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So I'm planning on running this AP, and it looks fun being able to plan your own rebellion, but the whole mechanics of 'la resistance' is going over my head. I have a few questions:
1) Focus: So you are supposed to set up for your rebellion as Loyalty (clout and popularity), Secrecy (For doing things without attracting attention, and Rough-and-Rumble scrappers with the security focus. . . but what does setting the focus mean? From what I can tell, the party has to make all three kinds of checks at any given time, so 'setting' a focus seems . . . arbitrary?
Speaking of:
2) So you can choose one dude to be in charge of one type of check as an officer. They get a bonus to that type of roll equal to a single stat (based on what's going on.) That makes these checks essentially ability checks that only one person can try. But the DCs are set like skill checks? That seems . . . unfair.
3)What's the deal with the Sentinel officer position? I'm confused.
4)Events: So let me see if I get this straight. Each week there is a chance of something happening, which is equal to the danger level(20% in the beginning) + the PC's current Notoriety score. If nothing happens, the next week the chance is doubled (to 40% plus notoriety ratingx2) and stays there until an event happens.
If an event happens, you roll on the event table, adding 20 to your roll (the danger rating.)
If you roll a Starred thing (like rivalry) then you roll again, and if you get that again, the effect becomes persistent?
5) Why would you ever bother with caches? I mean, you have to pay for them out of pocket, and they don't seem to do anything other than get taken away by guards on a bad roll. Am I missing something?
Alright I'm still learning these rules myself but lets learn how they work together!
1) Choosing your focus chooses which type of roll you gain your Focus Bonus on as seen on the Rebellion Advancement Table on page 22; It starts out at +2 to your Focus's type of roll, and then expands all the way up to +12 at Rank 20. You roll Loyalty, Secrecy, or Security checks when the appropriate check is required - much like a Swim check is required for swimming.
2) Officers add their appropriate attribute modifiers to checks as their title requires. For example, the Demagogue adds his Constitution OR Charisma modifier (whichever is higher) to all Loyalty checks that are taken, provided there is an assigned Demagogue.
3) Organization checks are Security, Loyalty, and Secrecy checks - the 'secondary' ones are the ones your group did NOT choose for a Focus. So if you choose Secrecy as your Focus, the Sentinel would grant a +1 bonus to Security and Loyalty checks. Secondly, during any checks made during an Event phase, he can add a certain attribute bonus to any of the organization checks made during that event (see the Sentinel's description for which attributes apply to which checks)
4) Absolutely correct EXCEPT for the starred portion; Starred events can become persistant IF you have to roll twice for events in one week for whatever reason. You don't always roll twice if you get one of the starred ones.
5) It allows players to set up easy-to-access caches near where they plan on adventuring. Because walking half way across the city can be time consuming, putting a cash near a planned adventure site can allow a quick retreat to regroup and heal. Combining it with a nearby safehouse also allows the players a good place to retreat, rest, and return.
That being said, its usefulness isn't immediately apparent, but provided enough immersion, it can be useful.
*Edit*: Organization checks (The three checks listed above) are not taken by an individual character, but by the organization as a whole. Just to make sure everything's clear, I'm gonna give an example of it in play (both to help me understand it fully and to help you out). I'll have it posted in a few minutes.
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Alright so lets say we have a brand new Silver Ravens group consisting of my test PCs - a Swashbuckler, Sorcerer, Cleric (Hidden Priest of Milani) and Unchained Rogue, as well as 2 unspoilered NPCs.
Since three of four of these are pretty scrappy individuals, they're going for a Security focus. Of the four PCs, Channady the Cleric is the Partisan (So +3 to Security Checks), Valeria the Rogue is the Strategist (+1 Rebellion Action each week, and +2 to any Organization Checks on that action), Marcellano the Swashbuckler is the Sentinel (+1 to secondary checks and +various to any event checks), and Rutilus the Sorcerer is the Demagogue, adding his +4 Cha to loyalty checks.
Totaling all this up, they have a +5 to Security Checks, +5 to Loyalty checks and +1 to Secrecy checks and can take 2 rebellion actions per week. Their weekly chance of an event is 20% per week (0 Notoriety + 20 Danger)
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Thanks for answering all my questions, but I still am a bit confused on a few things.
