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Rathalos32
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Joined: Wed 07 Dec 2022, 20:14

How much HA should be in a campaign?

Fri 03 Feb 2023, 17:13

Hello guys,

I was having a discursion on our local/nation group about HA and how much is too much to give to players. We noticed that 3 to 4 HA can pretty much defines a the character, if its a knight (e.g. defensive, guardian and monster hunter) or a barbarian (berserker, battle cry and massive blow) or rogue (backstabbing, assassin and fast footwork), it's easy to fill those roles with this amount of HA, so, should this be the approximation that the players should have?

We noticed that, although with less than half of the points of interesting in it, there is only one point where it gives HA to players. Following this logic, it could have just another or so HA in the full adventure worth of 14 sessions (kinda, it always depends of course).

So, should this be the base line for the amount of HA? In the beta v1 (where the awarding of HA was after the first session and then after 5 sessions) so it would be 3 to 4 HA for the same campaign I believe, so it seems to fit this number. Would it be too damaging to award more for longer campaigns?
 
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Mcgibs
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Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Fri 03 Feb 2023, 19:14

The 'value' of heroic abilities is sort of all over the place, so it's tricky to nail down a standard number. Things like Master Chef is hardly as valuable as Defensive, or Robust/Focused are built around being able to take them several times. As a GM, I'd be quite willing to hand out lesser or thematic abilities as adventure rewards, or from specific teacher NPCs (You went and trained with the local blacksmith for six months, now you have the blacksmith ability!), or as general campaign growth (you guys beat the big boss, everyone gets a level in Robust).

Keep in mind that players can also gain heroic abilities by hitting 18 in a skill (not easy, but it should definitely happen a couple times in a career)
 
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Short Fey
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Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Fri 03 Feb 2023, 21:33

I think that how often you wanna hand them out is ultimately up to you as a GM. Without going into detail, the adventure suggests handing out an HA when you complete specific goals, which would be about 4 HA from that, along with your starting one, then add maybe 2-3 from reaching 18 in a skill, leading to about 7-9 abilities roughly in total.

Having run it a bit myself as a gm, i get the impression that your not supposed to hand them out as candy, even "weaker" stuff like Robust or Master Chef. While i can agree that people will gravitate towards the stronger combat abilities (Like Fast Footwork), a thing that my players noticed when playing is that having a lot of combat oriented HA isn't necessarily a drawback, but it is not as empowering as it might appear either. One of my players has currently Fast Footwork and Duel Wield, and about 14 WP, so about 4 uses of each at full WP. If they spent it on a extra dodge, that's one less extra attack. If they spent it on an additional attack, that's one less extra dodge. So having a lot of combat oriented abilities isn't necessarily going to help you, sense they all use the same resource pool you might not be able to use all of them anyway.

This gives you some room for the other "Weaker" HA. While they been going well so far, they have ended up sleep deprived twice, and a two players ended up diseased, because they got a bit over confident in how far and easy they could get food in the wilderness and travel. A forced march, they become sleep deprived because a monster snuck up on them due to not having a guard. They get some food, but botch the cooking roll and they get sick. So while the "camping" skills in this case might not be as universally useful, the players recognized that when you are in a bad spot, guaranteeing a night's rest and food is VERY useful, as these conditions are not nice.

Ultimately i think the game is built around the players having about 5-8 abilities, but how many you wanna give out is up to you.
Beware the fey!
 
simontmn
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Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Sun 12 Feb 2023, 09:57

I think HAs roughly equate to levelling up in old school D&D, so around one HA per 5-10 sessions, following a major heroic achievement, looks about right to me. For a 14 session adventure I'd think 1 award in the middle and 1 at the climax would be right, plus with 14 improvement checks I can imagine some PCs might get a skill from 12 or 14 to 18 in that time.
 
JohnWithAgun
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Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 09:50

Something i been wondering myself.
How many session do you folk think a campaign using DragonBane can carry? As first stated, a "character build" would likely need 3-4+ heroic abilities to come together. That is 4+ "quests/story/arcs" or whatever term your table uses. Before you need to consider bringing it to an end. I suppose all builds can start stacking robust/focused, but its only getting less exiting from there.

