Whoa-whoa-whoa.  Ok.  As the uncredited writer of the LA quick start, I feel I have to step in here and provide my perspective on this one.  Not because Luna is wrong on the score, only that he's missing some key details.

Quote from: Lunamancer;1090215My perspective on LA in general is, this is a great and flexible system. Let's show it can do D&D style dungeon crawls as well as more free form adventures with plenty of RP and outdoor and exploration skill use. And that was shouted down, the part about the dungeon crawling. Let D&D do that. Let LA play to its strengths.

I'm in the same camp as Luna here.  In fact, I remember when Gygax was wondering aloud over the LA forums what to write for the intro adventure in the Living the Lejend book.  He throw out some idea for a grand tournament, with the PCs all taking art in little Ren Fair activities to learn the basic concepts of the system.  Sort of like High Time at the Winged Pig in the Mythus core book.  (Anyone remember that adventure?  No?  Exactly!)  I got up on my (comparably small) soap box and said something to the effect of "Dude, you are Gary Gygax.  People are looking to you for the next Giants-Drow saga, the next Keep on the Borderlands, the next Necropolis.  And you want to give them High Times at the Winged Pig part deux?  That's a mistake.  Own up to your legacy and give the fans what they want, but something new."  I mention this because, like Luna, I think LA does dungeoncrawling just fine (but different--no levels means no funky tiering), and I think it was silly for Gygax not to embrace that aspect of his legacy in this new game.  It would be like Metallica announcing they were going to do a new album of soft rock tunes.

So when I set out to write the QS, you better believe I was gonna put a little dungeon crawl in it.

QuoteBut then when it came to the QuickStart, since the objective was to showcase the game's rules, the adventure itself was kept pretty bog standard, tossing out the whole idea of playing to LA's strengths. The idea was also to get players started quickly, so it only stuck to familiar races, leaving out the ones unique to LA.

So I would say absolutely, there is a lot of room to grow this. It's been over a decade since I last asked him, but BluSponge felt like the quick start gets the job done, no other is needed. I thought it would have been neat to have a few other independent quick starts. Each to give a different taste of what LA is like since so much had to be left out of the original. The bog-standard RPG adventure is not going to appeal to everyone.

Did I say that?  Maybe I did.  A decade is a long time.

So here is the skinny on the QS.  I wasn't commissioned.  I wasn't given any parameters.  No instruction.  It isn't like Gary or Chris took me aside and said, "you know what you should do..."  None of that.  Savage Worlds had just come out and released this great Quick Start pdf with a really cool pulp adventure and I thought, "this is great!  LA needs something like this!"  I asked and there were no plans to do one.  So being the overeager fan, I set out and made one.  I put the pdf together in a very specific way, particularly in regards to the pre-gens (that wasn't kept in the TLG version), and sent it off to Gary and Chris who were then gracious enough to put it out.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see where I made a LOT of mistakes writing the QS.  In some ways, I probably made the game harder to comprehend.  And, like Luna says, the adventure wasn't written to play to LA's strengths (I just thought it was a cool idea for an adventure).  There wasn't a lot of strategy behind it.  It's basically a fan product.  Now, a decade later, I'd probably write something very different.  Kinda like my Barcalonia sourcebook draft that is sitting somewhere on CD.  It was a product of its time, my eagerness, and my inexperience.  I don't even recall it getting an edit from Chris or anyone.  The pdf went up just the way I turned it in.  The TLG folks took it, and reformatted it, and put it back out into the wild.  I didn't even have the wherewithal to put my name on it (because it's about the GAME, man!).

So anyone who reads the QS these days and thinks, WTF?  Or is underwhelmed with the adventure?  Or finds the abbreviated rules (particularly about power activation times) a hot mess?  That's all on me.

Do I feel the QS gets the job done?  Nope.  I have no doubt someone could do a better job than I did (or at least as good a one).  I don't think the QS is bad, mind you.  I'm proud of how it came out.  I think it (mostly) does what I set out to do.  But 10 years later, I think it could have been better.  A lot better.  But since there isn't an actively published game to support right now (unless you go with Perilous Journeys, which is close but feels like its missing some key ingredients), I'm not sure there is a point to revamping it.  

I personally would love to see a full on retroclone of LA.  I've played around with doing something in that vein, but I just don't have the time anymore to throw myself into a project like that when I'm not actively playing it.  And my level of system mastery is not even close to Luna's (in fact, that LA requires that level of system mastery is one of the things that bugs me about the game).  But anyone who wants to give it a go not only has my blessing, my attention, but also can count on my feedback.

But I'm curious.  Maybe Luna remembers.  What ARE the strengths that LA built its adventures on?  I don't remember any discussions or any guiding principles from Gary on that score.  That's the sort of thing that's been front and center on my mind as I start prepping for a Fantasy AGE game in the fall (using the LA bestiary and world materials, I should add): what does the game excel at and how do I build that into my adventures?

