JoeGKushner
Adventurer
The Black Company campaign setting is the latest entry in the Mythic Vistas series by Green Ronin. This book comes in at $44.95 in hardcover format at 320 black and white pages.
In terms of editing, despite having three proofreaders, it needs another round. I’m a very casual reader and there aren’t too many game mechanic mistakes here, as a matter of fact, I’ve only seen one, in reference to a DC check being +10 in one spot and +20 in another. Other stuff like the heal skill missing and wrong words, missing words, page @@ references are annoying; much like it was with Conan. Is it a curse?
In terms of art, we have a fantastic cover by Wayne Reynolds and the interior is by some of the industries best including Toren Atikinson, Kent Burle, Lisa Wood and others. The art fits the mood of the series in that it’s dark and moody, but like the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide, the artwork is sometimes too dark. The chapter breaks include a whole page devoted to the break and a full-page illustration following it. It looks good but isn’t the most effective use of space. Ditto for the two pages of ads at the back. Not bad at all though for a 320 page book.
On one hand, it acts as a bible of sorts to the Glen Cook’s dark and grim fantasy series, the Black Company. For those who’ve never read it, the Black Company novels follow the exploits of the mercenary group, the Black Company. It’s a world where wizards keep their true names secret and ancient dark powers arise and make mad bids for world domination. Much like George R.R. Martin’s Game of Throne series, Glen Cook isn’t afraid to get his characters dirty and it’s a dangerous world where morals aren’t of much use.
The Black Company book includes everything you need to know about the company including a timeline for the world, a map, summaries of the novels, character write ups and details of the setting proper. Now for those who’ve read the novels, that’s a lot of information, as a matter of fact, it’s more than the novels themselves give you sometimes. For example, there are no world maps in the novels. Glen Cook’s writing is much more character focused as opposed to say Robert Jordan where region details are rich and numerous.
On the other hand, the book acts as a great example of how to mechanically craft a dark fantasy game using the d20 engine. That includes working the classes up from the ground. In some cases, the changes are minor like some tweaks to the barbarian, now the berserker, or the rogue, now the thief, or even the fighter, who gains the ability to command. In others, it follows traditional D&D roles like the ranger, but due to the low magic setting, takes away their magical abilities and replaces them with abilities similar to sneak attack. It has a wizard, but one that uses a different magic system.
Some of the classes native to the setting are similar to others in the core rules. For example, while the monk is no where to be found, we have the weapon master, a specialist whose abilities include flurry of blows with any weapon that the character has weapon focus in. Other classes fill important niches include the noble, scout, and jack-of-all-trades. Classes that won’t be going toe to toe with the fighters, but whose talents make them vital in capturing essential qualities of the novels. Besides, people have been looking for an ‘Expert’ type class that had some other abilities.
New skills and feats are included. In feats, we have two new types, command and magic. The command feats are used to add bonuses to your unit. These range from Battlefield Command, where your unit gains a bonus to attack and damage to Disciplined Troops, where your unit gains a morale bonus and a bonus to their attack rolls. For magic, these go with the magic system itself. Some are just to know magic. Take the character Raven from the novels. Not a full fledge wizard, but one who had the Dabbler feat giving him the ability to take ranks in the Magic skill and giving them spell energy, also detailed in the magic system.
Some of the feats play off on the innate power wizards have. Take Defy Time. Depending on the Magnitude of the wizard, they can do anything from slow down their aging to becoming effectively immortal or the Ritual of Taking, where you can create an entity like the Limper by giving another spellcaster the Taken Template.
Many of these feats are useful for a standard campaign. Want to use Power Attack with a ranged weapon? Take Gut Shot. Want to dazzle your enemies with your sword skill? While Weapon Mastery requires Wis 13, and a BAB 15+ among other things, it grants a +3 attack bonus and a +6 damage bonus. Powerful but at those levels, probably balanced for a fighter.
For skills, Concentration works a little differently due to the way spells work. There are no spell levels so it’s a flat DC 20 + the damage dealt and a failed check increases the Magic Use DC by +4 for each failed check. Another skill changed from the default is Speak Language. Unlike most fantasy settings, there is no common tongue here so you need to know a few different languages. Details on other areas, like Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession gets the run down, in addition to the new skills like Command and Research.