However how many session it takes to raise your "main skills" to 18. i have no idea. How reaching skill 18 granting an heroic ability will work out is also up in the air.
It feels a little to random for me, but i will have to see in actual play. (I do fear John the lucky will have a better time with the campaign than Bill the unlucky)

What do you guys think?
and what is the session length on ideal campaign at your table?
 
simontmn
Posts: 55
Joined: Thu 09 Feb 2023, 00:18

Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 13:38

Game seems designed for long term play, at least dozens of sessions. I'm aiming for 4 hour sessions. Getting a skill up from 17 to 18 is likely to take around 7 die roll checks, so ca 7 sessions on average I think, but varying a lot ofc.
 
simontmn
Posts: 55
Joined: Thu 09 Feb 2023, 00:18

Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 13:53

Game seems designed for long term play, at least dozens of sessions. I'm aiming for 4 hour sessions. Getting a skill up from 17 to 18 is likely to take around 7 die roll checks, so ca 7 sessions on average I think, but varying a lot ofc.
It looks to me that several Trained skills are likely to hit 18 in quick succession, within a few sessions. This is kinda like the D&D transition from Low Level to High level.

For stats I'm using roll in order, replace one with a 15. This tends to give mostly starting skill levels of 12 not 14, which is good for extended play.
 
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Rathalos32
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Posts: 37
Joined: Wed 07 Dec 2022, 20:14

Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 15:34

Something i been wondering myself.
How many session do you folk think a campaign using DragonBane can carry? As first stated, a "character build" would likely need 3-4+ heroic abilities to come together. That is 4+ "quests/story/arcs" or whatever term your table uses. Before you need to consider bringing it to an end. I suppose all builds can start stacking robust/focused, but its only getting less exiting from there.

However how many session it takes to raise your "main skills" to 18. i have no idea. How reaching skill 18 granting an heroic ability will work out is also up in the air.
It feels a little to random for me, but i will have to see in actual play. (I do fear John the lucky will have a better time with the campaign than Bill the unlucky)

What do you guys think?
and what is the session length on ideal campaign at your table?
It was a question that I was having my self too and I think the system better supports and keep things concise up to 15 sessions (with 4 or 5 advanced marks to all players per session) and around 5 HA (counting the ones that the players starts). I've lead to believe this because:
  1. Allows to give enough time to specialize in some skills or to be a generalist, but no both. With more sessions you could have some the core skills maximized and have some good numbers in others.
  2. When having more HA and players starts to stack Robust/Focused the game lethality starts to shift hardly to the side of the players. Even 3 or 4 of those HA is enough to make a great impact
Well, that's my point of view and is my feeling with the progression of this system so far. Which does not mean that 25 to 30 session and 10+ HA campaign would break or something, just that the GM would probably have to give an extra effort to create interesting challenges to those players.
 
simontmn
Posts: 55
Joined: Thu 09 Feb 2023, 00:18

Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Mon 13 Feb 2023, 21:20

I really struggle to see this game ever getting easy! I tend to kill a lot of PCs. I like it when they get tough enough to survive a few fights!
 
CarlNyk
Posts: 68
Joined: Thu 08 Dec 2022, 15:15

Re: How much HA should be in a campaign?

Tue 14 Feb 2023, 19:03

So I checked skill progression.

1. Best start: 14
2. Always add a checkmark (this is pretty costly, rolling a 1 or a 20 will not happen every sessions for every skill)
3. For simplicity, when doing a skill check, fail every time the cumulative chance is lower than 50%
4. But always succeed if the cumulative chance is greater than 50%

Progression
1. 2 rolls 14 -> 15 (70% risk of failure each time)
2. 3 rolls 15 -> 16 (75%)
3. 4 rolls 16 -> 17 (80%)
4. 5 rolls 17 -> 18 (85%)

All-in-all, 14 sessions to hit 18 from 14 "on average". So a while. This ignores teachers.

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