Alright, after the last session, I’ve got a request for advice: has anyone ever had a dedicated sailor character in their game before? If so, how did you incorporate them into land adventures such that the player didn’t feel “useless” due to their lack of applicable skills?
This can go for any character that’s super skilled at something that’s not currently the focus, nor likely to be for some time.
I’ve already spoken to the player and they’re fine with it, but I want to try and do better then just getting consent to be sidelined if I can. I’ve got a few ideas for how to test their skills creatively, but would love to hear ideas if there are any?
Generally, I don’t do any thing about this situation but prevention. I try to make sure that players kind of know what the Situation and opening action are going in. You’re running a mire-or-less city-bound spy-hunter game; to me that says that Orienteering is probably not going to see much play. I’d consider myself informed enough to decide how much or how little I wanted to invest in Orienteering at that point.
The LPS generally have enough variety in their available skills to let a player diversify their builds sufficiently. That combined with the typical starting limit of Exponent 6 (sometimes I’ll set the limit to 5 or even 4 for skills), encourages a nice spread on the sheet.
If, after all that, a player sat down with only B6s is Seamanship, Sea-wise, Ship-wise, and Rigging, I might open up with some heckling and encourage a better spread. Probably wouldn’t mandate it, though. His funeral.
I also wouldn’t angle things so that the player’s skills were relevant. As the GM, my job is to engage and challenge the player’s Beliefs, not their skills.
Plenty of good opportunities to learn skills they don’t have (Beginner’s Luck is great fun).
Still, one of the cool things is Helping using some of the sailor skills in other places. We’ve had one of our river-ish characters making good use of Knots (to secure things), Rigging (to escape by cutting through the appropriate counter-weighted rope), etc.
Also, they can look to their Circles to pull in fun people to assist or give them opportunities to use their skills). I’d Circle up someone who needs me to help with their sailing vanity project (“Yes, my Master wants a yacht. Yes, we’re landlocked. No, he doesn’t care. Can you… show him the ropes?”).
As a player, if I want my skills to be relevant, I’d better write at least one of my Beliefs in that direction!
Whether that’s “I want my own boat! First step: sell my services to anyone I can con into it.” or “Treasures are buried on islands. I’ll steal the treasure map from my old captain, and then work towards getting us to sea…”, or something else, it’s down to me as a player to write my Beliefs to drive what I want.
Also, Instincts in that direction are fun (“Always know the quickest route to water” / “Always carry rope”).
Having skills you don’t get o use so much is part of it. Where your character starts, and how they evolve changes rather a lot (this being one of the joys of the game).
So, had our third session. Things seemed to go well.
Got a new question, though, concerning damage. How, precisely, is damage tracked?
For example, let’s say I hit for 3 Incidentals that do B3 each. My opponent’s MW starts at 3 Superficial, 6 Light, 7 Midi. That would be 3 Superficials, so that would go up to Light. What happens when I hit for more Superficials after that? Does he get a +1 Ob on top of the -1D? Or does the effect upgrade into a Midi wound for a -2D cumulative penalty?
Also, we used Range and Cover rules for the first time, but we mixed in some melee action a bit, so I wanted to make sure I did a decent job:
Whenever the chaser managed to close to Too Close, he switched to swinging his sword at the opponents, who were still trying to flee using the Withdraw action. Since we’re using Bloody Melee rules for speed of play, I had a simple Vs test of Speed+2 vs Sword skill. If Speed won, they got back into Optimal Range and we’d continue to the next Volley of R+C; if Sword won, they got a hit and were able to Maintain, which could force the Withdrawers to change tact. Does this sound correct? Or should the Sword then have to Hesitate on the next R+C volley due to switching their action to swinging in melee?
And yes, I admit the R+C was a rather sloppy affair mechanically; I hadn’t memorized the rules beforehand and we didn’t follow them as strictly as in the book, as the action was extremely fast paced and the players were enjoying themselves so I chose to “wing” the parts I wasn’t sure of.
The only way that wounds change into another is when three Superficials become a Light wound or when a Midi, Severe or Traumatic wound bleeds. Otherwise, each wound is its own separate, unchanging mark on the PTGS.
In more concrete terms, if you sustain three Superficial wounds, you erase them and mark down a Light wound instead. And, since its a wound that caused a -1D or greater penalty, you test Steel for the pain. If you sustain three more, you get another Light wound.
All wound penalties are cumulative, so a Superficial, a Light and a Midi wound all at once equal -2D -3D and +1 Ob (begin the deathspiral! if you haven’t Run Screaming yet).
