Adventurer Conqueror King v16 Rules Discussion

If all characters start with the Adventuring proficiency - “the character is well-equipped for a life of adventure” - having every character start out with a small sack containing the basic tools of the trade (flint & tinder, torches, rope, and a week of rations) seems reasonable. Then the initial shopping can focus on the class-specific tools, weapons, and armor, and beginning players won’t end up starving in the dark.
Experience can teach them why they need iron spikes, etc., and I think gaining that kind of knowledge is part of what makes the game fun.
I like the “shopping trip” sidebar. (RPG Haul Video!)

One of the things I’ve been writing for the Player Companion is “quick start” characters. Here’s an excerpt:


Selecting equipment and specializations can be time-consuming, especially for new players. As a faster alternative, we offer 8 pre-generated templates for each class, with weapons, armor, equipment, specializations, and spells ready for play. If you want to use these templates, you can skip step 8 (picking specializations and spells) and 9 (rolling for starting wealth and purchasing equipment) of character generation, and just roll 3d6 on the template table for your character’s class.
3d6 Roll Quick Start Character
3-4 Barbarian
Proficiencies: Berserkergang, Survival
Equipment: Double-bladed battleaxe, throwing axe, leather armor, thick wool cloak, wool shirt and trousers, boots
5-6 Thug
Proficiencies: Dungeon Bashing, Intimidation
Equipment: Huge flail, crossbow, case with 20 bolts, scarred leather armor, large sack, tunic, iron-toed boots
7-8 Corsair
Proficiencies: Swashbuckling, Seafaring
Equipment: Scimitar, shortbow, quiver with 20 arrows, 2 well-balanced daggers with boot-sheathes, leather armor, wineskin with good wine, 50’ rope, grappling hook, hammock, large sack, colorful silk girdle, high boots


I have completed the core classes. It would be very useful if anyone were so inclined as to imagine 8 different quick start templates for the assassin, explorer, bladedancer, bard, spellsword, nightblade, vaultguard, and craftpriest.

jedo, your idea for samples as a way to present kits is great - especially if they also appear on a table that shows how each is the permutation of whatever factors you think are important (spending a lot, spending a little, armor level, preparedness vs traveling light, etc.) The values are only in the document.
Alex, I also really like the templates. Do we imagine there is room for each approach - one in the core, one in the companion?
Autarch may have an intern who’d work for college-application recommendations (qualifications include getting a 5/5 on his history AP test and playing Chrystos in the White Box campaign) who could help with some of the data-entry kind of stuff - I’d also love to see a spreadsheet of monsters, for example.

Undercrypt, you asked “Has all of that wonderful economic modeling trickled down into the equipment table yet? Some of the prices are surprising. (Chain mail armor seems like it would require a lot more in materials, craftsmanship and time than two suits of leather armor, a barrel probably made by a cooper seems more valuable than a 10’ pole, a big stick is 2cp if you light it on fire but 1gp if you hit someone in the face with it, etc.)”
The answer is “yes and no”. Some of the prices have been adjusted, but others have not. Items for which we have commonly recorded prices from the classical and medieval ages are usually more accurate than esoteric D&D items. Items where the price has been noticeably reduced are usually more accurate. D&D notoriously inflates the prices of equipment. For example, a shortbow or longbow was a peasant’s weapon, but D&D has traditionally made them more expensive than swords. In ACKS, bows are much cheaper than in other versions of the game.
In order to keep ACKS’s prices somewhere similar to traditional D&D prices, I made the decision to assume that the equipment on the lists was good quality. The treasure section has information on low-quality weapons. For example, a knight’s sword is 10gp. A peasant’s sword is probably rusty, off-balance, and shoddily constructed, and therefore 4gp. Leather armor is 20gp, but a peasant’s makeshift rattling leather armor is only 12gp.
That said, we could certainly use another pass through if anyone sees any prices that seem seriously off-key.

