Playtest Report
We had a one-off session last night specifically to playtest the magic and combat systems from Blue Rose. We used the pre-generated characters and the very short adventure from Blue Rose Fast Play system.
For starters, we made considerable fun of the campaign world since none of the players are really into romantic fantasy. One player really enjoyed playing the rhy-cat (she's a big cat person), but everyone else changed details of their characters.
The magic system itself got a big thumbs up. The general consensus was that it was not unbalanced for a couple of reasons:
All the interesting arcana are fatiguing; the DC of the Will save goes up with character level so fatigue remains a danger. Failing the fatigue check means going normal->winded->fatigued->exhausted->unconscious; so casters ration their spells themselves.
Many spells are full-round actions; this means enemy spellcasters can be disrupted without having to ready actions ahead of time.
Even though the pregenerated characters only knew one-four spells, each spell could be used for three or four different effects out of the box, and I could set DCs for imaginative uses of the spells. This gave them a lot of flexibility, which the players appreciated.
What's more, everyone agreed the smaller number of spells was better. The core rules make it hard to be flexible (either a very small number spells known or need to prepare ahead of time) and the AU rules we have been using give you access to so many spells its hard to know them all (I'm constantly looking things up).
With the BR system, everyone can get pretty familiar with the spells and have a good array of tactical options without preparation. The players thought a useful way to adapt the system to our campaign setting is to sort the spells according to our unique criteria and then make some categories "cross-class" for certain spellcasters. That way, all casters get access to the same spells but will favor "appropriate" ones.
On the other hand, the damage track got a big thumbs down! Everyone *much* preferred hit points and being able to roll for damage. It was thought that the damage track might be acceptable for low hit point systems like Babylon 5, but not a good fit for heroic fantasy at all.
The players also liked the Conviction points. We use hero points in our regular game, but having a predictable, renewable pool was something the players really liked. They also were happy with the reroll use (I'm somewhat more specific about which rolls can be influenced by hero points). They were less happy about the ties to the alignment system.
Summary: Magic system good, damage system bad. I'll be doing some more design work to integrate the spells into my campaign world, may adopt the conviction points in addition to/in place of hero points. Cure and damaging spells will need the most work to convert, even with the conversion notes in the appendix.
Oh, and runecasters are going to be really painful to adapt; might need to rethink that whole role. I'll probably clean up the d20 version and post it once I've sorted the Section 15 properly and before I try converting it.
We had a one-off session last night specifically to playtest the magic and combat systems from Blue Rose. We used the pre-generated characters and the very short adventure from Blue Rose Fast Play system.
For starters, we made considerable fun of the campaign world since none of the players are really into romantic fantasy. One player really enjoyed playing the rhy-cat (she's a big cat person), but everyone else changed details of their characters.
The magic system itself got a big thumbs up. The general consensus was that it was not unbalanced for a couple of reasons:
All the interesting arcana are fatiguing; the DC of the Will save goes up with character level so fatigue remains a danger. Failing the fatigue check means going normal->winded->fatigued->exhausted->unconscious; so casters ration their spells themselves.
Many spells are full-round actions; this means enemy spellcasters can be disrupted without having to ready actions ahead of time.
Even though the pregenerated characters only knew one-four spells, each spell could be used for three or four different effects out of the box, and I could set DCs for imaginative uses of the spells. This gave them a lot of flexibility, which the players appreciated.
What's more, everyone agreed the smaller number of spells was better. The core rules make it hard to be flexible (either a very small number spells known or need to prepare ahead of time) and the AU rules we have been using give you access to so many spells its hard to know them all (I'm constantly looking things up).
With the BR system, everyone can get pretty familiar with the spells and have a good array of tactical options without preparation. The players thought a useful way to adapt the system to our campaign setting is to sort the spells according to our unique criteria and then make some categories "cross-class" for certain spellcasters. That way, all casters get access to the same spells but will favor "appropriate" ones.
On the other hand, the damage track got a big thumbs down! Everyone *much* preferred hit points and being able to roll for damage. It was thought that the damage track might be acceptable for low hit point systems like Babylon 5, but not a good fit for heroic fantasy at all.
The players also liked the Conviction points. We use hero points in our regular game, but having a predictable, renewable pool was something the players really liked. They also were happy with the reroll use (I'm somewhat more specific about which rolls can be influenced by hero points). They were less happy about the ties to the alignment system.
Summary: Magic system good, damage system bad. I'll be doing some more design work to integrate the spells into my campaign world, may adopt the conviction points in addition to/in place of hero points. Cure and damaging spells will need the most work to convert, even with the conversion notes in the appendix.
Oh, and runecasters are going to be really painful to adapt; might need to rethink that whole role. I'll probably clean up the d20 version and post it once I've sorted the Section 15 properly and before I try converting it.
