Previous installments in this readthrough of Drakar & Demoner / Dragonbane:
- Dragonbane, first edition
- The Pyramid of the Spider King and The Twin Mountains
- Dragonbane, second edition
- The Island of Mist and The Wolves of the Sea
Oh joy. We have gotten to the Drakar & Demoner Expert rules. The ones that were the basis of the bloated, nigh-unplayable fourth edition. The ones that added complexity for the sake of complexity and page count for the sake of pagecount. The ones that were the worst idea ever.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Sigh… well, let’s get through this. This box of two books (labelled Rules and Magic) is, in theory, a set of optional additions to the second edition core rules, made so that the GM can choose which ones to include and which ones to ignore. The introduction assures us that it’s all on popular demand, and that “more skills,” “more spells,” and “more wilderness survival rules” were what players were clamouring for at the time. As I was four years old at the time, I can neither confirm or deny that, though I’ll admit that wilderness survival does come up a lot in fantasy roleplaying…
RULES
First up is an extended character creation system. We’re explicitly told that we can choose to play a non-human, this time – in both the core books, this was clearly a possibility but more sort of implied or mentioned in passing. We’re warned that some races, like elves, are especially challenging to play properly, though. Right…
Stats can now optionally be generated either by having one die for each stat automatically roll the maximum (e.g., humans have Strength 3d6, so you’d roll 2d6+6 for your Strength) or by rolling three full sets of stats and choosing the one you prefer. Okay, that’s actually a big improvement given that my constant gripe is that PCs will otherwise end up with far humble stats than most named NPCs. You also need to roll for social standing if you’re a human, dwarf or halfling, with some classes having restrictions – you can only choose to be a Knight if you happen to be of noble birth, for instance. All white ducks are burghers and all other ducks are paupers, apparently, I’m not sure what’s up with that. Any “uncivilised” race, like orcs, are also considered paupers. Oh, and all settled giants are peasants, while all other giants are paupers. Which implies that you can choose to play a giant – not sure that’s going to be a good idea in a game all about exploring cramped ruins, mind you. Class also determines your starting funds under this system.
You can now choose your age. Higher ages get worse stats but more points to spend on skills and higher starting funds.
Classes are about unchanged but still repeated here to include new skills. There’s one new class, the Jester, who’s effectively a Thief with some additional fighting and wilderness skills. It’s noted that the GM should be lenient about letting players pick whichever class they want regardless of their race, but to also not go too crazy with it, because a dwarf pirate would be “just silly.” I don’t know, they love gold, drinking and singing and they have impressive beards – I feel like there’s some overlap there… Percental rolls to see if you can choose a particular class seems to have been done away with in favour of classes just having a minimum stat requirement, except for Wizards who still have them.
Skill score are no longer percentages, instead the system is 1d20 roll-under with your score being effectively your percentile score divided by 5. I admit that that makes a lot of sense given that scores are going to be in the 1-20 range, that stats are already in that range so now there is a single rule for both stats and skills, and that the math is the same but you don’t need to roll two dice at once and keep track of which one is which digit.
Skills don’t get picked anymore, they have to be bought with Background Points. A skill starts either at a base value of 0-4 determined by its base stat, or at 0 if it’s too complicated to have a base chance. Then you have to spend points to raise it, with the cost for each stat being the base cost for the skill multiplied with the base cost for your existing skill level. For example, let’s say that you have rolled a Dexterity of 16 and you want a skill of 13 in Draw Weapon. Draw Weapon gives you a base chance from Dexterity, and for Dexterity 16 that’s 3. So you need to first buy seven points at a cost of 2 points each (Draw Weapon has a base cost of 2, and the 1-10 range has a base cost of 1) for a total of 14 points, and then another three points at a cost of 4 points each (still base cost 2 for Draw Weapon, times 2 for the 11-14 range) for a total of 12 points and a final cost of 14+12=26 points. Gaaaah.