“In order to keep ACKS’s prices somewhere similar to traditional D&D prices”
can you explain that a bit more to me. What would a “peasants” plate armor cost? What in game effect does a 4gp sword have against a 10gp one and why wouldn’t a 1st level PC opt just to buy the 4 gp one? Is 12gp leather armor actually, “leather armor -1?”. Isn’t a high quality weapon or armor exemplified by a +1 weapon? When I think of Arya’s sword “Needle” in Game of Thrones, I think, "ok…+1 sword, high quality delineated from a “common” weapon.
The only rational I can see for making 1st level PC’s (nay, 1st level fighters specifically) buy a 10gp sword, is that ACKs wants to put an understandable limit on what 1st level PC’s can start with; with that said, isn’t the best approach to adjust starting gold, rather than “break” a defining feature of ACKs, which is to provide a workable system for the costs of items in-game?
In CHAINMAIL’s man to man section (pg. 26), describes the “leader” as having a +1 on all dice and, “the best weapons and armor available for their origin and period.” This “leader” became the “veteran” 1st level fighter in d&d (getting +1 hp, saves, and damage over 0-level men). So, I don’t see the rational for trying to “price out” plate armor and a good sword and shield from a 1st level fighter; after all, the 1st level fighter is head and shoulders above 0-level men in prowress and has already proven himself in battle.
Inflated costs to weapons and armor only effect 1st level fighter PCs, not NPC’s and not really any other classes. What am I missing? It doesn’t even seem to effect all 1st level PC’s, just the “first” 1st level PC’s as second generation PC’s (those taken from the list of hirelings, henchmen, nephews of retired PC’s, presumably would have had their equipment bought from the blacksmith hireling of the original PC, who’s equipment costs are different from those on the equipment table!

Ahh, right then. “Show us the good stuff, lives are on the line.” (And, of course… http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0122.html )
Given that, the only things that jump out are a few odd supplies.
Barding ranges from twice as expensive as comparable armor (leather) to ten times as expensive as comparable armor (plate). The 10x side of the spectrum seems to make sense, making a rough guess on the surface area of a horse - are the low ends too cheap?
Super-expensive herbs. 5g for a pound of garlic makes baby Romans cry. 5c puts it in the same class as cheese. Saffron, super-expensive import, sure… and maybe Belladonna and Wolfsbane are rare and take skill to identify (and hopefully aren’t showing up on toast).
Grappling Hook (25g) seems like three or four Crowbars (1g) worth of material/effort.
If I think of the 10’ pole as a particularly strong and well-balanced piece of wood used for moving your barge and that could serve as a Lance in a pinch, then, sure, 1g. It really looks like a peasant’s get-rich-quick scheme, though - “For your cow, I give you not 10, but 11 long sticks! You get a deal!”
If I’ve got the right impression of the time period, the Spellbook looks super cheap at 2s/page. I suppose a realistic price might put it out of the hands of the 1st level casters, though. Maybe wealthy mages are subsidizing the book industry.

“What in game effect does a 4gp sword have against a 10gp one and why wouldn’t a 1st level PC opt just to buy the 4 gp one? Is 12gp leather armor actually, “leather armor -1?”. Isn’t a high quality weapon or armor exemplified by a +1 weapon?”
I think high quality weapons are represented on the standard equipment list. Low quality arms and armor actually have mechanical drawbacks, as described on page 237 of the v16 ACKS document. Maybe the equipment section needs an explanation that characters can opt for lower quality arms, but that they will have penalties like scavenged weapons.

@Bargle: I can think of two other possible solutions to this.
“Peasant” arms and armor simply have a chance to break and need repairs. Weapons break on attack throws of 1 and armor will break if struck with a natural attack throw of 20. The item then needs to be repaired to return to working order. Weapons and armor of quality are obviously not immune to wear and tear, but it’s assumed they are being mended and cared for between combat. Items of lower quality are on top of that prone to more catastrophic failure (blade shatters, pommel cracks, straps break, etc).
I also think that some of this can also be handled by the DM at the table. For example, clothes offer no mechanical benefit, but you’d be hard pressed to find a player willing to save his coin by wearing a 5cp loincloth when all his fellow companions are splurging on “resplendent red silk with golden threads”.

BARGLE: Can you explain that a bit more to me. What would a “peasants” plate armor cost? What in game effect does a 4gp sword have against a 10gp one and why wouldn’t a 1st level PC opt just to buy the 4 gp one? Is 12gp leather armor actually, “leather armor -1?”. Isn’t a high quality weapon or armor exemplified by a +1 weapon? When I think of Arya’s sword “Needle” in Game of Thrones, I think, "ok…+1 sword, high quality delineated from a “common” weapon.
It’s all about where one puts the baseline. My assumption is that the baseline should be a well-made weapon or armor for a man-at-arms. Masterfully made weapons would be above that and shoddily made weapons below it. Peasants would use shoddy weapons.
Historically, a peasant’s sword might cost 50 pence (2 shillings) while a knight’s sword might cost 500 pence (2L). Since 1 pence = 1sp (approximately) in ACKs, that’s a range of 5gp to 50gp for a sword. ACKS puts a baseline sword at about 10gp with no modifiers. Using the rules for Scavenging Treasure in the Treasure Section, a 4gp sword (off-balance, loose hilt, shoddy construction) would be -1 to attack, -1 to initiative, and break on a roll of 1d20. Obviously an adventurer would prefer to use the 10gp sword, but if you’re outfitting 10,000 peasants, 40,000gp might be more affordable than 100,000gp.
So while one might find historical evidence that “10gp is too much for a sword - that’s 3 times the monthly wage of a peasant, and we know peasants could and did own swords.” But the sword they owned was a 4gp (shoddy) sword, not a 10gp (well-made) sword.
This is one major problem with assessing historical prices - one can’t always tell quality and quality makes a huge difference. Horse prices, for instance, varied as much as car prices do in our own day. Nowadays you can buy a used clunker capable of driving yourself around for $5,000, or you can buy a Ferrari for $500,000. Likewise, in the Middle Ages you might see a horse go for 500 pence and another horse go for 500,000 pence. We’ve provided a reasonable range at 30gp to 250gp, which in modern terms is something like a Honda Civic to a Lexus. But that obviously leaves off nags and brokedown gimps on the one side and Bucephalus King of Horses on the other…
I hope that explains it.