#2: I got that part, but they are still basically attribute checks with pretty high DCs (unless that is your focus) so the 'reduce city danger' action (forget the exact name) requires a DC 15 check. Assuming you even have someone in that spot, and assuming they maxed out their stats and have a 20 in the relevant stat, they only have a 50/50 shot of making it. And their chances don't really go up unless they get a headband/belt or when they hit level 8.
4) so when do you roll twice. Only time I can think of is if you use the garantee event action. Is it in future books?
5) but why not just bring all your stuff with you in your handy haversack? Then you can just retreat to your safe house and heal there without having to make a roll to drop off supplies and waste an action.
2) They're not attribute checks at all - the players just add specific attributes to the check, depending on if they're an appropriate officer or not. *Edit* They're closer to skill checks, where your skill ranks are based off your rebellion rank, modified by someone's attribute modifier and possibly other bonuses/penalties.
In my example, my group hs a +5 to their security checks thanks to their focus and the cleric's +3 to the check from her wisdom score. So yes, in this case, they have a 50/50 chance of succeeding - as they rank up, this gets easier and easier to do and would help immensely in keeping the town safer for both them and the citizens.
By rank 5 at the end of Book 1, the players would have a +4 to their focus - increasing this check to AT LEAST +7; if the cleric gets a higher Wisdom score, it could be increased further. It goes up as you gain rebellion rank too, as well as other modifiers.
As per the officers, there are a few things that might make them have higher than their +5 at rank 1 - first, if the check is made during the group's bonus action that week (thanks to their strategist), it'll be +7; if its made during an event, it'll add the Swashbuckler's strength or wisdom score on top of the cleric's, since the Swashbuckler is the group's sentinel (the Sentinel helps protect against bad events). In this case, his strength is 13 so they'd have a +6 to any security checks made during an event.
4) I'm.. not entirely sure. Might be some things in later books but I'm not 100% positive. The event that has you roll twice is certainly one of them though, and it can make you roll more than twice if you keep getting it.
5) Yeah like I said, its circumstantial at best. I'm sure your players could find a way to make use of it, but I'm not 100% positive.
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2) They're not attribute checks at all - the players just add specific attributes to the check, depending on if they're an appropriate officer or not. *Edit* They're closer to skill checks, where your skill ranks are based off your rebellion rank, modified by someone's attribute modifier and possibly other bonuses/penalties.
In my example, my group hs a +5 to their security checks thanks to their focus and the cleric's +3 to the check from her wisdom score. So yes, in this case, they have a 50/50 chance of succeeding - as they rank up, this gets easier and easier to do and would help immensely in keeping the town safer for both them and the citizens.
By rank 5 at the end of Book 1, the players would have a +4 to their focus - increasing this check to AT LEAST +7; if the cleric gets a higher Wisdom score, it could be increased further. It goes up as you gain rebellion rank too, as well as other modifiers.
As per the officers, there are a few things that might make them have higher than their +5 at rank 1 - first, if the check is made during the group's bonus action that week (thanks to their strategist), it'll be +7; if its made during an event, it'll add the Swashbuckler's strength or wisdom score on top of the cleric's, since the Swashbuckler is the group's sentinel (the Sentinel helps protect against bad events). In this case, his strength is 13 so they'd have a +6 to any security checks made during an event.
4) I'm.. not entirely sure. Might be some things in later books but I'm not 100% positive. The event that has you roll twice is certainly one of them though, and it can make you roll more than twice if you keep getting it.
5) Yeah like I said, its circumstantial at best. I'm sure your players could find a way to make use of it, but I'm not 100% positive.
Oh, I get it now, for #2, it's saving throw progression . . . okay. Still, there's no way of buffing the bonuses (like a cloak of resistance) but I guess they expect to mitigate that with the fact that (theoretically) the party can put its best foot forward. Still, some of the checks are pretty high (like putting a major cashe inside an enemy stronghold.)
Anyway, thanks for all the help. I hope I'm able to get my group off the ground, and we'll have a better chance now that I know a bit about what I'm doing. Thanks!
Not a problem! I'm prepping to run this campaign as well here in a month or so, and I'm setting up a playtest of it to try it out and get a feel for it.
Hopefully I won't have 11 deaths and 2 TPKs in the first book of Iron Gods like that time when I playtested it.. hah.
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Not a problem! I'm prepping to run this campaign as well here in a month or so, and I'm setting up a playtest of it to try it out and get a feel for it.
