From page 93: “The movement rates shown on the table above are figured based on an 8 hour day of travel through open, clear terrain… In addition to these conditions that can influence travel rates, characters may engage in a forced march, traveling 12 hours per day. A forced march is a day of hard, tiring travel, but increases travel speed by +1/2. However, the characters must rest for 24 hours after a forced march.”
If a forced march increases travel speed by 1/2 and marching time by 1/2 (8 hours → 12 hours), it increases the distance covered by 125%, thus leaving the forced marchers a couple of hours ahead of the normal marchers after their rest day. Is the text above correct, or should it read:
“… characters may engage in a forced march, traveling 12 hours per day to increase the distance traveled by +1/2.”
page 94: I think the interaction of the foraging rules and proficiencies is clearer with the new survival proficiency!
page 95: It would be a lot more GM-friendly to list the structural hit point ranges by their determining dice-
“20-45” → “5d6 + 15”, or “(1d6 + 3) x 5” for swingy totals
“5-10” → “1d6 + 4”
“95-120” → “5d6 + 90”
“75-100” → “5d6 + 70”
“125-150” → “5d6 + 120”, or …
“12-18” → “2d4 + 10”
“65-80” → “5d4 + 60”
“125-180” → “5d12 + 120”
“65-90” → “5d6 + 60”
“150-200” → “10d6 + 140”
“90-110” → “10d3 + 80”? “4d6 + 86”? “(2d2 + 7) x 10”?
… it’d make it easier to see at a glance how to generate the ship.
Duskreign’s Minion here.
p.51 Acrobatics
“The opponent can now attacked…” the word be is missing. The opponent can now be attacked.
Also, while I was working on this sample table, I noticed Elves no longer have a stat requirement - is that correct? Don’t all demi-humans have a stat requirement? Isn’t that the main difference between them and the Humans, or is it just a Dwarf thing now (which, if the case, doesn’t make a lot of sense either, to have a requirement system in place, which only seems to affect one class - well two classes, technically, but you get the idea. Why Dwarves and no one else)? In fact, upon further investigation, it seems to have disappeared between version 27 and the current version. So, yeah, something else to potentially look into.
APM: Elves have a requirement of INT 9. However, both of the elven classes presented have prime requisites of INT. Since a prime requisite in ACKS includes a 9 minimum, it is redundant to list an elven minimum for those two classes. Other custom elf classes that might be designed, and detailed in our to-be-released Players Companion, will show the elven INT 9 minimum.
If a forced march increases travel speed by 1/2 and marching time by 1/2 (8 hours → 12 hours), it increases the distance covered by 125%, thus leaving the forced marchers a couple of hours ahead of the normal marchers after their rest day. Is the text above correct, or should it read:
“… characters may engage in a forced march, traveling 12 hours per day to increase the distance traveled by +1/2.”
APM: A forced march is an extra 4 hours of travel time to increase the distance traveled by 50%.
We used ACKS for the bachelor party I ran this weekend and had a blast!
One thing that came up in play was that we had an efreeti summoned from a bottle. The PCs had scrolls of protection from elementals, so I used the description of efreeti which specifies that they are a kind of fire elemental to rule that they were warded by the scroll. However, the efreeti entry didn’t say that they were immune to fire. Should they be? What about actual fire elementals?
Looking over the thief skills, it seems that there’s little to no incentive to actually use any of them for the first 8 or so levels:
OL: 85% failure chance
F/RT: 85% failure chance
PP: 80% failure chance
MS: 80% failure chance
HS: 90% failure chance
HN: 65% failure chance
There are two reasons for why a thief should be very reluctant to use their skills:
- Their target numbers are vastly higher than the target numbers of other classes - the fighter does not expect to be constantly attacking monsters with an attack throw of 18+. If they did, they would quite rightly revolt. Mages do not have to worry about victims of their spells having saving throws of 3+, if they did, they would quite rightly revolt. Thieves don’t get to have target numbers that represent a 50% chance until 7th level. How is that a good thing? The only thing I can come up with is inertia - that’s the way it’s ‘always’ been.
- The consequences for failure are severe compared to others’. If a fighter fails to hit, he does no damage but gets the opportunity to try next round. If a thief fails his pickpocket roll, he risks having his character taken from him. If he fails a F/RT roll, he faces poisoning, maiming, crushing or other near-certain deaths. If he fails his HS or his MS rolls, there goes his ability to backstab. The consequences of failure are disproportionate to the chance of success until much later.
