Product– Oath Hammer Quick Start

System– Oath Hammer

Producer– Broken Blade Publishing

Price– free here  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/511285/oath-hammer-quickstart?affiliate_id=658618

TL; DR-Want Shadowrun rules in The Hobbit? 87%

Basics– Time to take back our home! In Oathhammer, players take the roles of dwarves, elves, humans, and many other fantasy races as they attempt to take back the dwarf home island long ago seized by the orcs.  Let’s get into the basics.

Base mechanics- Oathhammer is d6 pool based system.  For any action, a player takes an attribute and a skill, adds them together, adds penalties, and then rolls that many six sided dice.  The novel part of this system is the dice colors.  Different dice colors are assigned based on skills and abilities, with the least skilled dice only succeeding on a 4 or better and the best dice succeeding on a 2 or better.  These are small dice pools where a single success is needed for really simple actions and five successes are needed for really difficult actions.

Combat– Combat is teams based.  When combat happens, one character on each side makes a leadership check.  Going from high to low, that side decides if they will go before or after any group.  Combat is much like other dice pool games.  A character rolls an attack and a defender rolls a defence pool.  If the attacker wins, the net difference is carried over as damage.  The attacker then rolls weapon damage dice with any successes being carried over into more damage.  Lastly, the defender will roll armor dice, with the weapon reducing the number of dice the defender rolls.  The defender’s successes reduce the damage, and any remaining damage reduces grit or the hit points of the character.  When a character is reduced to 0 grit, two six-sided dice are rolled and a chart determines if it’s just a flesh wound, or if the character dies.

Magic– Magic is cast till you can’t.  Magic is a basic roll as above, and contested effects are determined by spell.  When you roll a 1, you build up stress.  Too much stress, and you can’t cast any more.

Character building– Characters are built by choosing a race, class, and oath.  The race gives you some bonuses and penalties to your attributes.  The class gives you some basic abilities and skills as well as what dice you roll for each action.  Finally, your oaths give you roleplaying opportunities and if you follow them, you gain experience points. 

Character advancement–  When you complete adventures and follow your oaths, you gain experience.  Those points are spent to increase your attributes, skills, and even buy new skill features.

Ok, thats the basics, let’s get into my thoughts.

Mechanics or Crunch- This is an interesting system, if a bit fiddly.  I love d6 dice pool systems.  It’s satisfying to throw a bunch of dice at a problem.  That said, the different dice colors are a tad fiddly.  Nothing too crazy, but you need to keep the different dice separate, and that’s not as much fun.  But it works, and it’s still fun to do.  4.5/5

Theme or Fluff-  Honestly this world feels like The Hobbit, in all the right ways.  You have dwarves who are fighting to get their homeland back.  You start as just random dudes, and can end up wielding huge armies who conquer the orcs to reclaim your homeland.  It’s a solid world to explore. 5/5

Execution– The book works, but it’s got some major flaws.  It’s beautiful and easy to read.  The sections are well laid out and enjoyable.  The big things I hate are for a quickstart are it’s not realy a quick start.  There are no pregens nor is there an adventure.  It’s an advertisement for the system-which is good, but it’s not a thing I could give my friends and jump in in 20 minutes.  We have to build characters and an adventure.  I couldn’t even find pregens on the website. I’d prefer almost no rules if you give me a game in 20 minutes. 3.5/5

Summary-I like The Hobbit and Shadowrun, and this is the mix of them.  The base mechanics work here, if they are a little bit fiddly at times.  The setting is pretty and well defined.  The only thing I don’t like is the lack of a real quickstart.   What’s here will draw you in, so it does its job. But, you won’t be able to play this game without more products and more work.  Aside from this, I love what I see.  87%