Good notes on those prices, Undercrypt.
Blizack, thanks for pointing out the mechanics in the rules! I don’t think most folks have gotten that far yet.

Edit: I apologize if I’m missing some information from the v16 rules, like the stuff blizak mentioned in the above post, until I get my desktop’s Internet working, I’m stuck reading the rules on my old Mac laptop that doesn’t read .doc files well so I haven’t been able to get into the weeds as well as I’d liked–don’t worry, I won’t let that stop me from mouthing off about the direction of your game.

  1. Regarding 4gp-250gp swords: That’s a little too much detail for what I would use I think, but as long as I can hire a blacksmith and can make 100 “generic” 10 gp sword for my high level PC without the math coming out wrong (i.e. It costs more to hire a blacksmith than it does to just go around to random shops, I’m cool with it.
    As I mentioned, my preference is for a single number (long sword = 10gp) and have the math work out rather than get bogged down in the difference between a 4gp sword and a 10gp sword. I just don’t want to be playing ‘papers and paychecks’–cause it’s not just swords, I would rather not have an inventory of 23 ogre toes, 13 spleens, 3 bags of grain for my peasants on the north side of the slope, etc, etc. I just want to outfit my army with my adventuring loot saved up over 10 levels and not be counting pennies and individual body parts. I’ve read some writing by you or tavis toward not getting too bogged down in the minutae, so I trust your direction.
  2. Honestly, when it comes to equipment, I’d be happy if nothing cost less than 1gp (and if that means garlic is sold by the bushel, so be it, or if the equipment list for 10’ poles are 1gp for a faggot of 10. Anything to make the math easier to do in my head. Too me, that’s one of the beautiful things in the FFC. Everything is in GP, makes for easy army construction on the fly–more 0d&d less ad&d (I shudder at the thought of trying to build a castle from the DMG). It means I can just hand a player a 9th level baron with 100,000gp and have him build a barony for a war-game in 15 minutes.
  3. unrelatedly. I notice that 1st level fighters are called, “men at arms”. You aren’t worried about people confusing 0-level hirelings with “men at arms” by using that level title? Are all, “men at arms” suppose to be 1st level fighters in ACKs?

It is almost like there are two equipment lists- one for shopping (appearing in the Player Character section) that is geared toward ‘baseline’ items. And then another one that is more in the DM section that covers the full range of objects the PCs might encounter. Like if they decide to attack a peasant village and loot them for all their peasant swords.
Differing quality items only come up as finds, and a Referee could choose to ignore that rule entirely. But as far as streamlining the gearing-up phase for a new character, only presenting them with relevant information makes sense.
Personally I am a huge fan of in depth equipment lists, and also the silver standard for FRPGs. I like the idea that in a desperate brawl my character might be able to grab that 5 copper cast iron frying pan from his pack and clock a kobold with it. But that can just be an alternate equipment list where the prices still match the overarching price model.

I think the list prices for standard items with price modifiers for scavenged or otherwise shoddy items works fine. I do wonder if there should be masterwork/superior quality items for weapons and armor. There’s a huge gap between a normal sword at 10 gp and a sword +1, with an indeterminate value but a minimum fair value of well more than 10,000 gp (5000 gp for the enchantment cost, 5000 gp for the monster parts, plus 1 month (or half a month with a formula) of time by either a spellcaster of 9th level or a spellcaster working under the supervision of a 9th level caster). The 2L (=50 gp) knight’s sword might be worth including; certainly, real world swords made by master smiths or using unusually high quality metals were greatly prized and treated as worth more than an average, non-shoddy sword, and that’s without the power that an actually magical weapon would add.
On a related note, according to the scavenged equipment rules, shoddy armor can break when a character rolls a 1 on an appropriate check… but I’m not sure what that means for armor. (I understand a shoddy sword breaking on a 1 on an attack roll). Is that about saving throws? Roll a 1 on an appropriate saving throw and your shoddy armor breaks makes sense, although it’s likely relatively rare. Maybe shoddy armor should break when an opponent rolls a 20 on an attack roll?

