Class: Barbarian - The Rage Spiral

It's been more than six years since I added the Barbarian class to my game, and in that time we've had a fair few of them!
Unfortunately they've rarely used their iconic Barbarian Rage ability. Something had to be done!
So here's a pair of abilities that synergise nicely, and encourage Barbarians to throw themselves headlong into battle...

Rage Gimmick Overview

Rage

You can go into a Rage at any time. 

You deal increasing amounts of damage as your rage grows, but the angrier you get the harder it is to stop!

Death Trance

When you're at 0 HP you enter a Death Trance.
The more hurt and/or enraged you are, the more attacks you get.

Rage + Death Trance

Together this means that a raging Barbarian in a death trance gets fuckloads of attacks and deals fuckloads of damage and will keep killing until everything stops moving.
Great for killing big monsters. Extremely great for dying gloriously. Extremely scary for everyone around you if you sink too deeply into battle-madness and go berzerk!

Rage Points

For ease of explanation and cross-compatibility I'm going to call the core mechanic "Rage Points" here.

Assume Rage Points last until you leave a Rage or combat ends.

Rage

Entering a Rage takes an Action.

While in a Rage:
- Hitting a foe grants you a Rage Point.
- Hitting an ally removes a Rage Point.
- Each Rage Point grants you +1 to melee damage and -1 to AC.

You must attack during a Rage. 

You lose 1 Charisma every time you could take an Attack action and don't.
If you reach 0 Charisma you lose your mind (and your character) and murder everything in sight.

Rage is overwhelming and calming down is difficult.
As a Standard Action, or for free when you kill a creature, you may attempt to calm the fuck down.
Save vs Doom, with a bonus equal to your level and a penalty equal to your Rage Point total.
On success, your Rage ends.

Note: Using an action to attempt to calm down is a non-attack action, so if you fail you'll lose Charisma. Best to sate your bloodlust by killing something...

Death Trance

At 0HP you enter a Death Trance.

While in a Death Trance:
- You gain a Rage Point every time you take damage.
- You gain an extra attack per Rage Point.
- You cannot be knocked out, put to sleep, or otherwise made unconscious.

Discussion -- Rage

So that's the Big New Thing! Pretty straightforward, and hopefully the synergies and tradeoffs are obvious.
Rage is good on its own - it makes you a powerful single-target damage dealer.
Death Trance is good on its own - it gives you a bunch of extra attacks in a pinch.
Put them together and you're a monster!

On the other hand, having tons of Rage Points is awesome up until you have to leave your Rage. If you're unlucky you'll get sucked down into a spiral of violence where you murder all your friends!

Moving Rage from a limited use resource to a building spiral was spurred by a conversation on the Discord with Great_Job, Chuffer, Rook, and some others.
Great_Job brought up that a Rage is usually presented as a resource management mechanic rather than evoking the "somewhat fluid, emotional nature" of losing yourself to anger, which is totally true!

Heavy inspiration from Great_Job's take on a rage monster PC: The Accursed.

The Rest

With the all-important Rage and the Death Trance out of the way, here's the rest of the Barbarian's cool shit.

Unique:
Barbarian saves and attack bonus don't advance normally.
Instead they roll twice on this Barbarian Powers table each level!

Bare-Chested:
Barbarians cannot wear armour, but they have a natural AC of 14 due to Barbarian luck and God-favour.
Despite wearing barely anything, Barbarians always count as protected against extreme weather.

Party Hard:
Barbarians are great at carousing.
The Barbarian, and anyone who chooses to Carouse with them, doubles how much they spend while carousing (and thus, doubles how much exp they gain).
However when they Save against carousing mishaps, they roll the save twice and take the worst result.
This stacks with multiple Barbarians. Two Barbarians means triple spend but roll three times and take the worst, and so on.

Discussion -- Full Package

Barbarian powers are cool and comfy at this point.
Everyone likes the wacky unique stuff like Charisma armour or crit range improvement, but you might notice that even the "boring" results - attack bonus and Save improvement - are indirect improvements to Rage. Attack bonus means you actually hit with your high damage rage attacks and Save bonus means you break out of Rage easier. Pretty sweet!

Low armour fits the Barbarian theme, but also serves as a way to separate the Barbarian from the other combat class - the Fighter.
Fighters can wear heavy plate, Barbarians are usually stuck with 14 AC. Low armour and a Rage mechanic that makes them easier to hit means they'll get knocked down to that spicy Death Trance easier!
Natural protection against extreme weather is important for my post-apoc weather stuff. I dig the idea that Barbarians can walk around in furry shorts while everyone else needs a full body suit!

