Fey Square

Devlog #3

Oct 08

First off, there’s a new Preview Edition up for download. The only changes are the addition of the paladin’s spell progression (which somehow eluded me for two years) and a spelling correction.

All the missing monsters have been taken care of. From there I’ll be hand picking “iconic” monsters that I believe should be in the book but it’s only about 10 creatures or so. I mentioned that I will be adding WP and NWP so the rest of the day will be spent culling the best proficiencies to create a sort of “definitive” list of skills that could carry the average fantasy campaign from level 1 to 20.

HawkWolf (my editor) is at the tail end of the spells. Once that’s finished, the spells will be added to the preview version which will balloon the damn thing from 180 pages to over 600 pages! The book will shrink once we format the thing into two columns but this book is going to be massive and we haven’t even added in items or monsters yet!.

2E: Swords & Sorcery?

Oct 06

JaybeeGeneral 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with the ruleset when I’m finished and it hit me: adapt 2E into swords & sorcery. Just throwing around some ideas here:

1. Level cap. Once you hit your “title” level and stop gaining hit dice you don’t level up anymore. There’ll be some means of acquiring power and proficiencies but at this point you’re a legendary hero.

2. Arcane magic is corrupt; if divine magic comes from the gods then arcane magic comes from devils. Anyone can learn magic but even magic items corrupt the soul. Good wizards balance this by protecting people against evil magic but even they lose a little something in the dark pacts they must make. Truly vile wizards physically transform as they take on the image of the devils they bind and worship.

3. Monsters are horrifying. Humanoids, monstrous humanoids like goblins, and giants are the only creatures mankind has extended contact with. Horrible, reality defying things like dragons, aberrations, demons, and behirs are truly terrible to behold and cause men to normal men to flee in terror.

4. Bringing back OD&D rules about high-HD creatures versus low HD creatures. In OD&D, you could make a number of attacks against 1HD or fewer creatures equal to your HD. If a 5th level hero was surrounded by 6 orcs he could attack 5 of them. This makes large battles easier to manage and the player feel truly powerful when he single-handily takes on 20 low-level guys without being overwhelmed in one round.

5. Wizards are warriors who dabble in magic. I like images of old men with swords but D&D’s wizard is a frail thing who sneezes and dies. S&S wizards are often skilled in combat as much as they are with rituals.

6. Everything resets after an adventurer. Warriors spend their money on women and food, wizards upgrade their laboratories, and priests give it away. I’ll adopt an Arneson rule where experience is gained not after earning money, but spending it.

7. Sci-fi theme. I love European fantasy in comics like Thorgal and Heavy Metal where there’s usually a science fiction bent. In an ancient age lost to mankind, technology from an ancient civilization (Atlanteans?) existed.

8. Monsters as gods. Why is a hill giant or winter wolf not considered a deity? We’re talking about creatures that could wreck havoc across whole countries. The adult red dragon sleeping in a cave outside the village isn’t fodder for the heroes, it’s a minor god.

I’ve got more ideas rattling around in the bone box that I’ll be putting to paper soon. The idea is to turn 2E from high-flying fantasy in other planes to something ugly, alien, and romantic. I don’t like gritty for the sake of being gritty but high magic, do-anything campaigns takes away some of the wonder of the unknown.

Devlog #2

Oct 05

JaybeeDevlog 1 Comment

Finished about 10 monsters today, rewrote the spell Symbol to match the updated Spell Compendium IV, and sketched the image entry for “Purple Worm” and will color it soon. Most of the monsters left are animals and I’ll probably just transcribe the entirety of Mammals, both normal and small, to the monster list since they’re referenced so many times by summoning spells. Once the 20 or so monsters left are finished I’m going to be adding iconic monsters I believe I should keep like pegasus and argus-eyes (my OGL version of beholders). With monsters finished I can move on to editing items to lighten my editor’s work load.

I’ve been thinking about seriously adding proficiencies to the book. I’m still not interested in the other optional material, but proficiencies were one of the defining optional rules that separated 2e from 1e whereas most optional rules were cut material from 1e. Non-weapon proficiencies will probably be the only optional rule I decide to add.

Devlog Update #1

Oct 03

JaybeeDevlog 1 Comment

Finished a few of the missing monsters, bringing me down to about 30 left. I’ve made a few plans about categorizing the monsters because I feel simple alphabetical order won’t do. They will be listed by category (humanoids, monstrous humanoids, fae, abominations, elementals, etc.) and then listed alphabetically.

Although I got away without using ability scores for monsters up until now, I’ll be creating a system for doing so. Essentially monsters will be “average” with a stat array of 10, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8: each type has bonuses/penalties (example, animals can never have more than 4 int and undead always have constitution 0) and then each individual monster has abilities/penalties. For example, a human bandit will have Str +2, con +1, int -1. Like 3e there’ll be an “elite” array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 for “boss” monsters. In general, monster ability scores are useless because the average monster won’t have any noticeable bonuses/penalties not already listed under their writeup. This information is for creating new monsters or customizing existing ones: maybe the PCs hire a monster so his individual scores are necessary.

I need to remind myself to update rules on vision and maybe write a section on stealth. It’s widely believed that move silently/hide were essential to stealth but that’s not true. There’s already a chart on the limitations of vision but there’s a few things I need to add like spotting light in darkness. On a moonless night in flat terrain a human can see a candle from about 3 miles.