Tom

Quote from: Blusponge;1090419I remember when Gygax was wondering aloud over the LA forums what to write for the intro adventure in the Living the Lejend book.  He throw out some idea for a grand tournament, with the PCs all taking art in little Ren Fair activities to learn the basic concepts of the system.

For an OG, he was hip to what was going on in CRPGs. Nowadays every computer game has that damned tutorial walking you through some actual play. It's the standard now. That said, I don't really like it. I find it frustrating, I don't actually learn anything from it, and it takes forever just for me to get going where I can mess around with things so i can begin figuring it all out. That's why even though I love Jon Creffield's work, and I thought Lejendary Road was a neat concept, I'm only luke warm on that module. Too much of that tutorial feel to it.

QuoteSort of like High Time at the Winged Pig in the Mythus core book.  (Anyone remember that adventure?  No?  Exactly!

Well, I remember High Time at the Winged Pig, and I really liked it. I don't consider it an adventure, though. It's more like an introduction. It will fill about a half session of play. It is it has a decent enough twist. If you add a part B to it and make it a full-fledged adventure, I think it works really well.

QuoteI got up on my (comparably small) soap box and said something to the effect of "Dude, you are Gary Gygax.  People are looking to you for the next Giants-Drow saga, the next Keep on the Borderlands, the next Necropolis.  And you want to give them High Times at the Winged Pig part deux?  That's a mistake.  Own up to your legacy and give the fans what they want, but something new."  I mention this because, like Luna, I think LA does dungeoncrawling just fine (but different--no levels means no funky tiering), and I think it was silly for Gygax not to embrace that aspect of his legacy in this new game.

Well, it's tough, though. Do you honor the legacy of his great works? Or do you honor the mind and the process that created those works? I don't think he would have come up with any of those great things if he hadn't been trying to do something new and different. If you take the best Gary ever did and had a Gary clone pumping out nothing but clones of those things, it will be okay. Maybe even highly salable. But it's not going to produce any new classics. My biggest gripe with the "modern RPG"--and you see this in spades with 5E and OSR--is that it's mainly a rehasing of the past. It's awesome that Tomb of Horrors has the kind of staying power that allows it to be rehashed for 4 decades and still sell really well. It would be even more awesome if someone could create the next great module that will carry on for the next 4 decades.

Hall of Many Panes, it turns out, is my favorite module of all time. Good pay-off for attempting to do something new there. At the same time, one of the very best parts of it is the large dungeon crawl.

QuoteI personally would love to see a full on retroclone of LA.  I've played around with doing something in that vein, but I just don't have the time anymore to throw myself into a project like that when I'm not actively playing it.  And my level of system mastery is not even close to Luna's (in fact, that LA requires that level of system mastery is one of the things that bugs me about the game).  But anyone who wants to give it a go not only has my blessing, my attention, but also can count on my feedback.

You know I love to argue this point of how easy or hard the game is. I began running my first LA campaign in 2000, about a year after LR4AP was published. After about 2 months, I was as comfortable running LA as I was running AD&D. At that point, I'd been running pure 1E for 7 years, and I'd been playing various editions, mostly mish-mashed, for 10 years prior to that. It's hard for me not to put LA waaaaay over on the easy to learn end of the spectrum.

If I have any special insights, they're not specific to LA. They're just things that I generally find to be good ideas no matter what RPG you play. Some RPGs are more receptive to these "good ideas" than others. I consider LA one of the best.

QuoteBut I'm curious.  Maybe Luna remembers.  What ARE the strengths that LA built its adventures on?  I don't remember any discussions or any guiding principles from Gary on that score.  That's the sort of thing that's been front and center on my mind as I start prepping for a Fantasy AGE game in the fall (using the LA bestiary and world materials, I should add): what does the game excel at and how do I build that into my adventures?

I think this is the one time the phrase "product of its time" can be invoked without me rolling my eyes. Remember, LR4AP was released in 1999, and the game was in beta back in 97.

As I recall gaming in the 90's, it went something like this. A hell of a lot of finger wagging. Dungeon crawling was fun as hell. But it got turned into a guilty pleasure. That's childish video game stuff. A more mature game has stuff like "political intrigue." Another thing that makes me roll my eyes. Because that term could mean so many different things that there's no way anyone who honestly does prefer to have "political intrigue" in their campaigns would ever use that phrase to describe their campaign or preferences. I think one of the reasons I liked LA it straight out had an ability called "Pretense."

Anyway, the point is, to be one of the cool kids--as cool as any gamer could aspire to become anyway--you had to look down your nose at dungeon crawls and hack and slay and deny that stuff is actually fun and exciting. Skill-based games were favored because, as different as classes could be from one another, they could still be designed as "combat balanced"--and a lot of people felt that was the case with D&D whether or not it actually ever was a design goal or whether or not it ever was truly combat balanced. Skill-based games, on the other hand, there was no way of predicting where players would lump their skill picks. It breaks the "combat balance" paradigm, so that necessarily shifts the focus of the game. Rules-lite were also favored, because hack-and-slay play generally meant rules-playing. Well, if you're lite on rules, it's not that interesting to rules play. You don't have much meat on the bones, And so that likewise shifted the focus of the game.