Barbarians carousing is another thing that's seeped into the group lore, I really liked the times the rest of the group was like "uhhh no actually I can't afford to party with the Barbarian we'll carouse later".
I kinda picture Barbarians as being somewhere between That One Friend who first got you drunk when you were a teenager and That One Friend who insists on going to a club even though you're old now and it's past midnight and you've been feeling a bit tired since 7pm.
Either way you're going to find yourself staring at a toilet bowl asking yourself why you agreed to shots.

Yo what happened to punching ghosts?!

If you've been in my game for a while you might notice that the Barbarian has lost a few things they used to have as standard.

Long story short, both "fists do d4 and can punch ghosts" and "eat spells cast on you on a nat 20" are on the random Barbarian Powers table now.

This is largely because Barbarians get lots of wacky powers already, and keeping track of these and the random powers and abilities from backstories was quite a lot!

And Finally - Death Rules Integration

So that's the cross-compatible version above.
In my game I've integrated this into my Death mechanics. 

It's maybe a bit too mechanically cute, but it's my game so whatever! I can regret it later!

Pain fuels Rage.

So my death system basically works by giving you Death Tokens at 0 HP.
Mostly this is Pain Tokens which might make you pass out, but you can also get Bleed (damage over time) and Trauma (risk of death).

In this version, Pain Tokens are used as Rage Points.
This has a few fun mechanical implications!

Same exact concept as above, but here's how it works in the Death Token version:

Rage

Entering a Rage takes an Action.

While in a Rage:
- You never Tempt Fate, ie. No passing out from Pain, no death from Trauma, no damage from Bleed.
- Hitting a foe grants you a Pain Token.
- Hitting an ally removes a Pain Token.
- Each Pain Token grants you +1 to melee damage and -1 to AC.

You must attack during a Rage. 

You lose 1 Charisma every time you could make an Attack and don't.
If you reach 0 Charisma you lose your mind (and your character) and murder everything in sight.

Rage is overwhelming and calming down is difficult.
As an Action, or for free when you kill a creature, you may attempt to calm the fuck down.
Save vs Doom, with a bonus equal to your level and a penalty equal to your Pain total.
On success, your Rage ends.

Note: Using an action to attempt to calm down is a non-attack action, so if you fail you'll lose Charisma. Best to sate your bloodlust by killing something...

Death Trance

At 0HP you enter a Death Trance.

While in a Death Trance:
- You gain an extra attack per Pain Token.
- Pain does not add to your rolls on the Death Table.

Implications

So this version uses Pain Tokens but is functionally the same as up top.
The fun part is that this has fairly interesting mechanical effects!

Some examples:
- Pain Tokens don't add to death table rolls so you tend to shrug off minor wounds. Like even if you're at zero with 5 Pain and get hit for 6 damage... you "roll" 0d6+6 instead of rolling 5d6+6. Life saver!

- Clerics can heal Pain Tokens. Might be fun to sabotage an enemy Barbarian by healing them, or use God's mercy to calm the soul of your angry Barbarian friend before he murders you all.
- When the Rage ends you've still got a bunch of Pain Tokens, so could probably pass out after your Rage.
- Food heals Death Tokens too, so a Barbarian who's come out of a rage will be H O N G R Y.

- Poison is Death Tokens so you're literally immune to poison during a Rage.
- Drink Pain Poison to hype yourself up!?

Hopefully it is fun! Someone persuade Ollie to go into a rage so we can see what happens. Would be real funny (for me...) if Zulu murdered everyone in a rage-fueled accident!

Game Stuff

Here's the player-facing character breakdown text:

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Barbarian

Strengths:
Combat Hero, Rage, Unique Barbarian Abilities

Weaknesses:
Can’t wear armour, anger management

Alignment
To the surprise of everyone, you detect as Lawful.

Technical Stuff
HD: 1d8 - minimum 6 at first level.
Saves: Fighter. (Stun 14, Doom 12, Blast 15, Law 13, Chaos 16)

Special Abilities

Unique: At first level, and every level thereafter, roll 1d100 twice on the Barbarian Powers table.
These can be anything from +1 to hit to intimidating hostile beasts to boosted crit damage.

Bare-Chested: You can’t wear armour (it’s for the weak) but you have a natural armour class of 14 due to luck, the favour of barbarian gods and/or protective tattoos.
Despite wearing not much at all you always count as protected against extreme weather.

Party Hard: You party really fucking hard. The whole party rolls double for carousing when you’re around, and when they save against Carousing mishaps they roll twice and take the worst.
This increases with multiple Barbarians - triple for two, quadruple for three, and so on.

