Forum

"Or maybe bonuses to Survey the Land rolls on water?" --- omgomg, yes this! That's what Diver is missing. As in; it enables a the character to make a Survey roll in a lake or the sea (or a river?). Higher levels can add both time under water and bonus to the roll. I can help cooking a table together. With the off chance of finding a sunken castle... or the mythic Amphibian cities.

Acrobatics and Athletics --- (no rush btw!)
How about calling Atlhetics Fleet-footed instead of Sprinter? I like the notion that it implies that this is a talent for someone who's not shy to flee combat. Or even something like "lättskrämd"... : )
I like that (the former) 1.x Acrobat catches the lack of a dungeoneering type of talent, as well as an acrobatic one. One idea is to lend a mechanic from Mountain climber, and let the acrobat lend the bonus to character she helps in balance excercises.
Another idea could be to move Rank 4 from 1.x Acrobat to 1.x Athletics (the runner/flee-er). But it's also nice that both talents makes it less deadly to flee.
Something that could fit either of them is a rank that lets the character interact with stationary objects druing a Run action. Like tearing down a shelf, tossing a barrel, spilling lamp oil... But maybe it's already possible in the rules and I haven't just been creative enough to offer it to my players.

Fast shooter - thanks!
I guess it becomes important that Fast shooter + Athlete/Sprinter doesn't become an even more outlandish combo...

Survey -

Good to know that our tables use it differently.

Builder - yes, good one, thanks, that's where I got the inspiration from.

"densely populated? Did you mean sparsely?" - Yes, sorry, I'm wrestling with English. I meant sparsely.


What I need to create now for my campaign, is this; (i've improvised from imagined ad-hoc tables the last months to try things out)

* A Mishap table. My players love to Survey, and it felt unfair that it started off as a more safe-to-fail activity than for example Fishing or Hunting.
Among the mishaps, I want to have "fail forward" kind of things as well (like the misshap when you set up a camp you cannot sleep in yourself).

* Remix the Survey table. Decrease frequency of resources of the land. Move quicksand to Mishaps. Remove dependency on complication. I plan to dig through the books and place the random encounters that fit into the table. For example, my party rolled for "good roads" (32) in the Survey table, and a Lore roll gave them that it was dwarven roads. The next time they rolled 32, I pulled from the random encounter about dwarven roads and let them find an old dwarven trinket. And for next time they roll for it, I'll pull up the dwarven road encounter from BoB with the exploring dwarf.

* Remix the Complications table - Here I'm unsure. But if I decrease the frequency for intelligent lifeforms a lot, and add other types of negative and positve oddities and features (like "bountiful"), it could turn into interesting complement to the Survey table, I'm thinking.

As a bonus, I could do a hidden roll from the Survey table if someone Leads the Way or Sets up camp with an unsual amount of successes.

Reason I'm telling you this is: could you possibly be interested in a remix of Survey for Reforged Power? If so, I'll start it in English instead of Swedish.
And, we owe the fun we have had with this table to you, obviously. My players doesn't even know it's a fanmade feature, they experience Survey so core to the game. It's the mechanical answer to "hmm, no, I'll spend the afternoon looking around instead..."

Web: Good find. I think if it fails to dodge/scout the web you can treat its movement rate as 0 during its upcoming initiative card, but that is it. If used repeatedly it will just power through (or roll might to power through, which monsters likely automatically succeed with)? Or maybe I should just disallow it use against monsters.

Diver: Diver could gain a bonus/be required to survey lake and costal ocean hexes, I do think it is a good idea. Note that people have wanted the modules to be separable though. So a rank here, cannot ONLY do this, as people might use the diver talent module and not use the survey the lands module, or vice versa.

Currently you survey lake/costal ocean hexes from nearby land, but I should remove that for this.
The problem is that water hexes should ideally have an entirely different table, as most results doesn't make sense, like an iron deposit, while actually not too uncommon to find in a lake, might be hard to actually mine? In Reforged Power you can only find 3 things in water hexes, if I remember correctly "abundant with fish", "abundant wildlife", like seals, bird nests, etc, and "clams/pearls". And you would only really have advantage of being a diver to find the last one.
So I would need a lot of advantageous things to find on the bottom of the sea, for it to be worth it.

Acrobat/Fleet-footed: So like this maybe?

Acrobat
✥ RANK 1: You get a +1 modification when you roll for move to fall, jump, balance, slide, somersault, or because of difficult terrain.
✥ RANK 2: If you successfully negate an attack by dodging and remaining standing, you may at the same time move one zone.
✥ RANK 3: You can add a D8 Artifact Die when you roll for move to fall, jump, balance, slide, somersault, or because of difficult terrain.
✥ RANK 4: When calculating fall damage halve the height of the fall, or if you suffer damage from being flung/thrown, halve the damage and round down.
✥ RANK 5: Replace the D8 die with a D12 die.