Since LA is skill-based and rules-lite, it was obviously better suited to this more "mature" mode of play. Is it Chris Clark who always says LA is about what you can do, not who you can kill?

And hey, how are you going to run a Dungeon Crawl campaign in LA without giving the Forester Order the shaft? The key is to take that as a legitimate question, not a rhetorical one. Foresters abilities are all athletically oriented. They're good at leaping and climbing and running. So you level up your dungeons to include more of these challenges. Make use of the third dimension while you're at it. This is just for starters. If you get serious about doing dungeoncrawls in LA, they will kick a D&D dungeoncrawl's ass. For what it's worth, I wrote a killer dungeon crawl many years ago where Alchemia, Creativity, and Panprobability are key to certain parts of the dungeon.

Quote from: Blusponge;1090419So here is the skinny on the QS.  I wasn't commissioned.  I wasn't given any parameters.  No instruction.  It isn't like Gary or Chris took me aside and said, "you know what you should do..."  None of that.  Savage Worlds had just come out and released this great Quick Start pdf with a really cool pulp adventure and I thought, "this is great!  LA needs something like this!"  I asked and there were no plans to do one.  So being the overeager fan, I set out and made one.  I put the pdf together in a very specific way, particularly in regards to the pre-gens (that wasn't kept in the TLG version), and sent it off to Gary and Chris who were then gracious enough to put it out.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see where I made a LOT of mistakes writing the QS.  In some ways, I probably made the game harder to comprehend.  And, like Luna says, the adventure wasn't written to play to LA's strengths (I just thought it was a cool idea for an adventure).  There wasn't a lot of strategy behind it.  It's basically a fan product.  Now, a decade later, I'd probably write something very different.  Kinda like my Barcalonia sourcebook draft that is sitting somewhere on CD.  It was a product of its time, my eagerness, and my inexperience.  I don't even recall it getting an edit from Chris or anyone.  The pdf went up just the way I turned it in.  The TLG folks took it, and reformatted it, and put it back out into the wild.  I didn't even have the wherewithal to put my name on it (because it's about the GAME, man!).

Before making a full reply, I just wanted to say thank you! I find the QS a good introduction with familiar tropes with familiar archetypes. You should be proud of what you did. Also, as a side note, the QS is the only still standing piece of Lejendary Adventure that people can still find available. After all this years! And If I mentioned I wanted to create a companion to the QS, is not to erase its success, but to build on its own merits.

Also, I wanted to add that I find interesting that none of us find solace in Perilous Journey.

PS: Lunamancer, Thank you for the answers on my previous questions. Of course I still have more to follow up.

Quote from: Rithuan;1090499Also, I wanted to add that I find interesting that none of us find solace in Perilous Journey.

I admire Perilous Journeys in some ways. Hey, they went out and actually put something together. That's great. For myself, I would rather have something more true to the original. The creators of Perilous Journeys don't play the way I play, and the original Lejendary Adventure is more flexible and accommodating. LA makes for a better center for the PJs of the world to revolve around rather than the other way around.

Cross-posted to the LA facebook group:

I've been wanting to do more dungeon crawling with Lejendary Adventure. AD&D 1E seems more specialized in dungeon crawls while Lejendary Adventure's power is as more of a general purpose engine. But that also means that LA should have no problem adapting those specialized parts of AD&D for the task.

So here are some ideas along those lines:

-Forcing open stuck doors: 10% of Avatar's body weight plus 50% of Physique Ability
-Bend Bars/Lift Gates: 30% of Physique Ability.
-Forcing open barred or locked doors: 1% per point of Physique over 100.

-Searching for Secret Doors: Speed + 50% of Scrutiny or Stealth (whichever is higher) + 10% of the other, if applicable. (examining/searching) and/or 10% of Stealth (access/escape)
-Finding Concealed Doors: Speed x2 +50% of Scrutiny and/or 50% of Stealth

-Listening at Doors: base 10% (for human hearing) plus 50% of Scrutiny and 10% of any Ability possessed that allows the Avatar to avoid Surprise

How to create a Wylf Outlaw

It's generally difficult in Lejendary Adventure to squeeze Alfar into the human Order templates. However, there are certain Alfar-Order combinations that lend themselves fairly well to it. Even still, whether you're playing a Human or Alfar Avatar, if you begin an Ordered Avatar without all the abilities in the proper order, it takes a lot of patience and a lot of merits to reach 9th Rank. After 9th Rank, you have full freedom to develop the Avatar you see fit. Here are some tips for creating a Wylf Outlaw Avatar to get to 9th Rank the quickest.

