Shadowdark Shadowdark: Cursed Scroll #5

[Scribe]

I never played Dark Sun. Similar concept?

It's an interesting idea; spend a fairly high level spell slot in order to make your subsequent spells more effective, but can't move around very much.

You dont have to stay in it, you are already empowered by killing the land, its just on a 5 round timer.

I'd have to go back and see how it was implemented in Dark Sun but the theme is there.

 

[darjr]

Late pledges end today. FYI

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think that bodes well for getting closer to ship date. Have we seen any updates on that?

 

[zottel]

AFAIK it is still late spring.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

She also said the Players Guide to the Western Reaches, along with the screens and alternative spell cards are coming next. After that, I think all we have left is the Gamemasters Guide and the soundtrack. So late spring may end up being accurate.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yes:
View attachment 429912

It would be fun to choose something like rope, iron spike, torch, etc. and always get advantage on related checks. But for +1 I think I'd always pick a weapon.

Let me parse this a little - Choose one type of gear ...you gain 1+half your level on checks ... with that type of gear. It works just fine on non-combat gear for non-combat checks.

As a general rule, I prefer to go with advantage rather than counting bonuses. I think this might be the only time in Shadowdark where we get a numerical bonus to a non-combat roll. So I think switching it to advantage is fine.

I am looking forward to using the delver and the expanded equipment list in a megadungeon game some time.

Oh, right....yes the bonus does increase for either type. I was thinking about the initial bonus. And I didn't mean to imply that you get a different bonus for weapons vs. gear; I just meant that you typically make a LOT more weapon attacks than you do skill checks dependent upon a single piece of gear.

At the highest levels, the +4 or +5 starts to roughly approximate rolling with Advantage (depends on the target number, though). Against very high DCs a static bonus can be better.

The Delver gets the chance to add ADV on top of the counting bonus. This is the Indiana Jones whip rule.

Yeah, I was going to say- the point of this seems to be that you can stack it with advantage. Which is pretty sweet.

(I made an ad hoc ruling in my session Sunday night that allowed two Disadvantages to stack - roll three times and take the worst- but it might be "cleaner" to just apply a numeric penalty in such situations).

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yeah, I was going to say- the point of this seems to be that you can stack it with advantage. Which is pretty sweet.

(I made an ad hoc ruling in my session Sunday night that allowed two Disadvantages to stack - roll three times and take the worst- but it might be "cleaner" to just apply a numeric penalty in such situations).

Two precedents:
1) The Elven Accuracy feat in 5e ("trivantage"). When I was playing D&D I loved this mechanic. Gloomstalker/Assassin FTW.
2) I've started playing some Dragonbane, and Advantage/Disadvantage (called "Boons" and "Banes") stack. So if you had 3 Boons and 2 Banes, you'd roll as if just 1 Boon. I.e., normal Advantage. Honestly it rarely occurs, but it's not hard.

We'll see. I probably won't change this class, but I might consider houseruling that A/D stack in Shadowdark.