O.L.D. Playtest Document: Book I - Characters (October 2014)

[Morrus]

I have just uploaded O.L.D. Playtest Document: Book I - Characters (October 2014) to the downloads area.

This 120-page document is the latest O.L.D. playtest document. It contains the character creation section, along with an introduction to the new magic rules. There are many changes from the previous document. Also included is the latest character sheet.

You can find the file here in the downloads section. Please use this thread for comments.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Huzzah!

Excellent, I have 4 weeks before my next playtest game session... time to dig in!

In a quick skim:
Page 5: Singular is "Die", Plural is "Dice"

Fire Mage, Pg 56. Bluffing is listed twice in the skills section

Speaking of, wasn't the plan to put brackets on skills that were placeholder/sets like [Magical Skills] and [Artistic Skills].. like you have on Page 66 for Wanderer?

 

[Morrus]

Having checked it a thousand times this week, and still the first thing I hear is "I found a typo!" I'm just putting my fingers in my ears and chanting "la la la can't hear you!" whenever anybody mentions typos.

(Thanks - I'll hopefully get those for the next document).

 

[Vlagrate]

Do repeatable traditions increase in price as if they had multiple grades? Ex: would taking Wanderer 3 times count as taking a Grade 3 Tradition (6000XP=(1+2+3)*1000) or as 3 Grade 1 Traditions (3000XP)?

On the same topic, are the experience costs set in stone? Because currently there is a mix of quadratic (cost*new rank) and linear advancement (traditions grant +1 or +2 to multiple stats and +1 skill rank) and the job of balancing the availability of each is dumped entirely on the GM.

 

[Morrus]

Do repeatable traditions increase in price as if they had multiple grades? Ex: would taking Wanderer 3 times count as taking a Grade 3 Tradition (6000XP=(1+2+3)*1000) or as 3 Grade 1 Traditions (3000XP)?

Nope, just 1,000 XP each time.

On the same topic, are the experience costs set in stone? Because currently there is a mix of quadratic (cost*new rank) and linear advancement (traditions grant +1 or +2 to multiple stats and +1 skill rank) and the job of balancing the availability of each is dumped entirely on the GM.

Not a word in the playtest document is set in stone. Please do playtest it! It's changed enormously over the last few months from playtest feedback.

Those are the same as the XP costs in N.E.W.; choosing the availability is certainly something that a GM advice section could address. Traditions can only be obtained in downtime between adventures, though.

 

[Morrus]

In a quick skim:
Page 5: Singular is "Die", Plural is "Dice"

Incidentally, as someone pointed that out on the Kickstarter update also -- that's a find/replace error I missed. It is supposed to say "d6s" not "dices". An artifact of when tiers got introduced and then removed in the last couple of playtest documents, and d6s briefly stopped being the only resolution die type.

 

[GlassEye]

The Logic (LOG) description (p. 10) references Intellect and INT.
The Mage tradition (p. 59) has a prerequisite of INT 4+. I'm assuming this is a holdover from the May playtest when Intellect was the prerequisite and should now be Logic instead of Intuition.

 

[Morrus]

The Logic (LOG) description (p. 10) references Intellect and INT.
The Mage tradition (p. 59) has a prerequisite of INT 4+. I'm assuming this is a holdover from the May playtest when Intellect was the prerequisite and should now be Logic instead of Intuition.

Yup! Thanks for spotting it!

 

[User_Undefined]

One potential gameplay issue I noticed. The fifth level of knight-errant make you immune to ranged attacks. Sounds great! Until you're an archer character and you GM made the villain a fifth rank knight-errant. Now your character is completely useless. Maybe you get a large defense bonus against ranged attacks or reduce the damage instead.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

[MENTION=6704138]User_Undefined[/MENTION] ..excellent nom de guerre...

Yes, immunity can be iffy in game design. I subscribe to Sean Reynolds Fewer Absolutes thinking myself. However I don't think the 5th level immunity to physical ranged attacks is out of whack... you can't get it until you have taken Squire I, Knight III, and Knight Errant V, it a pretty high level ability.

Then there is the small matter of the 3MP Infuse Space spell {Phasing, the attack selectively passes through certain types of matter and ignores Armor and Shield SOAK values...}, so increasing SOAK really wouldn't help.

Sean recommends changing immunities to a +10 bonus, in the D20 system. With the OLD math, that would be roughly equivalent to full-stop immunity in most cases... imagine a DEF of 38? It would take lots of luck and skill to hit that.
So.. {thinking while typing here, sorry} I think converting any 'immunity' to either a +10 to defense or +3d6 to opposed checks could pan out.

This doesn't really address your concern about a PC archer finding out that the bad-guy is a Rank 5 Knight-Errant... but hopefully at that level the PC is not a one-trick pony {unlike some NPCs at that level }


Last session my players ran into some Sword-Wraiths who have a DEF of 28 and the 5th Rank Man-At-Arms ability to shield each other. They died, despite the PC's being virtually unable to hit them physically. The Fire-Mage handled them quite easily {if you could using up all his MP in the first fight of the day 'easy'! }