The thief skills, imo need reworking, there are virtually no reasons whatever to even attempt anything but climbing walls until many levels have been gained - there are always better options to using the thief skills.
Sorry it took so long to reply, I was pretty sick for a bit this week. In any case…
“APM: Elves have a requirement of INT 9. However, both of the elven classes presented have prime requisites of INT. Since a prime requisite in ACKS includes a 9 minimum, it is redundant to list an elven minimum for those two classes.”
That makes a lot of sense and I see where you’re coming from however, at that point, isn’t it a little more redundant to have, say, 20 classes, each of which list a Minimum Requirement and yet 18 of them don’t have one at all? Rather than having a section for it and writing ‘none’ 90% of the time, wouldn’t it make more sense to just leave it out altogether and just include it with the Dwarves? Or, despite the redundancy, include it anyway (even if in just the racial classes, as that seems to be the only time it matters) simply for the sake of completeness?
Another question/also a follow-up to what Ataraxzy said, my group was saying the same thing about the low percentages for Thief skills. Something that might help a little (which I might have missed, though I didn’t see it mentioned) would be if Thieves could add their Dex modifier as a bonus to their Thief skill throws? I looked in the Ability section and the Thief section but neither said anything about this. Every other class gets a bonus to their main ability for having a high score in a certain stat (fighters: attack/damage, mages: bonus spells, etc) so why not the Thief?
Finally, three more quick things we noticed/had questions about:
- What’s the advantage to using a composite bow? Why does it cost more? Didn’t see this mentioned anywhere. Do you get to add your Str to damage or something?
- On the equipment table, a Light Riding Horse (75 GP) costs more than a Medium Riding Horse (40 GP). Seems backwards to me, especially since a Medium Warhorse (250 GP) costs 100 GP more than a Light Warhorse (150 GP). Is that correct or reversed?
- On the class proficiency page, some of the lists were out of alphabetical order. Kind of a nitpick/not a big deal, and I’m sure it’s due to some last minute additions, but I could see this being something one of you somewhere might care about. For example, on the Elven Spellsword, Weapon Focus and Weapon Finesse are reversed.
Another question/also a follow-up to what Ataraxzy said, my group was saying the same thing about the low percentages for Thief skills. Something that might help a little (which I might have missed, though I didn’t see it mentioned) would be if Thieves could add their Dex modifier as a bonus to their Thief skill throws? I looked in the Ability section and the Thief section but neither said anything about this. Every other class gets a bonus to their main ability for having a high score in a certain stat (fighters: attack/damage, mages: bonus spells, etc) so why not the Thief?
APM: The thief skills all use the “traditional” values in OD&D, AD&D 1e, B/X, Oriental Adventures, etc. That’s what we used when we built and ran ACKS so I’m not going to change it to untested values late in publication. Changing the thief values would mean, in turn, that hijinks would become more successful and profitable, that certain spells become less valuable, and so on. The thief can take a proficiency like Trap Finder or Skulk to improve his chances if desired. Also don’t forget that for both trap-finding and sneaking, there are defaults (i.e. is the monster surprised? did the player make his base 18+ to spot trap) so the thief skill is a “second chance” in those rolls.
Finally, three more quick things we noticed/had questions about:
- What’s the advantage to using a composite bow? Why does it cost more? Didn’t see this mentioned anywhere. Do you get to add your Str to damage or something?
APM: A composite bow has the range of a long bow but can be used from horseback. Historically, they were more expensive by far than simple bows. - On the equipment table, a Light Riding Horse (75 GP) costs more than a Medium Riding Horse (40 GP). Seems backwards to me, especially since a Medium Warhorse (250 GP) costs 100 GP more than a Light Warhorse (150 GP). Is that correct or reversed?
APM: Not reversed. If you are just riding around, you want the fastest horse possible. A light riding horse is the fastest, so its the most expensive. On the other hand, if you’re going to war, you want a strong horse that can carry you with armor and trample your foes. So a medium warhorse is worth more, and a heavy warhorse even more. Put another way, if medium riding horses were more expensive than light riding horses, very few people would buy them.
Thief Stuff: Makes sense, I didn’t consider the impact it would have on hijinks. I was not really in favor of changing the values either, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything about a Dex bonus.
