Peril Update in Short

Hey everyone, welcome back to another Dev Log! This one is all about Peril, Actions, and Taking Damage! This update was inspired by a playtest I did with my friend Eric Vulgaris on his Twitch stream which you can see right here!

So, what are the big changes?

Changing Fear

I recently worked on a game jam game called “St. Peter’s Home for the Mentally Impaired” which was created to facilitate the play of a horror movie as a TTRPG. From that, I got an idea for a really important difference when it came to levels of fear in an adventure. Panic, short-term fear that is caused by a sudden burst of fear hormones, and Peril, long-lasting fear of mortality, impending death, doom, gloom, and apathy. So, I replaced the Frightened Condition with these new, superior representations with fear and something changed.

Panic

Now I needed ways players could suffer both of these kinds of fear. So, I included rules for suffering fear damage (something that I feel like we should have suffered in the adventure when we saw a life-like rendition of the painting “Saturn eating his children”). That now causes panic, but what of Peril?

Peril

Well, something that’d been bugging me for a while was the Injured vs Wounded dynamic when a player takes damage. It makes sense from a game-ist point of view, but not in the world. So, critical damage always causes a Wounded condition, and the WIL Save is there for potentially gaining Peril.

BOOM! All of a sudden combat isn’t a total slog and Peril is involved in the system!

Conditions

I didn’t feel like players were receiving enough conditions naturally, something pointed out to me by one of Eric’s comments during the playtest. But the problem was, having a full pack of conditions meant you died, so it was a real ticking clock. To counteract that, I changed it so you only fall unconscious when your pack is full, instead of instantly dying.

Actions

Actions got a big change too! Instead of the main action and two quick actions you have 2 main actions. You cannot take the same main action twice in a single turn. You can dissolve one or both of these main actions into quick actions if you’d like.

HOWEVER, if you are successful with an attack or utility action, your turn ends immediately! Why? Speeds up the game and it keeps it balanced. It means you have to plan out your turn more, and that if you miss you can still try another action to make up for the lost action. Fantastic!!!!!

Can’t wait to see how this goes!

Other Things

There are many more changes made all across the book! Followers got a huge update, the monster rules, warbands, grammar all across the book, etc, etc, so give this new version a read or just read the changelog!

Thank you all so much!

Changelog

• Clarified text in the “Prices for Gear” section “Transportation”
• Removed Combat intro text
• Shortened Ambushing rules, included rolling initiative at the start of every turn
• Players now always have two main actions that can be split up into quick actions instead of one main action and two quick actions
• Successfully attacking an enemy now ends your turn
• Defending against an attack that a monster missed you on (remember, if a monster misses it still deals half damage) now deals no damage to you (the player) instead of 1/4 damage
• Successfully performing a utility action ends your turn
• The Expose Utility Action now can be utilized by the exposer and, if left unused, the effect ends at the end of the exposer’s next turn
• Using the Push Utility Action to push targets into impassible terrain (walls) now deals 1d4 damage
• Rules for characters taking “regular damage” (the normal damage taking rules) and “fear-related-damage” (sanity damage, terrifying presence, etc.) which both target Resolve, making resolve less of just HP Protection and more of stress defense, as was the original intention
• Players now always take the wounded condition after suffering critical damage, and the WIL save afterwards is to determine if they also gain the Peril condition
• Players now fall unconscious instead of instantly dying when they fill up on conditions
• Players that watch an ally fall unconscious due to conditions must succeed a WIL save or suffer the Panic condition themselves
• Removed starting Rations and Bedroll & Firestarters (a hold-over from a previous incarnation)
• Added a blurb about what your background actually means about your character
• Changed the Physical Details result of “Lisp” to “Lightly Accented”
• Heavy Armor now only reduces incoming damage by 1 (which is pretty dang significant I’ve found out)
• Now, personal coin purses can only hold 100 crowns, and a single slot can hold two extra coin purses, holding up to 200 crowns per slot
• Added a note in 10.3 Reward Amounts
• Some important bolding on the Followers section, as well as some much-needed changes to the Followers sheet
• Added text on when payments to followers should be made
• Halved the cost needed to form a warband after looking at what parties were actually likely to be able to field
• Added more text for desertion
• Beasts of Burden now use Monster Morale rules to simplify them further
• Clarified some rules on monsters moving over and through obstacles and nailing doors shut
• Monsters no longer gain conditions and instead, only lose defiance to keep tracking monsters to a minimum
• The example monster “Wraiths” are considered to be “Intelligent Undead” and are no longer immune to fear
• Peril condition replaces the Injured condition
• Panic condition has replaced the Frightened condition and is simpler and easier to deal with
• Starving condition has replaced the Hungry condition and has clearer text
• Crazed condition now only takes a long rest to clear, not a full rest
• And many many more!