like the kind of things that would vary much in size, I'm guessing the first figure is the correct one, but it's hard to be sure.

The section on ceremonial magic seems to go back and forth on whether tricnkets and talismans are associated with specific ceremonies or just levels and traditions. For example, the line "A ceremonialist creating a black magic talisman gains 1 point of corruption per level of the ceremony affiliated with the talisman" only makes sense if talismans can be associated with specific ceremonies, but the description of talismans says that the only two characteristics of a talisman are its tradition and its ceremony level.

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Traditional implements - one stone; inconsistency is due to holdovers from prior draft

Trinkets and Talismans - not affiliated with specific cermonies; incosistency is due to holdovers from prior draft

Warmistress - leather or less; will clarify

Nobiran Champion - doesn't get bonus proficiencies; incosistency is due to holdovers from prior draft

Loremasters/Occultists - can have congregants. students and cultists respectively; will clarify.

14

Minor things noticed. Mostly typos or an occasional old draft holdover.

Sorted: Things that are largely unimportant typos are at the top, things that might actually be considered a question are at the bottom. (So you can just scroll past the list of typos if you don’t care at this point.)

Page 28 - Revised Venturer header says d4 HD, table says d6.

Page 34/35: Zaharan Sorcerer subclass bonus class proficiencies do not mention when one of them is new or changed. (I noticed this with Apostasy in the Necromancer and Animal Husbandry/Beast Friendship in the Transmogrifier.)

Page 41 - Masterwork items: “the bonuses do no stack” instead of do not.

Page 68 - Tapping Power example says that spells cost SP equal to their level (4 SP is enough for 1 3rd and 1 1st level spell). The maximum 9 SP from a major place of power (or 5 SP from a minor) may or may not have been made with that version in mind.

Page 74 - Hasty Ceremony example says that Ra-Ramses applies his Cha modifier to his ceremony throw; text and other examples say Wis modifier.

Page 74 - “Ceremonies cannot be performed bot hastily and methodically” bot instead of both.

Page 75 - “only the lead ceremonialist can both and trigger a mishap” both instead of botch.

Page 75 - Unknown ceremony example: Ra-Ramses is referred to as Ramses-Ra. Last line: “is evil lust” instead of “his evil lust”.

Page 81 - Making Trinkets example: Ra-Ramses is Ramses-Ra again.

Page 83 - Ramses-Ra again. Also, he is described as an occultist with 55 spell points.

Page 97 - Call of the Galloping Herd refers to the “summoned roc”.

Page 100 - Cone of Frost refers to itself as Cone of Ice.

Page 101 - Contact Other Sphere does not list what color of magic it is.

Page 102 - Contact Other Sphere sidebar: “asking for a first level spell counts as one questions” instead of one question

Page 104 - Cause Serious Wounds says that Cause Critical Wounds works the same as Cause Critical Wounds (instead of saying that Cause Serious works the same as Cause Crit)

Page 133 - surrounded instead of surround, site instead of sight, “báleygr terrifying presence” instead of báleygr’s, “strike with one” instead of “strike with one of”.

Page 143 - last paragraph, second sentence, ‘they’ is lowercase.

Page 149 - Class categories list, Ceremonial is listed twice.

Page 57 - Says that eldritch ceremonialists who perform blood sacrifice gain corruption equal to HD of the sacrificed target, p 79 gives a different mechanic for calculating the corruption of blood sacrifice and also says that sacrificing normal animals as humanely as possible does not give corruption.

Page 78 - Blood sacrifice refers to a chaotic divine spellcaster instead of a ceremonialist. (I’m not actually sure if non-Chaotic ceremonialists can perform blood sacrifice; only chaotic divine spellcasters can, but I can’t find anything requiring ceremonialists to be Chaotic to do it.)

Page 108 - In the Force of Impetus example, Baldur flings a catapult onto itself; a light catapult has 300’ range while Force of Impetus has only a 60’ range, that catapult is dangerously close! (This honestly is so unimportant I wasn’t sure if I should even mention it, but this is the ACKS community after all, I say a lot of incredibly unimportant things >.>)

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I just want to mention this is looking so good. So much exciting stuff in there to pick and choose from

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1) The revised beast friendship proficiency describes how the identify plants and fauna throw interacts with the friends of birds and beasts class power, but how does it interact with the naturalism proficiency?

