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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011465" data-attributes="member: 1129">Grim Tales by Bad Axe Games promises on the cover, “High Adventure and Low Magic”. At 212 black and white pages, it’s not the longest book at $34.95 I’ve seen, but it’s not the most expensive either. When I read through it, I wonder, is this book needed? Couldn’t we just have a list of some of the options here that are used to capture high adventure and low magic as opposed to a hard cover book? Why do I say that? Well, upon first reading, it seems like I’m reading a bastardized version of d20 Modern with variants thrown in from half the d20 books in my library, which means that I have to read everything and examine everything because it’s not what it seems. Pretty painful when you realize it and have to start taking notes and defiantly not for the faint of heart who may look at these version of d20 Modern’s core classes and think they understand everything off the bat. What’s different then? It has the standard d20 Modern core or basic classes. The various classes based on a particular stat like Fast Hero or Strong Hero, but it writes them up as 20 level classes. It drops the d20 Modern Occupation, which provides a bonus Feat and additional permanent class skills, but provides you with backgrounds. These backgrounds provide you with three-five skills you can select as your class skills. Action Points aren’t the same. Standard Action Points, both those in Unearthed Arcana and D20 Modern, are pretty simple in that they allow an extra d6 to be added to a variety of d20 rolls. They have other abilities, like augmenting feats or simulating feats but their main benefit is bonus d6. Here, you have to spend an action point to confirm a critical hit. There are also a lot of variants here like action die based on level, or exploding action dice, where you get to roll the die again when your roll the maximum. Something that should be familiar to most Warhammer FRPG players. Another difference is that the talents aren’t detailed with the classes. Like feats, they’ve all been collection in another section of the book. Makes higher level character creation a bit annoying but once you’ve read the book a few times, not a big deal. Skills are a little different too. The character gets to select three skills, in addition to your background skills, and your career skills. The career skills are one Craft, one Knowledge and one Profession, skill to represent you’re living skills. In skills selections, they use Heal instead of Treat Injury, and they’re missing the Demolitions and Repair skills from the skill table. It also has the good old Use Rope skill, missing in d20 Modern. A fairly good mix but by no means all inclusive. In some ways I’m a little disappointed that the author didn’t go the route of Arcana Unearthed by streamlining skills like Hide and Move Silently or even go further like some of the Fantasy Flight Games have done. In terms of similarities, it also has defense and reputation, and the game mechanics, like BAB and saving throws, look similar to those found in d20 Modern. The one thing they kept which I understand, but don’t like, is the base assumption that characters will start off as being human, and that means they have the bonus feat and extra skill points included in their core. For example, the Tough Hero has 3 skill points per level and starts with two feats in addition to his bonus starting feats. So in looking at character creation, it should be pretty familiar to most players of D&D or d20 Modern with slight tweaks here and there. The dismissal of Prestige Classes may shock some, but the classes are flexible, more flexible than their d20Modern counterparts as they just keep going up in levels with bonus feats and talent trees. When looking at Feats, we’ve got material from a few sources. Some fantasy abilities, like Smite Evil from the Paladin have been turned into Talents. At first I couldn’t figure out what you’d do with something like that in a standard d20 campaign, but then it was explained to me that Smite Evil would probably be pretty handy for having a Buffy style d20 Modern campaign no? And I agree with that. However, in that vein, having the talents marked or broken up into different levels or with some better ideas of what genre they’d be appropriate for or how to use them in any genre, would’ve been ideal. One thing missing from this section, is how to change special abilities into talents. If some formula or basic details had been provided to show the GM how to take any class and break it down, the utility of this section would shoot up a notch. Outside of abilities, we still have to equip characters. We’ve got purchase DC and sale values included so you can go with either option. I’ve never liked the d20 Modern system for handling such thing so I’m glad that they’ve gone with a listed value as well. However, they’ve decided to go with the silver piece standard. It makes sense in terms of keeping true to the fiction where gold is rare and platinum is unheard of. More impressive is the section on weapon