Death Trance: You are an absolute monster when you are close to death.
While at 0HP, you enter a Death Trance where you attack in a frenzy and shrug off minor wounds.
In this state you gain an extra attack per Pain Token, and Pain does not add to your Death Table rolls.

Rage: In battle, as an Action, you can hype yourself up into a Rage.
Pain fuels your Rage - each Pain Token grants you +1 to melee damage and -1 to AC.
You gain a Pain Token whenever you hit a foe in melee, growing your Rage.
You lose a Pain Token whenever you hit a friend, slowing you down.
While in a Rage you never Tempt Fate due to Death Tokens, so you never have to stop fighting..

To stop Raging is difficult. As an Action, or when you kill a creature, you can attempt to stop your Rage by passing a Save vs Doom. You get a bonus equal to level and a penalty equal to your Pain total.

You must attack in a Rage. You lose 1 Charisma every time you could make an Attack action and don’t.
If this takes you to 0 Charisma you lose your mind (and your character) and murder all in sight.

And the full Barbarian Powers table

In case something happens to the Google doc!

Roll	Ability
1 - 29	More smashy! +1 to hit.
30 - 45	More lucky! -1 to all Saves
46	Double the Smash! When you dual-wield, always take both results for damage.
47 - 48	Meaty Motherfucker! +1 to Constitution Modifier
49 - 50	Fuck me?? No, fuck you! When a creature hits you when you're on 0HP, make a free attack against them. If you roll this again - two attacks, and so on.
51 - 52	Sense Weakness. When you attack an enemy, you know how much HP they have remaining.
53	Ah yes I know this beast. When an Encounter Check is rolled in a wilderness environment, you know exactly what a creature is from its Tracks, Spoor or Traces if you've seen its like before. If you reroll, +1 Wisdom Modifier.
54	Spell Eater. You can save vs any spell, even those that don't usually give a save. If you do, you "eat" the spell, negating the effect and causing your eyes and tattoos to glow a cool thematic colour. You unleash the spell's effect the next time you hit in combat, and you can save the spell for up to ten minutes. If you reroll, -2 to your Chaos save.
55	Loyal minion! You gain a hound, henchman, horse, or other exceptionally loyal and intelligent creature. They think you're the best, and obey your every whim. If you treat them badly they look at the camera and say "well, it's a living" and still do it. If you reroll and they're still alive, they get one free pass to avoid death. If they died already, it turns out they somehow survived! They're back!
56	Back, Beast! You can walk right up to a natural beast of animal intelligence and force them to roll a Morale check modified by the inverse of your Charisma modifier (as in higher Cha is better) - if they fail you choose whether they flee or calm down. On a reroll, +1 Charisma Modifier.
57	Something's coming. You have +5 Awareness in Wilderness environments. If you reroll, this bonus also applies to one other creature of your choice. One extra per reroll.
58	Get hench! +1 to Strength Modifier.
59 - 60	Bear-Handed. If you eat the heart of a natural creature you killed, you gain their strength for a ten minute Turn. That is, when you attack bare-handed you get their number of attacks, bonus to hit, and damage die. During this time you can't really speak and can only point and grunt. If you reroll, lasts an extra Turn.
61	King Hit. Boost damage die of weapons you wield. If this goes above 1d12 roll over onto 1d12+1d4, then 1d12+1d6, and so on. If you reroll, keep boosting.
62 - 63	Luck of the Gods. -2 to your Doom Save.
64 - 65	Overpower! On a melee hit you can blast everyone around you back 10' or so. On reroll, +1 to melee attacks.
66	And stay down! On a melee hit you can knock your target prone. On reroll, +1 to melee attacks.
67	Grapplemaster. When you win a Wrestle, you can choose 2 results instead of 1 - even the same result twice. If you reroll, +1 Strength Modifier.
68 - 69	Greetings, fellow traveller! +2 to Reaction Rolls and Morale Checks with other uncivilised folks, basically anyone who spends most of their life outside of a city, village, or other settlement.
70 - 71	But it is not this day! You can sacrifice a limb of your choice to cancel all damage from a single attack, and you no longer drop to 0HP when you sustain such an injury. If you reroll, an already broken limb somehow gets better (heals, miracle prosthetic, whatever) or the next time you do this you also pop back up to maximum HP.
72 - 73	Headtaker. Your crit range extends by 1, so you crit on a 19 or 20. If you reroll, it keeps extending.
74 - 75	Beastslayer. You deal double damage to natural beasts. If you reroll, triple damage, etc.
76 - 78	Gore Grinder. When you crit, roll twice and take both results. If you reroll, roll three times, etc.
79	Get behind me! If you pass a Save, you can make someone nearby pass their Save against the same thing. If you reroll, two people, and so on.
80-82	Glamour armour. Add your Charisma or Strength bonus to your AC, whichever's higher. If you reroll, either take both or boost your Charisma Modifier by 1.
83 - 84	Piss off, ghost! Your fists deal 1d4 damage and can harm anything, especially things usually immune to mundane attacks. If you reroll, keep improving the Damage Die of your fists.
85 - 86	Ultimate Nelson. When you choose to Hold a foe in a Wrestle, you pin them completely. If you reroll, +1 to Wrestle rolls each time.
87 - 88	Know no fear. Immune to fear effects and +2 bonus to Saves vs spooky undead or necromantic powers. If you reroll, further +2 to such saves each time.
89	Bah! It is nothing. You take 1 less damage from elemental effects, like fire or cold or lightning. Minimum 1. If you reroll, take 2 less damage, and so on.
90	Heedless Charge! When you charge into battle - you cannot be stopped by Opportunity Attacks and you deal double damage. If you reroll, triple damage, etc.
91 - 92	This will do. Given ten minutes and some relevant materials, you can craft a 1d6 damage weapon of any type from bones, sticks, rocks, and other detritus. If it gains a Notch it falls to pieces. If you reroll, improve the Damage die by one size.
93 - 94	These fools will believe anything! Civilised folk will generally believe anything you tell them about the exotic sights you've seen and great beasts you have slain. When you spout such braggadocio, reroll the Reaction Roll with a +2. If you reroll, add another +2.
95 - 96	Sin Eater. If a Cleric calls forth a Miracle in your vicinity, you cast it as well if you Save vs Law. If you reroll, -2 to your Law save.
97 - 98	Die! Die! Die! Once per round, when you successfully hit with an attack, you get a free attack against the same target. If you reroll, you can do it twice per round, and so on.
99	Don't Have Time to Bleed! You never take damage from Bleed Tokens when you Tempt Fate. If you reroll, +1 to your Constitution modifier.
100	Indestructible Master of War! Any time you would take Trauma Tokens, take that many Bleed Tokens instead. If you reroll, +1 to your Strength modifier.

