Forum

Here are my take:

Skills

• Some should probably go? Like seriously drop performance. Better to just straight up give Minstrels a boon, that allows them to use manipulation with an instrument when trying to change emotions, distract or make some spare coins?
• You could make a lot of other changes, I have some ideas, but I'll leave it for now.

Kin/Profession talents

• Balance talents around WP worth, see my post here for more info about this.

General Talents

• Kind of ok? Some are a bit weak, while others are a bit on the too good side. Like defender, rank 1, perhaps only gain an extra free parry if you do spend a fast action to parry? Then give warriors a talent that allows them to parry by spending WP? There are a lot that could have different versions. A shield fighter, could perhaps add a shields item bonus to armor rating? Some like lucky should probably be fundamentally changed.
• Cost and/or requirement of talents could be changed/added.

Combat

• ATTACK & DEFENSE modifiers. Maybe skip this or just add a simpler solution?
• Combat cards: Drop them?
• Some rules like falling damage should be revised. I tried to change some rules that did not make much sense like this in Reforged Power, so read through that and take what you want?
• Up all non improvised weapon damage to 2, probably including bow and arrow. Weapons should feel deadly. Nerf ranged weapons in other ways if needed.

Magic

• Throwing dice is part of the game and is part of the fun, but throwing magic dice should be avoided. These concepts mismatch somewhat.

Journeys

• The part where the one that keeps watch must sleep on the ground is just one roll to many. Simplify. Keep it to ONE roll for making camp. But make it hard to do strenuous activities for more than 2 QD, so change the wanderer talent so that it encompasses doing things without penalty for a 3rd QD/day. Other talents like fisher, could then also make the activity not count as strenuous, making you able to do that for the 3rd QD. In the rare circumstance that an event say that they are ambushed, then just make a scouting roll. Perhaps a failed make camp roll could attract attention and require said scouting roll?
  
  
  Strongholds
  • Make all Stronghold functions work on weekly basis.
  • Completely skip hirelings. Add some manipulation rolls to attract workers to a fill a function after it is built, these automatically sell some stuff on the side to make them able to gain some basic salary to go around, this is not further calculated. Examples, but note that numbers taken out of thin air and should probably be adjusted:
    • Quarry. Produces 20 stones per week. Uses 10 food per week, or you need to pay for food. You can pay for up to an additional 20 stones per week for half listed price. For every 6 reputation generated by your town, or for every trade route to a settlement that cannot produce stone, you can sell up to 20 stones per week for half price (they actually pay full price, but you only gain half due to needing to pay salesmen, etc).
    • Barrack. When staffed, hosts 10 guards. Then uses 20 food per week, or you need to pay for food. Also incurs a cost of X per week.
    • Smithy. When staffed, uses 5 food and wood per week, or you need to pay for this. Can make X iron from iron ore per week. Can either make items for you, or for every 6 reputation generated by your town, or for every trade route to a settlement without a smithy, can make and sell items for up to 10 iron/iron ore per week for an income to you for X silver per week.
  • The stronghold event rules are bad, you will very soon roll 61-66 almost all the time. I made alternative rules in Reforged Power, but there could of course be other ways to solve this.
  
  Gamemaster's guide + Adventures
  • I would probably make monsters roll +2 dice and deal +1 damage on average, perhaps even increase their Strength by 50% (especially if you up weapon damage). But I like it grim and gritty and that PCs and NPCs should be somewhat afraid of monsters. To compensate, perhaps make it easier to get characters back up on their feet? As that adds tension to the game. Perhaps allow for some basic usage of WP, like instead of lucky, allow all players crit rerolls for WP?
  • All important named NPCs should generally have much better talents so that they can provide a challenge if needed. Named enemies will always gain the attention of several PCs at once. So ideally they should be a fun fight for at least two PCs at the same time, while the rest of the PCs deal with other minions, etc. Making fights feel epic is the way to go. Also note that PCs probably have more ways to get back on their feet.
  
  What do you think? (And if you at Free League ever make a 2.0, please feel free to use anything you want from Reforged Power.)

Would like to see some improvement to the late game experience, especially with combat. (to many dice). It felt like the better the PC got the longer it took to resolve things, not quicker.

Without having anything solid, just some loose ideas.
* Skills could reduce what counts as a success, (You would still be rolling strength but if you were trained in melee, you you might be looking for 6 and 5).
* Skills could be an artifact die (simply getting bigger instead of adding more).
* Armor could be fixed value or what is counted as a success could depend on the type (6 for light, 5 for medium, 4 for heavy evt).

Pride also ended up being very iffy. Say your proud of something you are also good at, thus very unlikely to ever roll it. We only rolled it a 2 or 3 times during the whole campaign.
(The scout/pathfinder "i always find my way" has like 9 dice to roll and a push, good luck failing your pathfinding evt)

Some of the talents/ranks could use an "optional" section in my opinion. I dont like things that just outright removes game mechanics like the last rank of "fearless".