I think the way you handled the melee attacks was good! It’s better to keep play moving than to get bogged down figuring out exactly how to interface bullet time and… arrow time.
My suggestions, if the situation comes up again:
If the bowmen won or tied their maneuver test when things got too close to shoot, make sure to give them their Last Ditch Arrows. It sounds like they were mostly running away, so it’s moot, but it’s worth remembering if it comes up again.
Speed plus advantage vs weapon skill seems like a fair gambit for a character just trying to get out of dodge, but check the Bloody Versus rules: If the weapon skill side wins, they win the whole fight (“This fight is over!”, One Side Hits, p. 427). The struck bowman doesn’t have a say in what happens for the rest of the scene.
The bowmen could also change tack of their own volition and test Bow or some other skill in the Bloody Versus. They can still withdraw next volley as long as their opponent doesn’t best them outright (see above) and they don’t hesitate. I’d even say they have +1D advantage for weapon length if they could have fired according to the result of the maneuver (though they should definitely spend their last ditch arrows right away).
I don’t think there’s any penalty for switching back and forth between a sword and a bow; You just have to switch hands and there’s plenty of time for that in a maneuver. However, I might charge a 1s fee for firing after wielding a two-handed melee weapon. They’d have to drop or shoulder their bow and that’s fiddly.
Three Superficials is the exception. Other than that, each wound is its own separate entity. They are tracked individually, healed individually, and are recovered from individually. The PTGS is simply a chart to tell you how bad a given wound is when it’s received.
I’m not sure how I’d handle switching weapons for getting Too Close to shoot when doing Bloody Vs. The simplest is probably to impose an Ob penalty to one or both of the pools. Of course, an Instinct would help with this. Of course, if both combatants go to draw Steel, then there’s not issue.
I don’t think I would have let the bowmen have the opportunity to escape a Bloody Vs (though, they could use their bow and maybe Last Ditch Arrows). It just feels like dodging the consequence of the R&C play. Really, I think you handled it fine in the moment, though! And making those kind of off-the-cuff calls is important for GMing here, so you did good!
Hmm… I wonder about the 2D advantage. Getting Too Close to Shoot as a bowman in R&C usually means you done goofed and your position is compromised, so 2D seems a little generous. On the other hand! It may be a nice way to handle the fact that our hero had to draw their sword!
They got the 2D because they were using Withdraw, which is Speed+2D. Considering that their opponent was using Charge and their opponent was using Charge - with a Steel of freakin’ 6 - it was the best chance they had to stay ahead, at least until they did enough damage to cause the beast to slow so they could sneak out at extreme range.
OK, so if I understand correctly, my prior example should have it be that they’re only ever at a Light wound and that more Superficial and Light wounds are meaningless at that point, correct? That to push it up to Midi, I’d have to perform an actual Midi wound worth of damage?
I considered switching them over to true Bloody Vs and just have them fight, but the way I saw it, they were only going to want to run regardless; their goal was to escape, not kill. And since the one chasing them didn’t seem to have ranged weapons, but DOES have a sword, they knew that the safest option was to run and not stop. The only reason I could think of for them to stop is if they were wounded, making it impossible to blend into a crowd. Hence my decision of “if he actually hits them, they stop and Bloody Vs starts”.
The other one that came to mind is if they got too tired to run anymore. My plan was that, if it took long enough (about 8-9 actions), I and the PC would make a Forte Vs test. And since the PC’s Forte is definitely higher, that would likely have ended the chase with them cornered and entering Bloody Vs with the -1D disadvantage of being exhausted. Plus they’d be facing a Sword vs their Dirks, so that would be a pretty short contest…
In retrospect, I suppose there was also the possibility of them being physically cornered beforehand, but the person chasing them is completely new to the town, whereas they’ve been prowling the streets for years, so little chance unless guards show up to help - and they were occupied with what the rogues left behind. And after cold hard steel started flashing, none of the onlookers were going to get near them.
So the way I did it from a pure mechanical sense: as soon as the PC got to Too Close, I “switched” to Bloody Vs and let him roll his Sword without any penalty; since R+C was technically “over”, there’s no volley to switch and so no Hesitation to “change an action”. However, the enemy didn’t want to fight; they didn’t even stop or slow down as they’re still trying to escape. So I just had them “carry over” the action they had scripted for that volley, which was a Withdraw action from R+C (Speed+2D), and made it a vs test with them having the disadvantage of having to duck out of the sword’s way. Since they succeeded each time, I just had them move back to Optimal range and resumed R+C, with the PC’s next volley continuing right as it was written; his targets never stopped, so neither did he (more then a stutter step anyway).