See, in this setting, people try to hide things. There’s power in true names. Research is a good way to find out things. But the problem is that sometimes you’ve got to kill people, sometimes a whole lot of people, to get access to those ancient and moldy tomes so you need command to control your units on the field.
Due to the nature of magic here, there are several magic skills. This includes Detect Magic and Ghost Sound, things that might be zero level spells in another setting, to Magic Use, Prestidigitation and Resistance.
In terms of completeness, these core elements, classes, feats, and skills, do a fair job of noting the differences between this setting and a regular one. It notes which epic feats are suitable, as well as noting which feats just aren’t in style with the Black Company. It includes information on other classes that might be imported to the setting and what changes happen to them, ranging from being cut off from their innate powers like wizards and psions, to social restrictions like the noble. Most of the alternative core classes, those in essence covered by the Master Class series, are covered.
What discussion on game mechanics would be complete without a nod towards the PrCs in the setting? We have some short ones like the Artificer, a wizard who embeds spells into items, as well as the Deceiver, a religious killer for the demon-goddess Kina, as well as master commanders like the Great General. This isn’t to say that they’re all five level PrCs though. Take the Nightstalker. Since there are no spellcasting assassins per the DMG, we have this master of stealth. Others might want to turn towards the Sword Master, a warrior whose bond with his sword is both martial and mental and allows them to master the weapon with things like increasing the critical multiple to spending more action points in around.
Outside of the Great General, we have a few other soldier options like the Topkick, a squad leader whose mastery of the small unit enables him to do things like ambush his enemies and improve the rankings of his squad. Another one, the Veteran, is a more experienced soldier whose skills go into surviving, first by knowing his enemy and bonus actions points, to gaining bonus hit points and bonus feats.
For the most part, classes follow standard d20 mechanics. They have a few with medium saves, but no odd bab rankings like the Samurai from MEG’s setting, the Hunt. They have starting silver instead of gold, to reflect the setting’s standard, but don’t’ have any starting packages like they do in the Player’s Handbook. Their classes could be worked into a standard campaign, but redundancies would have to be watched for. The Black Company fighter for example, still has d10 hit dice, good fort save, and strong bab, but also gains more action points, lack of flexibility on their first feat selection, which goes instead to command, and more skill points than the standard D&D fighter. You would never want to play in a campaign that allows both types of fighters because anyone who picked a D&D fighter doesn’t understand the benefits lost. Heck, even if you throw out the bonus action points and the first level feat, the bonus skill points might make up for that.
Other cases I don’t see a problem. For example, I hate the D&D ranger. I’ve never liked the whole spellcasting thing. The ranger from this book could work side by side with the standard ranger because his focus is more martial, more of a wilderness survivor.
There are a lot of little things though. Take races. Normally in d20, you pick your race from among a wide variety. Here, you pick a background. Since everyone’s human, that means you get a bonus feat. Here, in your background, your bonus feat and skill points are restricted, but you get a bonus. Take the Criminal. They get four skill points and the skills mentioned, ranging from Hide to Sleight of Hand, are now all class skills for them. They also gain the ability to use Sleight of Hands as move actions and only get a –10 penalty when attempting to use it as a free action and a +2 bonus on Initiative checks with a favored class of thief. Now the restrictions can be painful but the benefits are well worth it and this is something to seriously review for anyone looking to mimic d20 Modern background or Occupations.
Other changes abound. How about dropping alignment and using allegiances ala d20 Modern? How about using Sanity Points based on the Unearthed Arcana system? How about using a silver standard instead of a gold one? What about Action Points from d20 Modern and other sources? These borrowed bits from other areas make the campaign read like someone’s highly modified D&D campaign and act as a great example of how to customize the engine for your own use.
In terms of good and bad, when looking at the silver standard, the book does an excellent job of noting that this is a low cash world and extremely low magic world. On one hand, this is excellent in keeping with the theme of the book. However, as D&D isn’t really about a 8th level character hoping that his chainmail saves him, it fails in the game area. Sure, the authors do a great job of providing numerous masterwork benefits that can be brought into the game, but unless the GM does a lot of training on his players, or his players are willing to adapt tactics that are not necessarily D&D based, he will have problems.
If the GM goes according to the equipment and treasure guide, most characters aren’t going to see full plate. It’s rare and expensive. So characters are going to get hit often. Unlike some d20 variants, like the Wheel of Time, characters don’t have any innate defensive bonuses.