Personally, I don’t like fiddly bits between magical and non magical swords. An wonderfully crafted sword (250gp) with a gold dragon Mahogony hilt with sapphire eyes (2000gp gems) works for me. Giving one of those to a trusted retainer for services rendered might increase his loyalty/morale by +1, but doesn’t go as far as a magic sword would (perhaps loyalty increase and +1 hit/dmg)
What’s the GP sale value of a +1 sword? You mentioned the creation cost, they aren’t the same right?

I don’t think a sale value is listed for magic items. I presume that the creation costs set a floor for a magic item–presumably, it’s worth the time and energy to make magic items despite their costs, and that implies that PCs are expected to value magic items at more than their creation costs. But it doesn’t directly tell us what they end up being worth, just that it is presumably at least equal to the creation costs. (Applying the rule of 33 suggests that a sword +1 with 10K in creation costs might be worth 10,300 gp… but I’m skeptical. I bet it’s worth more than that.)

I haven’t reached the number-crunching economic goodness yet, but with a creation cost of 10K+, just how big is the market for magic swords? How many people in the city (barony, empire) can afford to drop that much on something like a sword? How many mages/priests are there powerful enough and rich enough to create them? If the answer to either of those questions is “extremely few,” then magic swords aren’t mass market items that will be bought and traded like common goods - they’ll be treated like great works of art. Extremely valuable far beyond the creation cost, traceable histories, lists of known owners, auctioned off when necessary to absurdly high bids, named (the Hope Diamond, the Messiah Stradivarius), etc.
I guess a better question might be at what level of magic does that occur, because I suspect there’s a point where it undoubtedly would. If the Magic Sword +1 is a diamond - expensive, yes, but there are enough people who can afford them to make a trade of it - at what point is the magic so rare and powerful that it reaches Stradivarius level? Is it +3? +5?
That wonderfully crafted but non-magical jewel-encrusted sword sounds like a candidate for the Reserve Experience Fund. I don’t think I mentioned how much I like that rule. Using role-playing spending to soften the blow of mid- to high-level character death is gleeful.

Do we really need generic +x magic swords?
I have to review the monster section but I would like to see no differentiation between “pluses” needed to hit a monster, I mean instead of +1/+2/…/+5 or better I would just like “hit only by magic” and for really special monster “hit only by a weapon forged in the pools of wisdom on the moon” or something like that… :slight_smile:

Regarding magic item sale, the way I’ve handled it is to treat magic item sale something like the sale of a stolen used car: Very suspicious. Most magic items were looted from somewhere. Who has a prior claim of ownership? Who is going to come looking for it? Many magic items are cursed. Is this one cursed? The only way to know for sure is a lengthy and expensive ID process (costing 1,000gp). In short: “You found this WHERE?” and “if this magic item is so great, why are you selling it?”
Finally, market prices would tend to be depressed by the fact that with a sample or formula prices are halved. The very best (most efficient) manufacturers would set the prices. So, for instance, if someone were to want to sell a magic sword, I’d start with the cost (5,000gp), halve it (2,500gp) and then subtract the cost for an ID to make sure its not cursed (1,000) and make that the opening offer.
There’s obviously no real world economic example of magic items, but most high-value hard to appraise items in our world (cars, jewelry, fancy watches) function similarly. You don’t get nearly what it’s “worth”. As a result, only desperate adventurers sell their items. Most with an item they dont want give it to hirelings, or give it away as a gift (for back-up XP for the back-up PC).
I haven’t been explicit about this in the ACKS rules…should I be? Let me know what you think.

I never much liked the idea of buying and selling magical items, either. It works in certain settings, I suppose. I would recommend explicitly spelling out the objections to the idea in the rules, but maybe providing simple guidelines to prices for people who absolutely must have them.

Alex - I think you should go for it, even it’s a simple blurb like what you have here. If the DM has a list of creation costs (or if that could be included in the item lists), the DM would have everything he needs to adjudicate magic sales.
I’m not a big fan of magic shops either - my world’s are usually “low magic”. But I see part of the premise of ACKS as ‘D&D taken to it’s logical conclusions’ - rulers are powerful, the economy makes sense, tactics and the military rules will take into account the existence of magic. It’s only sensible that adventurers will eventually stockpile enough magic items to sell (if not the PC’s, then certainly some of the other NPC adventuring companies in the world).