New campaign - system suggestions

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>>54123949
I'm not sure what you mean by a reasonable (not huge) amount of crunch and whether that excludes rules-light systems as well as rules-heavy ones. If you're open to rules-light stuff, you should check out Barbarians of Lemuria.


>Barbarians of Lemuria,Mythic Edition (current edition) -- https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition

>Barbarians of Lemuria, Legendary Edition (earlier edition, shorter but not as refined) --http://www.mediafire.com/download/p5w885sa9a869ma/Barbarians+Of+Lemuria+-+Legendary+Edition.pdf

>Barbarians of Lemuria, House Rules / Patches for Legendary Edition (if you want minimalism of Legendary, but with the rules tightened up) -- https://mega.co.nz/#F!CtQR2bST!y_awB-GHCiL3CdK4iLCV7A

>>54124169

I mostly mean that we're not really intrested in a large amount of crunch, charbuilding or similar for a campaign like this. Rules-light systems are fine, it's the heavy stuff we're not so much into.

I've been considering BoL already, actually. Don't have any play experience with it, but it's certainly pretty quick and all. The combat doesn't seem like it has a lot of stunts or general cinematic shenanigans out of the box, but I guess it's pretty easy to include stuff like that.

As a general question, how durable are characters in BoL? We're still kind of going over how much lethality we want in this campaign, so it's something to consider.

>>54124308
>The combat doesn't seem like it has a lot of stunts or general cinematic shenanigans out of the box, but I guess it's pretty easy to include stuff like that.
I'm an old timer, so improvising bonuses and shit on the spot comes naturally to me, and I tend to avoid systems with too many rules that get in the way of that.

>As a general question, how durable are characters in BoL?
How ever durable you want them to be, really. Some of it depends on what you put them up against and how heavy their armor is (I recommend dropping helmets, mechanically-speaking, and dropping heavy armor and relabeling medium armor "heavy armor" to keep armor from getting so high it drags combat to a crawl). But I want to stress how easy it is to tweak things without disrupting things. Adding a few extra blood points isn't going to destroy the balance of the game but will have a measurable impact on character survival, especially if you also let people go lower in the negatives before dying (or reduce the penalties and dangers of being in the negatives).

But let's put it this way: a normal weapon does d6 damage and the average bloke has a 0 strength, meaning 3.5 damage per blow on average. Lifeblood for the average PC (with a strength of 1) is 11, so that's just a smidgen over 3 hits to take them down. Assuming they don't have any armor, that is. Light armor gives -1 damage (or 1d6-3 if you're rolling), and no mechanical penalty outside of casting spells, so that may change the equation a bit. On the other hand, the average PC stat is 1, so if you're fighting somebody who is on par with a PC, he'll be getting a +1 bonus from strength on average, which will negate the light armor. So, like I said, it depends.

Anyway, in my opinion, the two biggest concerns in Barbarians of Lemuria are armor (which can get obnoxiously high) and the narrowness of the 2d6 range, which can lead to hitting your head on the ceiling of the range. Let's say you want your character to be good at defense and so put 3 points into defense. Since the target number of all rolls is 9, that means an enemy has to roll a 12 to hit you before you take into account his melee and agility. Now, for skilled combatants, that's not too much of an issue, as they'll probably be getting a +2 from melee and agility combined, meaning they have to roll a 10 or over to hit you. That's a bit tricky, but not undoable, and you did maximize your defense after all.

But if you have a shield you can effectively increase your defense by 1, which again takes us into problem territory. It's pretty hard to roll an 11 or over on 2d6. More troubling still are all those mooks out there who aren't getting any bonus from their agility or melee stats. They only have a 1 in 36 chance to hit you, which is a bit ridiculous.

For that reason, I favor using d10s for task resolution, rolling 2d10 vs a target of 12 (rather than 2d6 vs 9). This is something I've seen other people in the community use, and the idea of using d10s is actually mentioned in the book, so it's not like it's a totally off-the-wall, crazy idea. It does mean that you have to use two different kinds of dice (d6s are necessary for weapon damage unless you want to revolutionize the way weapon damage and lifeblood are done), but I think it's definitely worth it.

If you don't want to do that, you might at least want to implement a quick fix of some sort, like making a natural 11 or over always be a success (instead of just a 12).

But don't let the fact that I'm pointing out what I think are flaws turn you off of the system. I've never seen a system that I didn't think had at least some issues, and these are easy to fix.

Check out The Edge of the Aquilonian Empire. Its based off of the star wars RPG system by FFG. It uses narrative dice, magic will warp your body/soul, and combat can be quite brutal as most creatures have low HP.