Your two chosen Abilities should be Waylaying first, obviously, followed by Archery. This leaves Weapons Ability to fill your default "fifth ability" slot. Combined with the racial abilities, this gives you all of the required outlaw abilities, plus Stealth and Scrutiny, two very valuable Abilities to add to the Outlaw Avatar's repertoire.

To get the abilities in order, first Ranging must exceed Archery, then Weapons Ability must be raised higher than Stealth. Adding to Weapons Ability is generally relatively easy. In most campaigns, combat will happen often enough that you will never be at a loss for Ability-specific Merits. And players generally don't mind having to increase their Avatar's Weapons Ability. As for Ranging and Archery, it is possible to get them in the correct order during Avatar creation.

Here's how:

If you're assigning 14 points to Speed BR, you will want to assign 53 to 66 points to Health BR and 20 to 31 points to Precision. If you choose not to assign maximum points to Speed BR, divide the freed up points as evenly as possible between Health and Precision BRs such that more of the freed up points are assigned to Health (example: if you opt for 8 Speed, this frees up 6 points; assign 4 additional points to Health and 2 to Precision).

Barring the rare Knack or Quirk, if you assign BR points like this, even if you roll the highest possible points for Precision and the lowest possible for Health, you will still begin with Waylaying, Ranging, and Archery, in order, ranked as your three highest Abilities. Note that the more points you assign to Health and the less to Precision, the more quickly the Avatar will rise in ranks. But the more points you assign to Precision and the fewer to Health, the more total Ability Score points you will have over all. This is the tradeoff.

Note also that it is possible to assign fewer points to Health, and more points to Precision than the range I have given. You may still begin with your Abilities in proper order, but you leave it to chance. Assigning 48 to Health, 36 to Precision, and 16 to Speed, for example, still give you a very high Probability of beginning play with the Abilities in order, while boosting your initial Archery ability making those initial combats a bit easier for you.

Hello again, I'm back

Quote from: Lunamancer;1090485For what it's worth, I wrote a killer dungeon crawl many years ago where Alchemia, Creativity, and Panprobability are key to certain parts of the dungeon.

I'll love to hear more about it!

Quote from: Lunamancer;1091945How to create a Wylf Outlaw

I recall a post from Gary in ENworld or Dragonsfoot, when he contradicted the errata regarding alfars and advancing in an Order. One of the many things that require a clear language.

I'm finally back with some more questions. I still have a few follow-ups for some of the previous post.

Command and Protection Circles [LR4AP 158]
This is a follow-up for an old question. A few pages ago, I asked if propitiation and votive materials for Teourgy used a slot in a Memory Tablet.

Now I face a similar question regarding the command and protect circles. For Sorcery (p158), it states that "A Sorcerer also must record, on a Sorcery memory tablet, all information about any type of workings - circle, Summonings, Calling Ups and Powers."

But for necrourgy (p 136), it only says that "Each Ritual, Spell and Power possessed must be recorded", not mentioning the command and protect circles. Geourgy (p 106) and Teourgy (p168), similar to necrourgy, does not mention recording the command and protect circles.

So, my question is: Does command and protection's circles need to be recorded in the memory tablet? Or is Sorcery just an exception? On page 57 appears as "materials" for Geourgy, Necrourgy, Sorcery, and Teourgy.

Psychogenic and Merits, pt2 [LML p143]
As a follow-up of the 3000 merits per Psychogenic power. If It's not in the initial training, when do you need to spend merits to learn a new power? because, for what I gather, Psychogenic is the only ability that requires to pay training, spend merits (3000) and also has an Ability limit (at least gain 10 points since the last power, unless you haven't reached the limit)

Quote from: Rithuan;1094198I'll love to hear more about it!

The short version is, part of the dungeon had a long lost ancient art gallery, guarded by a ghost (curator) who only permits entrance if he is permitted to drain some of the Avatar's energy (resulting in permanent health loss). It turns out it's well worth it. The art is all magical. You can't loot it, but it has beneficial effects. Mostly. Some of it is nasty. Successful use of creativity Ability gives some clue as to which is which. There's also a statue of a sad minstrel, and I allow a creativity check to understand the reason is sad is because his instrument is out of tune. Elsewhere in the dungeon is a magical tuning fork. If returned, the statue turns happy and bestows a benefit upon the party--enough to make up for the lost point of Health for sure.

In the dungeon is also an old alchemy lab. When the closet is searched, there is a trigger that closes and locks the door to the room, trapping the Avatars in. And if that isn't bad enough, the alchemist has skeletons in the closet. Bonewalkers that keep re-animating. A successful Alchemia check will allow an Avatar know which of the things left in the lab to combine to create an acid strong enough to eat through the lock on the door and escape. Without Alchemia, it's a matter of trial and error. Some combinations produce poison gases or explosions which can seriously harm the party. An Avatar without Alchemia who manages to get the right combination, though, gains Alchemia permanently at a score of 1-3.

