We’ve made available the most recent version of the rules to our contributors. Please share your initial thoughts here. We’ll branch out into new topics based on initial discussions here.
Two things – firstly, with the emphasis on the raising and management of large groups of soldiers, i would expect to see more mass combat rules, siege and defense, large group morale, stuff like that. Is that in the works?
Secondly, by way of nitpicking, the ship-to-ship siege equipment has something quite odd:
Ballista
Rate of fire: 1/5 rounds with 4 crew; 1/8 rounds with 3 crew; 1/10 rounds with 2 crew
Range: 0-200 yards
Attacks as: As a fighter with a level equal to the number of crew firing
Damage: 3d6 shp or 3d6 hp
Ballistae can be operated by a variable number of crew, and this will affect rate of fire and attack throws as indicated above. The standard 3d6 damage reflects firing a solid missile. If ballistae are used against characters or monsters, they do 3d6 hp damage to all creatures in a 5’ line.
Excuse me while I assign 25 dudes to this weapon emplacement to make it hit every single time. Wouldn’t this work better with a minimum and recommended weapon crew number, and then have the quality of that crew determine to-hit? the old spelljammer rules went into this in some detail IIRC.
the whole system of being tasked to do something by one’s overlord is interesting, could provide some good story hooks.
Hi GragSmash! No rules set survives first contact with the enemy…er…readers.
Ballista: My intent was that you could have a crew of 1 and 4 people manning the ballista, with a variable rate of fire and accuracy depending on crew size. But I didn’t state a maximum crew size. Oops! Thanks for noticing. The ballista rules were those that were used in B/X D&D, but I have the Spelljammer rules so I’ll take a look at how they handled it.
Mass Combat: There is an entire set of mass combat rules, already written. They don’t fit in the already-very-long core rule book so it will have to be a separate rule book. We are still discussing how we’re going to distribute those - it might be a free download, or it might be a free supplement for game purchasers, or a low-priced product.
The mass combat rules themselves are for use with tabletop miniatures, where one stand equals around 100 footmen, 25 horses, or 10 giants. They use the same mechanisms as ACKS (hp, attack throws, armor class), but scaled up, and every spell and magic item in ACKS will work in the tabletop battles, with an appropriately scaled effect. The rules include siege warfare as well.
Alex, will we get to demo those mass combat rules at Gen Con?
oops, that last post was by me - the site must have kept me logged in as admin from yesterday…
The only thing holding us back from demo-ing the rules at GenCon is having sexy miniature figures. For the Auran Empire home campaign, I just used paper cut-outs, but I worry that might not be convention-worthy.
I noticed two things while looking over these two classes.
The Assassin lists Hit Dice as 1d6, but their Level Progression chart says 1d4.
Also, the Elven Nightblade doesn’t mention if they loose access to their thief abilities in heavy armor.
Thanks, Justin – good catches. The assassin gets 1d6 for hit points. The Elven Nightblade does lose acccess to thief abilities in heavy armor. I’ll fix these in the next draft.
in proficences theres one called Berserkergang, should that just be beserker?
In how to attack, the table says a lvl 10 char has an attack of 4+ but in the example it says 3+
I do like the idea that weapon damage works on size. Might be able to see more variety being used.
Berserkergang was the Viking term.
Kalt, great catch on the erroneous text next to the table. I’ve fixed it.
You have grasped our intent completely in standardizing weapon damage. All too often a player’s desire to use, e.g, a flail, morning star, axe, or spear is blocked by a game that rewards only using swords.
Sean is right on with “berserkergang”. Although if that turns out to be a point of confusion we could change the name.
thanks for explaining berserkergang guys.