Bow: Okay, makes sense. Seems like the kind of thing I would have expected to see in the individual weapon descriptions though.
Horse Prices: That was a consideration of mine, and makes sense too, I just wanted to double-check.
Thanks, as always, for getting back to me so quickly. I’m always glad to see how well thought out everything is, even if it typically escapes me!
Baron, happy to respond! As it happens, the description of the longbow explains that they can’t be used by mounted troops.
Bow, Long: A long bow is made from a single piece of wood, as tall as the person who uses it. Equal in range and power to more expensive composite bows, longbows require substantial strength (STR 9 or more) and cannot be used by mounted troops. Historical examples include the ancient Indian longbow, the Nubian longbow, and the Welsh and English longbow.
@Alex: Well, you did ask for what was broken. Thief skills are broken. I’ll try to answer each of your counter objections as thoroughly as possible. It’s important that the rules reflect the incentives you wish players to respond to. You guys put up a great post in the last few weeks about players responding to incentives. What incentives are you placing here? Creative play? Sure, at the expense of expected utility. Allow me to explain:
- When would be a good time to use Pick Pocket as a 1st level thief? You’re in the market and need to get the key off the guard so you can free Mr. McGuffin from prison. You have the perfect opportunity, you reach in the guard’s pocket and roll… 70. Now the city watch is after you and you have to hide for a good long while and that guard in particular is not going to forget you.
A first level fighter has about a 55-60% chance to hit that guard, and will probably kill him quite handily, while the thief has a 20% chance and the consequences are worse. The mage can charm the guard or sleep the guard. The cleric is just as good as the fighter at 1st level.
Just ask yourself… when should the first level thief use any skill but climb walls? Don’t answer, just look at their percentages and decide for yourself. PP? MS? OL? When would it be a good idea to use any of these?
There’s always a better option at low levels. Why not just not give thieves their skills at 9th level? At least you’re not tricking players into thinking that they’re getting effective means of interacting with the world.
Imagine giving clerics and mages a 20% success rate at THEIR abilities. Seriously. Sit for 5 minutes and examine in your head what it would be like to be a mage with a 15% success rate at casting spells. How much fun would that be? - As for the comment that ‘it’s late in the game’… so what? That hurt. That’s not an argument, that’s an excuse. You’re a professional who’s been granted a whole lot of money to get something awesome done. Do what’s right for the game, not what’s easy. It’s broke. Do something about it. Really. I’m sorry I couldn’t comment much on this in the past, but I’ve had neither the time nor the availability. That ‘it’s close to publication’ is no good reason at all. You specifically asked for what was broken, that someone pointed out a big one is no excuse to back off on your implied promise to attack it to the best of your ability.
- So what that that’s the way it’s been done with all the other versions of D&D, big deal. That must by why you’re not introducing the campaign system, because all the other versions of D&D got that right. Amirite?
Give me reasons to believe, not pablum. Again, not fair and well beneath the usual standard of your comments. - And for Hijinks coming off too easy? The argument was about LOW LEVEL thieves. Your counter argument is about a domain of issue that doesn’t apply at all. Hijinks are for thieves who have a Syndicate. That’s 9th level. Their chances aren’t all that great either, but they’re vastly superior than 1st level, just not yet on a par with everyone else. Not to mention the fact that all the benefits to Hijinks are level based anyways: Assassination: 1,000gp/level of victim, Carousing: 3d12x5/level of carouser, Smuggler: 10 loads of merch/level, Spying: 2d12x100gp/level of spy… I’d say that even if you let low level thieves use their Syndicate abilities, you’re just exaggerating the problem: nobody else’s income generating mechanisms depends on such awful throws.
- Requiring a character to spend proficiency slots to get a 10% bonus to bring their skills from ‘unusable under any circumstances’ to ‘usable only when there are no consequences’ is not fair, not fun and not right. Should we require mages to spend proficiency slots to allow them a slightly better chance at casting a nearly-guaranteed-to-fail spell? We could even divide the bonuses by school of magic like we do with thief skills. Should we require fighters to spend proficiency slots just to hit goblins, or giants? Proficiencies are for adding color to your character, not this.
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Perhaps a better solution is as follows:
Thieves improve in their abilities every four levels, just like they do attack throws. Thieves from 1-4 use the current 4th level row.