As for Panprobability, there is a void spider in the dungeon. The nodes of its web are anchored in other dimensional space. Some of them will transport the party elsewhere in the dungeon. Some in the wilderness. A few to an inhospitable other plane that leads to certain death. An Avatar with Panprobability can get some rough idea of where the nodes lead and know which ones are dangerous.

QuoteI recall a post from Gary in ENworld or Dragonsfoot, when he contradicted the errata regarding alfars and advancing in an Order. One of the many things that require a clear language.

The general idea is pretty simple. It's just tricky to explain. I got a peak at some of the notes from the retro clone  Blusponge had begun a while back, and he introduces the language of "primary" versus "secondary" abilities. Using that language I think does give a hope to better explain how getting the Abilities in order works. Your "primary" ability is what the game terms your "first" ability. This is the Ability that begins at the highest percentage of the BR. For most Avatars, it's the one that begins at 100% of the BR. But for Trollkin, for example, the best one is Minstrelsy at 80% of Precision. Even if the actual score turns out to be higher for another ability, the primary is still primary.

The secondary Abilities for the order are all those required that are not primary. They must be in proper order, with no abilities interspersed, in order to qualify for 9th rank.

One exception, as I read it, is the Forester Order has a "mandatory" ability that must be either Ranging or Savagery. It's not a required ability, though. So there can be other Abilities between Rustic and Ranging/Savagery without it interfering in qualifying for 9th Rank.

Contrast this with the Rogue Order, who has a 5th required ability of either Minstrelsy or Chivalry. In order to qualify for 9th rank, you may not have other abilities ranked between Tricks and Chivalry/Minstrelsy.

That being said, it is a big challenge to get Alfar Abilities in order to reach 9th Rank in most cases. But again, once you've made 9th Rank, you can go on to develop the Avatar any way you see fit. Only the rising First Ability determines future rank qualifications. In the LA group where I'm a player, one of the other players is playing a Wylf Forester. Just a couple of sessions ago he finally made 9th Rank.

QuoteI'm finally back with some more questions. I still have a few follow-ups for some of the previous post.

Command and Protection Circles [LR4AP 158]
This is a follow-up for an old question. A few pages ago, I asked if propitiation and votive materials for Teourgy used a slot in a Memory Tablet.

Now I face a similar question regarding the command and protect circles. For Sorcery (p158), it states that "A Sorcerer also must record, on a Sorcery memory tablet, all information about any type of workings - circle, Summonings, Calling Ups and Powers."

But for necrourgy (p 136), it only says that "Each Ritual, Spell and Power possessed must be recorded", not mentioning the command and protect circles. Geourgy (p 106) and Teourgy (p168), similar to necrourgy, does not mention recording the command and protect circles.

So, my question is: Does command and protection's circles need to be recorded in the memory tablet? Or is Sorcery just an exception? On page 57 appears as "materials" for Geourgy, Necrourgy, Sorcery, and Teourgy.

So what I just wrote above about the Forester vs the Rogue Orders? It's oddly relevant to the answer to this question.

It is an open question about whether the differences in the wordings between the Rogue and Forester Orders concerning the Orders "fifth" Abilities is intended to mean they work different, or if it's just inconsistent editing. In the case of Rogue and Forester, I feel the subtle differences actually make sense considering their orders, so I side with the difference in wording being intentional.

For your question here, I'm leaning more towards inconsistent editing. Unless there's something out there I haven't thought of, I have no particular reason to believe the Sorcerer would work differently from the Geourge, Theurge, or Necrourge. I think the key thing, the spirit of the thing, is that the command and summoning circles take up two of your initial power picks. And that's because these summonings can obviously be very powerful. When we play, everyone respects the spirit of the thing, so using picks to get your initial command and summoning materials is fine. If I found players were going against the spirit, not picking circle materials with their initial equipment picks and instead acquiring them on the cheap after play begins, I probably would require the knowledge to be written on a memory tablet as a way of forcing those extra picks to be spent.

QuotePsychogenic and Merits, pt2 [LML p143]
As a follow-up of the 3000 merits per Psychogenic power. If It's not in the initial training, when do you need to spend merits to learn a new power? because, for what I gather, Psychogenic is the only ability that requires to pay training, spend merits (3000) and also has an Ability limit (at least gain 10 points since the last power, unless you haven't reached the limit)

Here's an easy and common example.

Say you decide you want to make a "Psionicist." So you pick Psychogenics as your first Ability. Most likely it will start somewhere in the 50's. So you're allowed to have up to 5 powers. But with Psychogenics as a first Ability comes 9 "magical" list picks. And each Psychogenic power costs 3 picks. So you only begin with 3 powers. The other two you may learn later at the cost of 3000 merits.


