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Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook
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<blockquote data-quote="lyle.spade" data-source="post: 7061216" data-attributes="member: 30042"><p><strong>2 out of 5 rating for Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook</strong></p><p></p><p>I picked this up a while back after reading some good reviews, and while in search of a system that would support a rare magic fantasy world I was developing. What I mean by "rare magic" is that magic is something only a very small slice of the population can wield, and is thus something accepted as real, but so rare as to be poorly understood and certainly something to be feared. I'd tried 5e for a while with the world, but it was too hard to yank out so much of the pervasive magic from character classes to make them fit...hence, my interest in this system, which only offers one magic-using class and doesn't assume magic stores on every corner in the nearest town.</p><p></p><p>The system works on a core mechanic of 3d6+stat+focus to overcome a static Target Number. Stats are single digit for almost all, if not all, of a character's 20-level lifespan, starting usually from 0-4 and growing through bonuses added at each level increase. There is simplicity baked into this, as one's stat is the modifier to rolls based on that stat. Focuses add a flat +2 to a roll, and are analogous to skills in other systems. Hence, one might roll 3d6+2(STR)+2(Athletics focus) to try to beat a TN13 to climb a wall. Easy; makes sense; seems like a different way of reaching the same thing that most other systems do. Combat is based on that roll versus an enemy's Defense, which is a static number, being 10+DEX, and perhaps some other modifiers. Damage is low, mostly d6+mod, or maybe 2d6+mod, and Armor, which is in the low single-digits is subtracted from this before being applied to Health Points.</p><p></p><p>Here's a sample: a guard has a Defense of 11, and a Warrior, using Accuracy (the stat for ranged weapons) of 3 and the appropriate Focus (adding +2) for the bow used, takes a shot at the guard. The archer rolls 3d6+3+2 and tries to meet or beat 11. He rolls a 15, total, and then rolls d6+3 for damage (with that long bow). PCs will start with Health Points in the 20s to 30s, and add around 5-10 per level. That guard (using the Bandit foe as a template) has 15 Health Points, so it's going to take at least 2 arrows at almost max damage to take him down. Remember this example for my comments later.</p><p></p><p>When rolling, you use 2 d6s of one color and a third of another, this other one being used to determine the number of Stunt Points earned whenever doubles are rolled on any of the three dice on a successful roll. Stunts are the system's mechanic for providing variability to roll-based play. Using your 1-6 Stunt Points, you purchase Stunts from the appropriate menu - either combat, magic, social, or exploration. These provide things like extra damage, pushing or disarming an opponent, knocking them over, getting the upper hand in a debate, or exploring an area faster or more completely than under other circumstances. There are about 2 pages, total, of all Stunts in the game. Stunts add variability to encounters by providing all charactes - PCs and NPCs - with the potential to do interesting things, regardless of class or level.</p><p></p><p>Character creation is spread over several chapters, and requires a great deal of page-flipping back and forth; I've seen other rulebooks put together more coherently in order to avoid this. Character options are pretty restricted at the lower levels, and increase some over time. However, not a whole lot happens at each new level compared to Pathfinder or any version of DnD since 3.0. Each level provides a stat boost and some other ability or increase in an ability, plus another Focus (the systems term for skill) or so, and not much else. The primary changes a character experiences are mechanical, in the form of numerical bonuses, rather than new abilities or noteworthy changes to those they already have. I'm not saying that these do not come along; rather, they do not come along as often, and when they do they aren't really that significant. All that said, there are only three classes: Mage, Rogue, and Warrior, and they are each flexible enough to enable players to create most any character, in the most general terms, available in other systems.</p><p></p><p>Magic is based on spells, which are categorized into Arcanas, of which there are 12. There are only 4 spells in each Arcana. Each Arcana represents spells of different types, like fire, healing, light, and so on. Spells are powered by Magic Points, which are a pool that grows over one's levels. You spend MP to activate a spell, roll against a static number to see if it works, and then in many cases the target gets a save to reduce the effects of the spell. Thus it is possible to spend your points and fail your activation roll and that's the end of your disappointing turn - that's not a bad thing, if you like that, but it's something worth being aware of when considering whether this magic system fits your play style. A mage character is proficient in spells from two of these categories, and picks up a new spell every few levels, meaning that the last new spell one would receive is not even halfway through the 20-level arc of a character. And by way of example, the most powerful fire spell only does 3d6+Willpower damage. Mind you, a first level character is likely to start the game with Health Points from the low 20s to low 30s, and adds d6+Willpower per level. Stats start at maybe 2 or 3, and you get to add +1 to one stat per level increase...meaning that a 10th level character could easily have in the neighborhood of at least 70 or 80 Health Points. Do the math. The most powerful fire spell in existence will do, at most, in the high 20s worth of damage...meaning that the most powerful mage might not kill a 1st level character with the most powerful fire spell one can wield. That's just weak. Beyond how weak most spells are mechanically, there are only a total of 48 spells spread across 12 Arcanas. And at your best, Mr. Mage, you will have access to 8 of them. They lack potency and variety.