Dragonbane general thread

[Aldarc]

Sorry I am late to the party. I am thrilled to see a 30 page thread DB thread on a forum! My 2 cents so far.

Welcome, Von Ether. I guess we have migrated from AGE to DB.

 

[Von Ether]

I guess so! I liked AGE especially for a spin on Modern d20 but the community content guidelines were a bit stricter than I would like and trying to condense the monster stat box was a challenge.

My adventure is the same for both systems.

Also my regular group got older and they seemed more interested in games with less mental overhead. Not saying AGE is complicated.

 

[overgeeked]

Sorry I am late to the party. I am thrilled to see a 30 page thread DB thread on a forum!

The more the merrier.

• I put the core box adventure inside Free League's Forbidden Lands map to create a bigger canvas and to provide two different bad guys to stop

That's a great idea. I haven't looked at Forbidden Lands yet. I might have to, now.

• My players who know how to game 5e are excited again
• My min/maxer had to interact with others and the environment to get boons as he couldn't min/max his PC
• I generally like to do quick and dirty conversions and DB lets me do that for both OSR and BRP.
• I am a believer in random encounter tables again. Then again DB table entries are much more than just "2d6 goblins here."

That all sounds great. What OSR stuff have you used with DB?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Also, I just realized that I'm not sure I fully grok all the benefits of having a shield. Is it just:

• You can parry ranged attacks in addition to melee attacks
• Has high durability, so better resists parry
• Protects your weapon from getting damaged on a parry (better to lose your shield than your weapon)

Is there anything else? (Aside from having shield-related Heroic Abilities, magic shields, etc.)

Anybody have an answer to this?

 

[Von Ether]

Alternatively, a couple of sentences in the section on armor could have defined the type of damage that armor does protect against, and then only the exceptions to that rule would need to be noted.

Also, I just realized that I'm not sure I fully grok all the benefits of having a shield. Is it just:

• You can parry ranged attacks in addition to melee attacks
• Has high durability, so better resists parry
• Protects your weapon from getting damaged on a parry (better to lose your shield than your weapon)

Is there anything else? (Aside from having shield-related Heroic Abilities, magic shields, etc.)

• There's no "skill tax." You use any STR-based melee skill to parry with a shield.
• Shields also can do a little damage in a pinch. So shield bash is a thing in DB without extra rules.
• Just like parrying with a weapon, a successful shield parry lets you move both you and your enemy 2m each

 

[Von Ether]

That's a great idea. I haven't looked at Forbidden Lands yet. I might have to, now.

That all sounds great. What OSR stuff have you used with DB?

I used the Forbidden Lands campaign, Raven's Purge, because that was originally going to be my next game and I already owned it and the Bitter Reach book.

Then DB kickstarter happened. I read the QS and the promise of an early release PDF sealed the deal as I knew my players were doing to be much more open to rolling one die with their skill rating as the challenge rating.

I used critters from the Wyrd and Wild. It didn't hurt that someone had already added those critters to a OSR monsters to DB monsters spreadsheet. (I did tweak the creatures I used more towards my interpretation of DB monster building.)

Honestly, though, now that the Bestiary is out, it is even easier to tweak and reskin what you need.

As a side note: Some of my friends now claim DB is my favorite game because our min/maxer who hardly ever gets scratched in any other game system finally had a PC death. His attitude was surprisingly great. He was, "Yep. Them's the rules and I'm dead." (He's the guy in 5e who would take the original Lucky Feat and then a cleric class.)

His best min/max was to put his highest scores in WIL and CON (15 and 14) when he couldn't get his skills above 12. He eventually discovered that getting more HAs meant he more temptations to burn through his WP, which he kept trying to avoid.

 

[overgeeked]

I used critters from the Wyrd and Wild. It didn't hurt that someone had already added those critters to a OSR monsters to DB monsters spreadsheet.

Oh. Do you have a link to that by chance?

 

[Bill Zebub]

My three hardcovers arrived today. Joy.

 

[Relax]

Given that there's a Mariner profession in the core rulebook, it would be nice to have rules for boats and ships and the like.

I'm definitely most looking forward to the Expert rulebook, then the Magic book, then possibly a new Bestiary, but that's a distant third.

 

[dbm]

I think the more ‘sword & sorcery’ vibe of Dragonbane means it’s totally cool to have fewer but more unique and dangerous monsters.

I haven’t got the game to the table yet but I get the feeling that Dragonbane adventures are not going to be a series of ‘level appropriate encounters’ but rather more like the Conan stories with more human(oid) antagonists and the odd monster which is almost more a puzzle than a straight-up fight. The fact that monster attacks always hit turns them into more of a unique challenge where I would hope my players try to reconnoiter, maybe try to research the enemy if they can, and then look for a specific way of resisting it’s attacks. It gives very strong Witcher vibes.