My brother reads a lot more fantasy literature than I do. Plus he's seen all the Harry Potter movies. And he has little kids. His opinion, if he's watching the wizards in these movies through the Lejendary Adventure lens, a lot of them do rely on magic wands or staves. Sometimes they cast spells without them that take a bit of casting (time) to complete. But then they also seem to have a few powers they use only when absolutely necessary that seems to require no items, no components, and no time. He believes the "high level" wizards have actually supplemented their "Enchantment" Ability with Psionics.

I think he's got a point. Psionics has some cool powers. So does Enchantment. With enchantment, I feel like I get a lot more bang for my buck. But I can see how valuable that zero casting time for Psychogenics would be as a supplement to an Enchanter. And since it is just a supplement, you don't have to worry about how hard keeping up acquiring new powers is. Because the Enchantment is your main go-to.


Incidentally, he also pointed out to me that in the "Essentials" version of the game, they swap out the Ability the Rogue learns at 1st Rank. In LR4AP, top ranked Rogues learn Psychogenics. In essentials, it's Enchantment. At first he thought it made it more D&D-like--like how thieves at 10th+ level can start to use spell scrolls. Having enchantment would enable Rogues use of any spell memory tablet as you and I have already discussed earlier in this thread. Psychogenics, we seem to agree, not so much. But on closer inspection, he thinks the real reason for the change is because Essentials left out Psychogenics. And so it was just to make it so it didn't reference a rule that wasn't there.


But I got to thinking. He's got a point about the D&D-like nature of Rogues learning Enchantment. And he's got a point about high level wizards supplementing their powers with Psychogenics. I thought, maybe I should just have Rogues pick up Enchantment at 1st Rank, and maybe Mages should get Psychogenics rather than Geourgy at 3rd Rank. He liked the idea but thought maybe I should just allow the players the choice. Rogues get to choose between Enchantment at Psychogenics. Mages may choose between Psychogenics and Geourgy. And I suppose Elementalists at 3rd rank should get to choose between Enchantment and Psychogenics.

Once again, thanks for your reply Lunamancer. Your reply was insightful, as always.
The psychogenic bit make me think a lot about how al extraordinary abilities could complement between each other. Also, and I know I already said it, how awesome is the Orders (or guilds) in LA.

Speaking of orders and characters, I have an open question: how do you approach character creation with this system? I find myself allocating max points in Precision and Speed, to increase de percentage of weapons and extraordinary abilities. I find that starting characters has scores too low.

Edit: it’s hard to write with a phone!

Quote from: Rithuan;1094427Also, and I know I already said it, how awesome is the Orders (or guilds) in LA.

Absolutely.

I think it hits a sweet spot. In D&D, the characters are limited in how far outside the class they can develop. In Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys game, the "vocation" sets the vast majority of your initial skills, but once the character is created, you can grow however you want with it. Orders in Lejendary Adventure give a lot more customization than D&D but more of a framework than Dangerous Journeys.

QuoteSpeaking of orders and characters, I have an open question: how do you approach character creation with this system? I find myself allocating max points in Precision and Speed, to increase de percentage of weapons and extraordinary abilities. I find that starting characters has scores too low.

I did more or less the same thing when I started playing. And I get the feeling almost everyone has experienced that. On the old Lejendary.com boards, a lot of people would just treat maxing out Speed BR as a given. And a lot of people felt Speed should cost more during initial character creation.

Obviously if you look at my tips for creating the Wylf Outlaw, there are times when you don't necessarily want to max out Precision. Fitting a race to an order in general is one good reason to do something different.

Another? If you're a combat min-maxer, even though Precision determines your starting Weapons Ability, that's only helpful if you're alive. If Health is roughly proportional to how long your character stays alive, it's roughly an equal factor to Precision in terms of making the best possible fighter. If you're a Soldier, having that Physique Ability also adds to the value of Health, making Health even greater an impact on your overall combat ability. Mind you, Physique begins only at 40% of Health (if you begin with all Abilities in order), and there are 10 points of Physique Ability score separating each +1 harm bonus. So there is a very tight range in which you want to sacrifice Precision for Health. But there is a degree to which you want to do that if you're trying to optimize your Avatar for fighting.

This is further emphasized with the Noble Order. The harm bonus for Chivalry is massive, and Chivalry is 100% of your starting Health. I've crunched the numbers, and it seems to me, in terms of sheer combat, assigning minimum points to Precision (so that Health may be maxed out) yields an Avatar that is roughly equal in combat as a Noble who has Precision maxed out. One will just do more harm while the other will hit more often. Assigning more points to Health means beginning with a much higher social station of course, as you begin as a highly ranked knight. Doing so, however, you skip a lot of ranks and miss out on a lot of those rank benefits. My point is, any choice here is viable. Go with the Avatar you wish to play.

