DwD Studios
Feedback on low- to high-level play
Wed, 08/28/2019 - 8:56am | 
lowyhong
I've been running Barebones Fantasy for about 5 years now with about 10 different groups (all of whom are kids). Since there's a 2e in the works, I thought I'd just share some observations and feedback that I've collected over the years.
Skills
Leader: The least popular skill among my students, and to be honest I'm not a fan of it too. I did have a couple pick it, but they never really did anything much with it, not when the Spellcaster and Enchanter were around to boost the party members' stats. I also find Leader the most cumbersome to use and adjudicate (how do you have an entire army in a dungeon?), whereas the other skills are more straightforward.
Cleric: Doesn't really have the same kind of synergy that other skills share with one another; seems to be its own thing, a Warrior-Spellcaster hybrid (in which case, why not just focus on Warrior and Spellcaster). For instance, a Warrior-Spellcaster with Offensive Strike and Protect would be an absolute death machine; with Cleric, I can't really think of many fun builds that synergise across the different skills.
Enchanter: Many of my players chose Enchanter as either their Primary or Secondary skill, and they enjoyed using it a lot. It's a very creative and freeform skill. However, at higher levels, it starts to get weird, since by default, RAW, Enchanters don't do dice rolls. I thus decided to houserule that all runes must have dice rolls (roll under the Enchanter's score), which would be more balanced at higher levels (speaking of which, I'll be sharing my thoughts on it later).
Scholar: A fun skill but no reason to take it beyond Level 1, once you get the "Yes/No question" ability. I've never run a game where players took career paths that waeren't some variation of "diplomat". The "Historian" part of being a scholar also never really came up in all of the games I've run. Nobody ever saw a need for it to put themselves in a better situation.
Scout: Fun skill especially with "Animal Handling", but it's one of those skills that don't really need to go beyond level 2 or 3. The associated aspects like "Survival" and "Tracking" probably would see more use at lower levels, but beyond that when players are fighting dragons and mindflayers, it's just... eh...
Spellcaster: Best and easiest-to-use skill in the whole game, without a doubt. Not all spells are made equally though, and I'll share my thoughts on them later.
Thief: Like Scout, it's probably more useful at lower levels. However, unlike Scout, I've had players use Thief to bypass challenges where the odds were very stacked against them. It's a nice skill that can turn the tide of a situation.
Warrior: Like Spellcaster, it's just really straightforward. Doesn't scale really well at higher levels unless the GM is generous with magic weapons, but it synergises well with most of the skills, so I'm ok with it.
I think that concludes the thoughts I have on skills.
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Great feedback, thanks! A lot of your feedback seems filtered through the lens of the dungeon crawl, which is awesome, since many of my game sessions are only maybe 25% dungeon crawl and we need different perspectives! I have a comment to make about two of your items...
Agreed. I have never been a fan of the Leader skill as written. It is clearly meant to be a D&D 4e "warlord" type skill, and it's clunky and cumbersome.
This is also another skill I've always been bothered by. Unlike Leader, this is a skill I actually had a role in creating. You see... during playtest we didn't have this skill initially. And when asked "how do I play a cleric" we said "Use some levels of warrior and some levels of spellcaster" and we got all sorts of complaints, saying "but that's a common trope" and "why would I have to do two skills to be a cleric and only one skill to be a thief or a warrior?" We created this skill to appease the testers and they loved it, though I didn't. If we do a separate cleric skill in 2nd edition, it will be custom made from scratch and have a separate spell list so it is its own thing... and will not include a built-in crossover warrior aspect. If you want to be a better warrior you take warrior skill levels. If you want to cast divine magic, you take cleric skill levels.
Let's talk about Spells here.
Aid: Nothing wrong with this spell. I like it a lot, and the scaling seems about right.
Charm: Also a good spell, seems pretty balanced, but have not had any players use it at higher levels yet.
Cleanse: Haven't seen this spell used yet, but doesn't appear to be game-breaking.
Control Weather: Nobody has ever taken this spell in the 10 campaigns I've run lol. I think I've instilled the fear of claustrophobia in all of them.
Dispel: Hasn't been used much at the table, but doesn't seem like it'd cause problems at higher levels. I like how it taps on Initiative too to disrupt spells.
