Symbaroum Thread

Love the setting. Art is fantastic. Like the options provided.

The damage soak as a balancing point annoys me as it makes me have to balance around the strongest combat character and respec enemies in the hotseat. I'm more likely to take the fluff and character options and convert them to something OSR.

>>54925530
My group only ran a few sessions of Symbaroum. We all enjoyed it, but found it really swingy in terms of how beholden you are to dice rolls. Some combats were a breeze because we were rolling well, some where more difficult than they should have been because we rolled shit.

Just picked up a copy with a friend because of how beautiful it is and how well written the first few pages were.

Anything I should know about before I run it?

>>54930831
same
bump for interest

>>54925530
I'm running it.

The system is simple in concept and easy to teach, but it doesn't run smooth. Attack rolls, damage rolls and armour as damage reduction means you have too many ways for attacks to fizzle in combat. Stacking different abilities that increase damage or armour is better than getting the higher levels of single abilities, while at the same time costing less xp. Vague explanation of what constitutes a "scene" leads to confusion on when powers stop and temp corruption is restored. There are too few non-combat abilities. The only thing I really like, beside the base mechanic, is ritual magic.

I think the system might be great as an intro to rpgs, but for experienced groups it's not quote crunchy enough to scratch that tactical itch, but it's not light enough for that no hassle rules-lite feel either.

I've started patching it with houserules, minor stuff so far, but I'll see where it goes.

The setting is cool, and my only real gripe is inconsistent naming. Great feel, room for interesting conflict, arenas for several types of adventure, and I love the eastern European vibe I'm getting, which is a shamefully underused source of inspiration in my opinion.

The published adventures are runnable, with some really cool parts, but are dragged down by the rules IMO. There are some instances of "combat as filler" and combat just isn't fun enough for that in the system so I'd rather save the combat for stuff that matters.

>>54925530
It encourages minmaxing a lot imho. To have a decent chance at anything you need to use feats, which the game provides in spades, to move all the rolls you have to do to one stat and leave the others at bare minimum. The result is usually a load of over specialized characters, which might be bad or good depending on your preferences. The magic system is kinda cool but again, you need to have youe character be a caster and little else to make it work consistently. The flavor is pretty good tho.

I personally think its a mess system-wise, and kind of bland setting-wise. The options are extremely limited, some rules overlap with each other or have 5 addendums for no reason, some rules are extremely awkward at the table (looking at you, ranged attacks) and overall we spent more time scratching our heads than enjoying the game.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it's just another "not everyone's cup of tea" case, but that's my take on it.

Beautiful, beautiful art and presentation though.

Have run and gm it.

Like the other says, the setting is cool, the art is nice, the magic system is fun.

But I think the combat system is somewhat incomplete, taking average stats for enemies, limited damage, and high defense altogether simplify the combat. You either can't hit/be hit at all, or you are 1 hit and down.

Plus the fact that there are imho not many choice you can make when building the character (there are not many abilities and I feel many of them do the same job), it makes me feel like most combats are running in the same pattern, and the PCs are all alike.

Symbaroum hits that sweet spot for me between being crunchy enough to feel like a game and being rules lite enough to avoid rules lawyering. Combat for our group always feels fast and fluid, though I agree that it can be pretty swingy at early levels