Yes, I am Mattias Johnsson Haake - Game Director of Symbaroum, also one of its co-creators, lead writers and editors. I am part of the 5E team but only as editor and project manager, and the same goes for my colleague (co-creator and rules designer) Mattias Lilja. The heavy lifting on Ruins of Symbaroum 5E is done by Jacob Rodgers, best known for his work of Adventures in Middle Earth - and a super nice, and super competent guy at that!
As for the second question, you have to reach out to the marvelous Paul Baldowski who started and runs The Iron Pact site. It is a fan page that we do not interfere with.
I'm going to shamelessly take advantage, and ask a question that you might be in a position to answer, or get an answer to...
I am
Very interested in this Kickstarter, but I am hesitating due to the issue I have with how the 5e
Adventures in Middle Earth conversion was done.
My Issue with AiME:
It kept D&D's Hit Point bloat.
The continual expansion of HP in D&D always creates scaling issues. AiME kept the HP increase for every level, and I thought it really broke the game out of the Tolkien mould, and introduced the D&D play paradigm onto a setting that it is not suited for.
(I have the same issues with the old mongoose d20 Conan game.)
In looking at this nice rundown of the original
Symbaroum system:
In preparation for running a Symbaroum game, here is an overview of the system, particularly the player-facing side. First, an oversimplified summary in D&D terms: HP = strength score (sort of,…
www.necropraxis.com
Will the 5e conversion of
Symbaroum keep the Low, mostly
Fixed Hit Points?
I really hope so. I will try and make my case...
IMHO by not introducing D&D HP bloat, it flattens the system Math which would make it
much easier to translate everything else over to a d20 roll-high system. I think that the HP would have to be a bit higher in the 5e conversion to account for the damage reduction that the original system uses. But I'm sure that is something that can be roughly calculated.
(If I had to eyeball it I would guess something like Con + class hit die; which would put the HP for most PC's in the range of 18-30)
Classes and levels need not change overmuch otherwise. After all a Level is just another way to do Advancement. There is no inherent reason why Hit Points have to increase with every level in class and level based games.
The PC will still get more Class abilities, Feats, and higher Proficiency bonuses - they will get measurably more powerful. But because of the more or less Fix HP totals they will always have a certain vulnerability to all the creatures in the
Symbaroum world. This should be seen as a feature not a bug. They will become more competent Hero's, but the "Fantasy Superhero" effect of high level D&D HP bloat will not be there to break the tone of the setting.
Anyway, I have said my piece. I thank you for your patience and indulgence.