Critical hits work different here too. A natural 20 or a failed Fortitude save when the character takes Constitution damage, call for a roll on the critical hit table. If you like Rolemaster, Warhammer or the old Mayfair Blood & Steel critical hit tables, you’ll love these. One table with d% roll, example effects, and a breakdown for blunt, cutting, or piercing wounds. These range from the low of no additional effect or being dazed or stunned, to having your head crushed and death in a number of round equal to your Con modifier.
This is in many ways, the problem I’ve been trying to work through with Dark Legacies. Low armor systems and critical hit systems always favor the GM. I’m the GM and I’m saying that. There’s just too much chance for the GM to roll critical hits and if the GM isn’t cheating and saving his players, too easy to kill or cripple the players. In a regular game, that’s not as problematic as it is here. There aren’t a lot of people capable of casting Heal or Raise Dead. At least, not in keeping with the spirit of the game.
Other bits make things more difficult like Massive Damage. Here, it’s your Con + your level. Fail the roll by 5 or less and you’re at 0 hit points and disabled. Fail by 6 or more and you’re out and dying. Good news is that it’s not at –10 hit points that you die. Bad news is that it’s when your Con reaches 0 and all damage you take after being at 0 hit points goes right to Con. For example, you don’t want to be ambushed. See, if you get hit during a round you’re surprised, you’ve got to make a Massive Damage roll, even if you haven’t hit your threshold yet. This accurately simulates lower level characters taking out dangerous foes but can obviously work against the players as well.
My take on the magic system; Innovative but time consuming and the player and GM better work out a few common spells for the characters. Let’s start with the wizard class. They have poor bab, poor fort, medium ref (makes sense no?), and good will. Unlike D&D, they have no spells per level. Instead, they have the ability, Student of Wizardry. They have spell energy equal to their Constitution modifier +1 and they gain a bonus of +2 to Magic Use checks. At first level, and every two levels after, they get Talents as bonus feats. They gain Magnitude’s at a fair pace, gaining First at 4th, Second at 10th, and Third at 16th. At each Magnitude, the wizard gains some bonuses like Magic Use insight bonuses or extra spell energy.
So you’ve got Magnitude, Magic Use, and Spell Energy right? What do you do with it? Spells go through six stages. Choose the spell and effect, get the effect’s DC, get the Casting Time, cast the spell, roll your Magic Use check, finish spell effects, and roll the spell’s drain and deduct your current spell energy from the total. The reaming drain is nonlethal damage.
Let’s say that your just staring off as a Student of Wizardry and have the Force. You can in essence create a Spiritual Hammer or a Magic Missile that when used for damage, uses a ranged touch attack and does 1d4 nonleathal. However, you can increase area, target, damage, range, duration, props or turn the nonlethal damage to lethal damage. Each change increases the Magic Use roll. For example, making it fatal is +10 right off the bat. If you want to increase the die type, it’s a +5 modifier, but only a +2 per additional die, for each additional die. So you could get, if I’m reading it right, a 1d6 lethal hammer for a total of +15 to the Magic Use roll.
The great thing is that in many ways, these abilities act as a Cosmic Power Pool in Champions. You can do almost anything with your power, but you might not be able to cast it if you get too greedy. See, you take 1d8 (+ Magic Use DC /5). So in this case, you’d take 1d8+3 points of subdual damage for a 1d6 lethal force hammer.
The fantastic thing is though, you can blend the talents together. The math gets complicated and I would have to quote Cartman from Southpark if any of my players continuously failed to write down vital modifiers ahead of time with something like, “Bad Monkey” followed by a whack to said player’s head with a two by four.
In terms of campaign tools, I think the book goes the wrong way. We have some rules for unit combat and mass combat, but they’re designed for a low magic campaign and to be honest, can’t compete with Cry Havoc for unit scales or Fields of Blood for larger battles. And that’s okay because they don’t have to and it prevents the reader from having to reference another book.
It’s when dealing with the campaign itself that I think the book fails. Look at the fiction. Many characters come and go. To simulate that, and the potential death factor, you might need something like the old Dark Sun Character Tree, briefly mentioned in Unearthed Arcana. It’s simply no fun when you’re 10th level fighter gets killed because he was ambushed and rolled a 1 on his fortitude save. No options like that are covered.