Thieves from 5-8 use the current 8th level row.
Thieves from 9-12 use the current 12th level row.
Thieves from 13-14 use the current 14th level row.
Low level thieves are still getting the shaft, metaphorically speaking, but it’s a vast improvement over the original and the ‘issues’ with Hijinks are side-stepped quite nicely. Not to mention, you reclaim a bit of column space for something else.
Maybe they should be relegated to the upcoming Player’s Guide? Seriously, thieves are a gotchya for new players and frustrating for old hands. They needs fixin’, even if I’m the only one who’s going to stand up and say so.
Hope this helps. Please consider what you’re going to be doing to players who want to play the roguish type. Perhaps it’s better to leave them off entirely after all, I don’t know. What I do know is that they’re not good as written.
Anyhoo, no need to respond. Just consider what you’re doing carefully. Best of luck!
A couple of observations:
- A first level thief successfully picks the guard’s pocket on a 17+ (20% of the time). He fails on 1-16, and is noticed on 1-8. So that’s a 40% chance of being noticed. A first level fighter hits an AC 5 guard on a 15+ (30% of the time). Unlike the thief, he’s obviously going to be noticed failing 70% of the time, and even when he succeeds, he killed somebody. That’s a problem, right? If it’s not a problem, the thief is just as likely to hit the guard- and he can backstab him for a bonus to hit and damage. Arguably, the thief is better positioned here.
- I think the “it’s late” has to be read in context with “untested”. People have been playing with these rules for a while, they seem to work, and you can always change this in your campaign.
- Hijink rolls are made by the perpetrators, so it’s not a question of the high-level character’s skill- the balancing issue comes up from juicing the abilities of the low-level hirelings.
- One more thought: A lot of this also depends on how you adjudicate the thieves in your campaign. If you stick to the aesthetic that thief skill checks are made either when attempting something impossible for another character, or as a “second chance” when the normal sneak/hear noise/etc. check fails, the chance of success goes up considerably.
- I’d say the fighter gets noticed 100% of the time, either by the guard or by everyone in the marketplace (which was the scenario used). Especially if everyone is basically low level. No-one here is a stealth ninja assassin.
Low level thieves are not great at their skills for a reason. They’re low level. Now I do agree that 20% is very low, and it’s a complaint that’s been levelled against the rogue classes for donkeys years, but like, so what? Fighters might die in their very first fight. Thieves might botch their first ‘Find Traps’ and die in their very first trap. There’s an equality there. Sure it might not be balanced, and may not be ‘fair’, but I’m personally not convinced that either of those things is true, or that it’s fundamentally broken. “That’s how it’s always been done” is not a great justification for retaining the model though.
That said - It would be nice if a low level thief could improve his chances of success through circumstantial means. Want to improve your chances of Pick Pockets? Have a colleague create a distraction (which could give anywhere from a +1 to a +4 to your roll). Want to improve your chances of Climb Walls? Buy a climbing kit, or describe to your GM how you are doing something cool to climb that wall, get a +1 to a +4 to your roll. etc… - Every business works to deadlines. Too late to change an untested rule is perfectly valid, particularly based on the presumption that the current rules have been extensively tested and found to be acceptable (maybe not great, but at a minimum, acceptable) by the majority of playtesters. If they hadn’t been, it would have come up sooner.
However, if it’s established that it is a major flaw, then the Autarch guys would be sensible to delay until it’s resolved. Also, clearer deadlines for feedback from us would help set our expectations. - Hijink rolls could easily be made by low level thieves. They’re not just aimed at name level and higher PCs. You could, conceivably (and IMO very easily) be a member of the local thieves guild yourself, and be expected (or volunteer) to perform hijinks for your boss outside of adventuring time. There. Hijink rolls for low level thieves. Done.
Low level characters are not very good at what they do, really. That’s part of the idiom of the OD&D flavour games and is something that later versions ‘fix’ in various ways - leading to the accusations of power creep in DnD3 onwards. I read somewhere that you shouldn’t really invest in a character until they’ve gotten to 3rd or 4th level, because before that point Fate is fickle. It’s a struggle to be low level and that’s supposed to be part of the fun. Some players want to be ‘experts’ from the word go, and in my experience they get incredibly frustrated playing 1st level characters. Or rather, they’re happy to play 1st level characters but they want them to have the competence of 5th or 6th level characters, and get annoyed at failing all the time. I have some sympathy for that because it’s nice to succeed.
