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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8252219" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/KFg5WyL.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Equipment & Ships is our next major section for outfitting our Hero and seeing what kinds of services they can pay for in the lands of the Whale Road. There’s no unified currency in this region, so wealth is an abstracted measure of coins, jewelry, trade goods, and other such sundries represented in Pounds, Shilling, and Pences. 1 Pound is equal to 40 Shillings, and 1 Shilling is equal to 6 Pences, so 240 Pences equal a Pound.Before going into this section further, Beowulf adds a new mini-system of Gifts and Burdens for equipment, ships, and creatures (both Followers and monsters/NPCs). Basically Gifts are positive qualities, Burdens are negative, and both Gifts and Burdens are referred to as ‘tags’ in terms of mechanical descriptors. Some are inherent aspects of a creature or object and cannot be rid of, but others can be added over the course of play from training and good fortune or from damage and other negative circumstances. Equipment and Ships with Gifts often command a fair price and/or the use of a sufficiently skilled craftsperson, while Burdens can decrease the value of an item for sale if a buyer is willing to risk their negative qualities. For weapons and armor, the fancy accoutrements of plate armor, greatswords, crossbows, and other metal-intensive and advanced pieces of gear are not available. We have new lists of era-appropriate wargear, including helmets as their own entry and two new shields who have their own special properties which are useful in combat: Cone-Boss Shields can be used to bash enemies,* while Metal-Rimmed Shields have a ring of iron which makes them Robust.** For helmets there’s a typical +1 AC that you can start out with, but there’s also a fancy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo_helmet" target="_blank">Sutton Hoo style helmet</a> with a facemask that grants +2 AC as well as the Robust Gift (but also the Noisy Burden which imposes disadvantage on Stealth checks). On that note, quite a few pieces of equipment have new Properties that can be invoked in combat: weapons with the Hooked property can disarm a foe on a critical hit in addition to their regular effects, while Splintering Weapons can destroy a shield or helmet on a critical hit.*but only with the use of the Bashing Strike feat which limits its usability for most builds.**can spend inspiration to negate a Critical Hit or Splintering Strike.For armor, most of it are varying degrees of mail, ranging from the humble Weaponshirt (basically an undergarment gambeson) to various layers of protective mail. It’s not difficult to get a decent AC with the right choice in starting gear: 16 at the bare minimum for a 10 DEX character with a mail corslet (13 + DEX AC), an iron-ribbed helm (+1 AC), and shield (+2 AC), or 14 if they choose to fight with a two-handed or dual-wielding weapons. A Hero who doesn’t mind being loud and obvious can get the heaviest armor, a knee-length mail hauberk (16 AC) and aforementioned helmet which gives them a 17 AC. A Hero who prioritizes defense first and foremost can have a 19 AC by adding a shield to these last two entries, and at 2nd level raise that to a 20 or even 21 at 2nd level with the shield-and-spear fighting style and/or the +2 AC face-mask helmet. As one can guess, helmets and shields are more important to make up for the lack of ‘heavy’ armor in the setting. Weapons tend to be mostly-wooden shafts and grips tipped with metal at the end, ranging from daggers to all manner of spears and axes. Some cultural groups are particularly renowned for certain weapons, such as the Seaxes of the Saxons (daggers and shortswords basically) or the deadly two-handed Dane Axes which are considered the province of the strongest warriors and madmen who forgo the use of shields. Swords are much like longswords and have no particularly high damage dice (d8) or special properties, but are considered mighty status symbols for their expense in material and the fact that they have no “tool” purposes like a dagger or hunting bow. This positions them as weapons solely for battle.Afterwards we have various lists of common prices for various objects, services, and fines and wergilds for improper and criminal activity. Northern Europe at this time lacks the elaborate trade networks, banks, and bazaars of more established empires, so most communities exchange goods via labor, barter, and the social trust of favors and oaths. They can still place the value of worth of an object, but in the case of smaller communities and poor villagers coins and luxury items can only go so far and are typically reserved for ring-giving. Heroes who earned the trust and goodwill of a local community and ruler will be given required tools, gifts, and repairs to their ship provided that they can return the favor with services rendered (such as killing a Monster troubling their kingdom or village).<img src="https://i.imgur.com/SfVNgvy.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Ships are so special they get a section of their own. Vessels common on the Whale Road are Nordic-style longships which are relatively small and exposed to the elements. In short, there are two Ship Types, the small and mobile Long-sided Ship and the slower yet sturdy Wide-beamed Ship. Long-sided ships can sail quicker to destinations as well as being better able to flee from pirates and other threats at sea (its Speed value), but Wide-beamed Ships can sail for longer periods before requiring resupply (its Range value). The size of a crew (who are not Followers but considered their own kind of hireling for the Hero) is 12 along with 6 passengers; any more can affect the Speed and Range of a ship barring the appropriate Gifts, and said ship can even suffer the Encumbered Burden as a result. Crew wages and Ship upkeep and repairs costs Pounds, with more expense in the case of damage-related Burdens to the ship.A Ship’s Burdens tend to reflect things such as Damaged impairing its functions, Encumbered slowing down its Speed and Range, and Missing Crew which also further decrease Speed and Range. Gifts