In the same vein, it doesn’t address down time or power levels. See, in the novels, years pass as the company builds it’s troop strength up and looks for ways to win. How do you handle character advancement during those times? What’s worse, sometimes a character shows up out of the blue or just starts and he’s the best. Take Raven for example. While the levels reflect him at his peak, he’s dangerous at a fighter 8/jack-of-all-trades 4/wizard 4. In terms of power level, let’s look at One-Eye at the peak of his abilities, a wizard 15 artificer 2, a man whose spent years fighting to live. Now compare him to Tobo, a youth who comes along at the end of the series and is gifted. He’s a wizard 26, weapon master 7, sword master 7. How do you have a game where these two individuals are side by side? It makes great fiction but terrible gaming. No time is spent working on those issues which weakens the capturing of the game’s feel.
In terms of what to do, the book spends a fair amount of time on various points that the GM could model after the Black Company novels, but I think that’s the wrong direction. While the book goes into a bit of detail on how to form a company, it doesn’t really go into how best to run one. For example, how about several sample companies that aren’t the Black Company that the players could either be a part of or create at low levels? On one hand, this would be difficult. What about military rankings and what they might mean to the company? We get a few generic titles but no real details.
To a certain point though, that’s to be expected. Despite their warrior bent, the real appeal of the novels is the interaction of the characters. Much like say the anime/manga Berserk, the army is merely a prop for storytelling. We see some general information and at times some detailed information and we know that the army needs food to survive and that sometimes the teller of the tales isn’t always truthful. However, those are the props to move the story along, not the story in and of itself. Where one author might spend twenty pages detailing the clothing and significance of the banners of the company, Glen Cook moves into what the company is doing.
In the end, the book captures the Black Company for d20. The classes, magic system, NPC write ups, campaign details, map, and history, are all of great use to someone who wants to recreate the Black Company as a campaign model. The lack of details on how to handle characters of different power levels, frequent character death, healing for high level characters, and campaign models that may not follow the fiction of the Black Company, is lacking.
For me, because I highly enjoy the Black Company, I recommend this book. The magic system, critical table, and other touches allow you more options when either running a pure Black Company campaign, or when trying to emulate a campaign where magic is more rare.
In terms of editing, despite having three proofreaders, it needs another round. I’m a very casual reader and there aren’t too many game mechanic mistakes here, as a matter of fact, I’ve only seen one, in reference to a DC check being +10 in one spot and +20 in another. Other stuff like the heal skill missing and wrong words, missing words, page @@ references are annoying; much like it was with Conan. Is it a curse?
In terms of art, we have a fantastic cover by Wayne Reynolds and the interior is by some of the industries best including Toren Atikinson, Kent Burle, Lisa Wood and others. The art fits the mood of the series in that it’s dark and moody, but like the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide, the artwork is sometimes too dark. The chapter breaks include a whole page devoted to the break and a full-page illustration following it. It looks good but isn’t the most effective use of space. Ditto for the two pages of ads at the back. Not bad at all though for a 320 page book.
On one hand, it acts as a bible of sorts to the Glen Cook’s dark and grim fantasy series, the Black Company. For those who’ve never read it, the Black Company novels follow the exploits of the mercenary group, the Black Company. It’s a world where wizards keep their true names secret and ancient dark powers arise and make mad bids for world domination. Much like George R.R. Martin’s Game of Throne series, Glen Cook isn’t afraid to get his characters dirty and it’s a dangerous world where morals aren’t of much use.
The Black Company book includes everything you need to know about the company including a timeline for the world, a map, summaries of the novels, character write ups and details of the setting proper. Now for those who’ve read the novels, that’s a lot of information, as a matter of fact, it’s more than the novels themselves give you sometimes. For example, there are no world maps in the novels. Glen Cook’s writing is much more character focused as opposed to say Robert Jordan where region details are rich and numerous.
On the other hand, the book acts as a great example of how to mechanically craft a dark fantasy game using the d20 engine. That includes working the classes up from the ground. In some cases, the changes are minor like some tweaks to the barbarian, now the berserker, or the rogue, now the thief, or even the fighter, who gains the ability to command. In others, it follows traditional D&D roles like the ranger, but due to the low magic setting, takes away their magical abilities and replaces them with abilities similar to sneak attack. It has a wizard, but one that uses a different magic system.