Hopefully I won't have 11 deaths and 2 TPKs in the first book of Iron Gods like that time when I playtested it.. hah.
From what I've heard from other players/GMs, to avoid tpks in the final dungeon of book 1:
Make sure that the PCs know about Nox. Make her seem like a bad mamma jamma. Make the regen obvious and let PCs do a gather information check on her. Oils of bless weapon are only 50 and thus always available in the city (Paladins of Abdar if you are looking for justification)
The final fight can be super hard because the summoned paper-book-outsider thing telepathically triggers all the guards (and Nox). However, it says that she hates the contract and does whatever she can to get out of it. Her orders are to defend the library and the asmodians, but not herself. If talked into it, the PCs could coup de grace her (unsummoning her) and not trigger everyone. Of course, she can't volunteer that info, but a clever PC or a successful knowledge plains check could figure it out.
Well it was via playtesting, not actual gameplay, so its not a biggy if I have a few deaths. My Test-PCs were just unlucky. My actual players didn't see a single death on their playthrough - though a few close shaves.
Oh, I get it now, for #2, it's saving throw progression . . . okay. Still, there's no way of buffing the bonuses (like a cloak of resistance) but I guess they expect to mitigate that with the fact that (theoretically) the party can put its best foot forward. Still, some of the checks are pretty high (like putting a major cashe inside an enemy stronghold.)
FWIW, there are a large number of rewards the players can earn in the first four books that boost their rebellion's organizational stats. So as far as this AP is concerned, I don't think this is much of a worry.
(In fact, I'm encountering the opposite problem with my players -- they've garnered so many permanent static bonuses that they pretty much automatically make every check that comes their way. There are still some checks which give further bonuses for higher and higher results (e.g., Earn Gold, Spread Disinformation, etc), so the stats still matter. But at this point, none of the regular "DC 15" or "DC 20" checks pose a challenge.)
How did you all manage time in HR? Did you count every session as a new week? Or based on task completion? I want to make sure I interject enough of the rebellion management phases to make it worthwhile, but not so many we get bogged down.
In my playtest I personally did it as one week per mission (or one mission per week). In my playbypost I'm probably going to do it the same - for a tabletop game, that can essentially be one week/mission per game session unless a mission doesn't take long or your games run long.
Thats my personal opinion and there are no definite rules on it though. Its just as it so happens, there are 6 missions.. and 7 weeks for Rexus to translate the documents.. so on that 7th week, when he translates it, they can hit up the Fantasmagorium that week.
Works perfectly imo :D
Thanks Crustypeanut and Eliandra Giltessan.
I imagine I'll have to combine a bit of both. My Saturday crew is going through MM and I roughly count days, but it only matters for downtime and resting between major battles. We go through 1 act (section of a book) every 2 sessions, and they may only take 1 or 2 game days in a session. That would be too fast, obviously.
The HR crew is a little different (only 1 is in the MM crew), and I intend to run it differently, too. I want there to be enough progression that they get their boons and build the rebellion close to the schedule assumed by the book. These guys know what they are doing, so I expect them to be thorough.
Overachievers. Mine resemble that remark.
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In game 2 weeks. They started with a few supporters after the riots. And they did the tiefling mission early, which got them boosts, and then another mission that got them boosts. I think they technically hit level 5 during the first phase of week 3. In general they rolled high on gaining supporters and low on losing them.
In the test I'm running, the mock team hit rank 5 in week 5, but I can easily see how a few lucky rolls work out to their favor and hit the maximum much earlier.
Here is where I hit a snag. According to the RAW in the PG, once they hit their maximum rank, they can no longer recruit supporters. This means their supporter count will likely only drop every week unless they get an event that adds to the count (Increased Support). For example:
How are you dealing with that, Eliandra?
I'm thinking I will make it so that they cannot recruit if they are already at the minimum number of supporters for the maximum rank. In the case of the first book, that means they can recruit as long as they are below 30 supporters. That way they can at least "tread water" until the maximum increases.
Creative Director
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In the test I'm running, the mock team hit rank 5 in week 5, but I can easily see how a few lucky rolls work out to their favor and hit the maximum much earlier.
Here is where I hit a snag. According to the RAW in the PG, once they hit their maximum rank, they can no longer recruit supporters. This means their supporter count will likely only drop every week unless they get an event that adds to the count (Increased Support). For example:
** spoiler omitted **
How are you dealing with that, Eliandra?