However, I don’t think the thief skills are ‘broken’ any more than I think it’s unfair that Clerics don’t get a spell at 1st Level, or that 3d6 in order is unfair, or that Fighters could have 1 hp. Low level is hard. Getting past it is an accomplishment in itself.
Atarxzy,
I apologize that I offended you. My comment of “it’s late in the game” was off-hand; let me explain my thought process further.
Let’s assume, for the moment, that you are right and this is a major problem. If so, then the only course of action would be to delay the launch of the product to do further playtesting. I can’t just “change the game”. Radically changing a core class’s throws without playtesting would be very bad design. Many, many game companies (mostly video game companies) have made the mistake of doing radical changes to a game late in development and then still shipping it, and they almost always end up harming the game in unexpected ways, worse than the benefit they get from the change, because games are complex inter-related systems. An example is that better low-level thieves would mean far more successful hijinks, which would mean faster-leveling NPC thieves, and richer guild masters. That whole system would have to be re-done, and also playtested. Etc.
So that would be the course of action if I concluded there was a problem. Is there a problem?
Well, we playtested ACKS for two years using the thief skills at their current values and I honestly have reached opposite conclusions as to whether there is a problem here. Thieves were never an unpopular choice and one of the highest level most successful characters in the game was a thief. In the follow on campaigns, thieves have stayed popular. Unlike other versions of D&D-type games, thieves remain useful over the life of the campaign. (Note that high-level thieves in ACKS are considerably better at their tasks than similar level thieves in AD&D 1e or BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia). Thus in playtest I have not seen the issues you are speaking of.
Thus, I’m not seeing the issue personally. Are others? I have not seen any indication of such. If a considerable plurality of the backers all raised a red flag and said that they thought these rules needed to be re-done, I would stop and re-tool. I did that with, e.g., the urban settlement rules, which set us back almost a month and a half. But I’m not seeing that, either.
So, given that I haven’t perceived the problem in actual play, and I’m not seeing a consensus among our backers that this is a problem, I don’t think it makes good sense to delay the launch of the product.
I am sorry that I cannot satisfy you in this regard. If you end up house-ruling the game, please let us know how it plays. Every campaign should be its own law and I expect that many folks will tweak to their satisfaction.
Each class has a schtick. They start out kind of weak at it, and improve with level. A first level thief should probably not be imagining stealing the key from the watch captain, sneaking past all the guards and freeing their friend. They should probably be imagining finding the sewers, crawling through them, fending off some rats, and passing a file up through a drain hole.
If we start them off with high skills, what’s the point of becoming a second level thief?
Another thing to think about… in decent sized cities, being caught thieving is probably worth a butt whooping, but isn’t a killing offense. Stabbing someone with a knife probably would be. Normal people don’t murder pickpockets.
Duskreign’s Minion here.
In Duskreign’s campaign I am playing a Thief. A rather successful 5th level (as of last night) Thief. I have not found the skills to be too low. Rather, the low chance of success has forced me to be more creative. It is worth noting that even though I have a fairly low chance of succeeding, my party members have no chance for most of the skills.
The most challenging part of playing a Thief is combat. With light armor, low HP, and no magic Thieves are a grease smear waiting to happen. Thus, you must be creative and recognize the limitations of the class. Precises shot, flaming oil, and hit and run tactics are the tools at my disposal, and I need to make the best use of them.
I can almost guarantee that increasing a Thief’s skills at low level would have a major impact on the game. Keep in mind that you need not be 9th level to start a syndicate; at 9th level you get some thieves for free. I have been sending my 2 henchmen out on hijinks since level 2, and this has been a very good source of revenue (and XP), so much so that I have found creative ways of spending the extra money so I do not get too far ahead of my party. A significant increase in success would widen that gap even more.
Thieves are fine the way they are. Like Alex, however, I would be interested to hear how much impact changing the Thief has on your game.
Not sure if it’s too late, but Arcane Spell list has 3rd Level spell “Darkvision” which I think is listed as “Infravision” in the Spell Index.
baronkohinar: composite bows also let you cleave up to 4 times instead of just 3 for a longbow. Something to think about when you hit hero level!
Michael, good catch, thanks!
Just noticed the Craftpriest experience progression is wrong. OMG! Seriously wrong.