Look, I get it, I get it! It’s supposed to give you greater freedom in getting precisely the character you want. But all I can see is endless finicky point-counting and equally endless opportunities to screw yourself over by mistake, not to mention your stats becoming a lot less important since they only affect your base chance, and that only for the skills that have a base chance; being incredibly smart now has no bearing at all on whether you can start out great at e.g. Botany, since you’ll just be buying it up from 0 points anyway. It’s just… dreary.
The last part of the chargen chapter yells at you to ROLEPLAY, DAMN IT!!!! and offers you a selection of life goals for your character. You’re encouraged to pick a couple, but since they have drawbacks (acting contrary to your life goals gives you a penalty) but no real benefits I don’t see much reason not to choose the absolute minimum you can. The goals themselves are fairly simple, things like Chivalry, Romance, Humour, Power, Wealth, Freedom. Fair enough as a roleplaying tool, but not exactly inspiring. Also, we’re told that elves absolutely care about nature and you can’t play one who doesn’t. Well, I wasn’t going to, but now I kind of want to just to spite you!
Skills! As I already hinted at, we’re switching from the percental scores. Instead, we’re doing d20 roll-under. Which, admittedly, is mathematically identical and requires keeping track of smaller numbers, so fine, I guess, but I still think that percentages have more charm. A critical success is now achieved by rolling a 1 and then getting a success when you do the roll over. A botch is a 20 followed by a failure.
And here come the eeeeeendless skill lists, boo hoo hoo hoo! Mathematics. Skiing. Dressing up. Shadowing, when we already have both Sneaking and Hiding. Bribery, because apparently offering to pay someone is so hard that you have to put points into it. I mean, that’s the problem with this whole “add a new skill for this thing someone might like to do” – it turns something that might have been an option for anyone to something you can’t even contemplate unless you have sunk a ton of resources into it at an early stage.
Some skills are okay, I guess, the ones that actually lets you do something that you explicitly couldn’t before. The aforementioned Draw Weapon is nice, for one thing, since it gives you a way to get ready for battle in a flash. There is also “Judo” and “Karate,” though they’re not really about the martial arts styles per se but just used to mean “throws” and “really good unarmed strikes.” Monks are the only ones who can start out with Karate, I notice, and they can also start out with Judo, so I guess now they’re a cross between their original Friar Tuck depiction and kung fu-ing shaolin badasses?
There is now also a specific dual wielding skill. Probably for the best, having two attacks per round instead of one is pretty powerful. Also, weapons are now divided into types, and your skill at any weapon of a type is at least one third of your highest weapon skill within that type. Which means that you’re not going to be completely hopeless with a shortsword if you know how to handle a broadsword… but still, it’s kind of stingy. Having Broadsword 18, which makes you a pretty serious badass, still just gives you Shortsword 6, and that’s in comparison to the 2 or 3 you’d have in base chance anyway. Oh well. Baby steps.
The more convoluted skill system needs a more convoluted experience system, so now we no longer get experience checks, instead the first time in a day you use a skill successfully you get an XP in that skill, and whenever you go a week without getting into trouble your accumulated experience points can be used to raise that skill for the same cost as with Background Points. You can also train during downtime, in which case you make a roll for the skill’s associated stat once a week (two if you have a teacher) and if you succeed you get an XP. It still takes foreeeeeever to get better in a skill, but I’ll admit that it will probably go a little bit faster. It’s very beancounty, though.
New combat rules! We can now include specific hit areas, so that multiple hits to e.g. the right arm means that you become unable to use it even though you’re otherwise still on your feet. Where a blow hits gets randomly determined. There are new lists of armour pieces, so you can wear armour on some bits but not others, or different kinds of armour on different parts.
There are grappling rules. They are mercifully brief.