include things such as a Musician who can improve a crew’s timing and morale in the form of +1 Speed, Extra Stores that increase Range, Reinforced that grants advantage on Constitution saves, and other such things. There’s a short but sweet section on Ship Combat, detailing special actions for maneuvering and and setting up Boarding actions, as well as what Burdens are placed on a ship based on the damage it sustains. Typically speaking most enemies don’t seek to directly damage ships; pirates and raiders want to kill the crew but also obtain a seaworthy vessel and its cargo, while monsters of the hungering variety would rather bite through inches of metal containing succulent manflesh than several feet of wood that may or may not be guarding edible things. Even when the Hero loses a ship, it is always a temporary setback rather than a permanent loss or ‘game over’ condition. Basic ships without many Gifts can be easily obtained narrative-wise, but higher-quality vessels require an investment of favors and gifts costing a minimum of 20-30 Pounds. As such ship loss in Beowulf is more akin to the removal of upgrades; still a punishment, but a financial setback more than anything.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/rOGhve0.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Our last major section of this chapter presents us with 27 new Heroic Feats! The vast majority require some sort of prerequisite: 13 are alignment-specific, 11 require a certain ability score of 13 or higher, and 3 have no prerequisites at all! I won’t cover every feat here, instead selecting a few of the more interesting ones.Armour of Faith is Church-specific and grants +1 to a mental ability score along with advantage on INT/WIS/CHA saves vs magical effects; Cunning Movement is akin to the Rogue’s 2nd level class feature in letting the Hero take Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a bonus action along with +1 to Dexterity; Feral Brutality has a host of features, including +1 Strength, advantage on initiative rolls, can two-weapon fight with non-light weapons, and do 1d6 damage with unarmed strikes; the Church-specific Divine Strike, Old Ways-specific Words of Doom, and alignment-irrelevant Foe Mockery are similar in that they grant Prayer/Doom/Mockery Points which refresh every long rest. Prayer and Doom points can be spent to add bonus damage in proficiency and convert the total damage into radiant or force respectively, while Mockery Points subtract from a creature’s d20 roll equal to the Hero’s Charisma modifier as a reaction; Hordebreaker grants +1 to Charisma and imposes the Coward condition on nearby allies on a failed saving throw when the Hero kills an opponent 1/long rest. The Coward condition causes enemies from then on to become Defeated when the next ally of theirs is witnessed being killed; Natural Communion and Remembered Secret are both Old Ways-specific, granting a respective +1 WIS or +1 INT and grant abilities which allow the user to ascertain knowledge in a supernatural way. In Natural Communion’s case the Hero can ask local spirits about the area, while for Remembered Secret they can choose every time they select this feat whether they can sense nearby magical items and creatures, learn the tongue of a broad type of beast, or can automatically stabilize a dying creature with a touch; Skill Adept is one of the prerequisite-free ones, allowing the Hero to choose 3 skills, granting proficiency in ones in which they previously weren’t proficient and doubling the proficiency bonus for skills in which they were; Warrior’s Rest grants +1 CHA and grants a Healing Pool equal to 5 times CHA modifier: during a short rest the Hero can sing a song, restoring HP of themselves and/or an ally on a 1 for 1 basis, and 10 HP worth to remove a condition (the Healing Pool refreshes every long rest).Warrior’s Rest sounds like it’s tailor-made to help Followers, right? Well the feature is a bit limited in use in this regard. Although we’ll cover them in the next Chapter, Followers don’t really have full stat blocks; they make Death Saving Throws, but they don’t have Hit Points or Hit Die, and in the sample adventure in this book allied NPCs with full stat blocks are converted into Followers upon joining the Hero which seems to be the implied default expectation in Beowulf: Age of Heroes. Sort of like how bosses in a video game RPG don’t have their original abilities or Hit Points once they join the party. As such it limits Warrior’s Rest a bit, making it primarily a “self-healing” type of thing in terms of HP restoration.Our chapter ends with discussion on campaigns that have More Than One Player. A short list of suggestions for balance concerns is given, such as getting rid of or having fewer Followers depending on group size. There’s also talk on using the Hero class as-is, with 8 + CON modifier HP at 1st level instead, or allowing the use of ‘outsider classes.’ In regards to development and playtesting, the authors assert that a Hero with a full set of Followers has an equivalent power to a typical 4-person party in 5e, saying that using this playstyle in non-Beowulf adventures should be seamless. The only concern is at higher levels when using parties with two Heroes or less than full Followers, due to the amount of monsters with Legendary and/or Lair actions along with the typical discussion of miscellaneous factors beyond just the build of the PCs. I should note that Followers are not akin to fully-classed PCs in typical D&D games and modules, although I’ll cover that properly in the next chapter.Thoughts So Far: The new equipment and feats are flavorful and neat, and the use of Gifts and Burdens to further customize gear is an interesting one, although I don’t much care for the ‘critical hit’ only ones given how rare those kind of rolls are. Although Followers will be covered later, most Beowulf players will have no shortage of action economy choices for their Actions, Reactions, and Bonus Actions between the Hero’s various class and subclass features and the Feats. This is nice on account that for many PCs the latter two often end up an afterthought for certain builds.Join us next time as we cover Part 3: Followers!</blockquote>

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