House Rules Update! 2018 edition

Another year, another metamorphosis!

PDF here

The main impetus this time around is basically to trim off as much fat and fiddly bits as possible, especially in the combat rules. If there's something in the rules that never gets used or I always forget about, it's gone.
It's become increasingly obvious that the Gambit is the only combat option anyone really needs. It's simple, has an obvious risk-reward angle, and has the exciting partial success possibility.
I've trimmed off anything that's not covered by a Gambit and simplified the rest.

The other thing is that Sneak Attack has always been a sticking point in the game. It's a weird outlier in terms of how skills work and is useless without a high Stealth to back it up.
Probably the biggest change in this update is reworking Sneak Attack and Stealth so they're not so tightly linked. Sneak Attack has been reworked into Backstab which is primarily for ganging up on the same enemy, but also still effective for traditional shanks from the shadows.
I'll go into it more when I get to that section below.

On the less rules-tweak side of things, I've added a few more bits to make the rules a bit more standalone, like putting basics about HP and AC and stats in the doc. It's not exactly a Ten Foot Polemic standalone game (yet?), but it's in here so you don't have to cross-reference with the LotFP rulebook so much. This is important if you are, for instance, one of my own players trying to use my rules to run your own session.

I've pulled out the relevant sections of the rules for ease of use, but do feel free to follow along in the house rules document.
So here we go, a change log with explanations and stuff as we go.

Char Gen

- Removed Ammo Dice
- Ammunition isn't tracked unless something happens to make ammo tracking important.

I'll talk about this here - the death of the Ammo Die.

Oh wow the site I originally got it from seems to be dead! My house rules are old!
Archive copy of the ammo die post here.

Anyway, the idea behind the cascading Ammo Die made its way into the Black Hack as the Usage Die. Seemed like a great way to track arrows etc in the abstract, but man I can't remember the last time someone fired enough arrows for it to matter. When the bulk of the game is dungeons and firing into melee is dangerous, you just don't fire that many arrows.

I've left the door open for resource management if people are in the middle of a desert or something, but in the main we're not going to be tracking ammo any more.

The Basic Basics

- Added this whole section

 Just making things a bit more clear because there are some minor changes from LotFP.

Most notably, making it clear that HP is your luck-shield not your life points per se.
Also, Surprised AC in the LotFP rulebook is surprisingly hard to find, so that's here now.
Armour rules also gathered into one place, which means there's a teaser for the new sword rules in here too.