2) Arena armor gives a +1 bonus to seduction rolls. What's a seduction roll? The seduction proficiency just gives a +2 bonus to reaction rolls.

3) A couple of issues with the Attacks and Armor Penetration of Large Monsters rules: For monster vs. monster attacks, how do we determine what portion of a monster's AC comes from agility vs. armor? How do these rules interact with Domains at War?

4) Heroic Treasure: Love it!!! When will we get to know how to determine if an item is common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary?

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[quote="James C. Bennett"]

1) The revised beast friendship proficiency describes how the identify plants and fauna throw interacts with the friends of birds and beasts class power, but how does it interact with the naturalism proficiency?

2) Arena armor gives a +1 bonus to seduction rolls. What's a seduction roll? The seduction proficiency just gives a +2 bonus to reaction rolls.

3) A couple of issues with the Attacks and Armor Penetration of Large Monsters rules: For monster vs. monster attacks, how do we determine what portion of a monster's AC comes from agility vs. armor? How do these rules interact with Domains at War?

4) Heroic Treasure: Love it!!! When will we get to know how to determine if an item is common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary?

[/quote]

 

2) was this intended to stack with the seduction proficiency or be a half-seduction? if half, then presumably just redoubling the seduction text and noting that it doesn't stack with seduction should suffice.

4) I have already mentally replaced "very rare" with "epic" and the magic item names in my head already have white, green, blue, purple, and orange (respectively) text.  Thanks blizzard...

18

1) The revised beast friendship proficiency describes how the identify plants and fauna throw interacts with the friends of birds and beasts class power, but how does it interact with the naturalism proficiency?

APM: Rules-as-written, it doesn't. Do we think it ought?

2) Arena armor gives a +1 bonus to seduction rolls. What's a seduction roll? The seduction proficiency just gives a +2 bonus to reaction rolls.

APM: 

3) A couple of issues with the Attacks and Armor Penetration of Large Monsters rules: For monster vs. monster attacks, how do we determine what portion of a monster's AC comes from agility vs. armor? How do these rules interact with Domains at War?

APM: There is no explicit rule that will tell you which portion of a monster's AC comes from agility versus armor. It's up to the Judge to decide. It would be a big complex table to work that out, which there's not space for in the book. 

APM: Domains at War uses the exact same attack throw system as ACKS and the exact same ACs and monster sizes, so it should interact exactly as in the rules listed. 

4) Heroic Treasure: Love it!!! When will we get to know how to determine if an item is common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary?

APM: In the next draft or two. It's based on the GP value of the item. I have held off on making the treasure tables because we have so many new items coming from backers.

 

 

19

[quote="Alex"] 2) Arena armor gives a +1 bonus to seduction rolls. What's a seduction roll? The seduction proficiency just gives a +2 bonus to reaction rolls.

APM: [/quote]

I think you accidentally an answer. (To me, it seems genre-appropriate for any attractive and scantily-dressed character to be naturally seductive, so my current assumption is that the +1 is a bonus to all reaction rolls that functions in the same situations that seduction does, and stacks with the seduction proficiency.)

I've just noticed that the Warmistress' provoke the passions ability doesn't have the "who are potentially attracted to her" caveat on any of its effects, despite being based (according to the text) on her alluring beauty... Which means a warmistress could potentially cause any creature to become enamoured with or distracted by her beauty for the duration of the provocation, regardless of said creature's normal preferences.

I suspect that it's probably deliberate; I can think of a few potentially-relevant literary examples that it might be a reference to. Besides, the warmistress' alluring beauty ability does include the standard caveat, which means that provoke the passions is more likely to achieve high-end results on characters who do nomally find the character attractive in any case. But I figured I should double-check, just to be sure.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of seduction rolls, arena armour grants its benefit by showing off the wearer's body; Is there non-armoured clothing that shows off the wearer's body with a similar benefit? For that matter, could a similar benefit be gained by wearing no clothing at all?

Ugh, I'm regretting asking that last question already...

20

[quote="GMJoe"]

Ugh, I'm regretting asking that last question already...

[/quote]

Nothing wrong with that. Dwarven Furies wearing nothing but their tatoos and frothing battle rage is a time honored tradition.