Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes & Heroes has a launch date! Mark your calendars for November 12th, 2024. 300+ more monsters for your D&D 2024, or Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition games, plus new horde rules and rules for heroic monsters who level up alongside you--whether they be allies, companions, or foes! Click here to follow on Kickstarter!
We now have a draft of the 32-page rulebook which will appear in the WOIN Starter Set. The three starter adventures are still being written, but the rulebook's first draft is done.
We're presenting it for feedback. Obviously, this is not the layout/presentation of the book, it's just a Google doc with a few shaded boxes. It won't look anything like this.
@Morrus I gave it a good read. Overall the draft is solid, although of course there are a few typos or stuff that may be clarified. If anything, the section that might need more work is the one related to monsters, where several entries refer to rules not present in this starter set.
More specifically:
- page 5 "!d6" dice
page 15, grappling hook, extra new line
page 15, oil flask, in the paragraph it's written oil "flash"
- the cost for each action, or alternatively stating that all actions take 1 action and explicitly state which take more
suppressive fire: as it is one character using suppressive fire can negate any number of opponents using the overwatch action against one ally. It seems a bit too much. Maybe it could work by targeting an enemy instead, for which the overwatch action is negated, and whose attacks suffer the cover penalty towards the ally
some guidelines of what constitutes cover would be useful. Is it enough to have say 10% of the body covered by a solid object, or it's more like 50%?
page 8 stabilization after getting unconscious. Is there a limit on how many times a character can be brought back to 1 HEALTH this way?
use of LUCK. Is there a maximum amount that can be spent on a single action? Also, it's not stated explicitly that the dice pool is reduced after spending LUCK this way. Finally there's no explanation on how to recover LUCK
SOAK changed a lot wrt the full rules. Here it directly subtracts an amount of damage dice before they are rolled. While this is an interesting approach, it's not employed for monsters, which list a static value as per the full rules. Also, there's no mention of 1 point of damage still being inflicted for each 6 rolled on a damage dice, even if the damage would be fully SOAKed
Afraid condition: it's not specified if a character has to use all action to run away from the source of fear, and if line of sight has to be interrupted before normal actions can resume
Tracking, searching and Scanning: a fixed Routine 10 regardless of the question may trivialize some important investigation aspects of the game. Shouldn't the difficulty be related to the kind of question asked, and the situation?
Magic, damage. It's not clear if one can apply a duration effect to a damaging spell, and how that would affect the damage inflicted. One could cast a spell for 0 PP for 1 point of damage, and spend as much as possible on duration, inflicting very large amounts of damage just out of this duration
Magic, summoning. Do the summoned creatures act on their own or do they require specific commands? Is concentration required to command them? Do they roll for their initiative, or act in the same round of the caster?
Psionic Power, Telepathic Message. No range is specified. Does it mean a character can communicate with another that is potentially in a different galaxy?
Chi Powers, Moon stance. Does the damage type change? Is it still affected by SOAK?
Equioment, Dressing Spray: is there a limit on how many times a character can benefit from this healing, per day? In the full rules it's clearly specified that a character can benefit only once per day from each source of healing.
I think this section would need most work, probably the monsters entries were copy/pasted from the full rules and as a result many things are not clear if this document is meant as stand alone.
For instance, many conditions are not described anywhere, the SOAK values are different than what described in the first pages, different forms of perception such as truesight are not explained, nor there's any mention of monster size, which sometimes affect the monster's actions. I won't go in further details because more than 50% of the monsters have issues of this kind.
@Morrus I gave it a good read. Overall the draft is solid, although of course there are a few typos or stuff that may be clarified. If anything, the section that might need more work is the one related to monsters, where several entries refer to rules not present in this starter set.
More specifically:
- page 5 "!d6" dice
page 15, grappling hook, extra new line
page 15, oil flask, in the paragraph it's written oil "flash"
- the cost for each action, or alternatively stating that all actions take 1 action and explicitly state which take more
suppressive fire: as it is one character using suppressive fire can negate any number of opponents using the overwatch action against one ally. It seems a bit too much. Maybe it could work by targeting an enemy instead, for which the overwatch action is negated, and whose attacks suffer the cover penalty towards the ally
some guidelines of what constitutes cover would be useful. Is it enough to have say 10% of the body covered by a solid object, or it's more like 50%?
page 8 stabilization after getting unconscious. Is there a limit on how many times a character can be brought back to 1 HEALTH this way?
use of LUCK. Is there a maximum amount that can be spent on a single action? Also, it's not stated explicitly that the dice pool is reduced after spending LUCK this way. Finally there's no explanation on how to recover LUCK
SOAK changed a lot wrt the full rules. Here it directly subtracts an amount of damage dice before they are rolled. While this is an interesting approach, it's not employed for monsters, which list a static value as per the full rules. Also, there's no mention of 1 point of damage still being inflicted for each 6 rolled on a damage dice, even if the damage would be fully SOAKed
Afraid condition: it's not specified if a character has to use all action to run away from the source of fear, and if line of sight has to be interrupted before normal actions can resume
Tracking, searching and Scanning: a fixed Routine 10 regardless of the question may trivialize some important investigation aspects of the game. Shouldn't the difficulty be related to the kind of question asked, and the situation?
Magic, damage. It's not clear if one can apply a duration effect to a damaging spell, and how that would affect the damage inflicted. One could cast a spell for 0 PP for 1 point of damage, and spend as much as possible on duration, inflicting very large amounts of damage just out of this duration
Magic, summoning. Do the summoned creatures act on their own or do they require specific commands? Is concentration required to command them? Do they roll for their initiative, or act in the same round of the caster?
Psionic Power, Telepathic Message. No range is specified. Does it mean a character can communicate with another that is potentially in a different galaxy?
Chi Powers, Moon stance. Does the damage type change? Is it still affected by SOAK?
Equioment, Dressing Spray: is there a limit on how many times a character can benefit from this healing, per day? In the full rules it's clearly specified that a character can benefit only once per day from each source of healing.
I think this section would need most work, probably the monsters entries were copy/pasted from the full rules and as a result many things are not clear if this document is meant as stand alone.
For instance, many conditions are not described anywhere, the SOAK values are different than what described in the first pages, different forms of perception such as truesight are not explained, nor there's any mention of monster size, which sometimes affect the monster's actions. I won't go in further details because more than 50% of the monsters have issues of this kind.
A quick thought while reading through the doc: since rolls are usually a combination of attribute and skill, shouldn't they be called something other than "attribute checks"? That term might suggest to the reader that attribute checks use only attributes.
docs.google.com