If you have a score of 20 or more in a weapon skill, you can fight two opponents at once by dividing your skill between them – so if you have a skill of 26, you might attack one opponent with a skill of 12 and parry a blow from another with a skill of 14. Fair enough, though I’m not sure how often that will come up given how slow character progression is…
There are rules for different materials for weapons and armour, from wooden arrows to mithril swords and dragonshide mail. Weapons of silver get mentioned, which I think actually do come in handy for some critters in the Monster Book.
There’s some pretty finicky rules for morale, which I really think could have been simplified down as “roll Psychic Power for NPCs under such-and-such conditions to see if they run away.” Still, I do appreciate that it’s there.
Heroism! Characters can now be given Hero Points for doing mighty deeds. In fact, the deeds are so mighty that I’m not sure how you’re supposed to get even a single Hero Point – it starts with “kill a young dragon,” and I’ve seen the stats for those things, I don’t think it’s humanly possible to take one down by the rules that have been outlined! Like, there’s bound to be some kind of super-strategic ways of doing it like luring it into a mine and then collapsing it on top of its head with a well-placed system of pulleys, but there’s not exactly a mechanic for it.
Anyway, you can use Hero Points to buy up your stats, which is pretty much the only way you can get permanently higher stats after chargen, or buy some moderately useful but not overwhelming special powers like “speak any language enough to get by” or “heal naturally twice as fast as normal.” Heroes are warned that they’ll attract rivals who want the glory of being the one to take them down.
Some tips for worldbuilding are provided, like how much you earn on honest work in a week, and how much it costs to maintain your lifestyle. There’s some general explanation for how medieval social classes work and what separates a burgher from a peasant. We get some handy fantasy archetypes with suggested inspirations (the writers seemed to have been fond of Tolkien, John Carter, Star Wars, Lakhmar, The Belgariad – apparently not yet translated to Swedish at this point – and something called Ladyhawk that I should probably look into) and stat blocks. They include “damsel in distress (badass)” and “damsel in distress (floozy).” 80s gender representation at its finest!
MAGIC
So let’s see what more they came up with to nerf magic-users with…
Well, for a start, wizards can no longer learn any spells. No, first they need to spend points in a school that gives access to a particular set of spells, and the more powerful the spell the higher your score in the school has to be before you can learn it. So that’s a pretty blatant point tax right there.
The schools are animism, which is nature magic; elementalism, which controls elemental forces; mentalism, which is vaguely like psionics, with spells for mind reading, levitation, protective forcefields, and some general buffs; necromancy, which is creepy death-magic; and illusionism, which creates illusions. There is also symbolism, which is a weird one wherein you don’t cast spells, you draw runes and when you activate them they affect anyone who looks at them. Different races have restrictions to what schools they can learn – humans can learn any of them, but halflings can only learn illusionism, dwarves can’t learn animism or illusionism, elves can’t learn necromancy, and so on.
A wizard can only cast a spell with a degree of effect equal to or lower than his score in the associated school. Since you need a minimum score of like 3 to learn the simplest spells and a degree of effect of 3 means a -4 penalty on a roll that you probably start with having a score of like 10 in, I don’t see that coming up too often. Likewise, the fact that a wizard can only keep as many spells in his head as his score in the school is not much of a restriction, because again, you’d be lucky to have five or so spells in total.
Because here’s the thing, the XP cost for spells is brutal. Something like Invisibility has a base cost of 6, so raising it up from 0 to 10 will cost you 60 XP. If you train for an entire year, you’ll maybe be able to get that much together, and that still makes you pretty bad at casting that spell. Oh, and if you’re of average size, you’ll need two degrees of effect to cover yourself with it, so subtract -2 from every casting, so effectively you have studied a whole year to have a 40% success chance at turning yourself invisible. Cheesus, I know that no one in this game is especially cool or heroic, but they really didn’t want caster supremacy, did they?
Magic scrolls make an appearance, but they’re sort of crappy. To cast a spell from a scroll, you need to succeed at an Intelligence roll and a roll for the spell’s school, and it takes you a bunch of minutes besides. The scroll disintegrates when the casting is complete, and you probably spent enough silver on it to buy a pair of horses.
