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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 2452993" data-attributes="member: 158">All right, a few things I learned from my two games of it:1) The surprise round is indeed deadly. The groups' collective jaw will hit the floor the first time one of them is "surprised to death." For our group, all it took was watching the results to the NPCs they snuck up on for them to get the idea. 2) The Massive Damage Threshold, is deadlier to the NPCs than the PCs, on average, because of how high it is, but I underscored the point of wariness in our combat when some of the NPC allies in their company died from gut wounds, arms lopped off, etc. You guys, having been former Rolemaster players, will appreciate that crit chart'ssimplicity compared to a Rolemaster or HARP. Similar lethality for less investment.I'm going to attach the Simple rules document I made up for our game to this post. WARNING: You need to amend the "Advantage" and "initiative" rules I used, as well as a couple of the results on the crit chart, if you want to use it as RULES-WRITTEN. However, it will give you a helpful start for a handout for them.3) Mages should have some sample pre-done spells done for them, so they can throw some stuff on the fly without having to worry about making spells from scratch.Also attached are some of the sample NPCs for my one-shot. NOTE the Mage, Judge, and what I did for the second sheet for him - included about 10 or 12 sample spells organized by time and drain.4) Give your people time to rest between encounters - more specifically, I mean try to avoid any "battle after battle" scenarios or "the clock is ticking" scenarios unless dramatically appropriate. As you well remember in our Gameday one-shot, <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> the way healing worked sharply curtails the amount of pushing onward a party can do. The more they push onward relentlessly without stopping, the more hopeless they'll feel. They'll have maxxed hitpoints but be paper tigers.5) For the main campaign, have them make up two PCs ahead of time. Even if they play craftily but the dice are against them, they won't have to invest as much time in rebuilding. If this doesn't set well, be ready to mitigate debilitating wounds instead of gut-wounds and amputations. In fact, you could make that a function of Action point expense. What I would encourage, is for them to not worry about playing a character with an injury. Part of the dark charm of those books was how people would be missing an eye, or missing a finger, or have some wicked scar, and yet they go on! You could house rule that, unless they're missing both arms, or missing their whole leg, or something, then by the next session, or next level, what have you, they've learned to compensate for their loss. 6) Since you know the Annals, you should have a much easier time with plots and scenarios. The best scenario I'd suggest is a series of two or three session arcs, with a month or so of gametime in between, especially after a character death. That way, roster changes are easier explained, if someone wants to create another character for replacement.Man, I'd love to get Robert Schwalb Or Owen Stephens in on this to give some advice. They wrote the thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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