Divination: Nobody has picked this spell, but IMO it sounds like a good spell at lower levels, and less so as the spellcaster goes up to level 6. Would be cool if it could be used to predict the future or something like that? Just a thought.
Entangle: I love this spell! Players often get creative with it, for instance using roots to entangle their foes before setting fire to them.
Heal: Good, straightforward spell. Scales well. However, one thing I'm not sure about is that at level 6, can this spell be cast for regenerative BP in addition to the 12D that he gets for healing himself/others?
Hinder: Seems like a good spell but none of my players have chosen this before.
Illusion: Good spell, useful for turning around an overwhelmingly difficult situation, which means it doesn't break at higher levels.
Offensive Strike: Great spell, super versatile. Would like to see a "chain" option (e.g. chain lightning).
Protection: Haven't seen this used at the table yet, but at level 5-6, it seems decently useful.
Repel: Nobody's ever chosen this spell, and I can't see why anyone would. It only seems to be really useful when dealing with hordes, but hordes are really annoying to use from a GM's perspective. Plus, driving enemies back 5 + spellcaster's level spaces isn't much, since they can close the distance easily. I just don't see this being of any use as both a low level and high level spell.
Summon: the seocnd most overpowered spell, but then again I haven't been making use of my power as a GM to arbitrate consequences, so there's that XD. One thing that bugs me though is when players decide to summon Rank 2 creatures at Level 4 to 6. Rank 2 creatures like Medusas are massively overpowered, and if you have 10 or so of them, they're just going to plow through opponents without anti-magic. Plus, it's annoying to have to run through so many creatures, adding to the downtime.
Telekinesis: It sounds cool on paper, but I'm not sure if I'll ever see this spell used except to deflect projectiles. As such, I can't say much about how useful Telekinesis is.
Transform: Pretty cool spell. Players got creative with it many times before (e.g. they *love* transforming into elementals).
Transport: The most overpowered spell, and the scaling is just out of whack here. At level 6, the spellcaster can blink himself or his target anywhere in the world, making it way too useful to not be in the spellcaster's arsenal. I would suggest toning it down, by having the following scale: at Level 1, the target can fly at 1 space/turn; at Level 2, the target can double his/her ground speed (i.e. haste); at Level 3, the target can fly at half his normal speed; at Level 4, the target can fly at his normal speed; at Level 5, the target can fly at double his normal speed; at Level 6, the target can blink to anywhere that he can see.
That's about all I have for spells at the moment.
EDIT: Would suggest changing the following spell names, as they're quite confusing.
"Hinder": Suggest "Curse" instead
"Telekinesis": Suggest "Mage Arm" or something along those lines (I can't count the number of times students got Telekinesis confused with Transport)
"Repel": I really don't know what you'd call Repel. It's just such a confusing spell.
Hey Bill, thanks for the quick reply. I have a few ideas for the Cleric, but I'll probably start a separate thread for them.
Just for perspective, how I run my adventures is that I will split them up into two parts: there are the non-combat moments where situations are quickly resolved with a couple of dice rolls (and failure means fail forwarding, e.g. time is lost or PCs fail to realise they're being watched). As such, skill percentages, while still important, have less of an impact outside of combat to keep the story flowing.
The other part is combat encounters which, as you've pointed out, are typically (though not always) run in dungeons or enclosed areas. I feel this is where we might run into some problems with non-combat skills. With non-combat skills, they're only needed insofar as to move the story forwards (so a failed roll is not necessarily a bad thing); you can't crash the story to a halt if the dice rolls are bad. With Warrior and Spellcaster, however, they're absolutely necessary for survival when PCs get thrown into deadly encounters that are tough to escape, or when they must absolutely kill the NPC to get to the next part of the story (e.g. a demilich that is threatening the fabric between the fugue plane and the mortal realm).
Funnily enough, with Covert Ops I didn't have this problem. I think that it's because in Covert Ops, even with combat-heavy campaigns, I saw almost every skill being used to some degree (Technician was used to hack computers that disabled security systems, Medic was used to stop bleeding and provide temporary respite, etc).
What I'd suggest is to give every skill some kind of use in combat as well, perhaps some kind of specialisation as you level up (in the same way the Scholar gets specialisations). It's probably going to be a lot of work to decide how some of the non-combat skills can tie into combat situations, but I think this will add a greater diversity of builds regardless of the campaign type that's being run.