I'm thinking I will make it so that they cannot recruit if they are already at the minimum number of supporters for the maximum rank. In the case of the first book, that means they can recruit as long as they are below 30 supporters. That way they can at least "tread water" until the maximum increases.
On one level, that rule's in there to encourage the PCs to not dally and waste time once they hit the top rank—but at the same point, allowing them to tread water as long as they're below that limit won't break anything.
Dilly-dallying is not a problem for my guys. Hitting the mark early is, and they'd gripe if I dropped them all the way back down to 0 before they could do anything about it. I know this grapevine... :)
Thanks!
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In the test I'm running, the mock team hit rank 5 in week 5, but I can easily see how a few lucky rolls work out to their favor and hit the maximum much earlier.
Here is where I hit a snag. According to the RAW in the PG, once they hit their maximum rank, they can no longer recruit supporters. This means their supporter count will likely only drop every week unless they get an event that adds to the count (Increased Support). For example:
** spoiler omitted **
How are you dealing with that, Eliandra?
I'm thinking I will make it so that they cannot recruit if they are already at the minimum number of supporters for the maximum rank. In the case of the first book, that means they can recruit as long as they are below 30 supporters. That way they can at least "tread water" until the maximum increases.
My team actually reached level 5 at the beginning of week 3, so there were 2 weeks where they recruited supporters.
My team has had about 2 weeks of rebellion activity where they've had to do things other than recruit supporters. But that's fine, because they've been recruiting teams and reducing danger. (They're all terrified of rebellion events. Fortunately, the first time they rolled one, they got "All Is Calm," so they actually avoided them for longer than they intended.)
They aren't losing as many people as you would think, because they have the rewards from the missions gaining them more supporters. And their focus is loyalty, so they don't usually fail the roll to lose only a few supporters.
As for the 7 weeks, I decided to just have Rexus give them all the information and send them to the Fantasmagorium the 4th week. No sense making them sit around for weeks because the dice worked to their advantage.
Yeah, that is one way to deal with it. I hadn't considered supporters that are gained from the missions themselves. Certainly I didn't add any into my spreadsheet o' rebellion calculations.
As an aside, are you letting them switch focus?
Seems reasonable.
They have not indicated that they want to. I did not plan to let them. If they decided they really wanted to, I'd probably add a cost to it. Maybe for one week all the teams would need to be in retraining, so they couldn't take any actions that required teams.
Same here, that was one of my first tweaks on the rebellion ruleset.
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The idea with caches is that the church of Milani has to hide them to even get them to the PCs. So in order to pocket the potions and such, they have to succeed at those checks.
As for the rebellion, my group was also level 9 at the end of Turn of the Torrent. We're scheduled only a couple of weeks away from the Masquerade, and they haven't reached level 10 yet. I'm not super stressed about this. Song of Silver says that they reach level 20 at the end of the rebellion no matter what level they were previously, so they'll still get all their rewards. And that 600 from the nobles should bump them up quite a bit.
Don't forget. Each week, the Rebellion will lose probably 1d6 supporters. And that assumes they make a Loyalty DC 10 check. If they fail? They lose 2d4+Rebellion Rank in followers.
So let's say they manage to get around 70 with all those bonuses. And now let's assume that seven weeks went by because Rex was the only one with the three languages needed to decipher the papers... unless someone had one of the necessary languages, hadn't taken anything in Linguistics, and then did 2 ranks in Linguistics to help Rex out, without participating in other events during that time.
Not likely. So seven weeks. A minimum of 7, maximum of 42, and more likely around 24 followers will HAVE LEFT because rebellions are stressful! So that 70 is now 46.
Each additional week that has gone by, they lose another 1d6 in all likelihood. They may have lost more if a Loyalty Check or two was failed. And recruiting supporters takes a Rebellion Action... which could be used for various other functions (and may in fact be NEEDED to free people or develop caches or the like).
BTW, I believe you can have more than one Recruiter. In fact, it's suggested Cohorts from the Leadership Feat be Recruiters... and I suggest Cohorts in a Support mode, where they can help craft magic items for the party or make potions or the like, rather than fight on the front lines.
Ive been looking at recruitment as well, debating making it 2d6 times rebellion level or something, so it scales up as the organisation grows. So at least by level 19 recruitment would gain 133 supporters, makes those high supporter numbers more achievable.