Some of the classes native to the setting are similar to others in the core rules. For example, while the monk is no where to be found, we have the weapon master, a specialist whose abilities include flurry of blows with any weapon that the character has weapon focus in. Other classes fill important niches include the noble, scout, and jack-of-all-trades. Classes that won’t be going toe to toe with the fighters, but whose talents make them vital in capturing essential qualities of the novels. Besides, people have been looking for an ‘Expert’ type class that had some other abilities.
New skills and feats are included. In feats, we have two new types, command and magic. The command feats are used to add bonuses to your unit. These range from Battlefield Command, where your unit gains a bonus to attack and damage to Disciplined Troops, where your unit gains a morale bonus and a bonus to their attack rolls. For magic, these go with the magic system itself. Some are just to know magic. Take the character Raven from the novels. Not a full fledge wizard, but one who had the Dabbler feat giving him the ability to take ranks in the Magic skill and giving them spell energy, also detailed in the magic system.
Some of the feats play off on the innate power wizards have. Take Defy Time. Depending on the Magnitude of the wizard, they can do anything from slow down their aging to becoming effectively immortal or the Ritual of Taking, where you can create an entity like the Limper by giving another spellcaster the Taken Template.
Many of these feats are useful for a standard campaign. Want to use Power Attack with a ranged weapon? Take Gut Shot. Want to dazzle your enemies with your sword skill? While Weapon Mastery requires Wis 13, and a BAB 15+ among other things, it grants a +3 attack bonus and a +6 damage bonus. Powerful but at those levels, probably balanced for a fighter.
For skills, Concentration works a little differently due to the way spells work. There are no spell levels so it’s a flat DC 20 + the damage dealt and a failed check increases the Magic Use DC by +4 for each failed check. Another skill changed from the default is Speak Language. Unlike most fantasy settings, there is no common tongue here so you need to know a few different languages. Details on other areas, like Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession gets the run down, in addition to the new skills like Command and Research.
See, in this setting, people try to hide things. There’s power in true names. Research is a good way to find out things. But the problem is that sometimes you’ve got to kill people, sometimes a whole lot of people, to get access to those ancient and moldy tomes so you need command to control your units on the field.
Due to the nature of magic here, there are several magic skills. This includes Detect Magic and Ghost Sound, things that might be zero level spells in another setting, to Magic Use, Prestidigitation and Resistance.
In terms of completeness, these core elements, classes, feats, and skills, do a fair job of noting the differences between this setting and a regular one. It notes which epic feats are suitable, as well as noting which feats just aren’t in style with the Black Company. It includes information on other classes that might be imported to the setting and what changes happen to them, ranging from being cut off from their innate powers like wizards and psions, to social restrictions like the noble. Most of the alternative core classes, those in essence covered by the Master Class series, are covered.
What discussion on game mechanics would be complete without a nod towards the PrCs in the setting? We have some short ones like the Artificer, a wizard who embeds spells into items, as well as the Deceiver, a religious killer for the demon-goddess Kina, as well as master commanders like the Great General. This isn’t to say that they’re all five level PrCs though. Take the Nightstalker. Since there are no spellcasting assassins per the DMG, we have this master of stealth. Others might want to turn towards the Sword Master, a warrior whose bond with his sword is both martial and mental and allows them to master the weapon with things like increasing the critical multiple to spending more action points in around.
Outside of the Great General, we have a few other soldier options like the Topkick, a squad leader whose mastery of the small unit enables him to do things like ambush his enemies and improve the rankings of his squad. Another one, the Veteran, is a more experienced soldier whose skills go into surviving, first by knowing his enemy and bonus actions points, to gaining bonus hit points and bonus feats.
For the most part, classes follow standard d20 mechanics. They have a few with medium saves, but no odd bab rankings like the Samurai from MEG’s setting, the Hunt. They have starting silver instead of gold, to reflect the setting’s standard, but don’t’ have any starting packages like they do in the Player’s Handbook. Their classes could be worked into a standard campaign, but redundancies would have to be watched for. The Black Company fighter for example, still has d10 hit dice, good fort save, and strong bab, but also gains more action points, lack of flexibility on their first feat selection, which goes instead to command, and more skill points than the standard D&D fighter. You would never want to play in a campaign that allows both types of fighters because anyone who picked a D&D fighter doesn’t understand the benefits lost. Heck, even if you throw out the bonus action points and the first level feat, the bonus skill points might make up for that.