Fleet-Footed
✥ RANK 1: You get a +1 modification when you use move to retreat, flee or oppose an opponent that retreats or flees.
If someone wants to retreat or flee from you, and nothing/no-one hinders you from pursuing, you may as a reaction spend a fast action to oppose their roll with your own move roll.
✥ RANK 2: When you run twice, or retreat and run, you may move one distance further.
If you fail any retreat or flee action, you gain free dodge actions against any resulting attacks against you.
✥ RANK 3: You can add a D8 Artifact Die when you use move to retreat or flee, or oppose an opponent that retreats or flees.
✥ RANK 4: Gain one free run action per turn, i.e. usable once every 15-minutes.
✥ RANK 5: Replace the D8 die with a D12 die.

Acrobat rank 4 is maybe a bit weak because of being too situational?

Reduce frequency? My players are angry that there is too few survyable resources. Like there is like 1/6 to 2/6 risk of there not being anything useful in a hex, and then they like throw a fit, and demands a reroll .... no but, they constantly asks if they somehow can be given a new roll, and I state, that the result of the survey was that there was nothing to find.. >.<
But this is easily amendable with another table?
Like put another table in the mix:
Roll 1d6+frequency:
1. You are fairly certain that no important things exists in the hex!
2. Corpse of something, roll for one simple carried find.
3. Remnants of an old overgrown house, roll for one simple find in a lair.
...
6+: Roll on the "Survey the lands" feature and complications tables.

Mishaps: Sure. When I wrote it, I honestly had a hard time with the mishap tables. Like if I go fish and don't find anything, this doesn't mean that I drowned myself or something. I thought that the pushed rolls should go with the mishaps, like sure you went out and found 3 berries after you pushed yourself, but doing so made you miss that one of them was poisonous.
But if you can make a failed table that makes sense, then sure. You could probably steal a lot of the events, like torn clothes, and so on.

Quicksand to mishaps.. maybe, but there is a 1/36 chance of rolling it and only in a Quagmire or something? So I thought of it as something funny to make the Quagmire just a little more dangerous to survey.

Remix the Survey table:
Wow, this kind sounds like something too complicated to make? Like sure, if you as a GM wants to connect the dots, great, but trying to make that into a table.. sounds exhausting.
So go ahead and write it in Swedish, but I and likely others are probably interested once you are done

Here is my take at things to find to find in a water hex. Please expand, elaborate or remove entries if you want this to be a thing.

- Abundant Fish: Bonus when fishing.
- Purple shells/Oyster beds: Dive for food/pearls.
- Huntable sea life: Allows hunting. In a lake maybe: otters, beavers, ducks, geese, muskrats, and swans? In an sea/ocean tile maybe seals, sea turtles, dolphins, sharks, whales, and sea birds?
- Kelp forest: Vegetable resource, maybe fertilizer, could maybe work like some kind of cloth too? At a minimum it could be used for ropes and so.
- Corals/Seashells: Crafting material? Construction? Jewelry?
- Underwater caves? But what do they add? Minable resources. Feels too fantasy?
- Sunken Treasure: Could be an old ship or so?
- Sunken/Underwater settlement: An old settlement that once where on land, that you could dive for simple finds in? Or maybe an active settlement owned by amphibians or other water dwelling creatures.
- Geothermal Vents: Probably a no on this one, or maybe in the Bloodmarch? But what do they yield? Rare minerals perhaps.
- Some super rare phenomena, that lets you travel through a vortex to another random water hex?
- Some wood resource that somehow got improved from being submerged for 100s of years? Or probably not?

As for Diver, then maybe?
✥ RANK 1: While wearing no metal armor, you only need to roll for endurance every Quarter Day in water. You only need to roll for endurance to hold your breath every 2d6 rounds and only if you are performing particularly strenuous activities. Gain a +1 modifier to endurance rolls to stay afloat, hold your breath or when you survey water hexes (if the Survey the Lands module is used).
✥ RANK 2: You can swim as a fast instead of a slow action (effectively doubling your swim speed). Gain a D8 Artifact Die when you try to stay afloat, hold your breath or when you survey water hexes (if the Survey the Lands module is used).
✥ RANK 3: While submerged in water, you normally can only stab, parry, dodge and perform other actions the GM sees fit. These should normally be performed at a -2 penalty, due to being under water, but you are so adept at fighting underwater, that you can turn the penalties into bonuses (i.e a +2 bonus instead of -2 penalty to these actions).
✥ RANK 4: Replace the D8 die with a D12 die.
✥ RANK 5: You automatically succeed any rolls to swim and you can hold your breath for a turn (15 minutes) before you need to roll.

Wow, you're so quick at these things!