</p><p></p><p>The monsters section of the book is 10 pages long, and the selected foes in the corebook are as boring and plain as are the spells. The vast majority can offer only melee attacks, and of them there are only a few that offer anything other than basic attacks, whether ranged, melee, or unarmed. Yes, there are a few that do interesting things, like the giant spider's web or medusa's paralyzing gaze, but those are the exception. Most of the monsters in the corebook and Bestiary (a separate book) offer Health Points damage only, relying on Stunts they generate to make their attacks interesting or varied in any way. When running other games I have often turned to bestiaries and books of foes for inspiration and ideas for adventures and encounters, and found the monster collection for this system to be utterly devoid of that spark that makes a GM think "cool power! I could put that thing in a flooded cavern, and..." It's just a collection of boring monsters that deal damage, and offer little else to differentiate them from one another. And given that all of them rely almost entirely for anything beyond Health Points of damage on rolling Stunts, over the span of a session or two every monster seems like the same thing. "Oh, the dragon hits you with its tail and gets a Stunt, knocking you prone and forcing you to drop your weapon." "Wow! That orc hit you and was able to, with Stunts, disarm you and knock you over." "Huh, the ooze got a stunt and disarmed you..." What at first seems like a neat way to vary encounters runs out of depth very quickly.</p><p></p><p>I don't mind the 3d6 core roll, which provides more of a bell curve of results. I like Stunts, for players, and in theory for me, but found that selecting Stunts for NPCs and monsters was cumbersome for me as GM, and painfully so when I ran encounters with a diverse group of foes. The choices that the Stunts provide help to vary combat, social, and exploration encounters, enabling players to do things that would be available to PCs of others games more often through feats or special abilities. That's a good thing, but when you're going through the menu of Stunts at the table it can really slow down the pace of the game. The bestiary section of the rulebook provides ideas about which Stunts a given monster would use, but leaves you to flip pages to find those stunts when the become available - another slowing factor for encounters.</p><p></p><p>Remember the combat example from above? And my comments about that fire spell? A big problem we've experienced is that combat can drag on for a while because weapons and spells do comparatively little damage versus Health Points, especially as the level of play increases. This is a problem in many systems, I know, but magic tends to create opportunities to deal some really devastating blows. This system does not provide those opportunities, leaving PCs in most encounters to just hack away, round after round, and me on my side of the screen hand-waving a great many encounters after they bog down in boring round after round rolls.</p><p></p><p>It probably sounds like I'm really down on this system and perhaps you're wondering why I didn't give it 1 star instead of 2. While the Stunt system is cumbersome for the GM, it works for players who are on the ball and familiar with the menu and how they like to run their characters in encounters. I've seen my players do creative things with various Stunts, and that's made for good moments in sessions. I am working on a house rules 'port of the Stunt system into 5e for critical hits, actually. Thus, for players I think the Stunts - combat, magic, exploration, and social - are a good, unique aspect of this system, and my players like them.</p><p></p><p>Overall, this is an easy system with one interesting aspect, the Stunts, which themselves are good for players and less so for the GM. It had an intiutive appeal for me upon reading about it and reading through the book the first time. It was through a few months of game play, however, that the limitations and shortcomings of the system came glaring through. The magic system, as I explained, is really disappointing, although if you want low magic - that is, magic that's not very powerful, doesn't offer many options, and is easy to get to know given the short list of spells - then you might really like this. The bestiary - both the short one in the corebook and the standalone book - stinks.