And yes, I’m describing it in more detail so it can be analyzed better - if this truly is outside of the book’s purview, I want to try to make sure my reasoning is sound so I can come as close to what the book would do; that way, I can keep it feeling like (and as balanced as) Burning Wheel.
Nah. It’s not “Health Levels” like in Word of Darkness or a health bar like in D&D. Having wounds of a given level sets no restriction on what kind of wounds you can receive. You can slice my wrist for a Light Wound, then cut my thigh for another Light Wound. That would give me a total of -2D to stuff. You can incapacitate me with Light Wounds if you pile enough on. You can punch me 4 times for a Superficial Wound each, and the first three would roll over into a Light Wound while the fourth would be a new Superficial. Punch me twice more, and I’m at two Light Wounds. Superficial’s are the exception, though. You could open with a nasty Midi hit, then hit me again for a less grievous Light.
Yeah, they tried to withdraw from that charging madman! Then they lost. The player won. The extra Speed test is just a violation of Let it Ride as you give them a second chance to escape and take away the player’s success by letting the enemy test again to avoid it.
The way you described it before made it sound like it was almost an accident where the groups bumped into each other without necessarily meaning too (which can happen). But knowing that one side was specifically trying to charge the other to get into melee changes things.
The rules for Too Close to Shoot is that once that happens, you check for Last Ditch Arrows (I believe Charge gives your opponents a free shot, so the losers would have gotten one shot off.) and then engage in close quarters. Part of the reason that rule is there is to let getting caught by melee fighters dangerous.
Oh thank goodness, it DOES stack! I was afraid I’d gotten it wrong somehow, as that was my original interpretation of it! And I was trying hard to imagine how it works when you have a bear that can quite literally be covered in daggers and only have -1D ever because of the threshold…!
So, they’re not permitted to attempt to make a run for it anymore? How does it make sense that they’d stop trying to run if this is that party’s main objective?
Also, it wasn’t an “extra” speed test - it was literally just the opposed test I used for Bloody Vs against the chaser’s Sword skill; it was what was scripted in their R+C volley, so I just used that with a -1D disadvantage for having to avoid a sword swing. If you’re trying to say they shouldn’t have been allowed to resume R+C with it, that’s fine, but I point you to my questions above in that case.
Ah, I’m not talking about this ^
I was talking about this. v
I feel like maybe some clarification could be handy. Bows can be used in Bloody Vs. So, when your PC closes in for melee violence, your bowmen can shoot him. Indeed, the Last Ditch Arrow rule let’s them do that before the conflict begins if they have a free shot – which they do because Charge always grants a free shot.
I say that it’s an extra Speed test because it places an obstacle in your player’s path that is in addition to what the rules call for. The rules say, when you get Too Close to Shoot, Range and Cover ends and you go to fighting. You guys were using Bloody Vs for that. It sounds like the understanding was that if the PC got close in on them with his sword, you guys would go to Bloody Vs. Putting another test in ther violates that understanding and is extraneous.
Bloody Vs involves building a dice pool out of weapon skill, various situational advantages, and FoRKs, splitting those pools into attack and defense, and then rolling those to resolve a brief martial conflict. Speed +2D vs Sword is not Bloody Vs.
I say it’s an extra Speed test also because it violates Let it Ride. You guys had already done the maneuvering tests for that volley. They don’t get to test again to see if they can reposition. It’s, “You try to withdraw, but he’s bearing down on you – fast! Too fast to get away from! What do you do?” “Get away from him,” is not a valid response. They’ve already made their get-away-from-him test and they failed. Narratively, if they keep trying to run, he’s just going to bear down on them and run them through. Mechanically, the testing to maneuver is going to carry over – Ride – until they do something to buy an opportunity to flee. Strategically, the player made a daring gambit and succeeded, let him force the engagement he rolled to force – or shoot him with an arrow on the way in!
My biggest issues are the +2D for the Speed test and allowing the bowmen to go back to optima if they succeed. Well, and subverting the player’s successful strategic decisions.
OK, I think I see what you’re saying. So if that scenario happened again, the party that was chased down now has to succeed at some other test in order to make a break for it, as the pursuer is on them. In this case, the “test” is Bloody Vs.
So, for example, if they succeeded at a test to trip their opponent, could they attempt to flee again with this distraction? Or are they required to continue fighting until their opponent is completely unconscious/dead?