I didnt like willpower and the fact the caster had way more options for its usage than the rest of the characters. I would suggest making magic available to all, and then the casters could have a special
feature/school like the rest of the classes maybe.

I changed the cost of talents to match that of skills, which is something that could make the base game simpler also. (and it makes skills more worthwhile early on. Then when people have learned the basic, they add talents to their sheets, makes it less "front loaded" so to say.)

(i have only used the rules not the setting)
Edit:
Stealing the monster auto hit feature from DragonBane might also be a good idea, just to speed things up.

What I experience with my advanced (~220XP) party is that combat becomes more and more volatile. Just saw our dwarf fighter take down a Rust Brothers Champion (with Rank 5 Talents, from RefP) with a desperate yet succesful attack with no less than twelve(!!!) successes (while his opponent was just able to come up with five to parry...). Impressive, but less and less predictable. And scary!

What greatly helped in our group was to adapt the RefP modules "Talents cost the same as Skills" and "Flatten Skill Cost", together with "Skills limit Talents". This made investments in skills more attractive, and we flattened the XP reward after every session with a slight incremant to compensate for the overall raised costs. Before we agreed upon that, everyone just invested in Talents because they are relatively cheap, and that gain in capabilities felt more and more unbalanced.

Armor appears fine as it is, even though we tend to require new equipment after each major fight. Seems realistic, though, but the benfit from armor is really limited, and IMHO there should be bigger restrictions from wearing heavy armor (and even carrying/using heavy equipment), not only for plate armor.

Talents (just as spells) that automatically remove effects or deal damage should be revised, for instance Fearless 3. Or it's too "cheap" for what it offers, while other Rank 3 Talents that offer nice benefits in combination with other Talents or Skills (like Steady Feet) are way too expensive for what they offer.

Not certain about the "level of spellcasting/magic". It's powerful, yes, but the 10 WP limit keeps too powerful magic (n PC hands) at bay. However, with the RefP's optional multiclassing I think that spellcasters have a high advantage when they adopt other, mundane Profession Talents, too. But in the end, other Professions can learn magic that way, too, and the 10XP limit puts a solid lid on what you can do with all these extra Talents.

I have very few complaints about system and I'd only improve the following:

- Experience: For me, it's simply too much. We limit the experience given per session according to some house rules (award experience after two sessions, 4 points to acquire talents, etc.) and even with that, I think it's too much experience.
In fact, we are finishing the campaign and I begin to see that some combats are redundant since NPCs have nothing to do against PCs. Of course, there are no levels in Forbidden Lands so you can face a dragon in the first session and fight four squirrels in the last ones but I feel that, in the last chapters, characters are too powerful.

- Magic Items: It's related to the previous one... There are some magic items too powerful in some places, especially in official published adventures (Quetzel, Mellified Mage), so I suppose they were not tested properly.
I understand this is not a balanced game and I liked it, but when some combats are redundant, sessions could be boring.

- Maps: I understand that this is not D&D where is really important the square where is a character. I like the movement system in Forbidden Lands (although I would introduce some clarifications). Problem is there are no maps (I mean: maps reflecting the interior of buildings) for many adventure sites and, if there is any, it has some mistakes. This suppose unnecessary work for the GM.

- Maps: I understand that this is not D&D where is really important the square where is a character. I like the movement system in Forbidden Lands (although I would introduce some clarifications). Problem is there are no maps (I mean: maps reflecting the interior of buildings) for many adventure sites and, if there is any, it has some mistakes. This suppose unnecessary work for the GM.

Can confirm this, even though from a different angle. While I like the idea of an abstract battlefield only described with relative distances between actors, keeping track of that and properly spending actions for movement in the heat of the fight are easily slipped. I have the vague feeling that fights with our advanced PC troupe would be different if we'd (painfully) track movement and other supplemental actions (draw and ready weapon, use items), which would limit offensive (and defensive as well) activities. Coming close to someone to strike is not as easy as one might think if you follow the rules strictly.

Journeys

• Consider adding better rules on what you can do each QD. It is perhaps not normal to perform strengthenous activity 12 hours per day and then maybe for 6 more hours before going to bed in you own a house? Maybe activities could be marked as rest, light or tough? Normally most activities are tough unless you have talents that makes one QD of it per day count as light (or even as resting)? Doing heavy activity more than twice could come with some roll, damage or count as pushing yourself someway? Or working 18 hours per day in your Smithy might come with a penalty to the crafting roll.
• If you only have 8 months, consider adding information about there then being 6 weeks per month? And consider not to measure any durations in months in the book, as that confuses players, as they are longer. Just replace month with 6 weeks, or 4, if that was intended.