angry_angel66's page

I've been creating my own maps for my own adventures for years, so this didn't bother me. I thought the rough descriptions of what should be present were enough to create an interesting play area.

"As a general guideline, in a given game session you’ll typically give up to five or six minor awards, two or three moderate awards, and only one major award, if any."

So, how long is a "given game session"? And it suggests giving XP for "finding secret areas," "locating a foe's hideout," and "mapping a dungeon" -- things that seem to lead their own rewards and which the party would be inclined to do anyway.

All in all, I have no idea what these guidelines are meant to convey in terms of frequency and types of rewards...

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the terminology here either. Sessions will vary wildly in length from group to group. The way I will be using this is as a guideline when preparing adventures so that between each milestone they should have had the opportunity to gain some of these small rewards. I'll be using them to reward good roleplay and behaviour that benefits the story but I'll probably also have a few more mechanical triggers written down like 'talk the bandits down instead of fighting them' or 'prevent civilian casualties'..

I think this needs to be limited to things that have a bulk of L or 1 only. Otherwise bodies, carriages and pebbles are gonna be used. The first thing one of my players asked upon reading the spell was "So I could just drop a load of copper coins at my feet and fire them one by one for D10 damage each? Sweet!"

Also RAW the range only applies to the object to be used as a projectile... not the target. Just hold my beer while I stand on top of this mountain and destroy the army below with my chest full of copper coins. XD

Related question -- why does the Rulebook have different numbers that don't cohere with the XP rewards in the Bestiary?

30 / 50 / 80

40 / 60 / 80 / 120... ?

So when it says in the Rulebook to plan for X mild, X moderate, and maybe a high encounter, how does that work with the Bestiary XP numbers?

The 10 / 30 / 80 rewards referenced on page 339 of the playtest rulebook are generally for things outside of encounter time. A couple of examples are given but these rewards are more at the GMs whim. These rewards are good for when a character does something interesting or noteworthy.

If you're facing off against monsters/traps the rules are more specific as to how much xp each thing is worth and these are detailed on pages 13 and 21 of the beastiary.

angry_angel66 wrote:

At level 18, with the best level 18 shields, monsters of the same level causing min damage will both dent your shield and usually deal some damage to the wielder. So the shield block reaction becomes worse as you level up... That's not right at all.

Have you taken into account that Legendary items get +6 to their hardness ? I don't know if this helps though, I still have to see it in play.

I've had another look and it isn't quite as bad as I thought. But still pretty bad. Damage varies depending on if the artack does damage only or damage plus poison or some kind of conditional effect. Focusing on pure damage effects:

Themetricsystem wrote:

Page 309. Shield Block / Reaction

Quote:

You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items.

This is the SPECIFIC Action here and the rules that apply, the only reason Dented and Broken Rules are refrenced is to indicate what Dents and the Broken Condition are. The Shield can only EVER take damage up to it own Hardness, it's spelled out VERY clearly right here.

ALSO NOTE: It mentions NOTHING here about a Shield Block destroying a Shield.

In the Twitch stream tonight (Aug 31) with designer Stephen Radney McFarland, he clarified that a shield can take multiple dents with the same blow. I asked the question,

“A fighter with a wooden shield of 3 hardness performs a shield block, and is hit for 100 damage. (1) how much damage does the fighter take, and (2) how many dents does the shield take? “ his answer was that the fighter takes 97 damage and the shield is destroyed, as in “took multiple dents at once”.

This needs to be in the next rules update as that is not how the rules read to me at present (I'm in the shield takes it's hardness in damage and excess is passed to the character and no more than 1 dent at a time camp)

More generally shield hardness needs to be raised significantly at later levels. At level 1, with the best level 1 shield, monsters of the same level as you will not exceed your shields hardness with min damage and have a roughly 50/50 chance of hitting the hardness exactly when rolling average. This feels right that the monster has to roll high to actually cause a dent and damage when blocking.

At level 18, with the best level 18 shields, monsters of the same level causing min damage will both dent your shield and usually deal some damage to the wielder. So the shield block reaction becomes worse as you level up... That's not right at all.

See page 21 of the beastiary. Each tier of encounter has a provided recommendation of XP reward. The actual XP is determined by the monsters level in relation to the level of the party.

If you have a level 4 party and want to throw them a High challenge encounter for their level you will have 80 XP to use to buy monsters. This could be 4 level 2 monsters or 2 level 4 monsters or 1 level 6 monster.

Hope this helps!