Tripping is fine! I’m a little insistent on it being a Bloody Vs here because I assume those were the terms set out beforehand for your table. If the understanding is, “We’ll handle getting Too Close with Bloody Vs,” then you really gotta stick with that if the player intentionally succeeds in bringing those circumstances about. It just feels unfair otherwise, you know?
If it’s more open as to how you’ll handle getting Too Close, then it’s more open; do what feels right. Just about any kind of physical contest is likely to be valid; look at what each side wants, how they’re doing it, and adjudicate from there.
On the Bloody Vs side, if only one side hits, they get to inflict damage per their weapon and describe how the opponent is bested or run off. “This fight is over.”
If both side hits, do damage and Steel tests if appropriate. If no one hesitates, the side with the most defense successes gets to decide what the next conflict is. A Speed test to escape is one of the examples.
If neither side hits, it’s much the same as the previous.
So even with Bloody Vs, you have some options. In this case, you’ll likely want to decide how the conflict folds into the larger R&C conflict. If the PC won in this case, it seems like he’d want to capture the enemy, so that’s probably what he’d do – if the enemy survived! If the enemy won, they’d probably want to drive him off. That could mean causing him to hesitate a volley.
Those stakes are lopsided. You may want to even them out some how. Or you may feel like, given that the swordsman has buddies backing him up and the enemy doesn’t (maybe, I don’t know if this was the case) that the stakes are appropriate to the situation. Or you might even be fine with those lopsided stakes – that’s also fine.
In any case, make those stakes explicit as early as possible.
OK, this is good. I was just afraid that one side would be somehow forever forced to participate in Bloody Vs once R+C was concluded; my reading of BW didn’t see it that way as I thought it was as flexible as you describe here, so I was questioning everything I thought the game was about! And I feared for when the situation was reversed and my PCs are being chased down instead…!
And yeah, that’s one thing we’re working on is explicitly declaring intent for each side - I’ve got it down for DoW, but the R+C came out of nowhere, so it was a much “looser” affair. I’d like to think that if we’d declared intention the way we should have, I would have stopped the chase properly.
True, such moments are fun, and just “going with the flow” is definitely exciting. But I have a big rule about trying to use the rules as written as much as possible.
It goes into my problem with most rules-light games, where they have super vague “it’s the GM’s call; we won’t tell you how to play” rules literally written on the page: why did I just pay +$20 USD for your stupid book to tell me that if you’re just going to tell me to wing it anyway?! I’d rather have spent nothing and just done impromptu rule-less “game stories” - it’s fast as lightning and there’s no expectation of balance from my “players” then, plus I can make up whatever I want better then GURPS ever could!
Besides, I personally believe that, once the rules are understood and you’re able to incorporate them into the game seemlessly, it helps make such moments all the sweeter - no “cheating” to dampen the feeling of victory, and genuine emotion when they know the ticking clock is real. And as one of the most intricate chaos generators I’ve ever seen, I believe that once I’m there, that’s when Burning Wheel will finally burn brightest I refuse to be that obvious and lame.
Anyway, I’ve got what I need for next time R+C comes up, so it should hopefully be a lot less messy. My players were long ago made aware that I ran it sloppy last session, and I promised them I’d do better next time, so we’ll see how it goes. Thanks again!
Alright, new session up! Got something I’d like clarification/critique on:
My sorcerous player has hit on the idea of “inventing” her own spells. I could’ve sworn I read something about that before, but can’t find any rules on discovering or creating spells, in either book. If anyone can point me to the right page, I’d be grateful, but for now, I’ve come up with this:
Basically, the player needs to Practice their Research, but instead of actually earning tests, they put the time forth toward earning the right to their First Reading of the spell of choice. They must chose a spell from the book’s list for this (custom spells can come after I vet this method as balanced or not). They must earn a Difficult test for it to qualify, though I’m thinking of bumping that up to Challenging due to how powerful new spells are. They also have to have a stated source of inspiration that makes sense for the spell in question - Cat’s Eye, for example, might require a lot of time spent in dark lightless caves studying bats and conducting experiments on them.
Again, if there’s a page number I’m forgetting for this, please let me know! I could’ve sworn I read rules for this somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it in any of the Sorcerous entries in the books. If I’m misremembering and there isn’t one, then what’s everyone’s take on this? I like the idea of my party wizards getting very slow access to spells of their own over time, as it makes sense for their characters to want to do so, so I’m keen on the overall idea, though I want to try to preserve some balance, of course.
There used to be rules for creating new spells in play and then refining those spells over time. The issue is that that system relied on old rules where you added your Will exponent to Sorcery when casting spells. So the old rules could allow you to plausibly get to pretty high Obs. Since spellcasting doesn’t work that way anymore, those rules have since been cut.