</p><p></p><p>I've been gaming since TSR had just released ADnD, and was hoping to find a somewhat different system that would fit the funky world I've been working on building. In the end, the core dice mechanics fit the world fine, but came up way short in ways that I believe would limit the utility and playability of the system at most fantasy tables, and I've never seen such uninspiring collections of spells and monsters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="lyle.spade, post: 7061216, member: 30042"] [b]2 out of 5 rating for Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook[/b] I picked this up a while back after reading some good reviews, and while in search of a system that would support a rare magic fantasy world I was developing. What I mean by "rare magic" is that magic is something only a very small slice of the population can wield, and is thus something accepted as real, but so rare as to be poorly understood and certainly something to be feared. I'd tried 5e for a while with the world, but it was too hard to yank out so much of the pervasive magic from character classes to make them fit...hence, my interest in this system, which only offers one magic-using class and doesn't assume magic stores on every corner in the nearest town. The system works on a core mechanic of 3d6+stat+focus to overcome a static Target Number. Stats are single digit for almost all, if not all, of a character's 20-level lifespan, starting usually from 0-4 and growing through bonuses added at each level increase. There is simplicity baked into this, as one's stat is the modifier to rolls based on that stat. Focuses add a flat +2 to a roll, and are analogous to skills in other systems. Hence, one might roll 3d6+2(STR)+2(Athletics focus) to try to beat a TN13 to climb a wall. Easy; makes sense; seems like a different way of reaching the same thing that most other systems do. Combat is based on that roll versus an enemy's Defense, which is a static number, being 10+DEX, and perhaps some other modifiers. Damage is low, mostly d6+mod, or maybe 2d6+mod, and Armor, which is in the low single-digits is subtracted from this before being applied to Health Points. Here's a sample: a guard has a Defense of 11, and a Warrior, using Accuracy (the stat for ranged weapons) of 3 and the appropriate Focus (adding +2) for the bow used, takes a shot at the guard. The archer rolls 3d6+3+2 and tries to meet or beat 11. He rolls a 15, total, and then rolls d6+3 for damage (with that long bow). PCs will start with Health Points in the 20s to 30s, and add around 5-10 per level. That guard (using the Bandit foe as a template) has 15 Health Points, so it's going to take at least 2 arrows at almost max damage to take him down. Remember this example for my comments later. When rolling, you use 2 d6s of one color and a third of another, this other one being used to determine the number of Stunt Points earned whenever doubles are rolled on any of the three dice on a successful roll. Stunts are the system's mechanic for providing variability to roll-based play. Using your 1-6 Stunt Points, you purchase Stunts from the appropriate menu - either combat, magic, social, or exploration. These provide things like extra damage, pushing or disarming an opponent, knocking them over, getting the upper hand in a debate, or exploring an area faster or more completely than under other circumstances. There are about 2 pages, total, of all Stunts in the game. Stunts add variability to encounters by providing all charactes - PCs and NPCs - with the potential to do interesting things, regardless of class or level. Character creation is spread over several chapters, and requires a great deal of page-flipping back and forth; I've seen other rulebooks put together more coherently in order to avoid this. Character options are pretty restricted at the lower levels, and increase some over time. However, not a whole lot happens at each new level compared to Pathfinder or any version of DnD since 3.0. Each level provides a stat boost and some other ability or increase in an ability, plus another Focus (the systems term for skill) or so, and not much else. The primary changes a character experiences are mechanical, in the form of numerical bonuses, rather than new abilities or noteworthy changes to those they already have. I'm not saying that these do not come along; rather, they do not come along as often, and when they do they aren't really that significant. All that said, there are only three classes: Mage, Rogue, and Warrior, and they are each flexible enough to enable players to create most any character, in the most general terms, available in other systems. Magic is based on spells, which are categorized into Arcanas, of which there are 12. There are only 4 spells in each Arcana. Each Arcana represents spells of different types, like fire, healing, light, and so on. Spells are powered by Magic Points, which are a pool that grows over one's levels. You spend MP to activate a spell, roll against a static number to see if it works, and then in many cases the target gets a save to reduce the effects of the spell. Thus it is possible to spend your points and fail your activation roll and that's the end of your disappointing turn - that's not a bad thing, if you like that, but it's something worth being aware of when considering whether this magic system fits your play style. A mage character is proficient in spells from two of these categories, and picks up a new spell every few levels, meaning that the last new spell one would receive is not even halfway through the 20-level arc of a character. And by way of example, the most powerful fire spell only does 3d6+Willpower damage. Mind you, a first level character is likely to start the game with Health Points from the low 20s to low 