Time for an EXTREME change!
Concentrate
Traditions primal
Duration 1 minute
Time to change into the most power form QUICKLY!. You cast the dragon form spell but only use one action to do so.
Thoughts?
Product– Knight: An Avalon RPG quickstart
System- Knight: An Avalon
Producer– Antre Monte Editions
Price– free here https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/all-about-games-consulting/knight-rpg
TL; DR– Power Rangers meets Dark Horror with NEON! 97%
Basics– Let’s cancel the Apocalypse! Knight: An Avalon RPG is a near modern day retelling of Camelot with men and women donning power armor to kill horrors out of the dark. Let’s break this down.
Basics- This is a d6 rpg. Your character has five aspects with three characteristics under each aspect for a total of 15 skills. When you want to do anything, you total the correct aspect with the correct characteristic and roll that many dice. Each even result is success and each odd is a failure. If you hit the correct amount of successes determined by the GM for the thing you are attempting to do, you succeed. A good aspect is a five and your off aspects are about threes with your characteristics ranging from one to three most of the time. The normal difficulty is three successes. No success at all is critical failure, while all success is a great feat/critical success.
Combat- Combat is round based and mostly theater of the mind. You have initiative which is 3d6+ an initiative score. Each round a character gets a move and an action with some reactions. When you attack a target you are aiming at the defense score for melee and at a reaction score for ranged combat. Here is the fun meat and potatoes of the game. You are not just a dude with a gun fighting horrors, you are a guy/gal in power armor. Your power armor has a force field that subtracts from all damage dealt to you. After that, you have armor points which act as the armor’s hit points and for every 10 the armor loses, you lose one of yours as you get battered around in the suit. Once the suit’s taken enough damage, it retracts and you’re just a guy/gal fighting the horrors of the dark!
Suit powers- Your suit has powers as well and these are fueled with the suits energy points. This works just like magic points in any RPG as you spend as much as you want until the suit is tapped out and you’re just left with your guns, fists, and harsh language.
Hope- Hope is sanity in this game. As you experience the horrors in the dark, you have to make checks to see if you lose hope. If you lose all your hope, you effectively die as you just become an agent of the darkness.
Heroism- Story candy! Heroism is the story candy of this game where you get it for story reasons or just being the guy/gal to buy pizza that week. It lets you reroll dice, avoid dying, not lose hope, or any other cool thing that the GM lets you do.
Alright, thats the basics, let’s dig in.
Mechanics or Crunch– This game plays like a strange version of Shadowrun and that’s a good thing. This is a VERY crunchy game with piles of d6s being thrown at a problem. I like that. Some things feel a bit inconsistent, like choosing DCs. When I want to do something opposed by a bad guy, the DC is half their relevant ability, but you do not do that for their defense stats. That feels just a tiny bit off. Not enough that it will keep me away, however. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff– Want gritty power rangers with rampant evils of capitalism and magic crap all over? Yep, I do too. That’s what this game feels like. Do you remember the 90s TV cartoon where football players went back and were working for Merlin with magic power armor? Mix that with a little Clive Barker and TONS of neon light tracery, and you get this. Yes, I want that. 5/5
Execution– This is well done and almost perfect for a crowd-funded project. There is a 30+ page book with art, a basic walkthrough of the game, and a short adventure WITH five premade characters. My ONE issue is that there is no hyperlinking. But it’s 30 pages and free. If I wanted to play it with friends, it took me 30 minutes to read through cover to cover and have enough of an idea how to play and run. That’s a hell of an introduction. 5/5
Summary– I grew up in the 90s and am a sucker for any power armor heroes. I also loved the Matrix and Dark City. This is that in a blender. I have some slight reservations about how numbers are calculated, but that’s not enough to keep me away. This is one to check out as it’s free, and in my opinion well worth your time. 97%
If you don’t think, you are fine.
Manipulate
Traditions occult
Range 30 feet; Target 1 willing creature
Duration 1 minute
You help a creature block all pain for a moment at the expense of its mind. The creature gains resistance 10 to all damage except mental damage where it is gains .weakness 20 mental damage. If the creature has any other resistances or weaknesses these are lost for the duration of the spell.
Thoughts?
Did you slip me a micky?
Micky
As an action, you enact this plan and inject a target within 30 feet with a dark. The target must make a Constitution saving throw against your plan DC. If it fails it takes a -1 to all checks for 10 minutes..
Level 3: The target gains a -2 penalty to all checks for the duration.
Level 5: The target gains a -3 penalty to all checks for the duration.
Level 7: The target gains a -4 penalty to all checks for the duration.
Level 9: The target gains a -5 penalty to all checks for the duration.
Thoughts?
Might be something you ate….
Manipulate Acid
Traditions arcane
Range 100 feet; Target 20-foot burst
Defense basic Fortitude
Your manipulate the biology of a target causing its digestive system to backfire and digest the creature from the inside out. Living targets with a digestive system take 10d6 acid damage based on their Fortitude save. If a target falls to zero hit points from this damage, they explode dealing 6d6 acid splash damage to all creatures within 10 feet. Targets that do not digest or are not alive are unaffected by this spell.