Other cases I don’t see a problem. For example, I hate the D&D ranger. I’ve never liked the whole spellcasting thing. The ranger from this book could work side by side with the standard ranger because his focus is more martial, more of a wilderness survivor.
There are a lot of little things though. Take races. Normally in d20, you pick your race from among a wide variety. Here, you pick a background. Since everyone’s human, that means you get a bonus feat. Here, in your background, your bonus feat and skill points are restricted, but you get a bonus. Take the Criminal. They get four skill points and the skills mentioned, ranging from Hide to Sleight of Hand, are now all class skills for them. They also gain the ability to use Sleight of Hands as move actions and only get a –10 penalty when attempting to use it as a free action and a +2 bonus on Initiative checks with a favored class of thief. Now the restrictions can be painful but the benefits are well worth it and this is something to seriously review for anyone looking to mimic d20 Modern background or Occupations.
Other changes abound. How about dropping alignment and using allegiances ala d20 Modern? How about using Sanity Points based on the Unearthed Arcana system? How about using a silver standard instead of a gold one? What about Action Points from d20 Modern and other sources? These borrowed bits from other areas make the campaign read like someone’s highly modified D&D campaign and act as a great example of how to customize the engine for your own use.
In terms of good and bad, when looking at the silver standard, the book does an excellent job of noting that this is a low cash world and extremely low magic world. On one hand, this is excellent in keeping with the theme of the book. However, as D&D isn’t really about a 8th level character hoping that his chainmail saves him, it fails in the game area. Sure, the authors do a great job of providing numerous masterwork benefits that can be brought into the game, but unless the GM does a lot of training on his players, or his players are willing to adapt tactics that are not necessarily D&D based, he will have problems.
If the GM goes according to the equipment and treasure guide, most characters aren’t going to see full plate. It’s rare and expensive. So characters are going to get hit often. Unlike some d20 variants, like the Wheel of Time, characters don’t have any innate defensive bonuses.
Critical hits work different here too. A natural 20 or a failed Fortitude save when the character takes Constitution damage, call for a roll on the critical hit table. If you like Rolemaster, Warhammer or the old Mayfair Blood & Steel critical hit tables, you’ll love these. One table with d% roll, example effects, and a breakdown for blunt, cutting, or piercing wounds. These range from the low of no additional effect or being dazed or stunned, to having your head crushed and death in a number of round equal to your Con modifier.
This is in many ways, the problem I’ve been trying to work through with Dark Legacies. Low armor systems and critical hit systems always favor the GM. I’m the GM and I’m saying that. There’s just too much chance for the GM to roll critical hits and if the GM isn’t cheating and saving his players, too easy to kill or cripple the players. In a regular game, that’s not as problematic as it is here. There aren’t a lot of people capable of casting Heal or Raise Dead. At least, not in keeping with the spirit of the game.
Other bits make things more difficult like Massive Damage. Here, it’s your Con + your level. Fail the roll by 5 or less and you’re at 0 hit points and disabled. Fail by 6 or more and you’re out and dying. Good news is that it’s not at –10 hit points that you die. Bad news is that it’s when your Con reaches 0 and all damage you take after being at 0 hit points goes right to Con. For example, you don’t want to be ambushed. See, if you get hit during a round you’re surprised, you’ve got to make a Massive Damage roll, even if you haven’t hit your threshold yet. This accurately simulates lower level characters taking out dangerous foes but can obviously work against the players as well.
My take on the magic system; Innovative but time consuming and the player and GM better work out a few common spells for the characters. Let’s start with the wizard class. They have poor bab, poor fort, medium ref (makes sense no?), and good will. Unlike D&D, they have no spells per level. Instead, they have the ability, Student of Wizardry. They have spell energy equal to their Constitution modifier +1 and they gain a bonus of +2 to Magic Use checks. At first level, and every two levels after, they get Talents as bonus feats. They gain Magnitude’s at a fair pace, gaining First at 4th, Second at 10th, and Third at 16th. At each Magnitude, the wizard gains some bonuses like Magic Use insight bonuses or extra spell energy.