design. It’s a system that shows you how to create weapons and classify them. It provides examples of typical melee and ranged weapons as well as different options. For example you can tweak damage, threat range, multiplier and even size. There are numerous abilities that can be added here and there in exchange for something else. For example, if you want to have a special ability like disarm, you decrease the damage dice. If you increase the size of the weapon, you increase the dice damage by two steps. It’s an interesting take on things and I’m sure players will be tweaking it out to their heart’s content. I can almost see something like “Pimp my Sword” coming out of all this. The problem, as I mentioned before, is that so much is the same that it almost seems nothing is different. Take combat. It’s almost the same as standard combat in d20 Modern. Almost but see here, even though you’re disabled when you hit 0 hit points, you can keep functioning at the disabled rank until your negative hit points go past your Constitution modifier. Got an 18 con? You can keep going from 0 to –4 hit points. In a similar vein, you don’t die until you go your negative in Con. That 18 con will keep you alive until –18. Some options though, are easier to spot due to the skulls. These skulls range from one to three skulls and indicate lethality factors. For example, when using death from massive damage, one skull, the recommended standard in this case, allows you to take damage equal to your con score plus armor, shield and natural armor bonus. On the opposite end, three skulls is a damage threshold of 10. Now most of the book is material I’ve seen before in one form or another. The section on spells and magic though, introduces a new spellcasting system. So how is the author going to keep the game low magic? New spell lists? Expensive spell components? Nope. Instead, it’s a new way to cast spells. You have to first learn the spell. That’s a bit problematic since the Spellcraft skill requires you to take a talent in order to have it as a class skill. Once you have it though, it’s not too bad as learning is 15 + spell level and depending on your feel, arcane or divine, you gain bonuses to learn your school spells. It’s in the casting that the bad news comes in. See, you make a caster check, which is 10 + spell level. You then take spell burn damage. Each level of the spell equals 1d6 of Constitution or if you’re an adept, Strength damage. Thankfully, you get Spell Burn Resistance based on your primary spellcasting attribute modifier in addition to any bonuses from talents. Now that’s pretty good. By 8th level, you could have, if using a point buy system, a 20 in your primary stat. Chances of taking lots of damage is pretty low. I’d probably overcome that with an exploding spell burn die cause I don’t see the limitation otherwise. The author though, decides that all 1’s automatically get through. The first time I’ve seen it be a bad thing to roll the minimum. Another option is to increase the spell burn die to say, d8, d10 or even higher. I think I prefer the exploding variant. Another new option is Horror and Insanity. The GM calls for a horror check. Each player rolls his horror check and compares it against a horror check roll table. The GM then rolls the Horror Threshold level and compares that to the encounter level and if the Horror Threshold is equal to or greater than the PC’s Charisma, then there’s trouble. The book includes numerous types of insanities, including short and long term, and breaks them up into various categories. Characters can have three levels, mild, moderate, and severe. In some cases, being severe kicks you up to a different insanity. General Anxiety Disorder for example, becomes Panic Disorder. Another big section is vehicles. The utility here is in the vehicle combat section. It’s broken down a few ways to spread the material out. First you have to determine speed advantage, then terrain, and then range. The combat sequence itself relies on determining initiative, speed, maneuver, and the GM checking for obstacles. In looking at maneuvers, we have stand off, ram, pace, gun it, and others. Each one with a Y or N in the Maneuverability and Speed Advantage Table. Some having limits at which range they can be performed at, and others at needing a Reaction Roll. It looks like a fun little system and could be perfect for chariot races or aerial dogfights with WWII planes. The section on cyberware, which can be any fantastic technology like mind flayer grafts, is interesting but probably something I’d skip. Chances are if I’m running a campaign in such a setting, it’ll have its own version of cyberware. The material here though, is good for those who are running everything off this book. Cyberware have a physical risk in that you can die from massive damage when undergoing surgery, or you may not mentally accept the new freakish status you’ve bestowed upon yourself with the grafts. This gets worse the more cyberware you use as you can continue to lose charisma, making the check harder to make each time. It’s a small sampling of items, ranging from exterior skin to