Dragonbane general thread

[Nikosandros]

Yes, if it is a safe place. The definition of a safe place is left to the GM. It's derived from the in-game narrative. If the characters try to sleep 500 meters from a dangerous location, I wouldn't allow it. The Riddermound adventure tells you so.

In my game, some characters have to spend the evening shift scouting the area to make sure it's safe, while others set up camp and cook.

Dangerous Locations: In certain locations, such as a dungeon with enemies all around, the player characters cannot make camp or take a shift rest. They must first leave the area and find a safer spot.

Seems like a reasonable and workable interpretation.

 

[Aldarc]

Fair enough. I was trying to understand the rules and also to discuss them. I''m so far liking Dragonbane a lot, but I find the rules to be a bit scattered in the manual.

You will get no debate about that from me. The rules can be scattered between character creation and elsewhere. I don't think that the layout for Free League is always the greatest. I understand why it's organized that way, but that doesn't mean it's the best way for finding information when you need it.

 

[Von Ether]

RPG books need to be an instruction manual, a reference guide, and an engaging lore document. It's a hard juggling act.

 

[Staffan]

Possibly. I do share the earlier expressed frustration that some 3pp just want to recreate a D&D cleric. That's not what I want. Maybe call it Celestial, possibly also dealing with star magic.

The D&D-style cleric is very specific to D&D and things based on it. Looking at the fantasy genre as a whole, you'll find plenty of examples of fighters, rogues, and various forms of magic-users, but pretty much the only places where you'll find "user of holy magic largely reminiscent of Biblical miracles, and often heavily armed and armored" as an archetype are those directly descended from D&D. Magical healing is more often, when it exists at all, considered the same as other magic. This is often a problem when adapting non-D&D settings to D&D rules – in D&D the cleric serves a vital role as the strongest healer, but the source material often doesn't have anything of the sort.

Religious magic will often fall into one of two kinds. One is magic that's much more closer tied to a particular deity. A priest of an Earth god might be able to reshape stone, or walk through it, or things like that, but they likely won't be able to heal. If they want to hurt you, they'd be more likely to throw a rock at you than a beam of holy light. The other is when the religion is a social source of magic – the magic itself isn't religious, it's just that the religion/cult is where they teach that particular form of magic.

Religion itself tends to serve a more social function. A priest is respected because of their place in society, and they are often highly educated and thus make good advisors, but no-one expects them to bust out a mace and deliver glowy smites on demand.

I will certainly be curious how traditions like Harmonism and Symbolism may possibly bridge that gap. For example, Harmonism could potentially be retooled as one chanting hymns or prayers. But we will see. Some have mentioned Spiritism as a tradition from old, but I'm not versed in past Drakar och Demoner editions enough to know how that fits.

In ye olden days, Harmonism was mostly about control with a bit of support IIRC. Spiritism was more along the lines of Victorian-style occultism, and sort of Necromancy-adjacent.