So you’ve got Magnitude, Magic Use, and Spell Energy right? What do you do with it? Spells go through six stages. Choose the spell and effect, get the effect’s DC, get the Casting Time, cast the spell, roll your Magic Use check, finish spell effects, and roll the spell’s drain and deduct your current spell energy from the total. The reaming drain is nonlethal damage.
Let’s say that your just staring off as a Student of Wizardry and have the Force. You can in essence create a Spiritual Hammer or a Magic Missile that when used for damage, uses a ranged touch attack and does 1d4 nonleathal. However, you can increase area, target, damage, range, duration, props or turn the nonlethal damage to lethal damage. Each change increases the Magic Use roll. For example, making it fatal is +10 right off the bat. If you want to increase the die type, it’s a +5 modifier, but only a +2 per additional die, for each additional die. So you could get, if I’m reading it right, a 1d6 lethal hammer for a total of +15 to the Magic Use roll.
The great thing is that in many ways, these abilities act as a Cosmic Power Pool in Champions. You can do almost anything with your power, but you might not be able to cast it if you get too greedy. See, you take 1d8 (+ Magic Use DC /5). So in this case, you’d take 1d8+3 points of subdual damage for a 1d6 lethal force hammer.
The fantastic thing is though, you can blend the talents together. The math gets complicated and I would have to quote Cartman from Southpark if any of my players continuously failed to write down vital modifiers ahead of time with something like, “Bad Monkey” followed by a whack to said player’s head with a two by four.
In terms of campaign tools, I think the book goes the wrong way. We have some rules for unit combat and mass combat, but they’re designed for a low magic campaign and to be honest, can’t compete with Cry Havoc for unit scales or Fields of Blood for larger battles. And that’s okay because they don’t have to and it prevents the reader from having to reference another book.
It’s when dealing with the campaign itself that I think the book fails. Look at the fiction. Many characters come and go. To simulate that, and the potential death factor, you might need something like the old Dark Sun Character Tree, briefly mentioned in Unearthed Arcana. It’s simply no fun when you’re 10th level fighter gets killed because he was ambushed and rolled a 1 on his fortitude save. No options like that are covered.
In the same vein, it doesn’t address down time or power levels. See, in the novels, years pass as the company builds it’s troop strength up and looks for ways to win. How do you handle character advancement during those times? What’s worse, sometimes a character shows up out of the blue or just starts and he’s the best. Take Raven for example. While the levels reflect him at his peak, he’s dangerous at a fighter 8/jack-of-all-trades 4/wizard 4. In terms of power level, let’s look at One-Eye at the peak of his abilities, a wizard 15 artificer 2, a man whose spent years fighting to live. Now compare him to Tobo, a youth who comes along at the end of the series and is gifted. He’s a wizard 26, weapon master 7, sword master 7. How do you have a game where these two individuals are side by side? It makes great fiction but terrible gaming. No time is spent working on those issues which weakens the capturing of the game’s feel.
In terms of what to do, the book spends a fair amount of time on various points that the GM could model after the Black Company novels, but I think that’s the wrong direction. While the book goes into a bit of detail on how to form a company, it doesn’t really go into how best to run one. For example, how about several sample companies that aren’t the Black Company that the players could either be a part of or create at low levels? On one hand, this would be difficult. What about military rankings and what they might mean to the company? We get a few generic titles but no real details.
To a certain point though, that’s to be expected. Despite their warrior bent, the real appeal of the novels is the interaction of the characters. Much like say the anime/manga Berserk, the army is merely a prop for storytelling. We see some general information and at times some detailed information and we know that the army needs food to survive and that sometimes the teller of the tales isn’t always truthful. However, those are the props to move the story along, not the story in and of itself. Where one author might spend twenty pages detailing the clothing and significance of the banners of the company, Glen Cook moves into what the company is doing.
In the end, the book captures the Black Company for d20. The classes, magic system, NPC write ups, campaign details, map, and history, are all of great use to someone who wants to recreate the Black Company as a campaign model. The lack of details on how to handle characters of different power levels, frequent character death, healing for high level characters, and campaign models that may not follow the fiction of the Black Company, is lacking.
For me, because I highly enjoy the Black Company, I recommend this book. The magic system, critical table, and other touches allow you more options when either running a pure Black Company campaign, or when trying to emulate a campaign where magic is more rare.