I don’t like the idea of your process being about Practice. I think it should be a test. Research exists to be tested. Set an Ob and test it. Let there be stakes to success or failure. Let FoRKs, Help, Artha, and Advantage come into it. Let the player write and pursue Beliefs about it. Let it drive play.
It also would be weird to base it on the difficulty of the research, since that would be relative: Exponent 1 Research would get the job done just as well and fast as Exponent 7. As a test, the player can spend extra successes working quickly, and would have a better chance at succeeding with a higher Exponent. Failure could mean more time taken to research, a flawed version of the spell, or a need to look for the spell somewhere dangerous – as examples. Failure might also mean that the character has to create the spell instead!
As for new spells, it’s kind of rough. An off-the-cuff quick-and-dirty suggestion would be to use the spells in the book as a baseline, generate an Ob for the spell, and then use double that Ob for the Sorcery (not open-ended) test to get to first reading. [Edit: Replacing first reading probably makes more sense.] Set the time for the test as a month (or two) multiplied by the base Ob of the new spell. (That might work as the time for the Research Ob for finding spells, too.)
That’s gonna be a pretty stiff Ob, but the nature of the test allows for a lot of FoRKs (Research, Read, Write, Symbology, Astrology, just to name a few off the top of my head), and new magic should be hard. There’s also the standard Working Carefully, Artha, and Advantage stuff to apply.
Extra successes can be used to reduce time as per Working Quickly. You might also allow for the character to spend extra successes on refining the spell a little further – maybe a -1 Ob, or an extra die toward resisting Tax, something like that. Those should probably be expensive, requiring multiple successes over to buy, and probably no stacking: 3 successes over might let you drop the Ob by 1, but you can’t spend 3 more to drop it again. You might let them do a little bit of tinkering for free, so long as there are trade-offs: Raise the Ob by 1 for an extra +1 to base damage, as an example.
Also, note that casting time can be an important constraint for Sorcery, even and especially for combat spells.
That sounds like excellent color for an Anatomy FoRK and a die of adventage.
Abstraction & Distillation is the old system Gnosego is referring to. We haven’t updated it for BWGR.
It was a multipartite and dangerous process.
Some quick and dirty ideas you can take inspiration from if you want:
The first step to creating a new spell is to come up with the concept. Here’s where the research (if some other sorcerer has conducted investigation along these lines) or study (as Gnosego describes) comes into play. If the sorcerer player rolls the dice, they should get a test for advancement as per normal. If they succeed, they have a raw spell. If they fail, they get the consequence you stated beforehand.
For the raw spell, you as the GM should work with the player to come up with what it does rules-wise. Set the obstacle and the actions it takes to cast. As long as the spell is “raw,” the obstacle and actions it takes to cast are doubled (like beginner’s luck). That also means the Forte test to resist the Sickness is doubled.
In the original system, if you failed to cast by a margin of 1-5, the spell still went off, but was subject to Variance (as per Garbled Transmission on pages 509-510 of BWGR). You randomly selected a number of rings on the Wheel of Magic equal to the margin of failure. If you failed to cast by a margin of 6+, it was an abject failure. Roll 1d6: 1: Unwanted Summoning, 2-5: Harmless Dissipation, 6: Outright tax (i.e., make the Forte test against the Sickness; you may not use Patiently dice even if you set them aside).
The sorcerer needs to successfully cast the raw spell a number of times equal to their Perception aptitude to “formalize” the spell. Formalization has two consequences: First, variance is reduced. Subtract two from the result of the d6 roll for the number of steps varied (but not from the die for the ring varied or direction). If this results in a zero or negative number, there is no variance. Second, you can now begin the process of “distilling” the spell into something more manageable.
First Distillation: Choose whether you want to work on the spell’s obstacle or the spell’s actions. Test Sorcery against the spell’s obstacle (not the doubled one). This test takes months equal to the obstafcle. If successful, you reduce either the spell’s obstacle or the spell’s actions to its final rating. You can cast the spell as is, but there’s still more you can do to distill it. Failure can be interesting here. Perhaps you introduce a strange quirk/variance into the spell that becomes permanent.
Second Distillation: This works on whatever you didn’t work on in the last roll: obstacle or actions. It follows the same process as First Distillation. If successful the spell now has its final obstacle and actions. Same deal with consequences of falure.
Finalization: The final step is like first and second distillation, but it’s to get rid of the variance rule if you fail with a margin of failure of 1-5. Same deal with consequences of failure. Success means you have a finished spell that you can teach to others.