30s, and adds d6+Willpower per level. Stats start at maybe 2 or 3, and you get to add +1 to one stat per level increase...meaning that a 10th level character could easily have in the neighborhood of at least 70 or 80 Health Points. Do the math. The most powerful fire spell in existence will do, at most, in the high 20s worth of damage...meaning that the most powerful mage might not kill a 1st level character with the most powerful fire spell one can wield. That's just weak. Beyond how weak most spells are mechanically, there are only a total of 48 spells spread across 12 Arcanas. And at your best, Mr. Mage, you will have access to 8 of them. They lack potency and variety. The monsters section of the book is 10 pages long, and the selected foes in the corebook are as boring and plain as are the spells. The vast majority can offer only melee attacks, and of them there are only a few that offer anything other than basic attacks, whether ranged, melee, or unarmed. Yes, there are a few that do interesting things, like the giant spider's web or medusa's paralyzing gaze, but those are the exception. Most of the monsters in the corebook and Bestiary (a separate book) offer Health Points damage only, relying on Stunts they generate to make their attacks interesting or varied in any way. When running other games I have often turned to bestiaries and books of foes for inspiration and ideas for adventures and encounters, and found the monster collection for this system to be utterly devoid of that spark that makes a GM think "cool power! I could put that thing in a flooded cavern, and..." It's just a collection of boring monsters that deal damage, and offer little else to differentiate them from one another. And given that all of them rely almost entirely for anything beyond Health Points of damage on rolling Stunts, over the span of a session or two every monster seems like the same thing. "Oh, the dragon hits you with its tail and gets a Stunt, knocking you prone and forcing you to drop your weapon." "Wow! That orc hit you and was able to, with Stunts, disarm you and knock you over." "Huh, the ooze got a stunt and disarmed you..." What at first seems like a neat way to vary encounters runs out of depth very quickly. I don't mind the 3d6 core roll, which provides more of a bell curve of results. I like Stunts, for players, and in theory for me, but found that selecting Stunts for NPCs and monsters was cumbersome for me as GM, and painfully so when I ran encounters with a diverse group of foes. The choices that the Stunts provide help to vary combat, social, and exploration encounters, enabling players to do things that would be available to PCs of others games more often through feats or special abilities. That's a good thing, but when you're going through the menu of Stunts at the table it can really slow down the pace of the game. The bestiary section of the rulebook provides ideas about which Stunts a given monster would use, but leaves you to flip pages to find those stunts when the become available - another slowing factor for encounters. Remember the combat example from above? And my comments about that fire spell? A big problem we've experienced is that combat can drag on for a while because weapons and spells do comparatively little damage versus Health Points, especially as the level of play increases. This is a problem in many systems, I know, but magic tends to create opportunities to deal some really devastating blows. This system does not provide those opportunities, leaving PCs in most encounters to just hack away, round after round, and me on my side of the screen hand-waving a great many encounters after they bog down in boring round after round rolls. It probably sounds like I'm really down on this system and perhaps you're wondering why I didn't give it 1 star instead of 2. While the Stunt system is cumbersome for the GM, it works for players who are on the ball and familiar with the menu and how they like to run their characters in encounters. I've seen my players do creative things with various Stunts, and that's made for good moments in sessions. I am working on a house rules 'port of the Stunt system into 5e for critical hits, actually. Thus, for players I think the Stunts - combat, magic, exploration, and social - are a good, unique aspect of this system, and my players like them. Overall, this is an easy system with one interesting aspect, the Stunts, which themselves are good for players and less so for the GM. It had an intiutive appeal for me upon reading about it and reading through the book the first time. It was through a few months of game play, however, that the limitations and shortcomings of the system came glaring through. The magic system, as I explained, is really disappointing, although if you want low magic - that is, magic that's not very powerful, doesn't offer many options, and is easy to get to know given the short list of spells - then you might really like this. The bestiary - both the short one in the corebook and the standalone book - stinks. I've been gaming since TSR had just released ADnD, and was hoping to find a somewhat different system that would fit the funky world I've been working on building. In the end, the core dice mechanics fit the world fine, but came up way short in ways that I believe would limit the utility and playability of the system at most fantasy tables, and I've never seen such uninspiring collections of spells and monsters. [/QUOTE]
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