Stats

- Added this whole section

Explanation of stats because it's subtly different from LotFP, mostly by accident over time.
Clearly the lore/reasoning is more or less transposed directly from the LotFP rulebook.

Most importantly - something I never realised was that Int/Wis were supposed to influence the Saves of people targeted by Magic-User/Cleric spells! I've never done that, so it's gone. In its place is being a better caster via recovered from Interrupted Casting and Spell Swaps. Works for me.
Oh and did you know that Charisma doesn't affect Reaction Rolls by the LotFP rules? I sure didn't! So that's called out as affecting Reaction Rolls now.

Hazards

- Moved Falling here
- Added Fire rules for ease of reference
- Added Drowning

Original falling rules make falls very dangerous, and means anything that makes your fall count as 10' less could potentially save you from massive amounts of damage.
Fire rules in LotFP are nice. I like them, but added a few extra bits from rulings we've had in the past.

Drowning has claimed the life of several adventurers in my game, would you believe. The ruling at the time turned out to be surprisingly functional - 5 rounds of activity (+/- Con) before you start taking damage.

---

Rations

- Added temporary shelter ruling

All the same as before, except that it's possible to set up a makeshift shelter in the wilderness if you spend a day and roll Bushcraft.
Requiring a tent and rations to heal quickly in the wilderness works well, but what do you do if you forgot to buy a tent and/or your tent got destroyed by an angry bear?
You can build a semi-permanent shelter in the wilderness with a day and a successful Bushcraft roll.
Tents are a shortcut that you can pack up and move easily every day, so they're much better for travel than spending a day scratch-building a shelter every time someone needs to heal quickly.

Magical Healing

- Tweaks to Cleric spells that deal with poison

This has been in the poison rules post for a couple years now, but this is the first time I've stuck it in the house rules doc.

Delay Poison means you'll likely have processed the poison before it kills you.
Neutralise Poison... neutralises poison.

---

Basic Combat

- Added Magic to this section

This is in the Classes section too, but it really should have been here all along.
Declare casting at the start of the round, you need to be protected until it goes off at the end of the round. Standard in my game since forever.

Fancy Combat Options

- Removed Bumrush
- Removed gimmicky Parry rules, rolled Disengage into Parry
- Replaced Sneak Attack with Backstab
- Added Evade
- Clarified Wrestling

- Moved setting spears to Reach weapon section

Here we go! Some big changes.

Bumrush/Charge is easily a gambit. I'm surprised it lasted so long really.

Parry and Disengage were two similarly defensive but separate actions before. Now Parry is just the overall defensive "please don't hurt me" action, boosting AC and avoiding Opportunity Attacks.

The new Backstab will come up lots more. It's primarily a bonus for flanking enemies now, with a secondary use for killing surprised enemies. Flanking is a 5e-style thing, multiple people attacking one target in melee. Optimally you'll have a tank distracting the enemy while you come in with the Backstab. Conveniently this can be used to make pack-hunting enemies more dangerous by giving them good Backstab scores.

Evade appeared in this skills post as "Combat Stealth" but it's in the house rules now. Takes an action and a successful skill roll, so only useful if you have reliable Stealth.
Great for setting up a Backstab since it gives you +4 to hit and they can't target you on their next turn, guaranteeing Flanking.

Together, Aim, Evade and Parry form a sort of combat boost trifecta.

Aim is use an action, boost ranged attack.
Evade is use an action, boost melee attack.
Parry is use an action, boost AC.

Maybe the almighty Gambit will eat them all next time round, but I like the balance for now.

Wrestling is great. Adding some clarity for multiple wrestlers, and how wrestling rolls happen on both sides of the round.
+/- 1000 for natural 1s and 20s is for the silliness of it, but also neatly describes "a natural 20 automatically wins a wrestle, unless both people roll a natural 20 in which case it's still down to modifiers".

Spears in a bit.

Melee Weapon Types

- Choppy weapons changed: deal improved damage die against light armour or less
- Stabby weapons changed: +1 to melee AC and +1 to melee attack bonus

I still enjoy differentiating the weapons like this, even if it bumps up the complexity a little. With a general lack of magical weapons in a low magic game, weapon choice takes up some of the slack.
They used to trigger effects depending on whether you rolled evens or won initiative or whatever, but that's really too fiddly and complicated. It might maybe be fine if you're a player, but for poor old me rolling for a bunch of enemies at once that's too much overhead.

So now this should all be much easier for someone rolling a bunch of dice at once, and hopefully easier for the players.

