Marc_C
Solitary Role Playing
I also asked them not to take any abilities to the second tier at character creation. They took 5 novice abilities instead.
Opinions on Symbaroum?
TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
No pressure. But I would absolutely love a write up!
Willie the Duck
Hero
I would be so tempted to create a character with 10 boons instead.
Marc_C
Solitary Role Playing
My first session last night went very well last night. The PCs left Thistle Hold with a Davokar forest exploration permit to find another missing expedition that should have come back one week ago. One member of the lost expedition is related to one of the PCs.
We had one minor quibble about a mystic power. It was resolved by re-reading the wording for each type of action. Symbaroum uses the word 'Active' for combat action or actions similar to combat actions - in the sense of 'physical activity' I guess. We were confused because Active usually means 'always on'.
My players are veterans that have played with the Basic and Expert rules so it was easy for me to explain the concept of hex crawl and ressource management. The orientation & misfortune rules of the starter set worked really well. The barbarian with the bushcraft talent got them lost on the first day they entered the forest! Fortunately one other characters made a really good cunning roll which put them back on track but they lost half-day. Hunting & foraging went well as the barbarian rolled a 1 (critical success). I gave them enough food for 2 days (3 characters) in the form a small deer. They also have 3 days worth of rations each.
Having a free attack for long weapons at the initial first contact round of melee can be devastating if they hit and the damage roll is average or more. On the other hand monster damage is a fixed average value so that hurts too.
The random encounters generated an attack by 4 Mare Cats with poison bites near the ruins of an ancient stone house in which the PCs had decided to sleep for the night. The second day everything went well. The random encounter was an Aboar (corrupted boar) that charged them near a march. After the fight the PC saw an ancient statue leaning near the edge of the marsh. Upon inspection the found a hole in the back which revealed a cavity that contain 4 Finds (1d4+4). The random rolls determined there was a useless debris, a curiosity (bronze statuette of a skeleton) and 2 mystical treasure (magic items) which are potentially worth a lot of Thalers (gold) when brought back to Thistle Hold.
The PCs received 2 XPs (one for each encounter) and 1 for the session itself. I liked the session and the system. Looking forward to the next session in two weeks.
We had one minor quibble about a mystic power. It was resolved by re-reading the wording for each type of action. Symbaroum uses the word 'Active' for combat action or actions similar to combat actions - in the sense of 'physical activity' I guess. We were confused because Active usually means 'always on'.
My players are veterans that have played with the Basic and Expert rules so it was easy for me to explain the concept of hex crawl and ressource management. The orientation & misfortune rules of the starter set worked really well. The barbarian with the bushcraft talent got them lost on the first day they entered the forest! Fortunately one other characters made a really good cunning roll which put them back on track but they lost half-day. Hunting & foraging went well as the barbarian rolled a 1 (critical success). I gave them enough food for 2 days (3 characters) in the form a small deer. They also have 3 days worth of rations each.
Having a free attack for long weapons at the initial first contact round of melee can be devastating if they hit and the damage roll is average or more. On the other hand monster damage is a fixed average value so that hurts too.
The random encounters generated an attack by 4 Mare Cats with poison bites near the ruins of an ancient stone house in which the PCs had decided to sleep for the night. The second day everything went well. The random encounter was an Aboar (corrupted boar) that charged them near a march. After the fight the PC saw an ancient statue leaning near the edge of the marsh. Upon inspection the found a hole in the back which revealed a cavity that contain 4 Finds (1d4+4). The random rolls determined there was a useless debris, a curiosity (bronze statuette of a skeleton) and 2 mystical treasure (magic items) which are potentially worth a lot of Thalers (gold) when brought back to Thistle Hold.
The PCs received 2 XPs (one for each encounter) and 1 for the session itself. I liked the session and the system. Looking forward to the next session in two weeks.
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TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
Thank you for the write up! How did the encounters go? Anything that surprised you?
Marc_C
Solitary Role Playing
The Mare Cats was as expected. Managed to poison one PCs. The witch was a 7 temporary corruption on a maximum of 8 at the end of the encounter. He rolled a critical success 1 on a spell so I gave only 1 corruption instead of the usual 1d4.
The Aboar encounter was weird. The PCs hit it but with 7 armour because of robust and armoured traits they scored no damage. They panicked. The Mystic successfully cast Maltransformation on the Aboar and turned it into an inoffensive small mammal. Then it was the Aboar's turn... it fled into the woods humiliated.
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