If you care about things other than combat, the other things the Avatar can do, some of the Orders have you making some excruciating choices. For the Soldier, your first Ability is Precision based, but all others are Health based. You may find yourself wanting to sacrifice more than just the few points of Precision that optimize your combat potential so that you can have a much higher Health so that 3 out of your 4 Abilities begin with much higher scores.

The Rogue is another one that presents a tough choice. Their first Ability is Health-based, the others are Precision-based. Usually if I make a Rogue I do want a Precision as high as possible because Weapons, Stealth, and Tricks are going to be frequently used. And with a 40 minimum health, plus two points for beginning with a health-based ability, plus 1d20 random points, I can be reasonably certain Pretense will always at least be at a competent level. On the other hand, sacrificing 4 points of Speed by assigning only 8 points rather than 12 to make Health 4 points higher may make the difference between the rogue beginning at 9th Rank or 8th Rank.

Speed in general seems like a no-brainer to max out, but if you don't begin with any Speed-based Abilities, and most Avatars don't, the main thing Speed does for you is helps with Avoidance checks. 4 points will make a difference of 4-16% (depending if the check is Speed x1, x2, x3, or x4). It's not really much in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, freeing up 4 points could potentially mean an additional 11 points in Ability scores--the order Abilities for Desperado are all Precision-based.


Here's another thing I do with Avatar builds. This is mostly a me thing. When I create human Ordered Avatars, I interpose an Ability not required by the order so that I begin play at 11th Rank. For instance, if I'm making an Ecclesiastic, I will choose Weapons as my 3rd Ability. Once I begin playing, I have to work to raise Physique higher than weapons, and then Learning higher than Weapons. Doing this, I step through each rank, one at a time, not skipping any ranks, so I gain all rank benefits. Plus I get to begin with a more unique Avatar. And, by the time I've gotten all abilities in order, the lower Abilities are all around 50. So I'm perfectly competent in them. After that point, I can focus entirely on my 1st Ability--or maybe even split merits between the 1st Ability and the unique Ability I've selected to differentiate my Avatar from others of the same order (so after making 9th Rank, I focus on raising Theurgy and Weapons--all the other Abilities remain roughly 50 each).

Want to do a Paladin? Create a Noble. But choose Theurgy as a 3rd Ability. Now you can squeeze off a couple of minor powers, healing for sure, but you are otherwise basically an extremely highly competent warrior.

One Avatar I made, right at the start I rolled the wanderlust knack (+10% to Nomadic Ability). So I made a nomadic soldier. Weapons, Planning, Nomadic, Physique with Ranging 10 as my bonus 5th Ability. The nice thing about this is I got +4 to my initial Precision rather than +2 due to the extra Precision-based Ability (Nomadic) in my Ability selection. That translated to an extra 2 points of Weapons Ability. But Nomadic also provides a harm bonus. So this Avatar started with a much higher harm bonus than most soldiers. In this case, I did max out Precision, but I sacrificed Speed BR for initial Health. Don't really need the movement speed, anyway, being that this Avatar usually fights from horseback.

The more you start to explore the system, the more you get off the beaten path of assigning 12 to Speed, 48 to Precision, 40 to Health, and choosing the exact Abilities needed by the Order.

Thanks for the detailed review. It's really a deep look into the system. Probably the hardest part.

The day has finally come! I'll play on Saturday with a cast of unlikely heroes. I'm happy! I have tried to schedule that game since forever. I'll try to ask one question before the game. How does the circles for summon works? Once you summon and bind (or the equivalent for the teourgy), can you step out of the circle? Does the party needs to be protected inside the circle as well (I imagine for necrourgy)?

As always, thank you!

Quote from: Rithuan;1101555Thanks for the detailed review. It's really a deep look into the system. Probably the hardest part.

Yeah, remember the intro to Lejendary Rules for All Players. It sets out two goals. To be rules lite and easy for beginners to learn. But at the same time was aiming to be something that provided a lot of depth and challenge for experienced players as well. When you break it down, you almost couldn't ask for a simpler game. Then when you start thinking through things, you find there is a lot of depth and nuance and even complexity to the game.

QuoteThe day has finally come! I'll play on Saturday with a cast of unlikely heroes. I'm happy! I have tried to schedule that game since forever.

Awesome! I hope it goes well. My advice would be, try not to get hung up on rules. Remember Abilities are broadly defined. Err on the side of allowing players to try things and using their Abilities. And the game numbers are tools and there to help you. Feel free to do with them what you will.

For example, if an Avatar is searching for a secret door, rather than just calling for a straight up Scrutiny check, I'll actually call for a check against Speed BR. Those who have Scrutiny get to add half of that ability to the probability. I don't feel constrained to limit myself to straight up percentile checks against the Ability score.

QuoteI'll try to ask one question before the game. How does the circles for summon works? Once you summon and bind (or the equivalent for the teourgy), can you step out of the circle? Does the party needs to be protected inside the circle as well (I imagine for necrourgy)?