Choppy axes deal improved die of damage against low armour targets. This means a greataxe vs a generic peasant rolls 1d12!

Smashy hammers are the same as before, piercing high armour targets.
Stabby swords are a straightforward upgrade against any target. +1 to hit, +1 to melee AC. Pair with a shield and you've got +2 AC against both melee and ranged attacks. Heavy armour, sword, and shield gives you a tip top 20 AC which is the effective maximum.
I might rename "Stabby" to "Versatile" to make it clear that they're good for offense and defence, but I'm keeping it for now.
Shanky is unchanged, deal bonus damage in a Wrestle if your roll beats their AC. Knife fights get messy.
Whippy is also unchanged. Ranged wrestle.

Noted here too: the Fighter gets extra bonuses on top of these. They're better than anyone else with any weapon, which is as it should be I think.

Melee Weapon Options

- Reach Weapons allow you to make an Opportunity Attack against enemies moving into melee.

Not actually a change, just not highlighted like this before. Was previously under the overcomplicated Parry action.
Opportunity Attack against approaching enemies makes the spear a superior defensive weapon, and good for defending your friends.

Also interacts with the new disengaging Parry. You can close in on a spear wielder by using Parry to avoid the Opportunity Attack, at the expense of not being able to attack them when you get in close enough.
Dropping Charge/Bumrush means that I can just drop setting spears against a charge. Spears are set against anything moving into range automatically, but no bonus to damage.

Ranged Weapon Options

- Firearms are all counted as flintlocks now.

- Rifled barrel improves Aim, instead of making up for range penalties
- Firearms ignore all armour at close range (all ranges for musket)

In a game where all of the various weapons have been cut down to several damage categories, it's a wonder I stuck with the Matchlock/Wheellock/Flintlock thing for so long. Who cares?
Everything is now counted as a flintlock, and if you want to have a rad wheellock on your pistol I'm not going to penalise you for it.

Range penalties literally never come up. I'm not going to measure ranges, and most if not all combat in this game is at short enough range that you don't need to worry about it.
Getting a rifled barrel means you double the Aim bonus to a big +8, at the expense of doubled reload time on a firearm you'd never manage to use more than once a fight anyway.
Finally, a reason to buy an Arquebus over a Pistol.
This should be an improvement even if you do measure ranges, since the Aim bonus makes up for the range penalties. Get your snipe on.
I was also doing the by-the-book firearms thing where guns pierce 5 points of AC, but piercing all armour is easier to adjudicate even if it's not entirely realistic.

Death and Dismemberment

- Updated for the modern era. 

This is all in pamphlet form now. Go see that post for an explanation of my game's most fiddly subsystem.
The main thing is to call them "Death Tokens" instead of "Death Dice", and add a bit more clarity. I think it's fine now.

This is a big wodge of complexity in the middle of an otherwise fairly rules light game, but it leads to a lot of fun gameplay for me. I swear.


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Wear and Tear

- Removed weapon/armour Quality
- Removed sacrificing armour to reduce damage

- Added England Upturn'd misfire table for Notched firearms

- Dwarfs can completely fix a single item per day, up from one Notch per day.

Having different weapon Qualities which gave different chances of taking Notches was a good idea in theory but definitely very easy to forget about in the heat of battle.
You know what's not easy to forget in the heat of battle? Crits and fumbles! Any time a natural 1 or 20 comes up, people notice. So now weapon/armour damage is triggered by those exclusively.

Part of the impetus was having high quality weapons and armour to replace magic weapons and armour, but that was a nice idea that never worked out great. Just make it extra fancy or something. Hell, make it unbreakable. That's as good as magic.

There was a rule here last time where you could sacrifice armour to reduce an attack's damage to 1, but that's gone now. I kept forgetting and so did the players.

England Upturn'd has cool a firearm-exclusive misfire table that it wold be a shame not to use, so I'm using it.

Dwarf repairs are better now, just because it makes it easier. Give a Dwarf a day and he can fix an item. Solid. A Mending spell always fixed an item completely, but I'm calling it out here to make it clear.

Skills

- Called out skill-boosting equipment and skills that get boosted by Intelligence
- Backstab is a reworked Sneak Attack

- First Aid reworked - forces patient to Tempt Fate on a 6 instead of dealing damage, no longer heals HP
- Added Rapid Reload to Sleight of Hand
- Added Evade to Stealth

- Added Invention to Tinkering

A few changes around here.

Intelligence modifies Arcana and Languages. Nothing new there.
Specialist's Tools give a +1 to Tinkering and First Aid, that's not been in these rules before.
Same with Crampons granting a +1 to Climbing, which needs calling out really.

