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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dustin Cooper" data-source="post: 9496586" data-attributes="member: 6922447">I've been running Sword World 2.5 for a while.Positives:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It's much easier to make a properly balanced encounter than something like 5e, and the 2-3 encounter adventuring day fits the pacing I like better than mainline D&D.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Characters are highly customizable.  While they use the word "class" to describe what you're taking levels in in the translation, it's more like skill packages.  Like taking levels in "fighter" gives you bonuses to attacks, access to certain feats, and that's really it.  "Fighter" doesn't even give you your initiative bonus.  But that's fine, because no one is just a fighter.  You're expected to take at least two "classes," and this means you have a lot of flexibility.  Like you can combine fighter with priest to get something like a D&D cleric, or you could instead take levels in Enhancer to learn breathing techniques to buff yourself, or you could take levels in Scout to be able to be a skill monkey.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Basic combat manages to be relatively simple, but still give people enough options that it doesn't feel like they're just spamming their attack every round.  The simple fact that the players determine the order they go in ends up meaning a lot.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Speaking of combat, do you remember how the playtest for 5e indicated that it would be modular, and that like you could add in a tactical module if you wanted it to feel more like 4e combat?  SW2.5 actually pulls that off.  There's three forms of combat.  Basic has a front line and a back line, and it works well for combats where you don't plan on having exact positioning be that important.  Standard Combat has specific distances and more rules for things like movement and cover, but it's over a 1 dimensional line.  I recently ran this for an encounter where the players were ambushed on both sides, and it worked great.  And then there's advanced combat that expands things onto your normal 2d map.  You could easily make a campaign that focused on one of those combat types entirely, or you could do something like use basic for the smaller fights and advanced for the big boss fight.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I rather like the setting as a whole.  It has a good aesthetic (and I think the sort of fantasy world you see in most isekai stuff derives from some form of Sword World), and I'm a sucker for magitech.  The default setting is one where society progressed to roughly 20th century level through magitech, but 300 years ago, that civilization got destroyed.  So there's a nation trying to rebuild the old mana powered train network, and a dungeon might be the relics of a subway station or a mall.</li> </ul>Negatives:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">So they decided to go the BECMI route and have multiple core rulebooks covering different tiers of play.  On one hand, this allows someone in Japan to spend like $10 and get all they need to try the game out with their friends.  On the other, it means things are spread out among several different sources.  To make matters worse, a lot of stuff that feels like it should be core is in supplements.  Like do you want to use point buy rather than rolling for stats, have work skills that represent what the PCs used to be or still do outside of adventuring, or the rules for that Advanced Combat system I mentioned above?  Those are all in a supplement called Advanced Treasury that's otherwise mostly a condensed list of items from all the other sources until that point.  It can be difficult to know what to read or where to find something.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Damage from players is weird.  They wanted granularity between weapon damage, but also wanted to use 2d6 for everything.  The solution is the Power Table.  Each weapon will have a value, and when you're doing damage, you roll 2d6, then look at the row that matches your weapon's power and find the column that matches what you just rolled.  It's not super hard (and you're expected to just write that row on your character sheet, so you're not looking at the full chart every time), but it can be a little clunky, particularly since it was made by hand rather than based on a specific formula (though the idea is that each increase does 1/6 of a point more damage on average than the previous row).  That said, I play on roll20, where someone already made a character sheet with macros that handle this, so it's really no issue for my game.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'm not sure I like how skills are divided.  Like I said above, combat focused or magic focused classes don't get much outside of combat or magic.  You'd think there might be a whole bunch of different classes for other skill packages, but not really.  Almost all of them are in a class called Scout, and then there's a ranger which has almost as many, but some of their skills only work outdoors, and the Sage, which is knowledge skills.  Other classes might have one or two things (like the Tactician, which lets you buff the party and reminds me of a 4e warlord, also gets the initiative skill), but if your goal is to be able to use a lot of skills, you don't have many ways of accomplishing that.  That said, this game is more designed around the idea that at least one party member has a given skill to roll for the party than around everyone rolling for a check, so it's not like literally everyone needs scout levels or something.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The character sheet doesn't list individual skills.  It wants you to just know which class to use and what stat to use with them.  A new player can't just glance down to see the options they have, and they may need to reference the book to see if something is even an option for them when they wouldn't for most recent D&D editions and derived games. Overall, I'm happy with this game.  I had been running D&D 4e for a while, but I was burning out on it and wanted something simpler, but still felt like it had more options and was easier to run than 5e, and I found it here.  It has its quirks, but I don't feel like they're that hard to learn to deal with them.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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