internal plates but gets the ball rolling. I’m more interested in the section on creature creation. Let’s face it, Wizards of the Coast did a half-assed job providing detailed explanations as to how you can create and properly list a challenge rating for a monster. This section covers numerous factors ranging from size and type, to special abilities and weaknesses. On the other hand, the only thing I really didn’t like mechanically, was the section on Encounter Level. It provides a nice breakdown of CR to EL conversion, which can be adjusted by the number of combatants. The problem is that in terms of doling out experience points, you receive experience points based on your class level. This goes against the grain of lower level characters catching up to the higher level ones quicker. On the other hand, it provides brief methods for granting XP for making skill checks and story awards. I’d be a little worried about the vague warning though as the skill check must “carries serious consequences” as I’ll have rogues and monks telling me that if they don’t make their tumbling check, an attack of opportunity is a serious consequence. The appendix includes a few different campaign models. It takes a creature or theme and shows how it could be used in the three different eras, archaic, modern, and apocalyptic. It’s hit or miss for me. The section on the undead and the dragon lords did nothing for me, but I did bookmark the dragon section, as these suckers are truly the stuff of epic battles, clocking in at a CR of 70. The Lethid Campaign however, that got my attention. These suckers have some relation to the Possessor’s from Philip Reed’s Roninarts book but take it a step further to more clearly put the implications of outer world and elderly tainted evil about them. The art ranges from fair to great. I’ve always enjoyed Scott Purdy’s style. Jeremy Mohler also adds some great pieces. Some of the art though, is just mediocre and takes up space. Take the art by the character classes for example. There are three illustrations, one for each era. They’re not bad, but they’re certainly not the best in the book. I find that the layout is lacking. The tables are just ugly. Not every table nor every piece of art needs to be boxed and not every piece of type in a table needs to be centered. Not every piece here suffers that, but most do. I hate to say it, but the tables look like they were done in Excel and just ported over. The crushed page look also doesn’t aid readability and doesn’t look good. The biggest problem I have with the book, is where is the campaign advice? The appendix, while a useful tool, can’t compare with the utility that a chapter on running a high adventure, low magic campaign would’ve. What are the long-term repercussions of not having rapid healing available? Since we have Spell Burn, should we have psion burn? Should non-magical augmentations be allowed to spruce up characters via new masterwork components such as those found in Bad Axe Games Heroes of High Favor Dwarves? Let’s take the smallest thing like a list of recommended reading. Now I’m 33 (or will be this September!) but grew up reading Robert E. Howard, among others, so I’m pretty familiar with Conan, Kull, Grey Mouser, Bran Mak Morn, Kane, Dray Prescot and dozens of other pulp heroes. However, the average 17-20 year old might not be. What’s more, with the wide plethora of high magic fantasy out there ranging from Robert Jordan and the various licensed properties of WoTC, including Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and the Magic cardgame itself, the standard, where fiction heroes struggle in a low magic world, are no longer entirely true. Where are the campaign creation tools? Where is the collection of these optional and variant rules that a GM can quickly look over and hand out to his players? It’d be a good thing to know that you’re dead at your negative constitution score as opposed to –10 and that it’s using the d20 Modern version of stabilization as opposed to the dreaded % of D&D. Something like the handouts WoTC had for the 3.5 updates to their numerous titles or the half page campaign designer here that collects only the skull ratings and none of the variants mentioned in the book. For me, this book came too late. One of the games or eras that people will probably want to recreate with this is Conan and Conan has it’s own rule set. Some of the optional rules have ‘official’ variants now. I also don’t get what the Core Mechanic task resolution is as it looks like the d20 resolution. Roll a d20 and add modifiers and compare it to a target number. Yup, that’s d20 alright. It repeats too much information form the core rules without providing a cheat sheet that lets you quickly see what’s different. Hopefully, we’ll see the company spin off the optional rules, like the Spell Burn and Insanity, into separate PDFs for those interested in adding those elements to their own campaign. Having said that, I can easily see an experienced GM using these tweaks and designs to forge his own unique vision of the d20 system.</blockquote>

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