Thoughts?
My god doesn’t like you!
Manipulate
Traditions divine
Range 50 feet; Target 1 enemy
Defense Will; Duration 1 round to 1 minute
You ask your god for a direct punishment on those enemies of your faith inflicting a multitude of plagues upon them all at once. One enemy in range must attempt a Fortitude save
Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The target becomes blinded, clumsy 1, confused, deafened, enfeebled 1, frightened 1, off-guard, sickened 1, slowed 1, and stupefied 1 for 1 round. If the target already has any of these conditions and the condition has a value increase that condition.
Failure The target becomes blinded, clumsy 1, confused, deafened, enfeebled 1, frightened 1, off-guard, sickened 1, slowed 1, and stupefied 1. If the target already has any of these conditions and the condition has a value increase that condition. The target must make a DC 11 flat check to end each condition individually.
Critical Failure The target becomes blinded, clumsy 1, confused, deafened, enfeebled 2, frightened 2, off-guard, sickened 2, slowed 2, and stupefied 2. If the target already has any of these conditions and the condition has a value increase that condition. The target must make a DC 11 flat check to reduce or end each condition individually.
.
Thoughts?
Product– Daggerheart Playtest
System- Daggerheart
Producer– Darrington Press
Price– free here https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/daggerheart/sources/playtest
TL; DR– RPG fusion! 93%
Basics– The Critical Roll bunch have an RPG! Let’s look over this d12 fusion RPG!
Basics- This is a 2d12 rpg. You roll both, add abilities and statistics, and see if you hit a desired DC. Pretty simple for the basics.
Hope and fear or 2d12- The basics are not too strange, but when you roll, you roll 2 different colored d12. One is your hope and one is your fear. If the hope beats the fear value, then you gain hope. If the fear beats the hope, then the GM gets to stop the action and jump in or gets to bank a fear for later.
Using hope- Hope is used to either help yourself or an ally when they roll. You can spend hope to give your friend an additional d12 hope die and choose the better of them. Also, you have a set of experiences. These are akin to skills in DnD. When an experience you have makes sense for a particular action and you want to, you can spend hope to gain the value of an experience as a bonus to the roll.
Combat, turns, and damage- This is a VERY heavy roleplaying game with less focus on crunch. Combat is not round based. Players can do any action from using abilities or attacking and place a token on the action tracker. This continues until a character rolls higher on the fear die. Then the GM gets to play using each token on the action tracker to do something such as attacking, using abilities, and removing conditions on enemies. In either case, if an attack is made, the attack goes against an evasion score. If the attack hits, then the attacker rolls damage. Damage does not just reduce hit points by an amount, but instead the attack goes against damage thresholds causing between zero and 3 hit points. If the attack hits but fails to hit the lowest damage threshold, you take stress. Stress is another stat and represents your body gradually being beaten down, but not enough to hurt you hard. Stress can also come from the environment or abilities you or enemies have. In addition, armor allows you to reduce damage, but it also gets beaten down with use. If you choose, you can reduce damage by your armor value, but you have to check off a use. No uses left means you can’t use your armor. No stress left means you can’t use that ability and all rolls against you have advantage.
Using Fear- Fear is the GMs version of hope. Fear allows enemies to do some actions, for the environment to do some actions, or even for the GM to add additional tokens to the turn tracker.
Alright, thats the basics, let’s dig in.
Mechanics or Crunch– The mechanics here are interesting. It’s not deep enough to be DnD, but its also not deep enough to be Shadowrun. It’s heavily based on the Cypher system. That’s not bad, but it’s also really up in the air. If you want consistency, this won’t be the game for you. If you can handle the give and take of this game, it’s a solid game. 5/5
Theme or Fluff– For the story, what’s here is good, but it’s also not done. It’s got a solid adventure, but you won’t see much world building here, but more is coming as they write more. I don’t hate anything, but I need more details in the base game, not just the adventure. 4.5/5
Execution– This is an interesting one. I love online materials, but Nexus does not have an app. I also don’t like the lack of an index. If it’s present, I have a hard time finding it, so that’s just as bad. The basic functions work well, but again there is no app. So, using a phone for this can be a bit of a pain. The adventure is nice and is fun. The character PDFs are nice as well and have solid help sections for the players. 4.5/5
Summary– This RPG leaves me optimistic. The mechanics and theme are interesting. I want more. Give me an app and give me some more world building, and I’d be even happier. That said, if you need hard crunch this won’t be for you. But it’s free, so check this one out. At worst, you see the system building before your eyes. It’s also an interesting mix of several different parts from other RPGs. You got bits from DnD all the way to the cypher system. I like those, so I like this as well. 93%
Time to change!
Concentrate
Traditions primal
Duration 1 minute
You rapidly turn into an elemental. You cast the elemental form spell but only use one action to do so.
Thoughts?
Throat Punch Games 