Yes, that sounds like a really good Diver to me. Sure, it could be played the other way around, removing the Survey stuff from Diver and instead adding a requirement to the underwater Survey table that most things requires Diver to explore - but it makes much more sense to me as you've written it. I think you have nailed the Diver talent pretty spot on. It's powerful but also very situational.

The Survey table for underwater - good stuff! I've added my input/reflections to each line.

- Abundant Fish: Bonus when fishing. -- Yes!
- Purple shells/Oyster beds: Dive for food/pearls. -- yes! I like the combination of food with a chance of a pearl.
- Huntable sea life: Allows hunting. In a lake maybe: otters, beavers, ducks, geese, muskrats, and swans? -- Yes! Though, do you mean as in Abundant? (bonus to hunting?). I could totally see that these made it into a regional based hunting-list (also somewhere down on my own todo-list...)
In an sea/ocean tile maybe seals, sea turtles, dolphins, sharks, whales, and sea birds? -- Yes! It's cool if Diver allowed the character to hunt for food/meat othwerwise not available.
- Kelp forest: Vegetable resource, maybe fertilizer, could maybe work like some kind of cloth too? At a minimum it could be used for ropes and so. -- Yes! Unless you're complicating your crafting tables too much... (I can't recall if you have something similar in there)
- Corals/Seashells: Crafting material? Construction? Jewelry? -- Yes, atleast a straight off "2d6 s" value type of reward? But you are the crafting master, it's cool of course if it can be crafted into a bonus to manipulate.
- Underwater caves? But what do they add? Minable resources. Feels too fantasy? -- Makes sense as well! I mean, there's a chance of ore everywhere... And dangerous to mine.
- Sunken Treasure: Could be an old ship or so? -- Yes! Classic. Could be presented as trade goods, with some of it unspoiled.
- Sunken/Underwater settlement: An old settlement that once where on land, that you could dive for simple finds in? -- Yes! Dangerous, but sometimes fruitful. Additionaly; Maybe a chance of being a wizards tower kind of thing.
Or maybe an active settlement owned by amphibians or other water dwelling creatures. -- Yes! But the character has spotted it first, from a safe distance.
- Geothermal Vents: Probably a no on this one, or maybe in the Bloodmarch? But what do they yield? Rare minerals perhaps. --- Mmm, it sounds right for Bloodmarch.
- Some super rare phenomena, that lets you travel through a vortex to another random water hex? -- Haha, yes, why not? (Perhaps with the equivalent of on underwater Portal guardian)
- Some wood resource that somehow got improved from being submerged for 100s of years? Or probably not? -- Yes, maybe not submerged for 100 of years, but an underwater living tree-ish plant that has the properties of one of the stronger wood types? "Giant kelp forests" kind of thing.

Additional random ideas:
- The bones of an undewater giant beast (the equivalent of the random encounter "28. The Bridge" from BoB).
- Random underwater monster from the tables. But the character has spotted it first, so it's safe to just swim back (and gather your crew of fellow Divers to hunt it . (The claw marks of a water troll, a hunting amphibian, a sleeping giant octopus...)
- X units of Luminescent algea, counts and weights like torches.
- Statues and other remniscents of ages past, rewarding the character with legends.
- Underwater elemental springs ... Hints of weird underwater vegetation and water of a type not found elsewhere
- Clay... Both Pelagia and Burning Pits of Llao-Yutuys has a focus on evil clay makers, my players has noted. There should be a bunch of sources of good clay around.
- Herbs... of the interesting kind.
- Encouner 25 Store orm from BoB... and 36, the cast-away.
- Time-weathered journal...
- Sunken shrine to the goddess Flow, with a boon and bane to a worshipper. (I have forgotten if the books have something on her, except for the water in The Hollows). Or the goddess Klay(?), as orcs worship her.
- Old battlefield. Maybe Sauri and Amphibians had a history of animosity...?


Btw,
Doing this in The Bitter Reach adds some obviousl dangers of freezing to death. That's something I wanted to pitch to you around as well. Instead of flat out dying when broken in Str or Int while Cold, I started to use your Critical Injury: Burn table. Just slightly modifiying it to fit frost/freeze damage. It has worked very well, especially in combination with your Heat rules.


Btw 2, here's my pitch on Survey:

Remove the Survey stuff from Builder. Make Survey a standalone Talent, that only is available if you choose the Survey module. This would sort the module overlap.

In the Survey talent, already at rank 1 or 2 mayhaps, you can choose to add +10 or -10 to the Survey table roll. I mean, in the sense that rolling 01 means 11, and 71 means 61.

On 61-66 there are resources of the land, the stuff you want to craft armour, make weapons, and build your stronghold from. Maybe also things like herbs that grow here, maybe food sources.

On 11-16 there are another type of findings, the things that explorers/adventurers out in the wild (and that would likely never return to this hex) would be more interested in.