Spell range and duration are now calculated from your score in the spell. This serves very little reason except to make it harder to eyeball.
Spell lists! Animism has gotten all the spells that felt “nature-y,” like weather control and talking to animals. It’s also got healing and, for some reason, raising and lowering stats (not that changing a stat by a few points does terribly much in that system, but still…).
Symbolism, as aforementioned, works by creating a symbol which can then be activated, and which has an effect on everyone who is looking at it at the time of activation. It can do things like prevent them from approaching, striking them blind, drawing them forward, or afflicting them with seizures, all of which lasts for a few rounds per degree of effect. High specialised, but might be useful in the hands of a creative player – certainly there is something to be said for getting to cast the spell and then keep it in store so you know it’ll take effect when you want it to.
Elementalism is about throwing fireballs and spreading darkness, and also enchanting or cursing weapons, for some reason. You can also learn to summon elementals, the four basic ones in the core and an additional three: light, darkness and cold elementals.
Illusionism can create illusions, natch. It can also be used to confuse people, make them stumble, place people in enchanted sleep (?) and make yourself look super-impressive. Invisibility is for some reason not an illusionism spell but is mentalism instead. Yeah, I don’t know. More serious illusion spells can create illusions that are so realistic that they are effectively solid constructs, though they can’t be better at anything than the illusionist himself is.
Necromancy can create zombie minions (also skeleton or mummy minions, with some extra effort), control existing undead creatures, and spread supernatural dread. It’s also got a high-level spell that can suck the Power Points out of someone else, and another that lets the necromancer “claw his way towards the enemy’s heart” – it causes 1d6 damage per round for a number of rounds equal to its degree of effect, ignoring armour. Creepy.
Mentalism, finally, lets you fly, teleport, read minds, get psychic visions, and some similar utilitarian stuff.
Players can invent their own spells. It takes a year or more of studies in a highly expensive laboratory, as well as some tricky rolls, but if the GM agrees that the proposed spell is within the wizard’s abilities, he ends up getting it at a starting value of 2-3 or so.
Magical objects can be created, but require very high school scores. There is one spell for impressing a single casting of a spell in an object, another that makes the impression permanent, and a fourth that supplies it with its own Power Points instead of drawing from the user’s. Players are pretty much never going to get to do this unless the campaign has literal decades of training times. There is a rather simpler spell that just stores Power Points in an object for later use, though. There is a list of example magical objects, all of which are from mythology or fiction (e.g., Aladdin’s flying carpet) – not sure if they are meant to exist within the game world or not.
Alternate universes exist, and there is a high-level spell that lets you move between them. Universes are primarily defined by how far they are from the different elemental poles, so there could be places full of fire and darkness, places of wind and snow, places of light and stone, etc. A fairly handy way to come up with new ones in a hurry, I guess, though again, not sure when it will become relevant because who’s going to learn this stupid spell that costs 12 XP per point and has no obvious application other than to get yourself in even more trouble?! The life-extending spell that follows it, likewise, seems to exist only to justify why wizards so often seem to be immortal.
Wizards can summon familiars, giving them loyal and sentient animal companions at the cost of a permanent point of Psychic Power. Cool, cool…
There follows a section on herbs and potions, and this is actually a place where those extra skills are justified – each potion requires a roll in a certain one to make, so you can learn to mix poisons or to create healing poultices. For each herb that’s used as an ingredient, there is a later listing that tells you what sort of environment you can look for it in. That’s kind of cool, it’s practically a crafting system.
And that, barring some extra gear, is that. As my exasperated tone implies, I’m not a fan of this one. There are a few handy bits, but for the most parts this is rules added for the sake of rules – and them claiming that they were all optional didn’t stop them from making them all mandatory in the fourth edition, did they? Resist rules bloat, people! Rules once introduced never go away, they just hang around and clutter up the place! Hrmpf.
Next up is the Monsterbook. That one I recall is inoffensive enough.