Hi, all! Italian long time fan here, I just wanted to leave some feedback on this awesome project.
I wrote an in-depth review on r/Symbaroum (
https://www.reddit.com/r/Symbaroum/comm ... _ruins_of/), I'll just summarize the important points here, since the review itself is pretty long.
- Corruption rules are a bit confusing mainly because they differ a bit from the Core Rules: now, from what I understand, when you go above the Corruption Threshold you either get a stigma or become completely corrupted. It's good, maybe it needs a better explanation (since I also probably got it wrong).
Yep, so when your Corruption total goes over your Threshold, you roll a d20. If the result is inside the difference between your Corruption total and the threshold then you get a mark of Corruption (which could include permanent Corruption). So, for example, if your Threshold is 5 and your current total Corruption is 10, then any result of 1-5 on the d20 would get a mark. The intent is that going over your Threshold is very tempting, since you can gamble on not getting any permanent effects. But, of course, there are other things (like magic items) that give permanent Corruption so managing total Corruption becomes a balancing act. And, of course, you can't reduce Corruption until you take some sort of rest and it consumes resources (Hit Dice).
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- I do not like the various rest rules, they maybe need to be more simple, but I appreciate the fact that the team stayed away from the standard 5E rules.
We can take another look at these, but their structure is very important, especially for handling higher-level characters. For both short and long rests in order to recover any significant amount of hit points you have to spend Hit Dice, which normally don't recharge until you take an extended rest (which is often only at the end of an adventure). Some groups that play 5e and make it easy to take rests might not be used to using Hit Dice to recover all the time, but it should be the primary way in
Ruins of Symbaroum.
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You'll note that certain features of Classes or Approaches provide the chance to get some Hit Dice back during a long rest. So a high level characters starts with a very high level of preparation (i.e. lots of hit points and Hit Dice) compared to a lower level character but then the world will wear them down... they'll lose hit points or gain Corruption, spend Hit Dice to recover but never get back as many Hit Dice as they spend. That way even a higher level character will be afraid of exploring the deepest reaches of Davokar or other extended sorts of missions.
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If you do give the game a chance, I'd strongly recommend using page 21 and treat each of the entries as a checklist ('this happens, then this, then this'). We hope it will come together quickly.
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- Very good stuff on races and backgrounds, keep them coming! I wonder how many backgrounds you're planning to release for each race. Also, as someone else pointed out, it could be good to change the term "race" seeing the cultural revolution that's going on right now (with which I deeply agree).
Thanks! We're definitely talking about how to handle this stuff going forward.
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- Mystics were handled masterfully, I love them and their corruption rules. I just have some reserves on rituals: as I say in the Reddit Thread, "I'm not fond of ritual rules, especially when they decided to port Holy Smoke from the Core Rulebook: I may be wrong but from what I got you can cast ritual spells as normal spells, but if you cast them as rituals you get no Corruption; it's a big no-no for me, I don't really want my players to cast Holy Smoke as a normal spell, I'd just keep two separate lists of spells and rituals, at least for imported ones. Also, you're forced to get rituals at levels 2 and 5 and they give you Permanent Corruption by learning them: why can't you choose to do it?". For Theurgs, I'm not fond of turning undeads but your mileage may vary. Wizards are perfect for now IMO, good job!
Thanks. I understand your point about Rituals — they're beneficial to the caster because they're another way to cast spells without gaining Corruption (other than that initial Permanent Corruption) but they're slow to cast. Part of it is, of course, the more rigid structure of classes in 5e. We can continue to take a look at things and see if there are alternatives, or if we just make it optional. Someone who skipped it would have a 'dead level' but less permanent Corruption and that might be worth it.
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- For Scoundrels, as I pointed out, "the Scoundrel's Cunning Class Privilege overlaps a bit with goblins' Survival Instinct: as a Scoundrel you can use a bonus action to perform Dash, Disengage or Hide; as a goblin, you can use a bonus action to perform Dodge or Disengage. It's not a big deal, it's just that many goblins will go for the Scoundrel class and maybe they won't feel rewarded enough".
Welcome to one of the most debated topics internally on the team. We've tried several different things and while we agree that a lot of Goblins will become Scoundrels, we don't want to hobble those who choose other paths, especially in a full rules package. So it remains a bit of an overlap but we'd rather have a couple of different ways to get the feature than to have some with and some without.
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The Explorer's ramification (the choice of three abilities) at level 6 is confusing, since Knights don't have one and just get fixed abilities, maybe some uniformation is needed, or maybe not! Diversification is fun!
Yep. You'll see in standard 5e that some classes (or subclasses) are much more straightforward than others. In cutting the sampler off at 6th level we disadvantaged the Explorer a bit, because each of those choices unlocks a package of features (i.e. the Explorer is more flexible than the Knight). In the full rules, the various features will make a little more sense.
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- For Warriors, Battle Wind is a bit overpowered in my opinion, but I haven't tested it yet.
Remember that temporary hit points do not stack. If you use your first round and gain 10 temporary hit points then take 5 points of damage and then use your second round to use your other chance at Battle Wind and again gain 10 temporary hit points then you have 10 temporary hit points, not 15. (Well technically, you get to pick, so you either have 5 or 10 temporary hit. points). Also, GMs can control the pacing of these features by how hard it is to take a short rest. If the party is exposed or being actively pursued or just isn't in a safe place they probably can't hunker down for an hour. Finally, gaining an average of 10 hit points at 1st level is a big deal. Gaining an average of 12 hit points at 10th level less so.
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- I'd like to know what your approach to character generation will be, since many enemies in the Promised Land have abysmal stat distribution and there will be a big disparity between them and characters with standard spreads as per 5E rules. I get that some enemies are intended to be weaker than Player Characters, so I won't delve very deep in the subject.
For monsters and other foes, we will be using the 5e challenge rating system, so what we produce will have maximum appeal to the market. (And, yes, we're very familiar with the limitations of the CR system so it is just a rough estimate of effectiveness.) So some characters will have stats high above what a Player-character can achieve and some will be much lower. Also monsters will have features that might draw on the original system for inspiration but work differently because of system changes. For example, Mal Rogan doesn't have an exceptional Strength score, but he has the ability to hit with Exceptional Strength (extra damage) as a supernatural feature of his condition.
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Rogan is good as he is but his artifact is a bit too powerful in his possession and maybe needs some revision.
Mal Rogan (and his crew) are designed to be a foe beyond 1st level heroes. A crew that sticks around and fights an undead captain and his band of thieves will probably have a bad, bad day. Just like in the original system, we won't pull punches — some things are just going to be too tough for the characters in their current situation.
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-All in all, I loved your work, I'm curious to see what will come out of this
Are you worried that level 20 characters will be much much stronger than low level characters, or are you going to limit the improvement gap/make leveling up harder? Are you thinking of re-publishing everything in 5E format or maybe release conversion rules for enemies in the Throne of Thorns campaign?
We should have more to say about the way forward in the near future. As for higher level characters, GMs are free to put a level cut-off into their games but we think that the Class designs and the rest system that we have in place (plus using other 5e features like exhaustion prominently as you see by the character sheet) will mean that there will be places that even 20th level heroes fear to tread.
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Thank you for your attention and hard work, cheers.
Thank you!
