So I have a friend hooked on ACKS and running it as a DM. He asked me a question today that I realized I couldn’t answer.
On the default character sheet, in the movement section, there is a place for Stealth and Climb.
What are they for? I could find no rules governing stealth movement, other than your standard movement rate which includes attempting to move quietly. So what is it for?
Cheers
Under the thief class description, it explains that thieves may move silently at up to half their combat movement rate. I’m pretty sure this is the “stealth” movement rate. Similarly, it says in the climb walls description that they can climb at up to 1/4 the combat movement rate, which would be the “climb” movement rate.
At least that’s what I think they are… special thief movement rates.
Agreed. I’ve used them more broadly than this, for other characters, though. However, I don’t think there’s specific support in the rule text for it. Each Campaign, law unto itself and all that…
The rates are, in fact, intended to be general rates. Characters might attempt to move stealthily or climb even if they are not thieves.
For instance, characters guided via Mountaineering proficiency would use climbing movement rate; characters attempting to take advantage of a monster’s Distracted state to sneak past would use stealth movement rate.
I did a bad job of making this clear in the rules text, though.
that much closer to ACKs 2nd Edition, eh? 
Hah. You know, I think the game could benefit from a second edition. But I feel morally obligated to release the Auran Empire supplement first. On the other hand, maybe it would be better to make AE compatible with a second edition! Ugh.
Glad I could help fill you with doubt and dread, my work here is done!
In all seriousness, though, if a 2nd edition involved only reimplementing classes, possibly changing how you interpret a given monster stat block, a campaign setting book should theoretically work for either. As long as the NPCs still have classes and levels and the monsters still have HD and treasure type, you could theoretically change what it means to be a 4th level Fighter or to be a 3HD monster or what’s found in TT E without making the sourcebook useless.
For example, if you suddenly decided that trying to roll 1d20 under a stat score (as I have seen other old-school rules systems do) that doesn’t invalidate Praetorian Jim-Bob being a 5th level fighter with a 16 strength. Or, if you decided that thieves are too weak and change up the skill mechanics to be more likely to succeed or it takes less XP to level up as a thief, a 2nd level thief in your world should still theoretically work.
Yeah, I didn’t really imagine changes to a 2nd edition to be that significant. More along the lines of clarification and re-editing. I think the desire to go back and make wholesale changes is akin to George Lucas wanting to go back and “improve” the original trilogy. You can’t improve on perfection!