Backstab is a big change. See Fancy Combat Options above. Upgrade hits against surprised or flanked enemies to crits.

First Aid is now focused directly on field medicine, healing up a person who's reached 0HP and is dying from Death Tokens. The combat medic skill to bring the dying back from the brink!

Failing on a 6 used to deal 1 damage to the patient, but now it makes the patient Tempt Fate which fits the Death Token angle better.

Healing HP with First Aid has been scrapped, eating to heal works better and more reliably.

Rapid Reload skill was sort of in the rules before, but it's here now.
Roll Sleight of Hand to get a free Reload action. This means you can Reload twice in one round, or even Reload while fighting. Potentially fire a gun every 3 rounds if you've got good Sleight of Hand and focus on reloading, which almost makes it worth it.

Evade, again, see Fancy Combat Options above. Dodge and weave to gain an advantage against an enemy.

Invention has been in the game for a while, because players looove coming up with bullshit mechanical things like breathing apparatus or complicated traps.
Only change is that if a device works successfully it gets a +1 to Invention rolls in future, so you slowly build it up until it works consistently. Previously this had it working after three successful uses, but I think this is mechanically neater.

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Rune Magic

- Minor tweaks

Due to mystery campaign reasons (and mild balance woes) the Repel rune doesn't generate stuff any more, only pushes it away. Breath weapons are too easy I guess!

There are a few other bits, but that's the main one.

Classes

- Added everything for each class, not just the things that are tweaked from baseline LotFP. You can run a class out of this document now.

Just makes it easier for people who aren't running LotFP to figure out everything a class has.

Onto actual changes that matter.

The Fighter

- Added Weapon Mastery

Fighters are simple. This is mostly on purpose, it's a straightforward class with a straightforward focus on straightforward murder.
People who want to be a fighter type tend to roll Barbarian nowadays. But I have a condition where any time we haven't had a Fighter in a while, I want to make Fighters better.

So here we are. Weapon Mastery. As seen in the Melee Weapon Types section, different kinds of weapons get different kinds of bonuses.
Fighters get those and more, with the bonuses intended to synergise with the base perks.
Having a Fighter that carries one of each weapon around sounds great.

The Choppy upgrade is suspiciously similar to 5e's great weapon thing, from which I took it.
The Smashy upgrade replaces the old "shiver armour on evens" thing. Hammer attack to make the enemy easier for your allies to hit. Combo with the new Backstab to good effect.
The Stabby upgrade means swords are very much the defensive weapon - use an action to Parry and hopefully you'll trigger one or more counterattacks. Amazing for a fully armoured and shielded Fighter.
The Shanky upgrade makes Fighters even more brutal wrestlers, seeing as their attack bonus means they'll win wrestles a lot.
The Whippy upgrade is to do some Indiana Jones shit and trip people up.

The Magic-User

- Altered Spell Interruption to make Chaos Mages more possible
- Made Spell Swap more lenient

Spell Interruption used to mean you could prevent a Spell Collapse with a Save vs Chaos.

Now a Save vs Chaos means you get to see what the Spell Collapse will do first, then choose whether you negate it. A small but significant change.
Shout out again to Aura Twilight's chaos magic table which I can't link enough.

Spell Swap now only has a penalty if you're swapping a higher level spell to a lower one, due to the potential magical leakage. You're forcing a larger amount of energy into a less complex spell and the magic might start leaking in around the sides.
Previously you had a penalty equal to the sum of the spell levels, so this is more lenient.
I want it to be slightly risky to swap a spell, but not so risky that I hear people going "nonono!" to a spell swap like the wizard's about to cast a Summon spell.

These Spell Swap rules carry over to other casters.


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The Extras

- Added this class

My Extras class is so similar to Manola's original Extras class that it's not worth a class blog post.

The only minor difference is that the "Magic for the Masses" rule applies to all items.
If you've got less than 10 of an item, it can be used once per scene and each takes up a separate Encumbrance slot.
If you've got 10 of an item, it can be used every round and all 10 items take up a single Encumbrance slot.

Two bows means you can fire arrows twice per scene.
Ten bows means you can fire arrows every round.

Two suits of chain armour means you can get Chain AC twice a scene.
Ten suits of chain armour means you have Chain AC at all times.

It's very strange and meta, but that's the Extras in a nutshell!

The Inheritor

- Added this class

Recently detailed in the Inheritor class post.
Eat monsters to steal their abilities and use them against your foes.
Enough of a niche that it doesn't step on other class's toes, and the game's first Inheritor so far has ended up being really interesting!