I think this is one of those areas where you should have fun with it, treating each spirit as a unique entity. I can tell you my understanding of the rules and how I do it.

The short answer is: Only the Activator must be inside the protection circle, and need only remain there long enough to issue a command.

Summoning in general works like this:

You create a summoning circle and protection circle. If the summoning circle is flawed, even if the activation succeeds, the summoning just fizzles out. You can think of it like, you may have succeeded in calling up the spirit, but failed to command it to so much as materialize. If the summoning circle is good but the protection circle is flawed, a successful activation indicates that the spirit's first act will be to attack the activator, before the activator can issue any command. The spirit leaves the command circle to attack, so no further commands to it may be issued either. Just think of it as the summoning having completely backfired. If both circles are good and the summoning is successful, the activator will issue its command. For elementals, this command sets them about their task. Since they must go to work on the task, the spirit will not attack even if you step out of the protection circle at that point.

There are some variations on this. Deital minions won't attack the activator, but they might shame you. Undead, once commanded, will remain obedient unless they sense the activator is weak--they automatically know if a Necrourge is at zero AEPs, and that's when they will attack. With Sorcery summonings, there's a good chance that the spirit will try to go rogue while obeying the letter of the command. You'll notice Tricks is one of the required Abilities of the Demonurge Order. It implies that you sometimes need to trick the spirits you summon.

All in all, I try to treat each spirit as an individual entity. A sorcerer certainly needs to name a specific spirit. For deital minions, I typically have the Avatar visited by the exact same minion each time using the Rite. For one thing, it helps curb potential abuse of summonings. The spirit will note your track record, and will start giving push back if you summon them for trivial or inappropriate reasons. But I think players also enjoy the continuity and learning the personality of their minion.

For elementals, I haven't done this yet, but recently I was reading through my AD&D 1E Lankhmar book, the NPC section, and one of the NPCs was a female djinn, and I thought it would be cool to have something like that for a recurring spirit. She can bring some sex appeal to it. Admonish Avatars for doing silly things. Laugh when they have silly plans. I also thought of giving her some of the 1e AD&D djinn powers, like the ability to create meals and such. So it's not just the attack forms listed in the BoL.

The other benefit to individualizing spirits is, if you make a call, and it turns out the spirit is over-powered or under-powered, it's a really easy correction to just have a different spirit show up thereafter, whose capacities are more in line with what you deem fair.

Quote from: Lunamancer;1101664Awesome! I hope it goes well. My advice would be, try not to get hung up on rules. Remember Abilities are broadly defined. Err on the side of allowing players to try things and using their Abilities. And the game numbers are tools and there to help you. Feel free to do with them what you will.

I can tell you my understanding of the rules and how I do it.

The short answer is: Only the Activator must be inside the protection circle, and need only remain there long enough to issue a command.

Summoning in general works like this:

As always, thank you for your clarifications and interpretations. Both equally valuable to me.

I just wanted to say that the adventure was great. As one shot, the players managed to do a lot of spell casting, combat and other skills. Since we really had a condensed adventure, and I had to speed up the pase and cut content, we didn't touch de concept of summoning and other general skills.

Now, my overall experience was great. The game run easier than I expected, and the players caught the rules after a few rolls. Also, all the players agreed that would like to keep playing the game - and with a group of limited time, that's a great compliment

Quote from: Rithuan;1103254As always, thank you for your clarifications and interpretations. Both equally valuable to me.

I just wanted to say that the adventure was great. As one shot, the players managed to do a lot of spell casting, combat and other skills. Since we really had a condensed adventure, and I had to speed up the pase and cut content, we didn't touch de concept of summoning and other general skills.

Yeah, summonings are extremely potent, but there are a lot of good reasons to not use them. There are the risks. There's also the time it takes to prepare the summoning circles, which means they won't be helpful in combat or other critical situations unless they are planned in advance. And the third reason is the AEP cost. One of the Avatars I play in a weekly game summoned a deital minion for the first time. This requires successful activation of the Invocation of Glory and the Summoning Rite. She got the Invocation but failed the Rite. So made a second attempt, getting both the second time. Still, that's two major and two extreme activations. 44 AEPs right there, out of her 60 total. Doesn't leave you with a lot of fire power for future activations.

QuoteNow, my overall experience was great. The game run easier than I expected, and the players caught the rules after a few rolls. Also, all the players agreed that would like to keep playing the game - and with a group of limited time, that's a great compliment

Glad to hear it worked out well.

I think what really works for new players is the fact that the percentile system is so intuitive, and the character creation system allowed you to create some really cool characters. Again, glad it worked for your group!

I have a quick question. Where can I find the time (in ABC) that takes a regular melee attack? I found the bow and throwing weapons, but no melee. Might be that I'm tired

Btw, I finally saw the Lejendary Adventure community on FB. I don't have a FB account, but I can see the post. Good times!