Quagmire and Mishaps - totally agree that it's fun when different terrain types have different amount of risk involved. But, that could be achieved through the Mishaps table, could it not?

Quick question, please clear up something for me.

Spell "Machine Soul", page 143 Player's Booklet:
"You imbue a machine-like object with the power of an engine. Making it able to spin cogs and perform different actions when drawing levers. The machine gains a Strength of 1, with a +2 bonus per extra Power Level. It can operate for one Quarter Day, but Power Levels can also be used to double the duration."

What is the purpose of this spell? I can't seem to imagine what I can use it for. Can you give me an example?

Machine Soul: Well the dwarves have many things that are mechanical in nature and this would be a magical way of powering them, also explaining why they exists. Because these dwarves can make many mechanical things that would be impossible for medieval engineers to produce, even if they would be as good as modern day engineers (like spider striders, page 135-136 in Ravens Purge, Witherbeam, page 69 in the Bloodmarch, Mecha page 112 in the Bloodmarch, Mekefalos and other things in the Tribolia of the Kogler page 221+ in the Bloodmarch).

...So if you and your players want a pump to drain the water of a system, or want a mill in the underground and have nothing that can power it, or want to build a mecanical ridable spider, etc, this spell can make it work and to some degree also provide its energy. Note that you might somehow want to make it into an artifact if you want it more permanently active, a good negative way for this is then to introduce something to feed the machinery with, be it steam with wood and water, or something like "blue tar" that Witherbeam uses.

You would still need to make the thing (unless you find some depowered dwarven relic), so I would require them to find some metal, a forge, spend some days and roll a successful crafting roll.

oh, 703145, I noticed that I forgot to reply to you.

Good underwater ideas.

And using the burn table for frost injuries as well was a very interesting idea.

On Survey, my take on it was that the rolls for resources and so really could have been made in advance, for the entire map.
Like if the GM would have made all these rolls in advance, it wouldn't change anything (except maybe be a bit more boring).
So if you succeed a Survey roll, you just notice what always was in the hex.
Adding +/-10 to a roll, feels like you magically change this, like "no there wasn't iron here, just because I scouted the hex and I am greater at this, there is never ever any iron, only silver"!

The categories I use is that result are clumped together around terrain and not utility. As 20-26 changes depending on terrain, making rocky results of 60+ more likely in mountains, woody results more likely in forests, etc.

And the Quagmire and Mishaps, yes, if I had a mishap table then sure. I will look into creating one I guess.

Edit: If I would make a specific Survey talent, it would rather have the ability to survey again for a second feature or so. Like everyone can find the easy to find features, but there are more hidden features as well.. but I discarded this thought when I wrote the talents, as there already is enough to find, and enough hexes on the map. Like sometimes there are no iron around your Stronghold, and just because you are great at searching it might not differ. Having to trade for things only increases RP moments.
..but if you reduce the likelihood of finding a resource in any given hex, then maybe? I will probably not implement it though.

"Hold" spell in Symbolism magic - page 140 Player's Booklet - It has rank of 5, while in summary of Symbolism magic, it is under rank 4. Should be changed to 4.

"Adding +/-10 to a roll, feels like you magically change this"

Mmm, I agree, to an extent. That's the illusion I want to project to my players as well. But..

* I'm thinking there are, broadly speaking, two types of things you can find on survey rolls: "static" features of the land like iron ore, old dwarven roads, an ancient monster skeleton, an old metoer crater, a runestone, exceptionally fertile farmland.
The second thing being "dynamic" content, like inhabitants, wildlife and plants (according to season?). Honey bees. Wild horses. Narcotic mushrsooms. A monster den. Maybe even NPCs. Things like that, that's been around for days, a season, or a few years.

But... I may already be deviating too much from your original Survey idea! If so, let's keep this a separate thing, and never mind these two points:

* Let's assume to following: Survey rolls of "resource fo the land/static" type are on results in-between 10 and 36. We prepulate the map with d36 Survey rolls. When I go exploring, I roll a d66. If I roll 36 or bellow, I find a static resource (if I roll higher, I just don't find it: I find a dynamic resource instead). If I subtract 10 to the die roll, the chance increases that I find a static resource - that could already have been pre-populated: resources between 10 and 16 just gets double the chance to be found... right? I think it make some logical sense.
(But then again, I may be deviating too much now!)

* Each hex is 87 square kilometers (10 km across a hex). (Or, 346 km^2 if you like me run double size hexes). That's pretty big. 87 m^2 is the equivalent of Upplands Väsby kommun, or southern Stockholms stad. I was thinking that what the Survey roll gives, is the resources that you can find in an afternoon, if you're an experienced explorer and kind of knows what kind of terrain to survey (and when to keep your head down from predators). But, that there's probably a lot of things you just couldn't spend time on exploring (if you spend just under an hour per 10 km^2?).