D&D 5E Free Arcanis: Shattered Empires primer and 5e sneak peek

[Raddu]

Anyone ever played in any of the Arcanis incarnations? Here's a free pdf that's a primer for the gritty setting and a sneak peek at their 5e content.

http://www.paradigmconcepts.com/Downloads/Arcanis/Arcanis_5E_Primer.pdf

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm currently reading through their proprietary system, because I like seeing how different system mechanics work, but the setting doesn't really feel like it would work well under 5E rules. You can't have grim and gritty in a world where you can sleep off axe blows.

 

[Shardstone]

I'm currently reading through their proprietary system, because I like seeing how different system mechanics work, but the setting doesn't really feel like it would work well under 5E rules. You can't have grim and gritty in a world where you can sleep off axe blows.

This isn't true at all. Lingering wounds, changing short rests, amping damages from monster, exhaustion, etc are just a few of the ways provided in the DMG and PHB to make gritty games.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This isn't true at all. Lingering wounds, changing short rests, amping damages from monster, exhaustion, etc are just a few of the ways provided in the DMG and PHB to make gritty games.

Exhaustion isn't a wound. Increasing the damage of monsters does not cause that wound to persist beyond the next long rest. There is no combination of rules presented for hit dice and resting which would prevent someone from going zero-to-full overnight; the only thing those dials limit are how frequently they can do that.

The option for Lingering Wounds is at least an attempt to make the healing system less ridiculous, but it's not a very good one. It reflects specific, debilitating injuries which can only be fixed with magic. And while that sort of thing could certainly help to reflect a grittier setting, it does nothing to address the basic consideration that an axe blow isn't something you should be able to sleep off overnight; you're still back to full health after sleeping, even if you're missing a hand.

 

[cbwjm]

It sounds like a decent setting. Some bits I find odd or out of place. The sorcerer subclass has an ability that allows them to spend sorcery points at 1st level even though they don't have sorcery points until level 2. Mind you, the ability does have other abilities so it's not like they don't have something to use at 1st level. They also seem to have arbitrarily changed the half caster spell slots/level instead of following the standard progression (they get only a single 2nd level spell at 5th level instead of 2).

I'd have to spend more time reading it over, but it sounds like it has some really interesting concepts. Dwarves which are barred from the afterlife, a race descended from gods that have a 7th ability that they can enhance with ASIs as they level up granting them new abilities. Sounds really cool.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

You can't have grim and gritty in a world where you can sleep off axe blows.

Good thing that's not what hp represents in 5E, then.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Good thing that's not what hp represents in 5E, then.

Maybe not in your game, but HP in 5E canonically represent different things at different tables, based on how the DM in question prefers to narrate damage. In every case, though, a loss of HP is the mechanical reflection associated with the in-game reality of someone being struck by an axe blow.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

No need to involve DM preferences. Just go with what the rulebook says. That way, it's much easier to disprove false claims about the game.

 

[Shardstone]

I guess in grim & gritty only the wounds matter, and nothing else. An interesting, if not slightly disappointing view, of the genre I'd say.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I guess in grim & gritty only the wounds matter, and nothing else. An interesting, if not slightly disappointing view, of the genre I'd say.

When I was reading through the Arcanis (old edition) last night, I did some skipping ahead to see how healing is supposed to work in that world, and how gritty it really is. It's hard to tell for sure without having actually played the game, but it looks like it uses a combination of stamina and wounds, where stamina is your typical luck/skill/fatigue handwave and wounds are rare/horrible/fatal.

So if you used the 5E rules with default healing rates, but added in the optional rules to lose a hand if you fail a Con check after a critical hit or whatever, then that would remain fairly true to the source material.