So that's that. A whole lot of incremental changes that I hopefully won't have a need to fiddle with for a while. Enjoy!

Unified House Rule Document Update AND Handy Linked PDF

Mid-year update whaaaat.

Mostly this is because I'm always a little bit "oh no!" when I discover someone's been reading the house rule doc and it's NOT UP TO DATE OH NO.

Occasionally I get a comment that's like "hey could you put all the Lorebonds and elf powers and stuff into the one pdf?" so that it can basically be played out of the box.
The answer is - kinda!

You can now find a Linked PDF Version here. Intended to be used/perused digitally, everything you need an external resource should have a handy-dandy link.

You can find the non-Linked PDF Version here. Intended to be printed out for table use.

Linked Version

Unlinked Version

For context for some of these changes, at the beginning of the year we had the campaign's first ever TPK! So we skipped the timeframe forward half a century so people could see what's happened in the interrim.
How exciting!

Change Log:

Religion:

- Added Zeanism, based on the teachings of one of the player characters who took the Termaxian "do whatever you want, the gods aren't watching!" thing to heart.
Basically this is the drug religion now, and the Cleric spell allows you to take drugs with no downsides!
- Termaxianism has changed in the last 50 years, mostly because they're pretty sure that God lost the final war for all creation. Now it's up to them to finish the fight. No change besides their general lore.
- Nonanism is now accepting of the Undead and Necromancy in general. Pragmatism or corruption? Who can say? Another lore change, they're mechanically the same. 

Char Gen:

- Removed the Cartographer equipment pack because it contained paper and pens and I can't be fucked to enforce the need for paper in order to draw a map any more. It was a boring idea anyway.

Experience Points:

- Added Party Roles as directly inspired by John Bell at the Retired Adventurer. This has been real useful for keeping track of stuff and keeping players engaged even if they're not directly involved in the action.

Living Standards:

- Originally you needed to get to Comfortable conditions in order to heal from 0HP to 1HP, no longer! Otherwise it interacts weirdly with the "Take a Break" option where you eat a ration to heal 1d6 HP.

- Comfortable conditions now give you an extra 1d6 bump if you're already at full health! You'd imagine everyone would prefer comfy sleeps, but if you get nothing extra at max health you may as well save your money and live in a bin.
- Splendid conditions grant 1d6+level extra temp HP, since Comfortable conditions stole that thunder.

Big Purple d30 Rule

- Now upgrades a single die roll to the next die size when used. Previously you could replace any single roll with the Big Purple d30, which had the surprisingly underwhelming effect of making it an "I Win" button. This compounded by the large number of d30s players would accrue through buying me beer...

Downtime Activities

- Magical Research went through a few changes to make it slightly more interesting.

Fancy Combat Actions

- Changes to Sneak Attack. Now you roll when attacking from surprise to find your extra attack bonus, and enemies with high Awareness (renamed Search) have a chance of avoiding the damage multiplier.

Fancy Combat Reactions

- Split these off into their own heading.

- Parry covers all defensive melee actions. Smaller weapons can counter, larger weapons can disarm, and setting spears against charge is now covered under the Parry banner.

Melee Weapon Types

- One day I'll probably either remove these or make them Fighter-only, but for now I'm simplifying further. I've got lots of players and don't want things to stay as fiddly as they were.
- Axes remain the same - double damage on evens vs low armour.

- Hammers get +2 vs Chain or better. Straight up.
- Swords get +1 to hit across the board. Versatile, never a bad choice, a little boring.

- Knives give bonus damage if you beat their AC with your Wrestle Roll because you're shanking the shit out of them.
- Whips remain.

Ranged Weapon Options

- Flintlocks are in the game post-timeskip! Hurrah! That's basically it.

Death & Dismemberment

- Rewritten for the millionth time. This remains one of my favourite subsystems but boy is it hard to explain when you're not just passing out dice around a table.

Running Away

- Added a section on this very important aspect of not dying.

- More on running away here.

New Skills

- Search renamed to Awareness.

- Sneak Attack: When attacking from Surprise, roll Sneak Attack. On success, gain the result as a bonus to hit. If the enemy fails an Awareness check, multiply damage by your whole Sneak Attack score. Even your standard 1-in-6 character gets a little benefit maybe.

Saving Throws

- Hey what I renamed them! Makes it easier, and I don't think I ever called a save vs device.

- Stun, Doom, Blast, Law, Chaos.

- All as per usual, except Law is your save vs Lawful magic. Makes that more of a divide I guess!

Also one of my players made a rad new character sheet. Hurrah!